So I have been playing on my Google Stadia for a while and I have to admit there have been a few kinks that may turn you away from Google Stadia and in my article about this, I will be comparing Doom 64 and Zombie Army 4, 2 first-person shooters that clearly show the issues Stadia has with first-person shooters.
So first up, this article is in no way intended to be representative of everyone’s experience on Google Stadia, just my personal opinion and I chose to do a comparison review. First off, Zombie Army 4, a game I truly love, I am a big fan of the Rebellion studio games and I finished the game 4 times now. It actually came out on my birthday and I really adore it. I originally finished it the first time on Playstation 4 and have also played it on other platforms since.
I love the atmosphere of the game so getting another chance to play it, I just jumped on the bandwagon and set off to kill me some more zombies. Sadly it became really clear that Stadia was not the best place to play this game as it was clearly plagued by lag. This lag expressed itself with unnatural movements, like full turns instead of slightly moving and not really giving me that fine-tuned action I was expecting based upon my numerous hours in the game.
Sadly it is also gameplay like this that ruins an experience completely, not wanting to sound too critical, just that you can not properly play a game when the controls don’t work. I move left to avoid a zombie barrage, but suddenly I am facing the wrong direction. I want to move forward and am suddenly in the middle of the horde? Sadly this is a no thanks. I wish it was different because this game really deserves so much more.
I did all this testing while having a more than decent 70+ download and the upload was in the twenties as well. So despite having a more than decent connection, it just did not do the trick. Guns not shooting, the scope getting delayed when wanting to take a sniper shot, … It almost felt like I was playing a prerelease beta…
Then I started playing another first-person shooter, namely Doom 64. Purposely a lower fidelity game and I was thinking less stressing. What a difference it made… Near perfect gameplay and not a single time did I feel the game was getting anything but near-perfect game responses from my Stadia controller. Aside from a few missed shots, that may as well be just missing from my side, I had little to no negative experiences in Doom 64.
Maybe this was all due to the bandwidth but no, this was consecutive gameplay in the middle of the day and there were no remarkable speed differences in my speed tests. So I went a little deeper in my investigation. Sadly only having the great Hitman 3 game as a shooter on my stadia, I decided to see if that was lagging or not. Long story short, the first minute had some issues but that was it, I was able to play an entire mission with just a minor glitch at first.
So Stadia does not perform as intended yet on a higher octane game like Zombie Army and I was kind of disappointed by it. In general, my experiences have been in between positive and very positive for the most part, but this was the first one that underperformed, which is a shame really, Zombie Army 4 is a superb game that I just love to bits.
In conclusion, I wonder if this is the current limit to Google Stadia? The highest octane games seem to underperform and in all honesty, both games are must-buys if and when they perform well. they will provide a lot of entertainment value, both in their own right. Is it possible that right now, this is the ceiling being hit by the service, or are other things to blame for my wonky experience? If anyone also has the Zombie Army game on Stadia and is playing without any issues, I will gladly hear all about it! I look forward to playing it without issues.
