My Playstation Vita Experience

I was invited by X-Cite and Sony to attend a preview of the Playstation Vita in Dubai. The even would give us an intro on their new portable gaming console as well as preview some games and more importantly allows to play with the device.

Introduction
The GM of Sony MENA, Robert Fisser stated that the Vita will have the strongest line up of launch games for a Sony console which is possible since the first party and third party games lined up for the Vita’s February 22nd launch is fairly strong.

When you purchase a Vita among the included items will be 56 WAAR (Wide-Area Augmented Reality) cards that you’ll be able to use with AR (augmented reality) games which you’ll be able to download for free from the PSN store. What differentiates these AR games from others is that these games will be a lot more advanced, sophisticated and use a big area for game play. There are also two social services that Sony are pushing in Vita called Party and Near. Party lets you voice chat with friends on the Vita at anytime, even if you’re playing different games while near lets you see all your Playstation Network friends status’s and what they’re playing (or have played). You will also be able to see if their are other Vita gamers in your proximity and invite them to play a game. Finally you can also unlock gifts, or give gifts to your PSN friends.

Another big feature Sony talked about was sharing save files between your Vita and the PS3 and cross-platform play which basically mean you’ll be able to play head-to-head between the Vita and PS3. They showed us a demonstration when one of their Wipeout 2048 game designer who was using a Vita raced against a producer who used a PS3.

Reality Fighters
Sony previewed a game called Reality Fighters, which is an AR fighting game that uses real world environments as the levels in the game. Mitsuo Hirakawa, who is a producer on the game, stated that the game doesn’t use a card marker (like the 3DS AR cards or the WAAR cards), which has never been done before; he also stated that characters scale up depending on where you are. So if you’re standing on a roof of a building and point your Vita downwards to the streets, your characters scale up to you, so you can have massive characters, Godzilla size fighting each other. The game will also come pre-loaded with 360-degree panoramas of popular areas around the world, like the Pyramids which you can use as your game environment. The game also features over 400 character customizations including costumes, over 50 different kinds of weapons and various fighting styles. You can also take a picture of your face so your character looks just like you.

My Experience
I was able to spend some time with the Vita and it was pretty impressive. I played Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Wipeout 2048, Everybody’s Golf, Little Deviants, Super Stardust.

First thing I noticed just as I held the Vita in my hand is that it’s not very portable so don’t expect to be able to put this in your pocket. Besides the fact that it’s pretty big for a portable device, the analogue controllers stick out. Both those factors make it impossible to store this device in your jeans pocket. The second thing I noticed is how surprisingly light it was. It’s quite deceiving because when you look at it you expect it to be slightly heavy while it felt nearly as light as an iPhone.

You navigate through the Vita menus by touch-screen swiping left-right, up or down and pressing on the icon you want. It’s quick and responsive. I tried Uncharted: Golden Abyss first since I had just beaten Uncharted 3 on the PS3 and was curious to see how different the game would look visually and I wasn’t disappointed. There were two chapters to choose from, the first showed off how crisp and detailed the visuals were with pretty impressive lighting effects. The game is visually as close to HD as you can get on a portable device. The character animations are pretty great as you could expect from Uncharted. The level featured climbing and jumping over things while showing off the gyroscope since I had to balance myself on a wooden beam.

The second chapter I played was called “That Makes Three of Us” and it featured more of the shooting aspect of the game. Without spoiling it too much, I had to save my companion from a bunch of enemies by sniping them before they shot my friend. Sniping in the game is pretty fun especially with the use of the touch screen. You zoom in and aim by holding the L1 button and you can adjust how close you want to zoom in using the sniper-scope via the touch screen. Sliding your finger up brings you closer while sliding your finger down zooms you out. This is basically the perfect portable version of the Uncharted franchise.

I wanted to test out the second touch-pad on the back of the device because I was curious to see how comfortable it would be to use so I started playing Little Deviants. In Little Deviants you have to help your character roll around by deforming the environment (using the back touch-pad) to collect stars and other items. It took a few minutes to get used to the back touch pad but when I got the hang of it this game was a lot of fun. The back touch pad was very responsive and it was very weird to visually see how the land responded to your touches. It’s difficult to describe and impossible to take a video of since I needed to hold the Vita with both my hands. The closest thing I can think of to describing it is that it’s like molding clay in your hands.

I really wanted to play Wipeout 2048 because it was a favorite franchise of mine back when I owned the Playstation 1 and I when I did get my hands on it I wasn’t disappointed. The races are fast, intense and enjoyable, visually the game is really nice to look at and the developers obviously focused on the little details because everything in the game looked good from the small details on vehicles to the environments and the explosions. I was only able to choose from a few tracks but the full game will have 10 new tracks and 20 vehicles to choose.

Super Stardust is a game that mixes gamplay elements from Geometry Wars and Asteroids, it was a nice little game to try out. Another game I tried was Everybody’s Golf which was nice looking but a sport I’m not into even though it was fun.

At the end of my game time with the Vita I was pretty impressed, I liked what I saw and what I played. Surprisingly the screen was pretty much free of my finger prints and there were no smudges. The AR features are also great and more advanced than what Nintendo has shown us with the 3DS. Graphically it’s a pretty powerful little system, more powerful than the Wii, but obviously not as good as a PS3 or 360 (but pretty close). The quality of the OLED screen was also great, there was glare from the lighting in the event hall and even with all the glare, I could easily see what I was doing on the screen. The Vita felt great in my hands as well but I would imagine someone with smaller hands might have trouble playing comfortably. The launch line-up suits the North American and European audiences and if Sony and third-party developers continue to support the Vita, I can see it being very successful, a lot more than the PSP.

First-party launch games:

Third-party launch titles:

Pre-Ordering in Kuwait & Pricing
You’ll be able to pre-order the Vita from the X-Cite website probably by this week (if not, definitely next week) and after the first week of online pre-orders you will be able to pre-order from their stores. When you pre-order the Vita online or at the store, it will come bundled with a memory card and a game. There is an incentive for pre-ordering it online from X-Cite, most probably a discount and the incentive for pre-ordering it in-store will be Vita merchandise, a bag or something of the sort.

The pricing of the Vita is as follows:

Wifi price: 1,149 AED (87 KD)
Wifi & 3G: 1,499 AED (114 KD)
SW Titles: 129 AED – 199 AED (10 KD – 15 KD)
Memory Card: 99 AED – 349 AED (7 KD – 26 KD)

The prices were listed in Emirati Dirham but I was told the prices in Kuwait will be very similar, the release date will be February 22.

Posted by Patrick