With the release of the Netflix game from Warner Bros. Games and Supermassive Games, I was keen to try it. So I fired up the game. First, I noticed how gorgeous the visuals and audio are, and I’d expect nothing less from my former employers. It is classic Supermassive Games.
But the biggest thing that puts me right off Netflix’s new gaming platform is using a mobile phone as a controller. First, I don’t play many games on my iPhone, despite Apple pushing its processor as the best in the biz. I find touchscreen controls awkward, and the lack of any tactile feedback is exceptionally off-putting.
I’ve been a keyboard-and-mouse person for decades, and it’s served me well on PC, Mac, and occasional PS5 (when compatible keyboards and mice work, Sony needs to do better on compatibility; it feels like a lottery as to what works and what doesn’t). But as I get back into PS5 Pro gaming (thanks to titles like Star Wars: Galactic Racing), I find the PS5 controller, with its force feedback and haptics, an exceptional experience. My problem is remembering which button does what, but repeated play builds muscle memory. If you tried playing Galactic Racer on a phone or tablet, the experience would be very different. When I first tried it on Amazon Luna’s cloud service on my Mac with a keyboard and mouse, the racing experience was fundamentally different from how it is on the PS5 Pro with the controller.
I once tried the iOS version of Death Stranding and found it absolutely unplayable, even on a large phone screen (even on an iPhone XX Pro Max). The Mac version was great, but the PS5 version is even better. I keep reading about people porting iD Software’s classic Doom to bonkers electronics like washing machines and toothbrushes, but just because you can doesn’t make for a great gaming experience. And that’s how I feel about mobile gaming. Unless the game makes good use of the touchscreen (like the Monument Valley series, e.g., puzzle games), you’ll need a third-party controller.
Netflix has been experimenting with gaming for some time, initially licensing mobile games you can download to your device as part of your subscription. Or “interactive” systems you control with your remote or through a web browser, making critical choices at specific times (see Black Mirror: Bandersnatch or Charlie Brooker’s Cat Burglar). But they’ve pulled these from the system and replaced them with games you control on your mobile phone.
Before The Conjuring: Unspoken was released, I tried one of the games, a mini-golf game that uses Netflix IP like Squid Game, and the experience was just God-awful. You’ll need to download another app to your phone, scan a QR code, and I found myself spending as much time looking down at my phone as I was on the screen. The video quality and latency weren’t great, and I gave up after about two minutes.
Slightly different experience with The Conjuring: Unspoken. First, I feel the controller setup needs to happen right at the start, not just after the cold open. It needs a guide to using it. It’s fairly obvious on the phone, but a little help wouldn’t go amiss. Second, the controls are very linear; you can’t move diagonally or use multi-touch. I also found myself looking down at my phone again. With a dedicated controller, you don’t need to do this – you can feel the controls quickly and easily.
This is an interesting experiment, but for it to go any further, Netflix needs to add third-party controller support, which will be difficult given the breadth and depth of features across TVs and streaming devices. Otherwise, I fear this gaming experience, like many Netflix shows, will get cancelled quickly (which is why I don’t subscribe to Netflix regularly; while it has a lot of good content, it’s the chaos monkey amongst all the streamers – I have no idea what they’re going to do, and that makes me nervous).
So my summary: a good, interesting take on an almost-everywhere gaming platform, but the control system seriously lets it down.