PS Vita hands-on impressions [Updated!]

The Device

Before picking up the PS Vita for the first time, I’d been forewarned by a colleague that it was deceptively lightweight for something so powerful. Thinking myself well prepared I continued onward undaunted. My first thoughts mere seconds later? Jesus Christ this thing is light! I mean REALLY light, far more so than the 3DS and perhaps even the PSPgo (hey, remember those?). Maybe the battery pack had been removed from the unit in question or something like that, but even then it still felt as though I was holding nothing but an empty shell rather than the most powerful handheld gaming console ever made!

However I resist the temptation to in turn call the Vita “fragile” as such; I wasn’t really in a situation where it would be socially or professionally acceptable to put the device though its paces in that regard. But even if I was, I doubt that I’d want to do the Vita any harm becuse just holding it felt so…… nice. My hands extensive memory of the many years of abuse they had suffered at the “mercy” of the PSP’s rough and uncomfortable edges were washed away as they gently wrapped around the Vita’s perfectly rounded contours. The entire device was just exceptionally smooth with little to no uncomfortable protrusions, right from the crystal clear OLED screen all the way round to the ……sigh…. rear mounted touch panel.

But while my index fingers and palms where busy having trauma therapy and my eyes were gazing upon the future of portable screens, my thumbs were busy exploring something else entirely: the twin analogue sticks. Not analogue nubs, not circle pads, not d-pads with some kind of exotic mounting, but actual analogue sticks that stand sound and true, just as god intended. My thumbs promptly reported back, after much random fumbling which I think slightly confused the booth clerks who were watching all the journalists like hawks, that the sticks were relatively firm and functional, but also surprisingly lacking in reach, which might perhaps make precision movement very difficult when a situation inevitably calls for it.

It was then that a bunch of other minor but irritating realisations struck me unawares. For one, the sticks are far far too close to the face buttons, making it exceptionally easy to nudge the former when attempting to utilise the latter. And it wasn’t until I was prompted to press start, as every real man is at some point in their lives, that I realised how ridiculously awkward the start/select buttons are! Not only are they tucked away in a corner of the Vita that’s near impossible to reach when in standard gaming posture, but the actual buttons themselves are significantly firmer that you would either expect or desire such a thing to be. I ended up having to take several attempts at the gargantuan task of “Press Start”, eventually using the tip of my fingernails to force the button down far enough for the system to acknowledge my intentions.

Are these fairly small and petty criticisms I’m making here? Yeah I guess they are a little, but it’s only because I’m really struggling to find much fault with the Vita as a device on the whole. Well, other than how ridiculous that rear touch panel still is! I’m not trying to say it’s perfect or anything like that, but it’s certainly more than satisfactory in all the areas that count, such as portability, visuals, controls and ergonomics. Whether the games on the Vita will correctly leverage these assets is another thing entirely, as the ones I was shown were a bit of a mixed bag.

The games

Note that during my hands-on session I was only allowed to play the 5 separate games for a maximum of 4 minutes each, so I can’t do much more than make a fairly cursory analysis at this point.

Little Big Planet

It should be no surprise that this game is just more of the patchwork platforming that you (hopefully) know and love. The graphics were fairly decent and the controls were suitably “floaty” to the point where, from a distance, it’s more or less indistinguishable from it’s console cousins.

Gameplay wise the only big change is that certain physics objects (most of which were marked with a special blue texture) can now be interacted with using the touch screens rather than the sackboy’s usual grab ability. I got to play with a several different applications of this new mechanic, such as being able to “push” objects out from the background using the rear screen or pulling back a slingshot with the front screen. Even though these were pretty basic examples, they were still quite fun to mess around with and didn’t feel like they had been forced into the game just for the sake of it. What’s more, there’s a good chance they will pale in compassion to whatever crazy stuff the LBP community will make once the game goes public. Can’t wait!

Virtua Tennis 4

Much to my own surprise this ended up being by far the most entertaining title of the lot! Technically It was your standard Virtua Tennis game but now In order to hit the ball you had to swipe across the screen, with the angle of your stroke determining the trajectory of the ball and the direction of the stroke adding either a top or bottom spin to it. At one point the booth clerk I was standing next too took the opportunity to remind me that the game is also playable with traditional analogue stick and face button controls at any time, but that she “preferred the touch screen style anyway”. Even though I have fairly strong suspicion that this was just a pre-canned phrase that she was being paid to tell people whenever possible, it totally echoed my own sentiments on the matter. Using the touch screen to control the balls trajectory and spin felt infinitely more precise than simply taping a button, possibly making it the first time I’ve ever felt touch screen integration actually enhancing my gameplay experience rather than being a tacked on gimmick.

