GameTap and Codemasters Align For Free Games

Joystiq reports that publisher Codemasters has announced an alliance with the GameTap service that raises the profile of the all-you-can-eat gaming buffet considerably. The service will offer titles like DIRT and Overlord for-purchase download, of course, but the real news is that current and future Codemasters titles will be available directly via the service. That is, if you have a subscription these games are free. "Beyond the games mentioned, potential superstar title Clive Barker's Jericho and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty will be part of that future day and date deal. All these titles will also be available to purchase through GameTap's digital store, but seriously, the cost of one game will get you four months of GameTap service. We continue to be impressed with GameTap's expanding services and ridiculously affordable price, not to mention their free ad-driven gaming space."

Comments

Hmmmm.

[SatanicPuppy]

I've always been curious about these services, both for a sort of browsing-without-buying variety, and as a foil against the ever-increasing piles of game crap that infest my storage spaces. Anyone use these services, and have any thoughts? I'm not averse to monthly fees, but if the service is clunky and annoying to use, that would drive me up the wall.

Re:Hmmmm.

[TheJerg]

I use Gametap and it's a great service. For the most part the interface is clean and straightforward. The service works like this: You decide what game you want to play. Once you decide, it begins downloading the game and runs the game straight off your computer. From then on you just have to log into Gametap to play. They are updating the list constantly(just about weekly) and they have a lot of interesting titles that I wouldn't buy but do play this way.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Andruil]

I definately enjoy it. Its pretty neat being able to play games from pretty much all the consoles. They keep adding to the list of games and now that they are getting current day games it just got better. And yeah you just log in, find a game, download and then play. There are alot of games you can't even get / play on their too. Plus with any of the emulated games you get the benefits of an emulator. You can hit escape and save your state right in the middle and come back later. Or use it as an in game save for the fun of it.

Re:Hmmmm.

[blueZhift]

I'm certainly all for keeping piles of gaming crap at a minimum! But I have not used GameTap yet, ironically in my efforts to get away from PC gaming in favor of consoles, the retro games on Xbox Live have given me a taste for some of the games now being offered on GameTap. I'm still on the fence, but I think GameTap may actually have some legs to it.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Spacehog320]

I use gametap, and i love it. i get access to a huge library of games for $10/mo. alot better investment then an mmo (and I played WoW for like 2 years).

Re:Hmmmm.

[spyrochaete]

I don't know whether it's available but a few months ago I tried a $1 one-month GamTap trial.

My experience wasn't very good. There's a pretty decent collection of games (95% are old and lame, 2% are kids games, 3% were somewhat good). I had some bad experiences with older games with copy protection. For instance, you have to print some enormous blue prints (that came in the original box) to answer copy protection questions before you can play. Couldn't they have taken out the copy protection? Game crackers figured out how to do that 15 years ago.

The interface is just awful but it works with a gamepad so that's a plus for some people, I guess. Every time you click a menu you're bombarded with an unrelated video that can't be stopped. This really slows down navigation and you keep seeing the same videos over and over. There aren't enough categories and you have to scroll past each title with a boxshot so finding the specific game you want is slow and annoying.

The worst aspect of all is the delays you have to endure when you want to play a game. It took me forever to find the "My Games" list initially. You pick the desired game from the list which brings up its index card. You click a button to bring up the play menu, and you have to wait and wait and wait for the PLAY button to become clickable while you watch some inane video advertising some GameTap feature you've already paid for. If you accidentally click the wrong button you have to go back and wait all over again for the PLAY button. This was the dealbreaker for me.

So close yet so far. I'd try GameTap again in a year because it's so promising, but the interface is just too annoying.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Shrubbman]

Well personally I find the interface just fine, of course I use the cursor keys to navigate it and I imagine if I tried using the mouse exclusively I'd probably be as annoyed as you seem to be. If you know the exact game you're looking for you can go to the search section to type in what you're looking for, or if you've played it before it'll show up in your 'recently played' playlist (the first list you get dropped into when switching to the game Vault section). Browsing works well for when you don't have a specific title in mind, broken down by console or genre as well as offering hotlists of top games the GameTap staff recommend.

As for the delay you mention between entering the 'play' menu and being able to click the 'play' button to start the game this is an unavoidable delay, the client is checking with the server to authenticate your right to play the game. Also, I do not share your annoyance with the in-client video ads. I'd be annoyed if they were selling ad space to outside services looking to make more money off me, but what those videos are is one more means of promotion trying to keep people interested in the service they're already paying for by highlighting different games and services your subscription is already getting you or certain titles "comes soon." Quite often I find lately I'll be authenticated and ready to go well before the video even starts playing and I'm behind a 10megabit connection with decently low latencies, I've sometimes purposely waited a bit to check out what's playing.

You're gripe with the interface is one of simply not having used the service long enough to figure out that cursor keys are your friend. You're gripe with the videos and the pause due to server authentication is I would say is probably due to a less-than-stellar internet connection. That's the one thing with GameTap, if you don't have a BIG internet pipe you're not gonna be as happy with it as you could be.

Re:Hmmmm.

