My commute is four hours each way, which I thankfully only have to do once a week. It’s environmentally friendly and comfortable, despite the unreliability of Deutsche Bahn. Four hours that I can use for myself: writing blog posts, watching series and movies, or gaming. For the latter, I bought the Backbone One smartphone controller.
Sure, there are a few games on iOS. I already know Dead Cells from the Nintendo Switch and it’s a great game, but I’ve also played it for far too many hours. The heavily criticized Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is coming to Netflix on iOS on December 14th and I’ll definitely be playing it. But at the end of the day, I’m a PC gamer through and through. Destiny 2 and New World are my main games, but the Phantom Liberty expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 is also waiting to be played. Unfortunately, none of these three games are included in Game Pass Ultimate and Microsoft’s cloud gaming service.
However, I have a powerful PC and a decent internet connection. The 35 Mbit upload speed should be enough. With Steam Link, Valve offers a way to stream the picture from your PC to any other device, and of course, send the inputs back. When I tested it on my home network, everything worked without a hitch. The first field test, however, was less than successful because my router blocked the connection until I opened the necessary ports. The second attempt a few minutes ago was rather sobering. The connection wasn’t stable, partly due to the train ride, I’m sure. Still, the Xbox Cloud was more reliable here. But things didn’t go well on the technical side either. Cyberpunk 2077 started, but the screen stayed black. After that, the computer was unusable remotely. Without a way to log in on the go, even restarting the PC doesn’t help. So, that’s it for remote play today.
I’m afraid that Steam Link over the internet will never run as smoothly as other cloud gaming services in the foreseeable future. On one hand, this is of course due to the system, which I have to manage myself. On the other hand, 35 Mbit is a far cry from a data center’s connection. But is that the end of the story? I don’t think so; I’ll have to look into the options here.
For one, I want to simplify the login on my PC. Theoretically, I could have my user account log in automatically, then the PC would be ready to go right after booting up. But to prevent the computer from running unnecessarily all day, it would be cool to be able to start it remotely as well. Alternatively, I’ll take another look at GeForce Now. At least Destiny 2 should run on it; New World refuses to work with GeForce Now because the game doesn’t officially support controllers.
The situation is not yet satisfactory. The GTA games will definitely give me a good amount of playtime for now. Otherwise, I’m just hoping for a more stable connection. Even though I mostly have 5G, the connection still fluctuates wildly from time to time, which really spoils the experience. Sure, this is a problem caused by the train journey, the movement, but there has to be a better way, right?