Gamers – My Game Reviews

Why I switched from Nvidia GeForce Now to Amazon Luna

Game Streaming is still a work in progress and has struggled to truly take off in the way that video streaming did slowly with RealPlayer and then solidifying with YouTube and Netflix.

The issue with Game Streaming vs Video Streaming

Video streaming is an easier concept to understand for most people. Simply have video delivered by digital information transmissions rather than analog signals. Even with the analog televisions, it is a simple concept. You turn on the television and switch to a channel which receives a signal. In many ways, it is still magical experience. You have a screen which puts people in a box and you hear their voices and see their movements. However, it is a concept which is simple to explain to the ordinary customers, especially in an age where tinkering isn’t a popular in our nation.

Video Games have been on the sidelines for many years, unable to break out its role as the strange cousin of the realizable standbys of television and earlier, radio shows. Another issue is that video games are not movies. They are interactive experiences which separates them from movies and puts them in the same place as the circus or sports. This comparison may make some gamers have an inferiority complex as they want to constantly have video games be taken seriously. Even with all the great stories, video games are still seen as a product of immature people even though many of the people making those statements belong to industries that exploit video games for content to make their movies and shows.

The way to change this is Game Streaming.

However, streaming a video game isn’t the same as streaming a movie. The difference in bandwidth is immense and video games began largely as physical objects, now mostly digital and now there needs to be a reliable to stream a video game from a server without requiring downloads or physical means. While some gamers may prefer physical copies, which I can agree with, most people will be satisfied with having a digital copy. However, the issue of storage is coming back one again. On my computer, I can only fit so many games and these huge games are making it tough to enjoy a variety of games, leaving me to play really old games or a single release. Such a situation leads players to concentrate their attention onto a few games or to not even pay attention to their backlog at all, making it tough for independents to make an impact on the industry when players all play the same game.

Game streaming can help bring gamers of all stripes together. Nvidia’s Geforce Now is a great compromise, allowing for a much larger library of games to be played as you have just add your game library and you can stream tons of games that would otherwise be unplayable on her computer. I have already explained how GeForce Now is a great service. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to play the Remastered version of the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

However, I had to switch to Amazon Luna.

Why?

Simply because it’s already bundled with my Prime Subscription. That helps in reducing the cost of the service. With Nvidia GeForce Now, the premium option (the best option) costs $19.99 and it has the best graphics chips in the servers. However, it is not worth the price right now. You have to buy the games separately and this adds to the cost. Some games on GeForce Now are free to play games but other game services have free to play games, so this is not as exclusive or as important as it seems here.

Amazon Luna has less games, but it is already bundled with my prime subscription and that is very important. I do not have to add anymore subscriptions to my account here.

Amazon also provides a Premium subscription with more games which costs more but bundling it with the Prime account is a great move on their part here. They also have other premium subscription choices to link up with other stores. The real star of the show which made me use the service was the inclusion of Skyrim in the service. My steam copy of Skyrim was getting glitchy on my computer and I needed another way to play this classic game.

Skyrim on Amazon Luna plays well and that is all I really needed. My laptop often overheats when playing a game installed on the machine, so I needed a virtual way of passing that issue.

Nvidia GeForce Now is a great service, but I needed to switch as it fits with my budget right now. Battlefield 6 was the main reason why I was paying for the service. As Battlefield 6 has many hackers and issues at the moment, I am going to wait and let the people who work on the game to smooth out any problems so that the gameplay experience is more enjoyable for me and other users.

Amazon Luna is probably the best game streaming service right now if one wants to just play and not have to worry about space on their computers. There is a limitation in games available but that if that really worries you, there are other premium additions that you can add to the service. Many people already have a prime subscription as one can clearly see with all the Amazon vehicles on a daily basis moving around America’s cities and communities. It is worth the money and I recommend that people subscribe to Amazon Luna if they want a way to stream without taking space.

It is also a great way to expose more people to gaming as it can be kind of an elitist space, but game streaming makes more available to those who wish to enter this incredible cyberspace of play and entertainment. The video game industry has great potential, and we need to be able to expand the culture of gaming beyond what we have seen before here. Being able to just pick up and play will bring in new people and maybe ideas so that gaming can start to innovate once again and bring some much-needed creativity into America and the gaming community.