[KermodeBear]

I love GameTap. It is easy to use and the game selection isn't just old titles. They have some games from 2005/2006, and they're not all no-name games either. I believe the site has an up to date list. It is nice that they have networked multi-player games, so you can play some of the classic arcade games with someone else across the country. Works well if you have a good connection.

There are a few things that I don't like, though:
1. I cannot get any game pad to work correctly; it seems to confuse the buttons for some reason.
2. You cannot modify the game files at all, so forget installing custom mods/maps/skins/etc.
3. The non-game content, especially the video. I see no benefit, at all, to the video content. I don't want to pay for someone to sit around and create content I have no interest in seeing!
4. The interface is pretty intensive. On an older machine the games themselves run fine, but the GameTap program itself crawls.

For the price and the variety of games available, these things are pretty minor. I think it's a great value. I believe they have a $1 first month offer going on, and even if not, you can cancel your account at any time.

Re:Hmmmm.

[spyrochaete]

My internet connection is pretty steller - 6MB with low latency. My issue with the videos is that they're videos! I did appreciate being informed of new features, but I considered myself pretty thoroughly informed the 4th and 5th times I'd seen the videos. Regardless of the speed of my computer and internet connection I just don't appreciate being bombarded with unskippable videos. I admit that I was extra sensitive about these videos because I'd purchased a non-GameTap subscription to the Sam and Max episodic games, and GameTap got them before subscribers, so I would literally walk away from my computer to avoid the spoilers in the videos.

My biggest problem with finding the list of games I'd downloaded was that it was difficult to locate the first time. After that it wasn't so terrible, but the layout was completely different from all the flying, swirling circles in the rest of the interface. Honestly, I wish the entire GameTap interface was like that recently played list - an ordinary Windows app, not some custom-made horror of a UI.

There is NO excuse for taking so long to authenticate me when I'm playing a game for the 10th time. When I tried the service they hadn't yet started free services so my account should have been the only type available. When you subscribe you have carte blanche access to everything, so why must you authenticate for 10, 20, even 60 seconds every single time? To play a 100KB, 20-year-old arcade ROM??? And of course, while you're waiting you're treated to a video advertisement!

I'm more surprised than anyone that I disliked GameTap because I am just about the biggest video game nut there can be. I love their selection and I really love how many old games there were, and the fact that they can be launched without additional configuration. I was very impressed that most GameTap games worked on my Vista Beta install as well.

In the end the hassles of the menu system were just too much for me. I found few games I wanted to play that I didn't already own, many old games required printed copy protection because they client wouldn't let me alt-tab (the only other option was to play in a window and this couldn't be toggled in-game), and for the life of me I couldn't get Uru multiplayer to work at all. I'm not even interested in their free services because I hate the UI so much. Perhaps I'm in the minority on this but it's something I feel very strongly about.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Shrubbman]

so why must you authenticate for 10, 20, even 60 seconds every single time?

OK, if your delays were running that long I can understand getting seriously pissed, when I start up a game the authentication usually takes me about 5-10 seconds, occasionally going a bit over but 20 seconds tops.

Also, I've never had troubles doing the alt-tab thing, do it all the time if I'm stuck somewhere and need to hit up a walkthrough. Maybe it's a Vista thing, I'm still on XP.

Not Bad.

[Calmiche]

I've been a Gametap subscriber for about a year now. It's not a bad service, but it's not incredible either.

Now, if you had asked me a couple months ago when I was getting Sam and Max, I would have been over the roof. However, that is in hiatus, and I rarely log in more than once a month.

Gametap seems to hit the perfect balance between convenience and aggravation. Anytime I start thinking about cancelling my account, something like this pops up.

Honestly, It's a good service for the money. If you keep an eye out, you can subscribe at the normal price, and then change your subscription later when they do a special rate promo. I'm actually paying $59 a year.

There is the fact that you have to be online to play any games, though. I use it on my laptop a lot for playing quickies while waiting for something else to finish. It's fine as long as I have Wi-Fi, but if I sit down somewhere where I'm out of range, I can't play any of my downloaded games.

There is a lot of convenience in not having to search for old game boxes and manuals. There are also built in emulators for old console games, as well as a REALLY good DOS emulator. Old games that I haven't been able to get working on windows XP with DOSBox work fine. Old games mostly don't have copy protection cracked. They have the old manuals available for download.

Big Hit titles are few and far between, but there are some really good games that I probably wouldn't have tried if it hadn't been for Gametap. It's nice to be able to try a game and decide you don't like it after 10 minutes and not be out $20.

Gametap is pretty hawt

[macdude22]

I've been using gametap for a while and if you buy a year's worth it's dirt cheap. I got in on a 60 dollar year. Sam n Max alone is worth that price, let alone all these fantastic classics like Ultima, Zork, Tons of beatumup Arcade games. The Gametap TV is pretty entertaining, having worked in a lab environment I can attest to the humor of Comput3r Lab. The interface works well and you can create favorites lists of games. My only beef is you have to have a network connection to play (games are stored locally but it has to connect to verify your account) but it's almost nowhere I go anymore that doesn't' so it's almost a moot point.

