Gaming Weekly – OUYA Special

The OUYA has now been with us for 3 whole weeks and 3 days at the time of writing. We’re sure that by now you have read numerous online reviews that both praise it for being ‘the little console who could’ as well as putting down for not being quite good enough, not living up to expectations and above all not offering a wide enough range of available games at download. Here at the Gadget Helpline we see things a little different, after are all we are the same team that brought you classic such as ‘Only In Japan‘ and ‘Patent Pending‘. We have give the OUYA the once over, we’ve poked it, prodded it and put it through it’s paces to see what all the fuss is or isn’t about. As soon as we opened the box there were various members of the Gadget Helpline team casually walking past the desk to catch a glimpse. I can honestly say that this little fella has had one of the biggest hype build ups in recent time. The only issue there being whether it lives up to that hype.

THE GOOD

The OUYA is a great little machine for casual gaming. Here in the office there is a 74% chance of a multiplayer game starting by someone who came over for a completely different reason. We have found some absolute Gems of games like ‘Hidden in plain sight’, ‘Bomb-squad’  and ‘No Brakes Valet’. These are all quick, easy to play games that keep going back to.

We also managed to sync up a Bluetooth PlayStation controller to the OUYA by connecting it via the USB cable and pressing the PS3 controller home button. we had to reboot the console as plugging anything into the USB port kills the Bluetooth. Since then it’s worked fine.

THE BAD

There are a few things about the console that started to grate after time and it’s all stuff that most people won’t even care about. For example all the prices seem to be in Dollars which can put you off buying some games as them seem a bit over priced when in reality they are cheaper than you think. Another thing is an annoyance is the fact that the back-end Android system hasn’t had much done to it, so little in fact that it still thinks it is a smartphone or a tablet. There are various options for touchscreen and screen rotation which have no point when it comes to the OUYA.

THE UGLY

There is only one thing I can put into this category and that is the controller. It’s such a strange peice of kit, it’s top heavy because of the touch pad area but the handles are light and feel flimsy like an original PlayStation controller. Our controller has also been plagued by sticky button and nobody wants that.

All that said, the OUYA is a nice little machine that is fun to tinker about on. It is essentially a Beta device so there is lots of room for improvement. I don’t think we’ll be playing on it everyday but it may just avoid relegation to the cupboard.

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