The Google Empire: Why we need more search engines other than Google

The usage of “network” effect to basically dismiss calls for other search engines or any other institution is a common phrase. The people who use it to say there is something transhistorical about Google and that people should be just accept Google. The thing that Google has is the ability to just control the access to information and also installing their search services on every Android device here. Microsoft got in trouble for the same thing, but now they are basically the underdogs here in the search space with Bing, which is good but is basically unable to gain traction because Google keeps people within their systems. This means that people only see Google and not other competitors.

I use Google’s products as they are not incompetent at making email services such as Gmail. However, they are often used as the only service and the “nerds” or power” users are trying to use other products. For example, think about DuckDuckGo or other search engines such as Bing as I mentioned earlier. However, Bing is the only one that is capable of challenging Google. In the early 2010s, its market share was higher than it is now but it is unable to get beyond a small percentage.

We need more search engine choices.

Why is that we allow people to congregate in the “best”

This best is being propped up with all sorts of trickery and manipulations. The most important thing that can happen now is that we need to break up the app stores of both Google and Apple. This duopoly has allowed for the ossification of many aspects of the internet. It has led to the decline in the quality of desktop sites. Previously, desktop sites had all their charm and qualities. Now it the same throughout and it is not interesting now. Even the corporate sites, the front page of a company’s brand have become little more than portals to their social media sites.

We need competition and while we may have alternatives, we do not currently have competition.

Search engines should be an area of competition and growth and not beholden to only one company. The internet is a space without any limit in space only bandwidth. We should have many choices.

Battlefield 6: Vehicular combat is a return to form for the series.

Battlefield 6 CV-90 on the Siege of Cairo Map

Battlefield 6’s Open Beta is in full swing, and people are coming into play. Battlefield 6 has already gotten over 500,000 peak players on steam charts. On console, it is probably even higher. I have been very impressed with the performance that the game is giving me on my computer.

In terms of the Vehicular combat, I have to say that this game series is one of the best and there no one that comes close to competing with it. Vehicular combat is a genre of video games that used to be more popular in the past and Battlefield holds up that tradition in spades here and with greater fidelity than before.

As of right now, Liberation Peak is the best map for vehicular combat. Considering how snipers are so prevalent on Liberation Peak that it is better to be inside a vehicle.

The map has a variety of vehicles available for use. There are jeeps that spawn at the various bases. Such vehicles are useful for attacking objective points on the map.

The infantry fighting vehicles are also there. It useful in being able to transport many soldiers. The CV-90 seen in these screenshots, can be used to transport 6 soldiers at a time. This means that the vehicle, piloted by someone with lots of skill can takeover objectives quickly on the map. It has multiple weapons and countermeasures, making it tough vehicle.

There are also Main Battle Tanks on this map also. In the beta, the main one available is the M1A2 Abrams. It is a very powerful vehicle capable of taking out vehicles as well as infantry. There is also a copilot position in here also which adds more firepower to the tanks.

Aircraft are also make their presence known on Liberation Peak. Such maps have their detractors in the form of some more purist FPS players but the aircraft opens up Battlefield to more players; I’ll be honest, they make the game more interesting than just having guys running around shooting at one another. The interplay between infantry and vehicle in Battlefield is what distinguishes it from other games.

The CV 90 on the Liberation Peak map in Conquest. A M1A2 Abrams can be seen on the road here.

The CV-90 is an example of what I like seeing in this series. Unlike some of the fanbase that only wants to play on the same urban maps, these vehicles allow for greater squad play than any other approach. One of the things that these vehicles allow is for players to hitch rides and capture objectives. The usage of vehicles in these games helps to build a sense of teamwork and give people something to strive for over just running and gunning opponents in games.

Battlefield always had a variety of maps and we should appreciate that. However, we cannot just have Urban repeats all the time. I like the bigger maps as they force players to think more about how to organize themselves and win the game.

Battlefield is all about the holistic integration of combined arms not just running and gunning on a small urban map. Battlefield 6 shows why the series is not just a clone of other FPS games but its own subgenre that is still highly popular amongst gamers.