Be Excellent To Each Other

Ah, I thought they had swung lower than that

There's Pac-Man CE for the PSP which now works on the Vita, and I also grabbed Tomba (dunno if this was compatible before or not)

Any other hidden gems?

A shooting fan's dream come true! Gradius™ Collection 5 classic games from the Gradius™ Series, I, II, III, IV and the long awaited Gradius™ Gaiden!

Hmmm, I'm doing post credits stuff on 'Sonic and blah blah Transformed' at the moment, but I'll look into that for my next racing game (although realistically that will be Mario Kart .

I'm really loving the Vita - especially as my wife still won't return my 3DS. It's so much better than I expected.

** edit ** - yes Gradius Collection its on the US store but not the EU one which means that you cant just buy and use it without a lot of faffing around :-(

I can confirm that this is awesome on PSP. It'd have been perfect if Gradius V was on there since that is undisputablyably the greatest ever shoot-em-up ever crafted.

It is possible to buy and play it on the PSP but to do that you need to create a US PSN account and purchase it on that and then use a separate memory card (with the US account set) to play it on your vita - you cant use it with a different account.

It would be nice if a future update to the vita allowed you to have multiple accounts on there the same way as the PS3 and PS4 :-(

I do wonder if this was something they were going to announce and make a big fanfare over and accidentally made it live early ?

Neogaf thread has descended into name calling and pointless arguments

Wait - you have to descend to that on other forums?

Also, that Muramasa, goddamn it's pretty. Like, real purdy. This has gotta be one of the most beautiful game I've played on the Vita so far.

Shame that the fighty sword smash ain't that hot. It reminds me an awful lot like The Dishwasher on XBLA yet it's not quite as responsive. Dishwasher was like Ninja Gaiden with it's hyper responsive twitch gameplay but Muramasa is a bit less intuitive. Plus, I might be playing it on hard, but I'm assuming that easy also has you swamped by 6 ninja at a time making it incredibly difficult to know what's going on. Anyone who plays it on normal, can you, like, tell me if you're getting the same on any easier setting? I'm minded to start again if there's less going on. It's not that bad though, but it's taking a little to get into.

But, damn, it's purdy.

Oh hang on, the voice acting! It's sounds MARVELLOUS! I'm loving the voice acting even if I can't understand what's going on (notwithstanding the subtitles).

Well worth a free download on PS+ though. I'mma stick with it.

Talking of PS+ - Everbody's Golf is brilliant.

I've never been a golf game fan (outside WiiSports) and only got it as it's 'free' - but it's really got it's claws into me. Perfect for a portable. Really relaxing. No reason not to give a go.

I don't know - I didn't find it that hard. Quick draw and a few smacks with my strongest sword, and didn't take any damange.

Indeed, most fights I manage to avoid damage.

(Plus also, there's a certain randomness as to which fights you'll get.)

Bought/downloaded Ridge Racer as it is (was?) on offer for seven quid. Disappointingly, despite looking fantastic for a handheld game it feels like a playable demo rather than a full game. Oh well.

I was tempted by it since it was on special but the reviews said so much was removed - I'm pretty sure the offer on PSN was for the 'deluxe' version which had all the DLC stuff - is there maybe an option somewhere to download all the extra tracks / cars that your missing ?

You have to download them all individually and manually(!), and there still aren't many tracks to race on once you've downloaded them. And: no single-player career mode. Just one-off races and time trials.

Glad I avoided it - I'm doing the same for Lego Batman 2 right now - its only a fiver but its another 'dumbed down' port so its missing the hubworld and a lot of the other bits that were in the main games (I've no idea why they chopped it out)

Uncharted then. As far as I can tell, only being 20 minutes in, it's extremely linear, go where your told and press what your told, and if you fall off something you die and go back to a checkpoint miles back.

Unless anybody tells me it gets massively better, i'm going to delete it.

Uncharted then. As far as I can tell, only being 20 minutes in, it's extremely linear, go where your told and press what your told, and if you fall off something you die and go back to a checkpoint miles back.

Uncharted then. As far as I can tell, only being 20 minutes in, it's extremely linear, go where your told and press what your told, and if you fall off something you die and go back to a checkpoint miles back.

Unless anybody tells me it gets massively better, i'm going to delete it.

So this is your first Uncharted game then?

More seriously, assuming it's anything like the 'proper' Uncharted games, it'll still be pretty good fun within the strictures of it's formula and it's probably worth giving it a bit more than 20 minutes of a shot. Also, if everyone took Dave's advice on whether things were good fun or not we'd probably all just kill ourselves at birth rather than carry on the life of apparent misery that awaited us.

