Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm surprised we haven't yet seen Sony TVs with built-in Vitas.

The OLED screen has been replaced by an LED screen, though.

Yeah, I noticed people talking about the in the comments for the article. If the OLED screen is as nice as people are saying that's quite a shitty move from Sony because after stocks of the old version sell out every new Vita owner will be stuck with a worse looking screen. It probably means you'll be able to sell your original model for a fortune though if you ever get bored of it...

It's a very nice screen, but I'm not sure what advances have been made in screen technology in the last couple of years. It's possible they might be able to get the same effect of a nice screen but with cheaper tech now. I will wait until I see them side by side.

Best bit of Vita TV is nothing to do with the Vita: it's a £70 device that can stream PS4 games from my lounge to any other TV in my house. Unless it sucks (which it might), then that's incredibly useful.

Also, the Vita's OLED screen is lovely, but so are modern LCDs e.g. iOS ones. The PSP had crummy LCD screens but that doesn't mean all LCDs are crummy.

Is the Vita TV coming out over here or is it Japan only?

No Europe/US announcement just yet.

Hmmm, I'd assumed it was just a 'Vita in a small box' but Sony have published the list of Vita games that the Vita TV will support and it's not exhaustive; things like Uncharted and Wipeout are missing which is a bit surprising. Unless this is just stuff that can't be played without the touchpad or something, which is an issue that would be solved by the PS4 controller.

I went and got Killzone Mercanaries last night and, thanks to the cats waking me up at 5 in the fucking morning today, got in a couple of hours before work.

It's marvellous! Really, really good! The Eurogamer and Edge reviews have been underselling it somewhat by saying it's a good FPS for a handheld, but I actually think that's unfair from what I've played so far - it's a decent, well thought out FPS full stop. The fact it's on Vita and can thus be played mid-poo is just a bonus really.

I played the multiplayer beta and was underwhelmed. Sell it to me.

I wasn't too fussed with the beta either, but I played the full game for an hour last night and an hour this morning and was impressed with what I played. In terms of the actual game, that equates to me doing the first single-player mission before bed last night, then doing it again and part of the second mission this morning (because I was a bit tired last night and couldn't really remember what had happened in the plot). So I'm not even remotely far through enough to give a definitive opinion, just my initial impressions.

I noticed that the game allows for multiple approaches to achieve goals (went through all guns blazing last night, then did the first mission much more stealthily this morning), with multiple routes and bonus objectives in each mission. The mercenary idea works nicely as you're only allied to whoever is paying the most, so presumably there'll be missions to come that you'll do from the perspective of the Helghast. The money you earn is used to buy weapons and equipment, all of which seem to have different characteristics, which I imagine would have an impact on your tactics in the game.

Though it's disabled by default, there's an option to use the motion sensor to assist aiming a la Uncharted: Golden Abyss, which works even more beautifully in this than it did in that. The twin sticks do their job well enough, but being able to tweak your aim by gently moving the whole console works well. There's also a fair challenge there - I'm playing on normal difficulty and died plenty, but it never felt unfair.

Also, it's beautiful to look at. Big boy console FPS graphics on a handheld with all the action show pieces you'd expect.

I think, from what I've played, it would stack up okay on a main console. Probably wouldn't be considered to be the best, or the most cutting edge FPS out there, but worth a gander anyway. On the Vita, so far at least, it seems more or less essential. And I know what I said about other reviews underselling it by saying it's good for a handheld and that I've essentially just said the same thing, but fuck you, that's why.

Yeah, it's based on inputs, but the PS4 controller doesn't solve it either, it has a touchpad, not a touchscreen.

Hopefully they will just patch the bigger games, which might actually improve Uncharted if they get rid of the forced touchscreen nonsense.

960x544 won't look super nice upscaled, but quite a few PS3 games did the same, and no one complained, so I guess they will get away with it.

I think it is a pretty smart move, but it is weird that the PS4 doesn't run Vita games.

Heh, oh yeah, so it does. :embarrassed: I don't know why I keep forgetting that; I always remember the touch pad on the back but it never sticks in my head that it's got a touch screen as well for some reason.

