PS Vita Commentary

I've now had my Vita for more than a month, so I thought it would be a good time to make a post about what I think about it and how I've been using it. First, I got the vita primarily because I have a great amount of interest in current mobile computing platforms and want to support further development and research in that area. I also believe that dedicated gaming machines are important for the video game industry, and I feel like I should support that area too. Beyond my desire for these areas to expand and continue improving, I genuinely believe the Vita to be an interesting device for someone like me to play with.

The Playstation Vita has a nice large display and a good array of control options. In particular, I really appreciate the direction pad, the analog sticks, the face buttons and the shoulder buttons. All of these inputs allow for traditional control styles. The front and rear cameras have very quick response times, making them ideal for interactive gaming applications, but sub-par for more traditional image capture purposes. The other methods for input include accelerometers, and front and rear touch pads. Some casual applications can benefit from the touch screen, however I've yet to find a game that uses accelerometer data as anything useful that goes beyond just a silly gimmick. In fact, I almost always find accelerometer based gameplay to be obnoxious since I like to play for a few minutes in bed while relaxing, and I'm not in a mood to move around much at that point. The rear touch is occasionally interesting, but entirely too easy to hit accidentally. This becomes even more irritating when the score in a game is affected by all of the accidental rear touches going on.

The games I have been playing since I got it include "Plants vs. Zombies", "Escape Plan", "Motorstorm RC" and "Super Stardust Delta." Each of these games is convenient for a mobile platform because they provide short play session options with plenty of ways to continue playing. Plants vs. Zombies is essentially the exact same game that appears elsewhere with intuitive front-touchscreen controls. If you don't have another version of PvZ already, this one is worth picking up. Escape Plan consists of a set of levels with mostly front and rear touch controls to move your characters and adjust the environment to allow them to travel from beginning to end. Motorstorm RC is a simple RC car game with quite a few maps and intuitive RC car style controls. It is a great deal at the free price I paid for it, but I would actually even recommend it to anyone who likes RC cars. Finally, Super Stardust Delta is an interesting asteroid shooting game with a few annoyances in the controls (tilt to change the view and accidental rear touch or shake bombs). This is just a brief overview of each of these games, but hopefully I can say something more in-depth about them in the future.

Overall, I think the Vita is an interesting system with a lot of promise. I believe the hardware itself is a steal even at $300 for the 3g version, but it remains to be seen if consumers will realize that. Additionally, I think Sony is going to have a lot of problems trying to move mobile device software at prices as high as $50 for a single game when nearly all other mobile devices have an endless supply of free or $0.99 games that, while they are lower quality overall, make people think twice about buying a downloadable game for even $10. PS Vita games can charge some premium, but they really should not be allowing games that sell for $3 on iOS and Android sell for $40 on the Vita. Things like that are really an embarrassment.