Saturday Morning Gaming: Gaming As A Service

Maribou and I FINALLY switched to high-speed internet.

In our defense, we didn’t really need it until recently. The main thing that I use the internet for is text (like right now!) and downloading games onto Steam. Single-player games that don’t rely on being served server-side. Maribou’s usage is also mostly for text but she was also a fan of Netflix. The good news is that we generally didn’t step on each other’s toes too much. But I generally couldn’t download a game while she was watching a show because it made her show stutter and, let’s face it, I should just pause and wait until we’d gone to bed to download stuff. It’s not like I was going to play it anytime soon.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. High speed internet. We went from a speed of around 5 Megs to 40(!). So now we can do stuff like “both watch Netflix at the same time” or “download a game and not care whether she’s watching Netflix” or, most importantly, play with PlayStation’s gaming service: PlayStation Now.

My general attitude toward Gaming As A Service (henceforth GaaS) is “I have enough games to not need to play games that I don’t own”. Except, well, I’ve been playing the Batman Arkham Games as part of the joys of waiting for Cyberpunk to come out. These are games that I’ve played through before but I love the setting, I love the characters, I love the voice acting, and the games themselves are strong games in and of themselves beyond whether you care about Batman or not. They’re just awesome.

So I beat Arkham Asylum Remastered and I beat Arkham City Remastered and I was sitting there wishing that I could get my hands on Arkham Origins and play that before I moved on to Arkham Knight. So I googled it. And, wouldn’t you know, they didn’t remaster it, they had no plans to remaster it, and the only way that I could get my paws on it was to purchase a subscription to PlayStation Now. I looked at the price and it said 25 bucks for 3 months. 25 bucks for three months?!? Preposterous! Then I asked myself: “Would you pay $50 for Arkham Origins Remastered?” and, wouldn’t you know it? I would.

So I got myself a subscription.

And, of course, my internet was not fast enough. So we called the various cable companies and had various people come out to our house and plug stuff and unplug stuff and, now, I’ve got 40 down and I can play on PlayStation Now.

It’s not BAD. I am pleased with it for the ability to play Arkham Origins but it also has games like the Ratchet and Clanks, the Dark Clouds, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, The Overlords, The Uncharteds, and that’s only talking about the high notes for me personally. There’s a bunch of stuff on there.

Now, if it were up to me, I’d prefer to have the physical media because if I’m playing while Maribou is watching Netflix sometimes I suffer from some light stutter… it’s nothing that would prevent me from playing but it can mess with my timing. This is generally only a problem when I’m fighting, say, Deathstroke or Lady Shiva but, if you are fighting them, it IS a problem. But if you’re just out and about solving crimes? Well, you might take a punch or two that you might otherwise have successfully dodged or blocked but you’ll be able to finish the fight and get back to what you were doing.

And when I am done with this, I am looking at those Ratchet and Clank games, and remembering how much I absolutely LOVED them.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is “Boat Tail End High Speed run-2+” by Sheba_Also 15.6 Million Views. Used under a creative commons license.)