Game releases are a little light at the moment, so maybe it’s a good time to take stock. Let’s talk about the PS Vita. Who has one, do you use it much? If you don’t have one, are you thinking of buying one? What’s holding you back?
I’ve had a mixed experience with my Vita. I literally don’t think I’ve spent more than five minutes with a disc based game on my Vita ever. That was at launch and I haven’t bothered buying or playing anything off a disc since.
I have, however, spent a lot of time playing indie game and — perhaps more crucially — playing old games that I didn’t get the chance to check out on the PC when they first released. Games like Spelunky, Hotline Miami, etc. I’ve wrote previously that the PS Vita has been my ‘In case you missed it machine’. It’s such a glorious device to play Indie games on. It really is.
Recently I’ve spent time playing games like OlliOlli and LuftRausers on it. These are the kind of games I use my Vita for. It feels more like a PC portable than a PlayStation Portable. That’s weird, but kind of cool.
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36 responses to “Community Review: The PlayStation Vita”
I don’t have one yet, but I am definitely interested if Sony bring out a PS4/Vita bundle in Australia.
I regret pretty much every purchase for my Vita so far once they become free games on PS+. Probably the biggest downside.
Good system, good selection of games, I haven’t used it in a while since the 3DS has been getting some renewed action. Plus my headphones are broken.
This is true… but given that I’ve usually bought those games on sale for $2-$5, I can live with that. Especially when you consider that I buy very few 3DS digital games because they’re too expensive, and I don’t trust the digital infrastructure.
I have bought 0 full digital games for my 3DS due to that dodgy online infrastructure.
I would buy more cheap $2-$5 games on PSN if I could spend the advertised $2-$5, and not have to give them a $10 transaction minimum.
You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve bought a game, only to have it go free on PSPlus months later. One time, I bought a game and it went free a couple of weeks later…
You’ve hit the nail on the head there – it’s my PC and PS3 portable. I’m spending most of my time with it playing games that I actually own on PC or PS3, but are too low-key to “waste” time on when I’m able to use the TV for gaming. Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Guacamelee, Sly Cooper – these are all games that I’ve spent hefty chunks of Vita gaming time on, on the bus, in the car, while boring TV is on.
I bought mine second hand a few months ago because I felt the time was right, and I’m spending more time with it now than my 3DS, which is a real shock to me.
Hurts your thumb joints like crazy if you spend too much time spelunking, though 🙁
Best purchase I have made, and so was the original PSP…
I was stuck at LAX in 2012 with Uncharted Golden Abyss for 8 hours, exactly the kind of scenario this thing is amazing for. Yes, game releases are unfortunately quite dry, but when something does come out it’s usually pretty amazing, and there’s a nice dribble of indie ware in between…
I love my Vita, but I do train commute every single day… Contemplating getting the Slim, just cause’… Currently enjoying God of War on it this week and am extremely pumped for Borderlands 2!
If anyone is one the fence or doesn’t understand the device, I simply boot up Killzone: Mercenary and watch the jaws drop…
I will back this thing to the hilt, amazing device capable of more than it’s given credit for!
I don’t own one, I don’t know if/when I’ll get one, but I know that when I do I will have about 20 games for the thing automatically, thanks to PS+ purchases and digital PSP games I bought previously.
I enjoy mine a lot. I travel quite a bit for work and I don’t find mobile phone gaming to be very fulfilling for more than a few minutes at a time, so it’s good to have something that offers a more substantial gaming experience on hand. I think for console/portable gaming in general the twin-stick experience can’t be beaten.
I bought mine a few months back but have been downloading every free PS+ title made available, so the only titles I’ve been buying are the indies when they go cheap. Really enjoy titles like Olli Olli, Spelunky and Hotline Miami, but also appreciate having access to something a bit meatier like Uncharted or Wipeout.
We got a 2nd hand one for 179 from EB, they even threw in a 16gb memory card for free a week later with the 6 lego games digital download. Brilliant deal. (the 199 brand new deal had just kicked in).
Honestly, we use it more than the 3ds ever got used. We link it up to the ps4, the boy watches youtube on it, uses it as a ps4 controller, remote plays rayman on it over our wifi and everything, it’s great.