I just signed up the other day.

[odhen]

I'm currently waiting to upgrade my computer to be able to run the new games coming out (Bioshock, Crysis, CoD4, etc.), so I decided to jump on the 99 cents for a month subscription to play the Sam and Max episodes and Planescape: Torment, and whatever else I can squeeze into this month. I've been happy with the service so far, and I think while I probably won't subscribe continously, it's not a bad deal even at $10 for a month or two if you're in a situation where you can't run the newer games coming out, or we're in the middle of a gaming drought.

Gametap rocks

[MrMadnutz]

This is actually one of the few services I saw on a tv commercial and hopped online to subscribe. It started great, but over the past year-and-a-half, it's actually gotten better. Not just the games: the interface, game and list management, profile management, etc. Aaaaand, they often update games already there for better compatibility, etc. Also recognizes all my gamepads with no problem.

Linux + GameTap = world domination

[Sparr0]

I can only dream, wetly, of what would happen if GameTap teamed up with Cedega, or even started their own fork of wine, to make most/all of their games work in Linux. GameTap on a linux HTPC would make the ultimate console, imho. It would cost them a few thousand man hours, and gain them a few hundred customers. That has to add up eventually.

Good service, with a couple of annoying points

[Dachannien]

GameTap actually is a pretty good service, as several posters above have indicated. Lots of good games, including a number of recent releases such as Legend and Anniversary from the Tomb Raider series, and numerous older arcade and console games. The six Sam and Max episodes are worth the subscription fee alone, and there's a second "season" worth of those coming out later this year.

They recently switched to a sort of three-tier service. One tier is free, a subset of their game catalog that you can play without subscribing, as long as you don't mind sitting through an ad before you play a game. A portion of the free games rotate in and out of the selection every week or two.

The next tier is the subscription tier, in which you get unlimited access to their entire game catalog as long as you subscribe (and as long as you're connected to their servers).

The third tier is kind of separate - it's the ability to purchase and download games similar to how Stardock and Direct2Drive work. You don't really get a good deal on these games compared to Amazon, though, to be honest. Most of the purchase games are more recent, although some of them are also in the subscription tier catalog.

I do have a few beefs with GameTap, though. The past couple of months have seen the new games (they usually release about 5 new games a week) taken up mostly with fighting games. A few fighting games, sure, a dozen, maybe. But we're talking numerous fighting games here. I'm willing to forgive them this point, because they are making good deals with companies like Codemasters and Eidos to get some or all of their games on board. A dry spell isn't too bad if we get the monsoon eventually.

Another problem is that you (in most cases) sacrifice the ability to add custom mods to games that, when purchased, are very moddable. This is because GameTap uses a third-party content encryption scheme that locks up the games to prevent copying. Essentially, each game image includes two virtual drives: one for the game CD (if needed), and one for the install directory for the game itself. When you select a game to play, GameTap mounts the drive images, which have been preinstalled and configured. The virtual drive driver blocks access to the mounted images from other processes, preventing you from reading directory names or writing files to the images (there are ways to get around this, if you can convince the game process or a child process to do the work for you, but most games don't have a means of accomplishing this).

Vista's virtualization scheme concerning the Program Files directory tree is an example, though, of how GameTap could permit users to add third-party mods to the games without needing direct access to the virtual drive images. Numerous users have requested such a facility, but since the DRM is from a third party instead of being developed in-house, it's unlikely we'll see this feature request fulfilled.

The final, and biggest, beef is that GameTap does not permit you to unsubscribe without human interaction. You have to either call in by phone or use the website's online chat feature to contact customer service. The CSR will ask why you want to cancel your service, and depending on your answer, they will try to give you the hard sell, such as going through all the reasons that GameTap owns your world or offering you a free or reduced single month on the spot to change your mind. Since virtually all subscription game services, such as MMOGs, permit you to subscribe and unsubscribe with a few clicks, GameTap comes up woefully short here.

Mixed reaction

[keith_nt4]

I subscribed about a year ago. They seem to update the game library and client constantly (if you don't login for a couple months the updates will take a while).

I have some things I'll add that I don't think anyone else has mentioned:
- sure they have PC games but no multiplayer! Would it really be so hard to integrate GameSpy or something similar? Ok I guess they'd need some huge set of CD keys but seriously. Couldn't they at least mention this? They do have mutliplayer but only for arcade titles (not for consoles).

-I have an XBox 360 USB gamepad for Windows and all the buttons seemed to map automatically for me (start/select etc.). I thought that was pretty neat...I'm fairly certain it won't recognize all and map all gamepads like that.

-Some games don't seem to work correctly to or at least not very well. For instance I tried one of the hitman games and was getting terrible frame rates. My PC will play Oblivion at 30+ frames per second but I can't run hitman?! (it's a 3800+ with 2 gigs of memory and a decent video card).

It's a great service if you just want to try a game you know you'd never play (Psychonaughts is was a good example for me). For everything but some of the old PC games you will need a game pad though. I recommend the XBox 360 USB, the one directly from MS.