1074: Loving the Vita

It’s fashionable to bash Sony’s latest handheld, the Vita. This is partly justified, because it hasn’t been selling particularly well — especially when compared to Nintendo’s latest powerhouse the 3DS, which seems entirely likely to repeat the success of its predecessor the DS family. The poor sales can be attributed to its relatively high price and the fact that its proprietary memory cards are unnecessarily expensive and can’t be used in anything else, unlike the standard SD cards that the 3DS uses.

But even though I know these criticisms are valid and warranted, it still bugs me a little that this means people are quickly writing off the Vita as a no-hoper, as a stillborn, with some even going so far as to compare it to disastrous past industry efforts such as Nintendo’s dreadful Virtual Boy. That’s just ridiculous.

Fact is, the Vita is a wonderful piece of kit. For your money, you get a gorgeous shiny gadget with a deliciously bright, big, high-resolution LED screen, two not-very-good-but-functional cameras (front and back) and not one but two touch-sensitive surfaces (again, front and back). Games specifically designed for Vita look beautiful on that big shiny screen, and the system runs downloadable PSP titles perfectly — though the lack of UMD drive means that those who have an extensive collection of physical PSP games will either need to keep their old handheld around or re-purchase their games as downloadable versions.

The PSP support is an aspect of the Vita that I can’t help but feel is understated. I know, I know, you could buy a used PSP for a fraction of the price of a new Vita, but how great the games look on that LED screen shouldn’t be underestimated — plus with the latest system firmware, it’s possible to apply bilinear filtering to the games to smooth out edges without making them look overly-blurry, and assign the Vita’s right stick and touchscreen to various functions. You’d be surprised quite how much more comfortable it is using the right stick to move the camera in games that previously used the shoulder buttons for this purpose — the PSP, let’s not forget, didn’t have a right stick and had that peculiar and uncomfortable “nub” instead of an actual stick on the left.

The other aspect of that PSP compatibility is that it makes the old “Vita has no games” argument sort of invalid — because not only do you have a healthy selection of largely good-quality Vita titles to draw on, you also have a huge selection of downloadable PSP titles to work your way through, too. If you’re a JRPG or SRPG fan in particular, the Vita is a fantastic system. The first three Persona games; Trails in the Sky; all the Final Fantasy games up to IX plus spinoffs Final Fantasy Tactics and Dissidia Final Fantasy; Tactics Ogre; the list goes on. (It goes on longer if you’re American, because you also have titles like Growlanser and Gungnir to enjoy, too. Damn you, Atlus, for not having a European arm.)

As for the actual Vita games themselves, there are some real gems there. Everybody’s Golf/Hot Shots Golf is fantastic fun, and packed with content. Gravity Rush is a beautiful, stylish, challenging game that makes good use of the Vita’s accelerometers alongside a more traditional control scheme. The Vita version of Need for Speed Most Wanted is a very good one, ideal for a quick race on the go. Lumines Electronic Symphony is a fantastic puzzle game — though not very toilet-friendly, as sessions tend to go on for quite a while. LittleBigPlanet is an ideal fit for the Vita’s interface and touchscreen. And then there are a bunch of cheaper download-only games that are also fantastic — the strange and abstract world of Sound Shapes; the John Cleese-voiced, Unreal Engine-powered brain training of Smart As…; the freebies like that ecosystem game I’ve forgotten the name of and hilarious pass-and-play party game Frobisher Says.

And then you have PlayStation Minis, which is home to some surprisingly brilliant games — Velocity by FuturLab being one in particular you should really check out. And then there’s the newly-added support for PlayStation Mobile, which offers super-cheap ports of some of the best iOS and Android games out there.

Need I go on? Yes, the cost of entry may be higher than a 3DS or a PSP, but the Vita is packed with a ton of possibilities that people just aren’t talking about enough. “The story” about the Vita always seems to be that it’s “Sony’s big failure” — and while that may end up being true, it’d be nice to see, just once, a feature in the professional press detailing the many things this system does wonderfully well rather than yet another predictable article heralding its apparently-imminent doom.  We’ve all seen this article many times over — so how about ditching the negativity for a bit and exploring the many good things the system does offer so those of us who do have one can unearth some of the platform’s hidden gems — because they’re out there.

If you happened to get a Vita (or PS3, for that matter) for Christmas, do feel free to add “Angry_Jedi” to your PSN friends list!