It doesn't seem any harder to me at the moment but the check points are much further apart which is rapidly becoming annoying. I've just got to the bit where you follow some guy outside the walls and take out metal heads and it's... so very boring. I enjoyed J&D but this is just tedious. All the colour has been sucked out of it and replaced with Nu-metal Jak who's so very angry at everything. Rather than a straight platformer with a stupid story about Eco this rubbish about fighting for the resistence is too uninspired to hold my attention. And it's gone GTA-lite but the hub just isn't interesting enough to roam about in and it's too large and sprawling. So. Very. Bored. I can't see me bothering with the rest of this.

Oh, and NO ONE HOLDS ONTO THE PLASTIC SIDES OF THE VITA. YOUR FINGERS WILL ALWAYS TOUCH THE BACK PANEL SO DON'T BOTHER TO PUT ANY CONTROLS ON IT YOU CANTS. The back panel moves the vehicles up and down in the air (fucking stupid) and (worse) it flicks to the first person view. Usually when you don't want it to. Which is ALL THE FUCKING TIME CAUSE NO ONE USES THE FIRST PERSON VIEW AND MY FINGERS ALWAYS TOUCH THE BACK PANEL. J&D didn't have any of these problems and there's about 4 other buttons they could have used. Dicks.

Wrong architecture: The Vita's ARM-based, the PS4 x86-based.

The PS4's CPU is more powerful than the Vita's, but not nearly powerful enough to emulate a Vita. That means they'd have to put a Vita chipset on the PS4's board like they put a PS2 chipset on the (early) PS3's board... So they might as well put it in a separate box and sell it as a separate product.

(There's the issue of different GPU architectures as well - PowerVR in the Vita, Radeon in the PS4 - but I don't know if that could be solved at the driver level.)

Yes, I'm aware of the technical differences. It still seems ill thought out to me, they clearly didn't have this plan in mind when they designed the Vita, and it shows. I do think they should consider making a smaller dongle that adds full Vita compatibility to the PS4 (and maybe they should do similar for PS3).

It's also a little confusing in their lineup, they now have two home console on the horizon, that offer differing functionality, and then they have the super slim PS3, which they are presumably hoping to sell a lot of, which is conflicting with the Vita TV somewhat too.

It's a nice idea, but it's a little bit messy.

I do; mine don't.

I've decided that Jak 2 has sucked all the fun from Jak & Daxter and might just give up with this shit after 2 hours playtime. I don't even think it's hard - I've been skimming through it easily enough - it's just not much fun. I'm having so little fun travelling from one end of the city to another, GTA-style, to pick up missions that I'm not sure I'm even ready for GTAV now. I'd totally forgot how boring it is meandering about. Jak & Daxter was bright, fun (-ish) and had some nice plinky music: Jak 2 is all Nu-Metal, teenage angst crap with boring grey vistas and shit music. Oh, and they've given him a gun too. Ridiculous.

It seems that J&D was aimed at the Japanese market and Jak 2 was aimed squarely into faceless corporate America. I just hope those corporate execs never mull over whether to 'revive the franchise', cause they'd obviously killed it off on the second outing.

IGN wrote:

"Jak is far more likeable now that he speaks, and that fact that he's pissed off and owns honking big guns weaves in an unmistakable new level of emotion into the narrative."

Fuck. Off. And. Die.

That has to be ironic, surely?

Stealth: A Clone in the Dark - reet nice gory platform puzzler. Yeah, this better than that Jak 2 shit. I'm enjoying this muchly.

Stealth's boss levels are propah peng. It sorta reminds me of Creatures' torture levels from the C64.

Is "peng" good or bad?

I played it through* on my phone and thoroughly enjoyed it; very good stuff indeed. I continue to be stunned at how well executed the controls are on a touch screen, especially in a game that demands such precision at times.

*Well, I played most of it; I think I threw in the towel on like the third last level because it annoyed me too much but I'd more than got my money's worth by that point as it's a relatively long game.

