What’s on Tap?

By Vermouth

A little while ago GameTap debuted to a collective sense of “meh”. The game selection was not particularly impressive and $9.99 a month to play a bunch of old games seemed like a steep fee. But as the months went by, they kept adding more and more to the game catalogue. They also introduced a cheap first month for only 99 cents. Earlier this month I decided to take the leap and wow, this is a quality service. The game selection is excellent and the quality of the program is surprisingly nimble. The game library for this service includes three categories of games: regular “real” retail games, retro games and original games.

The first game I downloaded was a “real” game, Tomb Raider Legend. My experience with this game was really exciting. I was a huge fan of the Tomb Raider franchise eleven years ago when the first game came out and it was nice to see the game return to being good after all the years of absolutely terrible versions. There were a bunch of other real games which I wanted to try; as I’m writing this I’m downloading Psychonauts which I’ve regretted not buying for a while. Also in the catalogue, stuff like the Infinity Engine RPGs, simulations like Lock On and Colin McCrae 2005, and some shooters like Far Cry really gives it a good variety of these kings of games - and plenty of them to enjoy.

The real retail games make up a small part of the GameTap library. This library has a huge range of retro arcade and console games. There are seemingly hundreds of them from across a whole range of platforms that can be quickly downloaded like Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter 2, Panzer Dragoon Zwei and so on and so forth. The number of platforms they’re drawing on are pretty diverse: every Sega platform, arcade, DOS, C64 etc. The only real downside here is that there are no Nintendo platforms - which were a huge part of my childhood, but if you owned a lot of computer games growing up, this will be a treasure trove for you.

The third types of games are original games. Two of these are the online Myst game which was up in the air for a while and the Sam and Max episodes. I haven’t played Myst because that series never appealed much to me. However Sam and Max is a real surprise. It’s very difficult for a puzzle idiot like me but on the other hand even in the first few puzzles I’d played through in Episode 1 was making me laugh aloud just like the old days.

All in all GameTap has been a pleasant surprise for some summertime gaming while I await the flood of big huge games in August. It’s got a great selection of games, it’s got new games old games, and games you can’t get in the store.