My Ouya review

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My Ouya review

Postby S4Blade » Wed Feb 12, '14, 9:32 pm

This is just a little mini-review I threw together on the Ouya. It's kind of long I know.

My Ouya review:

Let me start by saying that I was a big fan of the concept behind the Ouya. A small, inexpensive console that lets you play Android games. The strictly download to play games did not bother me because I'm a big fan of digital distribution. Despite my optimistic approach to the system, I really felt that the whole experience was kind of lacking. I had a good time playing some of the games, but I didn't spend as much time with the system as I thought I would.

Console Hardware

The console itself is probably one of the coolest parts of the experience. The console is a small cube that can fit in the palm of your hand, and is very easy to tote around. There are a few ports on the back for your network, a USB slot for an XBOX 360 or PS3 controller, a power connector, an HDMI port, and a mini USB slot. One issue is that the supplied HDMI and power cables are fairly short, and caused me to have to move my surge protector to plug the console in, and still be able to reach the TV with the HDMI cable.

The Ouya has an 8 Gig internal flash drive which may not seem like a lot, but most of the games are really tiny in size. Usually about 20-50MB. If the internal drive is not enough storage space, you can connect a Flash drive in the USB port and use that.

Using a 360/PS3 controller may seem like a good idea at first, but a lot of the games do not have proper support for them, and it leaves you with odd button mappings and quirky movement in some games. I mostly stuck with the Ouya controller.

Ouya Controller

The controller for the Ouya is a mixed bag. It's setup like the 360 controller, but it has a narrower width, so it can feel a little cramped at times. The R and L triggers are very mushy and just don't feel very precise. There is some good news about the controller. It runs off of two double A batteries and the batteries last a very long time. With all the time I put into playing games on my Ouya I never had to swap out the batteries once, I'm still using the original batteries.

The Ouya controller is one of those things that you get used to when you are using it, but when you go back to using a 360 controller you are immediately reminded how awkward the Ouya controller felt in your hands.

Interface

The Ouya interface is pretty slick. You only have four different options on the main menu, and everything is pretty self explanatory. The system itself comes with no documentation, and it's saying a lot that I was able to find everything I needed without any problems just by poking around. The biggest thing that works in the Interface's favor is that it's a pretty simple console, and it doesn't force you to have a bunch of apps that you are never going to use.

However, there are a lot of additional apps available in the app store like emulators, video watching programs, and lots of other things. I didn't mess around with them, but I heard that the video players are often choppy and not very good.

Searching the store for games is very well done. You just press Y and it pulls up the search window and an on-screen keyboard. Start typing stuff in and it will narrow down searches on the fly, much like Windows 8. The Ouya store narrows down searches much faster than the PSN store.

Software

This is probably my biggest problem with the Ouya. It plays Android games, but you do not have access to the entire Google Play store. Developers must specifically make their games playable on the Ouya, and you will need to buy them again on the Ouya, even if you already bought them on the Google Play store. This causes a lot of potentially good games to be absent, which was kind of a bummer.

The Ouya website touts that there are around 500-600 games to choose from but most of them are not very great, or seem like they are still in Alpha testing. There are so many crappy top down, dual stick shooters that it's ridiculous.

Buying games is very easy. When you setup your Ouya, you add in a credit card number, and all you have to do is click "Purchase" and confirm the purchase, and you have bought the game. It's a good and simple system, but each game has it's own menu structure, so you have to be careful not to accidentally buy games when you are trying to exit a game. (I actually did this once)

The fact of the matter is, you're not going to see a lot of big name games in the Ouya store. Killing Floor Calamity is about the biggest game that I know of, but it's a top down shooter that is terrible compared to the original Killing Floor FPS game on PC (which I love to death).

The gaming highlights of my Ouya journey were: No Brakes Valet, Freedom Fall, and Potatoman Seeks The Troof. While Freedom Fall was very playable on the Ouya, the PC version has a much smoother frame rate, and it looks much better.

Another nice thing about the Ouya is that every so often the Ouya team will gift you free money to buy games from the shop. As long as you have a registered console with an email address. They gifted me $5 twice. It may not seem like a lot of money, but a lot of the games are $0.99-$1.99, so it can actually buy you a few games.

Conclusion

In closing, I want to say that I had high hopes for the Ouya, but it doesn't take long to realize that the whole experience is kind of gimped. With the proper software support I really think that it could have become much more. Despite a fun game here and there, nothing really makes it feel like a must buy system.

I'm a very curious gamer. Stuff like the Ouya intrigues me, so I do not regret buying one, but I ran out of games that I wanted to play much sooner than I thought I would. The good news is that the Ouya is still a growing console, and there will no doubt be more games released for it. Until then, I will go back to playing other games and will only bring my Ouya back out again to replay the games I enjoyed enough to purchase, which was 3 total.
Last edited by S4Blade on Wed Feb 12, '14, 11:34 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: My Ouya review

Postby myau56 » Wed Feb 12, '14, 10:12 pm

Litle review ! :o :lol: But a nice one ! But even with it, this Ouya doesn't interests me at all :) But for those who are interested : go through !
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Re: My Ouya review

Postby Atlinsmere » Thu Feb 13, '14, 12:26 am

Nice review. I was kind of skeptical about whether or not I wanted to get a OUYA and now I know that if I do, I'll wait awhile. I can also imagine how bad a top down Killing Floor would be considering I love the PC version myself. Think I'll actually go play it now.
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Re: My Ouya review

Postby S4Blade » Thu Feb 13, '14, 1:29 pm

Yes, Killing Floor is a great game. It's my most played game on Steam, over 100 hours. It's quite a tragedy to see it as a top down shooter game.
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