( )

I really liked Uncharted on the Vita and finished it. The touch puzzles become a bit of a pain sometimes, but I enjoyed the story and stuff well enough.

​PlayStation Vita Review Update: Two And A Half Years Later
kirkhamilton

​PlayStation Vita Review Update: Two And A Half Years Later

The PlayStation Vita has come a long way in the last two and a half years. Sony's handheld console has navigated a winding and sometimes uncertain route, often deviating from whatever we thought its original course would be. And yet somehow, these many months later, it has landed in a pretty good place.

When Sony released the Vita in February of 2012, we were excited, but cautious. We recommended it to some people, but not to others. Stephen wrote our official review before we had moved to our current "Yes/No/Not Yet" system for console reviews, but had we been using that system, the Vita would most certainly have gotten a "Not Yet."

Today, I'm going to be revisiting Sony's ambitious handheld. How does the Vita hold up, just a hair under two and a half years after it came out? Let's find out.

​In 2012, Sony seemed to want the Vita to be everything. It would be your dedicated gaming device but also your pocket organizer, your maps application, your email client. It would let you Tweet and keep your calendar. It would be an iPad and a PSP rolled into one. There was even an option to get a 3G Vita with a data plan, so that you could use apps and (theoretically) play online games on the go.

The Vita of 2014 is a much more focused device. Its non-gaming apps are mostly vestigial balloons floating on the lower sub-basements of the operating system, only half-remembered when we scan through them looking for the "settings" button.

It's not really a surprising development, given that as Stephen noted in his initial review, it never really did all that other stuff all that well. While there are still a few of the faithful who use every part of the Vita buffalo, my educated guess is that the majority of people simply use their Vitas to play games.

That's okay, though. The Vita is really good for that.

The PlayStation Vita is a lovely device. It's also an odd device. Both of those things have been true since day one: The big screen, the well-balanced feel, the pop of the face buttons, those funky shoulder triggers that you eventually got used to.

These months and years later, some of the more experimental aspects of the Vita are more obviously questionable. The front touchscreen is a clear winner, but the rear-touch pad has never felt particularly comfortable to use and is too prone to accidental input. It is more unfortunate than ever that the thumbsticks cannot be clicked, and that a handheld could come so close to mirroring the inputs on a Dualshock controller only to leave off two shoulder buttons.

All of that leaves the Vita in a bit of an odd place. It's a well-made, shiny device that's missing a couple of features that it really needs. It's unusual, and in several small ways requires games to be designed for it, rather than matching a console controller 1:1.

In the end, that means that the Vita is better suited for some games than for others. The good news is, there are a lot of good games that are well-suited to the Vita. (More on that in a bit.) The bad news is, it'll never quite be able to match the feel of playing a console game like Borderlands 2 or God of War.

​The Vita got a hardware update a couple of months ago with the release of the ligher, cheaper Vita Slim. I reviewed the Slim back in May, and had this to say:

The Vita Slim improves on the original Vita in several small ways—buttons, plugs, included memory, ease of use, lighter weight. It also brings one notable downgrade—the less brilliant screen. What once was a Vita remains a Vita, though now it'll be a bit easier to carry around.

That about sums it up. The new Vita is lighter, easier to hold, and cheaper, but the new screen is less brilliant than the OLED on the original. All in all it's a modest improvement, which is fine, given that the original device was a pretty nice piece of gear. Though it was hard not to be a little bit disappointed in the continuing lack of the aforementioned clickable thumbsticks and L1/R1 buttons.

At various points in its lifespan, Sony suggested that the Vita would eventually be able to effortlessly stream PS3 and PS4 games from anywhere in your home or abroad, letting you pick up a PS4 game mid-pause and carry on from down at the cafe, or from the library at school.

To relive those days of heady promise, watch this 2013 "A Day with PlayStation" trailer from the 1:05 mark:

That would've been pretty freakin cool, huh?

But while the reality of the Vita's remote play function can be cool enough, it's safe to say that the reality falls pretty short of the ambitions put forth by that video.

It's to Sony's credit that they've made PS4 game natively support remote play, but the feature works best if you enable a direct connect to your PS4 and stay close to the console. It gets less responsive as you move around your house and connect to your PS4 through your home network, and in our experience becomes basically unplayable should you attempt to jack in from a remote network across town.

The Vita's odd design doesn't do it any favors with remote play, either. While some games don't require clickable thumbsticks and two extra shoulder buttons to work properly, most do, and the Vita's workaround of having players tap the back or front touchscreens feels like exactly that—a workaround.

