Our Chad loves to buy a game or two and although he didn't manage to buy a single thing on launch night (see launch night article), within a few days he had quite a library going. Only fair he shares his thoughts for those of us who are already getting impatient with the wait for the next round of games....
An absolutely gorgeous 2D beat-'em-up that plays very much like its console brethren and its Guilty Gear forebears (i.e. more technical than your Street Fighters). It turns out that the Vita's D-pad is excellent (I'd say it's the best since the Neo Geo Pocket's), making Blazblue surprisingly playable.
A new iteration of my favourite golf series ever, this version does what the series has always done well, albeit very prettily.
For whatever reasons, the Vita's version of FIFA is based on 11 rather than 12, which means you don't get the latter's sublime new defensive system. However, despite the criticism levelled at 11, VIta FIFA plays a great game of football and the touch controls are nicely implemented, especially the rear-touch shooting.
This really hasn't changed at all from the millions of other versions available, except maybe for the introduction of a new 'shuffle' block that mixes all the blocks on the screen and the new way the 'disappear colour' block works. Some good songs though (any game featuring The Art Of Noise has to be good), so for a fan like me it's enough.
If you're not bored of Katamari yet (as I'm not) then pick this up, as it could be the best one yet. The King Of All Cosmos is in great form and the 'story' bits are hilarious.
Yeah, if you don't like the Uncharted games, then this is going to be an Ely for you every day of the week. For the rest of us, this is the same game you've played on the PS3 with a new bunch of characters and a welcome visit to the Uncharted universe. The Vita's controls are perfect and the sheer number of touch controls chucked at the game is amazing. Some of them work really well, such as investigating artefacts, brawling and using the rear touch to climb.
I think this is probably the first Virtua Tennis game I have played since World Tour on the PSP in 2005, but I quickly got back into it. The game looks great, although I haven't investigated if there are any touch controls.
Yes it's 30-frames, but it doesn't matter: Wipeout 2048 is smooth, beautiful and great fun to play. I haven't progressed far enough into the campaign to see if anything significant has changed, not that I care too much if it has. Long load times though.
Overall, I'm very happy with the Vita and its line-up. Admittedly, most are just versions of what we've had before, but I guess that's kind of expected at launch and to have such a robust and strong selection of games from day one is seriously impressive.
Moreover, I don't know if Sony is looking to get away from that console feel to its games, as that's kind of the Vita's USP -- to continue playing your games when you leave the house. I suspect Remote Play will get seriously impressive in the future to achieve just that.
The Vita hardware is fantastic, it feels like a quality product and the controls are superb. The D-pad brilliant and I look forward to more beat-'em-ups coming to the machine to take advantage (plus the inevitable Neo Geo emulator -- Mark Of The Wolves will be so good). The analogue sticks are superb also.
That's about it I guess.