I absolutely love my Vita to bits so many great games, more of the kind of games I’m into, the graphics and colors are gorgeous. My fav handheld since the DSI. There is room for improvement they need something like Pokemon a game that gets the console selling give people a reason to get excited for the new installment of the series, maybe strike a deal and get dragon quest on there or something along those lines.
I love mine, a ton of great games on an awesome screen.
It’s weird though, because the Vita is semi-failing, it’s let a lot of really niche titles get localised, like Danganronpa, Demon Gaze and Project Diva. It’s great that these titles are getting a chance in the west, and now that Freedom Wars, Oreshika and Danganronpa 2 are coming out, i see no reason to get rid of my vita any time soon.
also obligatory Gravity Rush and Persona 4 Golden are fantastic.
Adore my vita, but again, I gotta agree, I tend to use it more for playing indies than anything else (Not counting the outrageous amount of time I’ve spent with Persona 4 Golden)
Just bought it one month back from Dick Smith sales. Initially, I thought it’s a perfect “time waster” for my coming long haul flight. But I have spent more time with it than PS3 nowadays, playing unit13, soul sacrifice and toukiden mostly! ! Online/Ad hoc multiplayer games are fun with friends and most importantly, I can play it anytime in short succession.
Hopefully they could pump out high quality games for the next 2 – 3 years.
I own one and I love it. I use it to play Trials Fusion, Infamous Second Son or ACIV via Remote Play when I am in bed. I play Spelunky and FEZ when on my lunch break at work. I really could do without the back touch, it just seems unnecessary hardware and ALWAYS feels forced into games. The thumbsticks could be bigger or offer a wider range of motion as I find shooters difficult with it. I wish it supported multiple profiles so I can have my US profile and my wife’s AU profiles on it at once (like the PS3) this way my wife could play games she really likes and actually earn trophies for her profile. I give it Stars out of Stars.
Holy shit… I just realised that I have a Vita and a copy of Trials Fusion for PS4… once I actually own a PS4, I’m never going to get any sleep ever again….
Got burned really bad by the original PSP as i got it at launch, picked up a few games and then it gathered dust for years at a time.
However remote play has me intrigued and if it was out there at a good price point i would likely pick it up for that and for the free games i would already have thanks to PS+.
I bought a Vita a year or so ago and have absolutely loved it. The ability to have party chat running and play games has been fantastic and there are quite a few times when it has served as a Vent alternative. Interestingly enough, I only own two physical games for various reasons and everything else is digital, something I’d recommend to people (digital over physical). Having a PS3 has been incredibly useful for me because I’ve frequently had to shuffle games off and on after running out of space. I definitely recommend it for JRPG fans.
I have one, and it’s gathering dust. It got a fair bit of use when I first got it, Uncharted: GA, AC: Lib and Gravity Rush were great fun when I was on holiday, away from my consoles and my PC. But, as soon as I got back from the holiday, the Vita went on a shelf, and I went back to my PC. There haven’t been any games since that I particularly want to play on it; Persona was interesting for a while, but too repetitive for my liking – heresy, I know :P. And other platforms are far more enticing – now that I’ve upgraded to a new laptop, I don’t think I’ll even be using my Vita as my portable gaming system for holidays and such.
I’ve been thinking of getting one lately, the only thing holding me back is I love my 3ds and have a stack of games I still need to play through on that (I am still playing like 10 hours a week of 3ds). I’m also concerned that pretty much every vita game that interests me is a re-release, I mainly want to play the god of war pack, ffx pack and psone games on it.
What are some other good games on there? What are the good rpgs and are there many fantasy style ones?
I’ve noticed my time with my Vita is a lot more sporadic than when I had my PSP, usually I latch onto Dragon’s Crown, Soul Sacrifice or Persona 4 and don’t let go for a few days and then when I put the Vita down I forget all about it =\ it’s kind of odd as I used to play my PSP everywhere but with my Vita for some reason it doesn’t feel as comfortable in my hands and I find I constantly need to take breaks or I get cramps?
I love my Vita, it sees a lot of use. Only have a couple of physical games, picked up when i saw then cheap, and a bunch of PS+ titles. What i don’t get, is people getting bent out of shape when a game they bought shows up for free on PS+; I mean, you deemed it good enough value to actually purchase in the first place, so has that value actually been diminished because it’s subsequently become available for free?
