Google Stadia: the real review

This was supposed to be a tweet, but as it got a bit too long, I’ll put it into a post. When Google Stadia was announced, I was one of the first people to buy the founder’s pack because the idea of being able to play on any screen anywhere, just by having an internet connection and a controller, was perfectly matching my plans to play while I was traveling around the world. Since the first packs began to arrive, I’ve been seeing on the internet a lot of hate and many reviews that did not put this service in a good place and I thought it was because they introduced only the beta version. I decided to do my personal review of a daily user so you can get an idea of what you will get if you decide to make the leap to this platform.

Let’s discuss the most important features:

Latency

The big worry. You´ve probably heard the phrase “sure, you need a very good connection and very low ping to be able to play” as it is a streaming-based service. Well, I play mainly in my house located near Barcelona, where the fiber doesn’t reach. Connected to Ethernet, I get 23Mb/s and 20Mb/s over wifi. With this connection, I can play Stadia without any problem. The character responds quickly, the camera movements are fluid and even Stadia says that my connection is excellent for playing.

I don’t know if the video comes in 1080 or 4K (as my TV is only 1080), but it looks super sharp. There’s no difference between playing using Stadia or a traditional console. Only sometimes, when I play from my MacBook Pro via Wi-Fi while in bed, there are moments when the video stream appears lag occasional. I’ve also tried playing in my office, where we have 300Mb/s and obviously everything works perfectly. So, I can say that you don’t need a super-fast connection to play.

User experience

Generally speaking, using Stadia feels really good. Buying a game is intuitive and quick and the menus of both the app and the screen are self-explanatory. The controller is very comfortable, I’ve spent more than 2 hours playing (and my chromecast didn’t explode as some users have reported). However, the configuration of the buttons on the controller makes you inadvertently press the screen capture button almost every time you want to open the options menu. There are many items that are not yet available, such as activating the Google assistant from the remote, making groups of friends or being able to give the buddy pass. That’s why the whole experience isn’t complete yet.

Conclusion

I’m not sure who Stadia is aimed at: PC users will hardly be able to switch to controller and it doesn’t make any sense for those already having a console to switch to Stadia. I imagine it will be useful in those cases, in which you want to make the leap to buy a new console and consider this alternative. Apart from that, if more games are added in the future (which I’m sure about), it’s overall a good service that delivers what it promises. I guess. we’ll see the level of acceptance it has in the gaming world over the next year