Amazon Luna Review – IGN

Exploiting a game gives you options to quickly start playing, add to a playlist (which works like a collection of your favorites), or browse trailers, screenshots, or even streamers currently playing the game You can also read a quick breakdown from Metacritic and see more Luna games by publisher. It’s about as good as a games page – it’s robust and useful and I really enjoyed clicking around, checking which streamers were playing each game, and watching a few trailers.

All Amazon Prime members can access a handful of games for free. It’s a relatively small group, although they change periodically. A previous group offered Overcooked 2, Mega Man 11, Castlevania Anniversary Collection, and Skatebird. At the time of publication, the group was Steel Assault, Myst, Control and Garfield Kart. Amazon clearly sees this as icing on the Amazon Prime cake, rather than the kind of killer feature that would require users to shell out $14.99 a month to start subscribing.

Amazon also wants users to purchase pay-per-view “channels” that host a themed collection of games. The main channel is Luna+. It costs $9.99 per month and offers a catalog of over 120 games, including blockbusters like Ghostrunner: Complete Edition, Abzu, Control Ultimate Edition, Enter the Gungeon, and Super Mega Baseball 3.

Curiously, Amazon Studio’s own games don’t make the cut. Games like Lost Ark and New World are completely absent from Luna. It feels especially overwhelming compared to Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is included with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription. and features Microsoft’s full lineup of first-party games on release day.

The other big channel is reserved for Ubisoft+, which offers the studio’s big games, including Riders Republic, Far Cry 6: Ultimate Edition, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Complete Edition, and more. This channel costs $17.99 per month, but it is not owned by Luna. Your $17.99 subscription also lets you play locally on PC or stream to Stadia. (Ubisoft+’s PC-only plan costs a little less at $14.99.)

There are a few other channels, including Family Channel for $5.99 per month, Retro Channel for $4.99 per month, and a Jackbox Games channel for $4.99 per month. A large majority of these games are exclusive to their respective channels, which means that to access Luna’s entire catalog of games, you’ll pay $41/month on top of your Amazon Prime membership.

But is that a bit of a backwards way of thinking about it. In reality, many users might only want Jackbox Games – or play games with the family. And while this review won’t focus on the collective quality of these individual channels, it’s not hard to imagine someone subscribing to something like the Jackbox channel for an evening game night, or a family that just wants to play Overcooked. For these use cases, Amazon Luna’s monthly prices of around $5 are a real steal.

As long as you remember to cancel eventually.

Amazon Luna – Controller

Amazon also sells a dedicated Luna controller. It works with Luna, but also PC and a variety of other platforms via Bluetooth. Although it retails for $69.99, it is frequently on sale (it is currently on sale for $29.99).

I’ve tested *lots* of controllers, and Luna’s is pretty decent. It’s 235.5g without batteries or 281.5g with its two AAs. It feels heavy in a good way and its weight is very close to the Xbox Series X controller. It has a USB-C port for wired charging and gaming.

It looks and feels like a mix between a Switch Pro and Xbox controller. It’s subtly branded with a small shiny logo and purple sticks under the thumb.

The triggers feature an aggressive swoop that makes them easy to squeeze and the buttons are definitely ‘clicky’ although a little convex for my taste. The D-Pad feels a little amateurish, but my main beef is with the thumb pads, which feature a deep cut with aggressive knurling. They’re not totally comfortable, as they’re too small and too deep for my thumb pads to rest on unless I’m playing with the tops of my fingers.

But I still love the controller, and that’s mostly down to its smart Wi-Fi connection, which uses a service called Cloud Direct. After setting up the controller with a separate app, your controller can stay connected to your Wi-Fi of choice, making switching between devices a breeze. The Luna Controller still lets you use a Bluetooth connection for other compatible devices, but once you start playing on Fire TV devices, it automatically switches to Cloud Direct.

Finally, when you’re really in a rush, you can use your phone as a controller. It’s never the best way to play games, but Amazon has done a decent job of packing features and settings into this mode, including configurable haptic feedback, swipeable buttons, and the ability to choose between layouts. main, arcade and driving. Unfortunately, you can’t drag and drop the buttons exactly where you want them, but it’s still a nice feature if you’re in a rush.

Amazon Luna – Bandwidth

Like all streaming services, Amazon Luna burns a fair amount of data. There are only two video resolutions to choose from: 1080p and 720p. 1080p will use around 10GB of data per hour, while 720p will only use half that at 5GB per hour.

This setting is configured on a device-by-device basis, and whether you’re playing on PC, Fire Stick, or phone, the data estimates are the same.

Amazon Luna – Performance and Gaming

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of streaming performance, it’s time to highlight one of Amazon Luna’s coolest features: Luna Couch. With Luna Couch, you can play a number of cooperative games with friends, even if they don’t have a Luna subscription. You start a game, click on Luna Couch in the sidebar, and receive a single-use code. Then you can text your friends with the code and they can participate.

It’s a stellar feature and there are currently 88 games supporting it, including Lost Judgment, Killer Queen Black, Yakuza Zero, and Jackbox 1-8. If Luna has a killer feature, maybe it’s this one. That is, provided your friends all have a decent internet connection. In practice, getting a group of friends together who all have an internet connection capable of streaming games is quite a daunting task.

As is the case with all streaming services, your experience depends almost entirely on the strength and speed of your internet connection. Amazon Luna requires at least 10 Mbps to run, but in practice you’ll need a lot more speed and a stable connection. My main tests were on a 2.4 Ghz 358 Mbps down / 41 up connection. It’s of course more than fast enough, but I did notice a bit of flakiness. On PC, this flakiness manifested itself in drops in graphical fidelity and audio corruption. This rarely had any effect on gameplay, however, and I was able to navigate my way through the hyper-fast gameplay of Ghostrunner and Enter the Gungeon with minimal fuss.

But on my Fire TV Stick 4K Max, I encountered more disruptive issues, including dropouts and connection breaks. They happened momentarily about every 10 minutes which was usually anxiety-provoking but really frustrating at times. It’s hard to fully immerse yourself in a game when you expect something to go wrong. During one particularly tumultuous session, I got so sick of being thrown into Super Mega Baseball, that I put the controller down and walked away.

But no matter how bad the streaming got, I never felt like I was experiencing latency from the controller, at least when connected to Cloud Direct. Even when the visuals started to stutter, I still felt like my inputs were registering, and it made my overall experience better than what I experienced on services like Google Stadia.