All in all remote play is a neat idea that doesn't really deliver as promised, and judging by the nature of the technical bottlenecks it's hitting, probably never will. It's a nifty way to turn your PS4 into a quasi-Wii U, playing games on the couch while someone else watches the TV. But the dream of go-anywhere, play-anytime remains just that: a dream.

​One thing about the Vita that's surprised me is how well it complements its competition, the Nintendo 3DS. When Nintendo released the 3DS XL, the screen-size gulf between the two handheld systems narrowed significantly. Shortly afterward, in early 2013, the 3DS started on a tear of incredible games, while the Vita was still finding its groove. It seemed as though Nintendo was about to eat Sony's lunch.

These days, however, the two handhelds practically work together hand in, uh, hand. There isn't much overlap between their game libraries, which means that each system has a unique gaming identity. The 3DS has a bunch of great Nintendo games and some interesting third-party exclusives, while the Vita has a ton of indie games that are more fun to play on the go than on a big screen, and a bunch of excellent new and remastered JRPGs.

The 3DS and Vita may be mortal enemies as far as Nintendo and Sony are concerned, but for a gamer who actually owns both of them, they get along like the best of friends.

​When the Vita launched, it promised to blur the lines between handheld gaming and set-top console gaming. Sony made a big show out of Wipeout and Uncharted games that looked just like their PS3 equivalents.

Two and a half years later, the actual game library of the Vita is much stranger, more diverse, and more appealing than those early releases suggested. There are a few good Vita games that feel like portable versions of established PS3 and PS4 games, but the best stuff on Vita is much more interesting.

There are good AAA-style action/adventure games, like Gravity Rush and Killzone: Mercenary. There are playful games that employ the Vita's many cameras and touchscreens in the service of user creativity, like Tearaway and LittleBigPlanet Vita. There are arcade shooters like Super Stardust Delta and Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate.

There are JRPG reboots and re-releases that outdo their console forbearers, like Final Fantasy X/X-2 and Persona 4 Golden—the latter of which went on to become one of the most unlikely killer apps of all time—along with a raft of less mainstream JRPGs. There are action RPGs like Soul Sacrifice, and there are oddball Japanese visual novels that have won over so many of us at Kotaku, games like Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward and Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

The Vita also doubles as a terrific way to discover or rediscover great PSP games, as Sony has made a large number of PSP and PSOne games available on their store. If you wanted to buy a Vita and use it only to play classic JRPGs like Trails in the Sky and Final Fantasy Tactics, you'd have a very good time doing so.

​And then there are the indies. So many good independently developed games are now on Vita, most of which are available for other systems, but many of which feel particularly at home on the Vita. Turns out, the platforming masterpiece Spelunky is a perfect fit for the Vita. Ditto Sound Shapes, OlliOlli, Thomas Was Alone, Lone Survivor, Luftrausers, Divekick, Fez, Hotline Miami, and many more.

Sony is making more and more Vita games "cross-buy," meaning that if you buy them on Vita you also get a copy on PS4 and PS3. With some games, it's even possible to have your saved data sync between devices, meaning that, in a way, the Vita is finally able to live up to its promise of allowing you to take your console games on the go with you. And as with their other consoles, if you sign up for Sony's PlayStation Plus service, you'll get a bunch of great Vita games for free, with more added each month.

The long and short of it: Over the past two and a half years, Sony has managed to cobble together a diverse and interesting collection of games for the Vita. FPSes, platformers, RPGs, shoot 'em ups, dating sims, visual novels, art games and so much more—there really is something for just about everyone.

In Conclusion

When it comes time to recommend a game console, it almost always comes down to games. Are there enough of them? Are they good enough? At this point, the Vita answers both of those questions with a resounding affirmative.

The Vita hasn't become the system it set out to be in 2012. Instead, it's become something a bit odder, and arguably more interesting. While there are plenty of ways that the Vita could be improved, at this point Sony has done enough to make the Vita much easier to recommend.

There remains an elephant in the room, however: The fact that Sony has slowed down in announcing new games made specifically for the Vita, opting instead to port over PS3 and PS4 games and re-release other games that can be played elsewhere. Are we recommending something that is in the process of being abandoned by the people who created it? Possibly. Does it matter? Not really, because the Vita's future, unclear as it is, is irrelevant given how strong the Vita's present is.

The Vita's got more than enough good games to make up for any unfulfilled promises or unmet potential, and it's more affordable than ever. In 2014, should you get a PlayStation Vita?
YES

Chepstow