A Review/Ramble/Editorial of the PSVita

Some of you may have followed the previous post on handhelds and their cultural relevance and if you did it was abundantly clear that I very much love my Vita. What follows are just some thoughts on the system in no real order on how it plays, works, games and interface.

THE SYSTEM:

It's excellent. It's built very well and even though it's a little on the large side for a handheld it feels great in my hands. I really liked my PSP 3000, but it was a tad small and uncomfortable to hold.

The sticks are excellent and give you the precise control you'd expect from sticks. The buttons are of the "clicky" variety which isn't my favorite, but the shoulder buttons feel very good.

The touchscreens work very well. As good as any smart phone I've ever used.

The screen itself is huge. It's gorgeous and is a pleasure on the eyes.

I thought the interface was a little clumsy at first. Want to look at friends or trophies or chat? They are all separate apps that have to be loaded independently of each other. At first I thought this was lame until I realized it was more than likely done this way as a way to save power.

I like that the system seems to be aware of when it actually needs to be connected to the PSN and only connects when necessary. It always holds the wifi signal, but won't go into PSN accounts until needed. Again I would assume this is to save battery.

The networking and PSN Store all work better than I could have hoped. It's all relatively seamless and works well. I've been adding funds to my wallet and using PSN cards with great ease.

The system multitasks extremely well. I love that at literally any point of any game I can hit the PS Home button and it will instantly pull me out of the game and will allow me to flip through any page on the Vita I want. I can pull up my friends or trophies app or load the PS Store and Chat all while keeping my game running in the background. When I'm ready to keep playing I go back to the page my game is running on and hit continue and I'm instantly back in the game with no loading. It's awesome.

The battery generally gets a beating by me since I have all the settings maxed and am generally downloading something at the same time. Not sure from a first hand account yet as to how long it will last while simply just playing a game, but the general 4-5 hours seems accurate.

I really only have 2 gripes about the system: 1. I'm not fond of the speaker locations. They are almost constantly blocked by my thumbs to some extent while using the sticks. It's not a huge deal, but can be distracting to get some slight sound muffling while playing. 2. The back touchscreen is great, but sometimes I'm accidentally inputting things when I don't mean to because of where I place my fingers on the system. I guess that there's probably not a way around this as it is literally the nature of the Vita.

GAMES:

I currently own Uncharted, Escape Plan, Rayman, Mutant Blobs and Super Stardust. The weakest of the line up is Escape Plan. While not a bad game it isn't wowing me like I hoped it would. Levels are very short and the load times are long. Using all aspects of the Vita has been very "grin giving" to me. Pushing things over or pulling out drawers by hitting the back touchscreen gives a very unique feel to a puzzle game I've never seen before. This is the only game I've ever played that gives you almost a fly on the wall God complex through the way it plays which is really cool. Leaky steam coming out of a pipe? Literally plug the pipe with your finger. It's a neat game that could be really amazing when a sequel rolls around.

Uncharted is shockingly good and is surprisingly more fun than Uncharted 1 and 2 for the consoles. I'm not saying it's the better game, but that it is more fun. There seems to be more platforming and a smaller amount of endlessly streaming enemies wearing balaclavas (one of my biggest gripes of the series). There are even some decent stealth levels which were almost non-existent in the console versions (I've yet to play UC3).

Using the touchscreen for this game has been surprisingly fun. I'm no fan of gimmicky controls, but I do appreciate using a new input that is executed well. Another good example of this is arming charges in Killzone by using the Sixaxis tilt controls. In Uncharted you enter combinations through a dial combination lock. You take charcoal rubbings of important landmarks. You use the back panel to spin an item and the front panel to literally clean it up to better inspect it. At one point I had to put my Vita up to a bright light to see the hidden ink on some paper to read it. Using the back touch panel as an exact and seamless way to zoom with my sniper rifle and camera is amazingly refreshing. One thing I thought I would never use was to use the sixaxis to further dial in a precise shot while aiming down the sights. I now use this all the time. Combat also utilizes a little touchscreen prompts for fist fights. The lamest one by far is when you slip while walking across a beam and have to use the sixaxis to not fall....really lame.

Needless to say the graphics are amazing on this game and the soundtrack and voice acting is on level with the console versions. I'm on chapter 15 and I'm still shocked that I'm playing this on a handheld.

Rayman is a breath of fresh air that I didn't know I needed. It's ridiculously fast paced and tons of fun. It's like Mario mixed with Sonic, but with very tight controls and some tough platforming. It uses the touchscreen to a small, but fun, extent to grab certain items that are in bubbles. A very fun game that I wouldn't have given a fair shake on consoles.

I got Super Stardust as a gaming dare by my bro-in-law, Silent, to have high score competitions and it's fucking awesome. Basically it's a twin stick shooter and is as balls crazy as Geometry Wars, but you're playing on a spherical planets. Amazing controls and graphics with a great soundtrack. A ton of modes to play and a leaderboard built specifically to make you play more and more as every game mode shows where your points stack up against your friends. It's very addicting and very fun. Just so you all know I'm already pummeling Silent.

Mutant Blobs I got just last night and haven't even played yet. I keep reading it's a ton of fun and a must buy. I'll keep you posted on that.

CONCLUSION:

All in all I'm madly in love with the Vita. I've been consistently choosing to play it over my PS3 and 360 which is something I've never done with a handheld.

The ability to play small short games along with large complex ones is something that hasn't happened up to this point with handhelds.

UBER-CONCLUSION:

Sell all other handhelds and get a Vita. It's truly the best handheld there's ever been. I look forward to pwning your weak punk ass scores in Super Stardust.