REVIEW : Utomik (PC Client/ Service)
Utomik has a new take on PC Gaming, with the concept of small downloads and download as you play. Utomik is not a video streaming or game streaming service, what it does is downloads the game in small parts so that you can start playing instantly and it does this quite well. Utomik offers number of games from variety of Genre and range from Indies to AAA titles, this amount of choice in Games and low monthly few is hard to argue with.
Utomik has an ever-growing library but at the time of writing there were 715 Games to choose from. To access all these games, you have to download Utomik PC Client and log-in with your credentials, after that just choose the game and start playing. Most Games require you to download some data before you start playing, but since the data download is usually very small, you can start playing instantly. The home screen is easy to navigate and very well laid out with Games divided based on categories or sub sections, further you can even search for the game you want to play. The Sub Sections such as Most Played and highest rated games help a lot in finding the games which are liked by plenty of other Utomik users. The technology behind the games downloading as you play is really smart and you will never notice any issue while playing the games. It is similar to Sony having split download functionality on PS4, in which you select if you want to play Single player or Multiplayer, but Utomik is much better implemented in this regard.
To play your Games on Utomik, you always have to be connected to the internet, there is no offline mode. Utomik has also been working on trying to get day 1 releases of games, with successfully launching 1 indie game(Yono and the Celestial Elephant)on release date in recent times with another launching on 14th February. Utomik has also partnered with Ubisoft to bring some old classics like Prince of Persia to the Platform.
We tried a variety of games and all worked well except Metro 2033 Redux (could be a driver issue) which showed some weird graphical glitches initially but later on started working fine. Since Utomik is not a Video Streaming service similar to OnLive or Nvidia’s Geforce Now, your CPU and GPUs are still utilized by games and you have to meet game requirement.
Utomik has two plans to offer, a single user plan for $5.99 a month and a family plan for $9.99 a month which allows upto 4 users to use the service simultaneously. Utomik also features parental controls if you want to restrict some games from your children. Utomik also offer 14-day trial for both the plans, so if you are still in doubt over the service, just test it out using the trial, you won’t be disappointed. Both Utomik plans are fairly priced and since new games are added every week, you are playing something new always.
Utomik is still a new service and the team behind it are making sure that the service is a great success by taking all the necessary steps. The time Utomik saves by not downloading large files at one go is really a game changer. The longest wait time you will ever experience will depend on your connection but for us it was around 10 minutes for one of the larger sized game. The PC client also picks up and controllers you have attached to your PC.