It’s the way it goes with a lot of retail purchases. Like PC’s – if you buy a new PC, stop looking at prices for them afterwards, as you’ll only piss yourself off 🙂
I have had a vita now for a year, I pushed ahead to get one with once they release word that FFX was coming to it.
In the past I have played as much as 15 hours a week on the Vita (more when I’m traveling), mostly these days it gets about 6-7 hours (so still a bit of gaming)
I don’t enjoy how it feels in my hands, I more wish the touch pad on the back was smaller because the way I hold it my fingers are always mashing the touch pad (you notice it on some games more than others), other than that issue I don’t really have one with the size or weight.
Performance wise it has been great and the battery I find is really good, you can leave the system in suspend mode for days on end and your game is still ready waiting to go next time you turn it on.
Memory cards are a bit of a pain in the arse, but you can now get a 64gb one online so I’m looking into that, what pains me about the memory cards is you have to shut down the whole system when you swap them so it kills a couple of mins changing it out because I forget what card has what game saves on it
I have become more impressed with the games selection with the more recent releases,
I started out with AC liberation, Shinobido and Lego LOTR
I was really impressed with the Lego game (being my 1st Lego game as well)
AC was good but not as blockbuster as I had hoped still playing AC on the go is really great
with PS+ I also got my hands on Uncharted which has its draw backs and if you compare it to its PS3 brothers it’s only a 6.5/10, but still for an on the go uncharted game its great the story is a bit shaky, but the game play overall and the voice acting is tops for a vita game it’s got to be 8.5/10 easy.
Killzone has been a stand out game which really shows the true power of the vita and puts other Vita FPS’s to shame.
FFX I have loved playing on the go
The PSP GTA’s and PSOne games can get really cheap on sales
Very much looking forward to Borderlands 2
No huge on the indie games but Hotline Miami, Stealth and Guacamelee have been loads of fun and I easy plug hours into them all
I have enjoyed the Remote play function with my PS4 but it’s more a gimmick for me I rather my TV for PS4
Bottom line Love my Vita, gets way more play time then my PSP’s ever did.
If you’re on the fence I would say just check what games you’re interested in and what’s coming out in the future, took me a long time to make up my mind but happy I did
I’ve owned one since launch and love it. Releases were a bit thin early on but more and more stuff is coming out for it and it’s been getting the lion’s share of my limited gaming time recently.
Part of the reason though is that it’s getting the sort of games that I really enjoy. I’d imagine that if you’re not into niche JRPGs and other Japanese stuff you’re not going to find much appealing on the system (much in the same way that I struggle to find much to play on my 3DS because I’m not into Nintendo’s franchises). The last few months have seen a flood of this sort of content and a heap of announcements for localizations of more of them, to the point where I can’t keep up any more. Especially with all the quality indie games also releasing.
I’d say the biggest thing that improved my Vita experience recently was splurging out and importing a 64gb memory card. The 16gb one I had before was insanely limiting, but I’m finding 64gb feels like you never really need to worry about space. Just wish it wasn’t proprietary and so stupidly expensive as a result.
EDIT: Didn’t mention that moving to the 64gb has basically made me decide to go all-digital from this point unless it’s an import I can’t get any other way. Juggling game cartridges around is a pain.
Very under rated piece of kit in my opinion. A PS3 in your hands, nuff said.
The issue is support from developers. I’ve loved Tear Away, Living Dead and Final Fantasy X – but it needs more ports (and not the cheeky cut down versions Lego franchise keeps on pushing out). The games don’t need to be new (as FFX proves) the just need to be made – where is Red Dead Redemption, GTAV, The Last of Us, etc?
If these games all run fine on a PS3 they can run fine on a Vita and the argument of not enough sales doesn’t make sense. If the big titles were on the Vita, people would buy the Vita to play these games. I can guarantee there was spike in sales when Tear Away came out because it was an A-grade game only available on the Vita. It tipped my decision to jump in and buy one.
Please Sony, support those supporting you with games worth playing.
One other thing to note is that as a portable media device it is the best looking screen I’ve come across. Video is a pure joy on a Vita.
“I literally don’t think I’ve spent more than five minutes with a disc based game on my Vita ever”
Quite understandable as the Vita doesn’t actually HAVE a disc drive.
I have a Vita and use it fairly extensively, probably my second platform after PC. Great display, fairly rugged, good selection of games these days – although I do incline towards JRPGs, and it’s probably the second best platform for JRPGs after the PS3 at the moment.