Little Deviants

You may remember Little Deviants from Sony’s original “NGP” press conference a while back; it was shown as a possible application of the rear touch screen, allowing you to “push” parts of the game-world upwards in order to solve puzzles. But it turns out that that was actually only one of several different mini games present in the full title, all of which involve these little orange monsters (who i assume are the titular Deviants) giving me the impression that Sony are keen to make this the Vita’s answer to the Raving Rabbids. Unfortunately, while the three segments I played made neat little tech demos and all, I can’t really see any of them providing much entertainment after the first few tries.

In the first one was an augmented reality minigame where you had use the Vita’s gyroscope and front camera to hunt down enemies hidden around you and then press the shoulder buttons to shoot at them. If that sounds a little familiar, it’s because its almost identical to the 3DS’s built in Face Raiders app (sans-face scanning trick) something that I doubt was a coincidence.

Next was a slightly more original game where I had to use the Vita’s tilt sensor to steer a flying character through a maze of hazards in order to reach a bomb before it detonates. Trying to see where all those aforementioned hazards where while moving the Vita about in such a fashion was extremely awkward, but I think that’s just a testament to the general stupidity of tilt based games as a concept.

And to fish off I played a quasi whack-a-mole style game where I had to poke the Deviants from either the front or the back touch screen depending on which direction they were facing when they appeared. Sounds simple enough, but unlike the Little Big Planet there were no indicators showing where my fingers where on the rear screen, making it really difficult to hit the targets I was aiming for and not the ones that gave score penalties.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

This is probably many a Sony fan’s most anticipated title for the Vita, and for good reason! It’s perfectly in keeping with Naught Dog’s ludicrously high standards when it comes to visuals; a wonderful showcase for the Vita’s vast graphical capability. Unfortunately it’s the control system that really lets it down, particularly the extensive (but thankfully optional) touch based controls which have you make all sorts of awkward gestures on both screens to do even the most basic of actions.

I really tried my best to embrace this new control scheme rather than be a fuddy duddy about the whole thing, but long before my 4 minutes was up I was already reaching for the traditional button inputs out of frustration. Even then however, the aiming and movement controls felt far too sluggish and imprecise for me to actually have much fun with it. Overall a rather disappointing experience that I really hope can be corrected before the game launches.

Sound Shapes

This was more or less the only “original” title on display at the public PSV booth; created by none other than Queasy Games, the developers of the the somewhat overlooked PSN classic Riff: Everyday Shooter back in 2008. Much like Riff, Sound Shapes is all about music dynamically changing alongside the gameplay, this time in the guise of a side scrolling platformer instead of a twin stick shooter.

Your main objective (as far as I could tell) is to get to the end of the level while collecting as many glowing orbs as possible, and as you obtain those orbs the background music will change according to where that orb was on the screen when you picked it up. Where it differs from Riff is that the music is far more than just a neat little distraction; enemies will often shoot at you in time with the beat of the current music track, requiring to keep a constant feel for the level’s rhythm if you want to survive.

It was certainly a very enjoyable title from what I played, but it was also very abstract compared to the rest of the PSV lineup so I can’t really see it doing well at retail. hopeful they have the sense to make it a DLC title; I’d hate to see Queasy’s second professional game be their last!

Although I didn’t have time to take a look at it myself, I’m told that Sound Shapes will also have an extensive level creation system akin to Little Big Planet, however there’s no word on whether there will also be any sort of bespoke online infrastructure in place to support a full blown community around that feature.

Summary

I don’t think it quite lives up to the dream Sony were selling of a portable PS3, but it certainly meets you half way there with all round a well crafted (mostly) logical successor to the PSP that I believe will easily stand the test of time. While quite irritating at first, the few minor issues I mentioned earlier are the sort of thing that players should be able to adapt to given enough time. Of course If we’re lucky they may even be dealt with by Sony at the production stage before the console even hits the market.

The only real elephant in the room in my book is that rear touch screen, which after my hands-on time with the Vita just seem even more ridiculous than it did before (no mean feat!). I’ve yet to see anything that makes it look like anything other than an ill-conceived gimmick, and my heart sinks whenever I think about how much could have been shaved off the Vita’s production costs if it had been omitted from the design all together.

As for the games, while each of the ones I played did a good job of expressing the individual strengths of the Vita, they all did so in isolation; none coming even close to demonstrating  decent graphics, gameplay, rear/front touch screen usage and controls all in one complete package. But then again, that’s likely something for future generations of Vita games to be concerned with. For now however, If this is the sort of quality we can expect from Vita launch titles then I think the system should be off to a relatively solid start, or at the very least make the 3DS launch line up look more of a joke than it already does.