Stadia promised a lot of things that no other platform could offer. The ability to play your games anywhere without a dedicated gaming device or subscription is unparalleled, while features like Crowd Play, State Share, and Phone Link use cutting-edge technology that have the potential to move the industry forward and change the way we play games forever. Above all else, what really made me a Stadia believer was the promise of the superior performance that cloud gaming can offer. Playing Doom Eternal in 4K at 60fps on a decade-old toaster sounds like witchcraft, and would make gaming a lot more accessible to a massive group of players. As GPUs continue to get scalped for over $1,000 and next-gen consoles remain completely unavailable, Stadia gives players the opportunity to play the latest and greatest games when they otherwise couldn’t afford to. And while that promise is true, there’s a serious compromise made to performance in most cases, particularly when it comes to Ubisoft games. This is what makes Stadia my last resort instead of my first choice for new games, and I was really hoping to see more improvement after two years.
Ubisoft is clearly one of the biggest supporters of Stadia. Practically every major Ubisoft release over the last two years has launched simultaneously on Stadia, and Ubisoft+ subscribers have access to the full library of Ubisoft Stadia games as a free perk. So why then is Far Cry 6 on Stadia the worst version of the game? Not only is it locked to 30fps in line with the PS4 and Xbox One versions, but graphical settings appear to be somewhere between what we would consider medium and low on a PC, at least based on my testing on three different devices.
Far Cry 6 on Stadia looks muddy and washed out, with poor contrast and lots of visual flaws. Faces lack detail even when you walk right up on someone, and night scenes are practically impossible to navigate because of how much gets lost in the blacks. This is all under ideal circumstances, either hardwired into the network or sitting inches away from my router on a 5GHz Wi-Fi connection downloading at 400Mb/s. Even at that speed, I still experience occasional artifacting and pauses.
One of the most noticeable flaws can be seen any time you're in a dark area looking at a flat surface like a wall. Here you’ll see color banding that makes different light values look like a gradient, as well as blocky compression artifacts. The effect is that Far Cry 6 looks worse than a PS4 or Xbox One game on Stadia when Stadia’s game should look the best.
I don’t know how much of the blame to levy at Stadia’s streaming technology versus Ubisoft’s port, but I do know this isn’t the first Ubisoft game locked at 30fps on Stadia. Far Cry 5, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and Watch Dogs: Legion are also locked to 30fps and have similar performance issues to Far Cry 6. Perhaps it's just not worth it for Ubisoft to invest in better Stadia ports because the player base is so small, but if Stadia can only offer worse versions of new games for the same price, how will the player base ever grow?
I’d have to have no other options to play Far Cry 6 on Stadia, which is such a shame because I do appreciate the flexibility that Stadia offers me to play wherever I want on any screen. Every time a major new game comes out I check Stadia to see what kind of improvements have been made, and so far I’ve always been disappointed. Maybe Far Cry 7 will finally realize Stadia’s full potential, but I might not stick around to find out.