By Alec Meer on December 16th, 2011 at 4:53 pm.
This is probably old news to you, but it’s new news to me and my ancient Egyptian ancestors told me during my hypnotherapy that the entire universe is just a figment of my imagination, therefore I can post it if I please and if you moan it’s only because I’m imagining someone moaning. Cloud gaming tech Gaikai has been offering streaming demos of various games – most notably Dead Space 2 and Mass Effect 2 – here and there for a while now, but I’ve just discovered that, over on Eurogamer, you can jump into browser-based slices of Crysis 2, Magicka, FIFA 12 and the Witcher 2.
Update: omigodomigodomigod. There are more demos on the Gaikai site. Including FARMING SIMULATOR. Yes! Also, try this link if you’re being region-blocked on the other. It might work: hard to say without catching a few jetplanes to the other side of the world.
Gaikai different to OnLive in that this is just to promote the full, traditional version of the game rather than be main event in itself, and it’s pretty good way of achieving that even if there is an inevitable hit to visual quality and control smoothness. Clever stuff, but looks much nicer in a window than fullscreen.
Oh, and Crysis 2 seems slightly laggy even when running on a massive PC elsewhere, bless it.
“Witcher 12.”
Oh wow, I’m going over there right now.
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You typo people really are the boringest.
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Now I feel bad.
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What’s the preferred way to report typos then?
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Don’t bother. Instead, report inaccuracies. No-one really cares about typos.
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Not caring. Or privately and politely via mail or twitter, so it doesn’t look like you being a public know-it-all and risk inciting other commenters calling you something related to early-20th century German political movements.
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Email when it’s John who made it, but I don’t believe the others like it.
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[You could be polite by n]ot caring. [Alternatively you could try] privately and politely[,] via mail or twitter[,] [contacting us/me] so it doesn’t look like you['re] being a public [know it all.] [If you do not inform me that way then you] risk inciting other commenters calling you something related to [a mid 19th-]century German [ideological] movement[].
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My typos should be carved into my flesh as a painful reminder of my inadequcies.
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Didn’t all these people get taken away in the Pendant Bus already?
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Correct response to OP: ‘Oh, oops! How careless of me! Fixed.’
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Incorrect response: You are the worst person in the world. You am akin to nazi.
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I always thought that mentioning typos in the comments was more polite than wasting someone’s time with a fully-fledged email.
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I wonder if by Witcher 12 they’ll have given Geralt some personality …?
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@ Bhazor
He was correct calling the Nazi’s a mid 20th century political movement; your act of correcting him to state Nazism as being a 19th century political movement was in fact incorrect. The reason why is that year 0ce-99ce was in fact its own century and is considered 1st century as opposed to 100ce-199ce.
For example, we are currently in the 21st century and not the 20th.
Abolitionism would have been a mid 19th century political movement :D
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Nope. Nazism (or national socialism*) dates back to the mid 1800s. Hitler and co’s Workers Party was just a continuation of an older ideology that didn’t really kick off in Germany until after WW1. The Nazi eugenics also date back to this time.
*Hitler and his pals opposed socialism but kept the name because it was very appealing to the voters. If he’d been honest and called his party “The Jew Dislikers” he probably wouldn’t of got the vote. Proof that PR has been the root cause of all evils that have beset mankind.
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If he’d been honest and called his party “The Jew Dislikers” he probably wouldn’t [have] got the vote. [This is p]roof that PR has been the root cause of all evils that have beset mankind.
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If he’d called his party “The Jew Dislikers”, the German voters probably would have found his use of English rather pretentious and distancing.
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WTH is with those brackets, is there a editor at large? does it not give you guys the your connetion is useless crap? (from Czech republic on a ADSL)
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FARMING SIMULATOR 2011!!!
Everyone try it out now! It’s brilliant.
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I got my tractor stuck to a car (upside down, no less) in the first minute…perhaps I’m not cut out for farming…
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I am continiously suprised at how popular it is where I live (a rural area).
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Another technology offering pseudo-demos can only be good, even if it’s just the ‘is the game any good?’ type of demoing rather than ‘will my obscure quintuple SLI overclocked liquid helium cooled abomination of a PC run it?’ demoing.
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‘Your location is currently unsupported’
sigh
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“Your bandwidth is not sufficient to stream a high quality experience. Please turn off other Internet-enabled applications or devices and try again.”
:(
Sucks having slow broadband.
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On a sorta-related tangent, RPS regular and general bargain-scout Lewie P has found that tomrorow, you can grab Crysis 2 off Direct2Drive (registers on Origin) for £3.74
(Also for the same price: Mirror’s Edge the day after tomorrow, Dragon Age 2 on the 23rd, Dragon Age 1 Complete for £5 on the 24th, and The Saboteur for £3.74 again on the 30th – all worth getting, all should be Origin-registerable)
That is an absurdly low price, and I honestly consider it one of the most underrated games of this year. Most actual discussion on it got drowned out by the traditional PC blog nonsense about FOV settings and DirectX versions, forgetting that – while not *quite* as open as the first game – it’s a rock solid shooter with fairly freeform battlefields.
