It launched today.
It took 2 minutes to... Launch the game, find rivals (less than 5 seconds) and be atomized by 3 other players. :)
2 fucking minutes !!!
When I bought the Saturn version decades ago, i had to invite friends and pay over 100 dollars for the game, extra controllers, multitap to enjoy a battle...
Now it's free and I don't have to fight against AI when I'm alone...
It's responsive, fun.
Bomber Man for Stadia is freaking awesome.
Glad to hear you had a positive experience! Pretty amazing right? I really need to jump into the game more, I played it for a bit when it first came out but fell off. I'm sure since it's F2P now it'll be more active so you're playing against more actual players rather than bots.
In other news I actually got invited to try Luna out yesterday. I went ahead and accepted and decided to get the Luna controller as well (that won't arrive until Saturday).
First impressions of the service is that it's overall very good but is obviously still very early as far as what it offers.
The streaming clarity itself is great and honestly (at 1080p) I can't tell a difference between Stadia and Luna.
Responsiveness though (using a Bluetooth controller currently) there's just a tiny bit of a delay when compared to Stadia. It's not bad at all and more than playable but pushing buttons you can see just a very slight delay when compared to Stadia (I compared Metro Exodus on both using a Bluetooth controller). I was using WiFi though with a Bluetooth controller so not the most ideal situation. I'm sure the actual Luna controller will provide better responsiveness.
The feature list though is very anemic, there's really not much there other than playing games. There's no friend's list, no chat, no achievements, no way to take screenshots, clips, etc. Granted Stadia didn't get many of these same features until later so I'm sure many of the same will eventually come to Luna.
Same thing with supported devices. I do not own any iOS or Fire TV devices so the only way for me to use Luna is either through my laptop or PC. I have a few Fire HD tablets and was honestly expecting it to support at least those but it doesn't. I tried using "Desktop mode" on Chrome and sideloading the Fire TV app but it still doesn't work. Again, this will come later along with full Android support.
The library of games is a good start and they have been adding (they just added a few games yesterday) so as long as it continues to grow then there's a lot of promise there. This however lies my biggest problem with Luna. I know many people clamor for Stadia to go the Netflix route but (while I love having options) this route would not work for me. It's great if you love to try out several games or play through several games rather quickly but for me personally I only play a handful of games at a time and sometimes it'll take me weeks (if not months) to get through them. Having a large library where games rotate in/out just isn't my ideal way to play. Also there's the problem of big releases, something like Cyberpunk for example, I don't think you're going to see that on any game subscription service anytime soon (unless CDPR does some sort of subscription service themselves like Ubisoft...but even then that's an additional subscription on top of what you're already paying).
So to summarize my initial impressions...
1. The tech is great and very comparable to Stadia.
2. The service is very early and there's lots of work to do regarding adding to the feature set, supported devices, etc.
3. The initial library of games is a good start.
4. If the Netflix style works for you then Luna appears to be a very promising service with the colossal weight of Amazon behind it.
Right now the subscription cost during beta is $5.99 per month and if you want Uplay+ it's an additional $14.99. I do plan to keep it for now but may drop it after beta depending on how the price changes.