I have a 64GB memory card, loaded down with a mix of PS1, PSP and native Vita titles. I never have enough space, although admittedly many of the titles using up space are games I would like to play in principle but never actually do… in practice a handful of JRPGs get most of my attention.
Drowning in content these days from niche JRPGs taking the system by force. It’s the glory days of the PSP all over again.
I’ve got no interest in buying one.
I bought a PSP at launch and I had very few (if any) really good gaming experiences with it.
I’ve said before that I don’t really think Sony “gets it” in terms of what people want on a handheld, most of their major releases are ports/ versions of their big console games and they just don’t work on a handheld.
It does seem that they’ve embraced the indie scene though this time around which is a good idea, but I still don’t want to pay for the machine/ memory card/ games just to play indie titles (many of which are multiplatform anyway) when my 3DS has a healthy library of AAA system exclusives.
Memory cards are still too expensive.
Apart from that it’s a fine piece of tech.
I’m so happy to see so much love for vita. 🙂
I need one more for my psone classics I’ve got. My PSP is in the middle of dying a slow handheld console death due to a combination of high cupboard and a curious-how-gravity-works cat. If there’s a lot more cross function play with the PS4 then I’m all for that, but I’m also pleased to see Football Manager 2014 has a cross function feature with the Vita. Something I wasn’t expecting at all.
I’ll be getting one at some point though, probably around Christmas time and make the most of any bundle deal that’s going around
Still feels like a waste of money to me at the moment, a bit like the Wii U.
I picked up a 2nd hand one on eBay for $140…best $140 I’ve spent in a long time! It is now my main gaming machine and fits into my life perfectly. I have a young family, a full time job and help my wife run her business in the evenings. This doesn’t leave much time for gaming so the instant resume function is amazing for me.
Currently have installed, Metal Gear Solid PS1, Everybody’s Golf, Earth Defence Force 2017, Stealth Inc, Rayman Origin and Legends, The Walking Dead and Super Star Dust Delta. Plus a decent back log of PS+ games to get through.
When I eventually get a PS4 I think Remote Play will see a lot of use as we only have one TV in the house.
Got it Launch Day… and whilst for the first year, it was a spare time device. Roll around January 2013 and circumstances changed, it is now it gets played every workday for 4 hrs (2 hrs each way).
I’ve spent far more time on the Vita, then I have with console games over the last 18mths. In that same time also, I’ve bought a ridiculous amount of games, and I’m hoping this time at E3 the memory cards are revised again and we’ll get a 128GB card, I know I could get a 64GB to replace the 32GB, but this close to E3 will wait.
Current go to game is Hatsune Miku : Project DIVA f, cracked the 50hr mark this morning. Also gave God Of War a run over the weekend (thanks to retroactive PS3 Crossbuy) and whilst rough still plays fine.
The backlog I have is well into the double digits and hypothetically I’d have enough content (ports included) to last for the next 12mths.
Looking forward to Hatsune Miku : Project Diva 2nd f, Danganrompa 2, Oddworld : Abe’s Oddysee, Velocity 2X, Ratchet & Clank Collection and many more that I know that are coming throughout the year.
It’s the best for rpgs and visual novels. Persona 4, virtues last reward and danganronpa were perfect. The walking dead game (although a little glitchy) is fantastic as well.
I think this is where it works best
Monster monpiece!
Had mine for more than a year and I love it. Funnily enough, it’s the games that I’ve spent the least on that I’ve really enjoyed the most. Hotline Miami is simply perfect on Vita, it just IS the best way to play the game. ‘Triple A’ Vita games are few and far between, but they’re decent, memory is the only real issue I have with the Vita at all. Seriously, we need the 64gb card, I really don’t understand why they’re not available.
I am addicted to my Vita. I catch a bus and train to and from Uni so it’s perfect. My 3DS hasn’t been used in a long time. Not to mention I got my Vita for free for trading my old PC to a mate. I showcase my Vita, with my Wii U-branded headphones (I know, I know). All day. Every day.
3DS will regain it’s glory when Smash releases though.
Love my Vita as well – got it at eb on the $200 sellout of the old model with the card and Lego games, I also had the big PSPlus library on hand. Just bought a 64GB card so I can have more games available ‘at the ready’.