First Impressions of NVIDIA’s SHIELD Gaming Portable

Before leaving NVIDIA’s press event in Montreal last week, we were hooked-up with one of its SHIELD gaming portables. With ‘Console Mode’ announced at this event, and the fact that we hadn’t done any SHIELD testing prior, I had looked quite forward to tearing it out of its box and getting to “work“.

So far, I’m impressed.

Before I go further,  let me just say this: SHIELD is not going to be for everyone – namely, those who don’t want to lug around something far bulkier than a tablet or smartphone. SHIELD won’t fit in your pocket, but it will easily fit into a bag if you happen to always carry one around.

For people like me, who tend to ignore most games on mobile platforms because of the lack of real control (especially racing and FPS titles), SHIELD is like a match made in heaven. I consider it to be far superior to other gamepad solutions which clip onto a tablet or smartphone, or act as a dock. SHIELD is much more elegant than that. That said, I don’t think it’s perfect, but that’s not expected for a first-gen product, nor one that is forced into certain design decisions in order to keep the form-factor as modest as possible.

Performance-wise, I think SHIELD is quite snappy. Applications install and uninstall fast, and fortunately, load fast. I’ve put about four hours into gaming so far, and up to this point I haven’t experienced any real game lag, either with a native game or streaming from the PC. The only downside at this point is not having enough Tegra 4-optimized games out there to take advantage of.

SHIELD’s gamepad will take a little getting used to, as the movement / camera view analog sticks are situated next to each other at the bottom. For those PlayStation gamers out there, that might not seem like much of a big deal, since the DualShock gamepad is designed similarly. For someone who’s put a thousand hours into their Xbox 360 gamepad, it definitely took a little getting used to. As mentioned above, this could have been a forced design decision, or it simply could have been considered the best implementation to begin with. The fact that I am already getting used to it might be telling.

Software and otherwise, I have no complaints so far. As I expected, though, after loading up games I bought long ago for my tablet, I began to enjoy them a lot more than before. Shadowgun, for example, became quite a bit easier on the SHIELD, thanks to having a real controller to make use of. I still dislike playing FPS games with a gamepad, but versus a touch interface, I have no complaints.

Shadowgun

Racing games also stand to benefit from a real gamepad, and sure enough, I noticed the difference in Riptide GP2 right away (a game I put about 5 hours into on my Nexus 7). I suddenly found it easier to win races, and more natural to pull off tricks.

While not pictured, a good example of how a real gamepad can improve your gaming versus a touch interface hit me like a ton of bricks with Beach Buggy Blitz. This is a game that I’ve put over 20 hours into; it features an accomplishment that requires you to travel 25KM without having to reset your vehicle. Generally, I have to end up resetting about three or four times within that 25KM, so I haven’t been able to pull it off. Until I played the game on SHIELD, that is.

Riptide GP2

Why did I suddenly improve so much in a game I’ve put a lot of time into already? Because instead of having to move my hand on the screen to hit the brake icon, I had a real trigger to push in the back. I was suddenly able to take corners much more carefully – the difference was stark.

I feel like I could talk about this for another 2,000 words, but it might be best to save those for an actual review, after I’m able to put a lot more time into the SHIELD. Before I stop though, I need to mention the game streaming capability of the SHIELD, which simply blew me away.

Game-streaming requires a GeForce-enabled PC, and what it does is run the game live on that PC, and streams it wirelessly to the SHIELD. Performance-wise, I was very impressed. When I left the room, it was hit or miss, but I have a different dual-band router to test out, so I will see if that improves things.

Here’s a direct screenshot of Sleeping Dogs running on the SHIELD, being streamed from my GTX 770-equipped PC:

Sleeping Dogs via PC Game Streaming

Again, I plan on properly reviewing the SHIELD soon, and that will include the whys and hows of the tech, along with a look at other games, and of course, Console Mode. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to hit up the comments section below.