U so old! Allow old people Internet!

I thought it was 'hot'. Willoughby hot, not soup hot.

Correct me if I'm wrong but that Lone Survivor is supposed to be pretty good, right? For a tenner, I'm having some of that.

Did you like Home on iPhones and probably other phones? Then you may also enjoy Lone Survivor: Directors Cut on Vita.

I am.

I'm guessing it used to be a peeeeeeeceeeee game but I'd rather not read up on it until it's finished, cause it's like, one of those games. Y'know, weird un's with twisty freaky shit going on.

Curve Digital ports tend to be on PS+ within a month of release, so I might wait. Got my fingers burnt with Stealth Inc!

Engadget review of the new Vita. Headlines: battery life massively improved but screen noticeably crapper than the original.

EDF 2017 is £11.99 (£10.80 for PS+ subscribers) at the moment.

Tearaway is getting some amazing reviews

(shamelessly stolen from Neogaf here : http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=719375 )

Yep, the closest to a killer app for the Vita.

What sort of game is it?

A video game.

The latest video game from Media Molecule (the makers of little big planet)

Perhaps read one of the 20 odd reviews above - however here is one of the opening few paragraphs from the US Gamer review

I've played it and it is very nice. I wasn't bumming it mega hard, but it was a sweet little game.

Finished Stealth: A Clone in the Dark!

It took me a while as it's one if those games you dip in and out, but it was vee dot good. I don't particularly like puzzle games that much neither but the dark humour and bloody blood splats kept me going. I like that each world messed around with a obstacle but not once outstayed it's welcome, the boss levels were clever and interesting and it was challenging but easy enough for my arthritic fingers. It's funny how many people must have either (a) jacked it in before the end or (b) been uber shit, cause I was 7th on the worldwide leaderboards for the last level despite being insanely slow.

Anyway, if you like X you'll like this X.

Shame about the ending though. I knew something was coming but it wasn't a long enough payoff after all I went through.

I really enjoyed it as well, although I was one of those who didn't finish it as one of the final levels was a pain in the ass. Good fun though and very clever as you say.

Also: what was the ending about then?

Finish it yourself you lazy git.

Picked up Persona 4 Golden in the States. It's early days yet -- I'm just a few hours in -- but this could be the first JRPG I've enjoyed in many years. It appears to be exceptional.

It remains that way, don't worry. The start is probably the worst bit.

No, the title is the worst bit.

Lone Survivor - I finished this ages ago but forgot to write something about it. Here is that something.

It's fab!

But if you want more than that, it's super duper fab!

But you want a summary of it as you're too lazy to read reviews of summats, then get this load of letters and words in your peepers:

You wake up and you don't know who you are or what you're doing. Then you look around and the world has gone to shit and everyone is either dead or a zombie. It's got that pretend it's an old 8-bit game look about it but it's the sound effects that lift this above the average. Stick your headphones in and get lost in this world of thumping heart beats, meaty gun shots and people shouting boo in your face. Probably. Anyhoo, it's 2D and there are jaggies but you won't care cause it sucks you right into a world of weird shit happening in your facce. You have to juggle solving puzzles, getting about without being eaten, and remembering where stuff is so you can do stuff with other stuff.

It reminds me of Resident Evil and Dead Rising.

Early Resi cause it's actually bleeding difficult when it gets going and you've got sod all ammo to be going on with, but when zombies have been deaded they stay deaded, and if you don't save then you'll go back to the last time that you did. Then there's a ticking clock that never stops; you play in days and if you die then you'll go back to the start of the day. Combine these two things and death is actually pretty scary because you can waste a whole day's work if you get killed just because you wanted to press on to the next bit and thought you could do it but, y'know, you were actually shit. You also have to keep your man well fed and watered as well, because, well, you'll starve otherwise, right.

But it's not just killing zombies and solving puzzles and remembering to eat cheese slices, because it's also weird. You meet people who probably aren't there and people who probably aren't all there (if you gets me; y'know, nutters), and you dream of a man with a box on his head.