It also runs so much better than the first game. And no, they didn’t drop the jungle environments because the engine can’t handle it. In fact, most of the user-made levels (DX11 update and editor are now out) are jungle themed. Apparently it’s way easier to make those than urban environments – go figure.
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It’s too bad EA pulled Crysis 2 from all U.S. digital retailers to keep it exclusively in “you never know when we’ll block you forever” Origin while you Europeans get to enjoy sales from a myriad of sites. My American brain cannot handle this concept of not getting the best options available to me. I guess I’ll just have to handle the situation by never buying Crysis 2.
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Crysis 2 is on Direct2Drive US/Canada as well… What you talkin’ about? They only pulled it from Steam because they were running that half-arsed PR campaign about how Valve were big meanies and FORCING them to leave that nobody in their right mind believed.
And if you want to reduce your chance of getting banned from Origin to approximately zero, DON’T POST ON THE OFFICIAL FORUMS. It’s dumb that you have to do it this way, but it’s an easy workaround. Alternatively, if you absolutely *must* troll the BF3 forums, create a new, seperate forum account that isn’t linked to your Origin account.
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Hmm, you’re right about D2D. It’s still not on greenman, and last time I checked it was missing from Impulse, but it seems to be back there as well.
Regarding their forums though, you don’t actually need to post. EA has banned users who are MENTIONED in other users’ posts, which is complete idiocy, but they’re not backing down and are keeping the innocent players banned for being cursed at. Even non-participation still carries with it the potential for losing your Origin library. No thank you.
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The guy who got banned for being quoted was posting on the forums – some ham-fisted moderator banned both the guy quoting and the one quoted. Collateral damage, two people in the same thread.
Again, you are safe if you avoid the official forums, or post under a different account.
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Nope. Im clicking “Play” and nothing happens. Is it region locked ?
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Didn’t work for me in Opera, so I switched to Firefox. Try IE or Firefox if you’re not using them
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Same for me. Wouldn’t work in Opera, so I had to use IE.
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The problem is that most of the internet in the UK is utter crap and their trying to stream at the maximum quality possible. If the stream was compressed to 360p then some of us might be able to play.
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The international link works in germany. Which is kind of strange, since those things tend to never work here, but i’m glad anyways ;-).
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Strange, both links show as being the same for me: hxxp://www.gaikai.com/games
Not that I’d likely pass the bandwidth test anyway.
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In Kanada it seems to work pretty good. I played dead rising and it worked flawlessly. Now to try Farm Simulator.
Edit: Farm Simulator is fun but there seems to be no way to change your avatar.
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Looks compressed and feels a little sluggish, but as a demo it’s fine by my standards. Beats the heck out of a promo video.
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“Sorry…
Your bandwidth is not sufficient to stream a high quality experience. Please turn off other Internet-enabled applications or devices and try again.”
sigh. i couldn’t get onlive to work either.
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I actually managed to get the Witcher 2 to work.
The mouse is crazy sensitive in the Witcher 2….one point I felt like my character was having a seizure the camera was moving so much.
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Are you using something like Synergy that might be changing your mouse from relative to absolute? Some games really don’t like that.
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Tried Crysis 2,.
Ran on an old laptop..In a browser…?..on a wireless network..!!!
That’s mighty impressive, more so that Onlive which required a client and wireless was a bit of a problem then and there.
The name, on the other hand, is a a complete disaster.
Onlive is sort of self-explanatory.
Gaikai?! What!
(Japanese for “open ocean” apparently..)
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‘Steam’ sounds like an ambiguously gay sauna/club. In fact, Steamworks actually *is*
Seriously, google it.
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Does that install anything on your computer?
/paranoid.
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You need Java, which most people should already have. As far as a Gaikai specific plugin, there is none.
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“Your location is not currently supported. Please check back at a later date as we are constantly expanding our service.”
As in its never going to be available here (in Finland) Sweden might get it because Sweden always gets all the nice things :(
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This could turn out to be a great way to “demo” games. Sure the video quality is poor, it stutters every now and then and the input lag means that things like the combat mechanics of The Witcher 2 cannot properly be judged (first time playing, just now) but it’s so quick and easy (assuming it works). I suppose if ordinary demos are still offered alongside this, then you could use this service to filter those you deem worthy of a proper download and install, or a flat-out purchase, of course.
Very interesting. Let’s hope it leads to more demos!
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You succeded in speaking about Solipsism on a game website. I’m impressed :)
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Gaikai requires Java you say? That would be the same Java that allowed unscrupulous ads to infiltrate my computer with viruses despite being fully up to date in every way possible?
Sod that, no streaming games for me then!
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“Your connection appears to have slowed. Please quit other connected applications or services and try again.”
Right… because an idle 100/10 connection isn’t enough for streaming video. Probably just not supported at “my location” then.
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“hard to say without catching a few jetplanes to the other side of the world” – Jeez Alec, where’s your journalistic integrity? I expect my casual blog browsing to have PROPERLY VERIFIED FACTS! Well, from someone in Australia, I can say that apparently our region isn’t supported. Freaking tyranny of distance.
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That’d be why it doesn’t work in Japan then. *headbang*
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Had a look at Crysis 2. Quite impressive really.
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