I reckon, if you can get past the difficulty that ramps up near the end of the 3/5 hour "campaign" then you'll probably think this is pretty cool. Then it ends.

Mild spoiler ahead.



Major spoiler ahead.



Personally I thought it was pretty great and well worth a tenner. It's like iPhone's Home with shooting. Kinda.

Also, I was reading that, for example, some of these indie games don't make it onto Xbox because Microsoft insists that they must be attached to a publisher. Well more fool them cause Playstation is the play to go for new experiences like this. The irony, of course, is that all of these indie games came out on PC ages ago!

What else have I been playing, Proteus!

Another "Indie" game this time it's a "procedurally generated explore-em-up". It's yet another retro-styled game.

Here's what happens, in a nut shell.

A procedurally generated island is created. It's Spring; it's daytime. You walk about. You see a frog. You follow him and make him jump away. The sound effects are plinky plonky. It's relaxing in a sense. You continue to walk about. You see some trees. You see some beach. You see a graveyard. You see a big tree but mainly small trees. You climb up a steep hill with snow on the peaks. A rain cloud comes in. The sun sets. It gets dark. You walk about. The island isn't actually that large so you can see all of it within the daytime.

THEN you realise that there's a circle of light and stuff going on over there. You walk up to it, it's all happening at night, and you step into the circle of light and POW, you advance a season.

It's summer. A host of crazy shit is going on. Ok, well there's some flys instead of frogs, now there's some rabbits, some other stuff... anyhoo. It's the same island but changed a bit. It's also daytime so you wander around the same island. There's no caves, nothing to go inside, you can't interact with anything other than chasing frogs, rabbits, and getting chased by flies. There's no new stuff on the island other than the flora and the rabbits and shit. You wait till night time and the circle of light is back.

You step into it and POW, you advance a season. Guess what to! Autumn! Exciting.

Well, turns out it's a bit less busy than summer. Some flies have died. It's a bit orange. There's little wildlife now. You walk about a bit but since you already covered the entire island in Spring there's fack all to look at. It's the same but orange and the music and sound effects are a bit different. You're bored. Come on night fall! Eventually, night gets there and you step into the circle and POW *yawn* it's winter.

Winter is cold and hostile, but you'd never know. It's just foggy and dark but the sun comes out over the clouds and the snow turns purple to orange. You can still explore the same island that you have 3 times over but, again, there's no real changes. It's not interesting enough to continually walk around. It's far too small to get lost, there's little in the way of interesting landmarks, there are hills and beaches but it's never interesting enough to walk around in for too long, it's all trees. It just doesn't captivate like it should be doing. It's not doing anything wrong, it's just not interesting enough or large enough to wander around and lose yourself in.

Mild Spoiler but I doubt it's interesting enough to spoil.



That's Proteus. Flawed but interesting enough for ten minutes but since it's selling for a tenner, you gotta accept that it ain't worth the money. I've been reading the reviews and, frankly, I'm astonished how easily pleased some of the reviewers are. "It's relaxing to wander around" "I could explore for hours" etc. All of these reviews are wrong. Listen to me. It ain't worth it for anymore than half an hour, tops.

Quite - I played Lone Survivor a month or so ago and rumbled through it in a day. I nearly gave it up when I couldn't get past the first "boss" (the chase one) but then fluked my way to the end of that bit and it was fairly easy from then in.

I got the green ending, I think.

Picked one of these up on Black Friday for a hundred quid new with a 4g card. Bought the 16gb pack with LBP, Wipeout etc in it and a few other games.

What an excellent little console. I love it. Everything the PSP should have been. Sony's content management software is fucking appalling though. If I'd used it or even heard what it does before buying the Vita I wouldn't have one.

TxK from Llamasoft has passed cert and is quasi-imminent. I'm over the ruddy moon, got one of my tracks in the bonus round. We're looking at a soundtrack album or at least a Bandcamp of it, a la Tempest 2000 off the Jaguar.

I'm off to play some Motorstorm RC anyway. Makes me giggle like the idiot I am.