Vita Reviews

Epic, action-packed, exhilarating, cinematic, intense, exciting and other such grandiose words are often used to describe video games these days. Whatever happened to fun? It's the one word which more than likely got people into video games in the first place. Gaming is - at its core - supposed to be fun.

The Vita, when it was announced, was a machine for FPS games on the go. Although every game benefited from that second stick for camera control, being able to play a shooter without severely hampering the experience was a major plus. The first shooter to be released for the console, Resistance: Burning Skies, came out months after the Vita's launch. That was only mistake number one.

The original Coconut Dodge, released as a PlayStation Mini in 2010, is one of only a small handful of games that I've rewarded with a 10/10. At a time before FuturLab became the Sony darlings they so deservedly are today, they were just another developer vying for attention on the Minis platform and in Coconut Dodge they made a game that was not only so much better than almost anything else on the platform, but that was so much better than it needed to be. They'd gone above and beyond, taking a simple idea and creating perfection.

Velocity was constantly named one of the best PlayStation Minis and ended up ranked as one of the best games available on PSP. It amazed critics and placed FuturLab firmly as a company to watch, a was the game that seems to have cemented their relationship with Sony and gotten them work on both PlayStation Mobile and now PlayStation Vita. A little more than twelve months after the release of the original, FuturLab have remade Velocity as a full blown Vita game, complete with a platinum trophy, upgraded visuals and leaderboards. Is that enough to make the ...

Penguin Party is a new PlayStation Mobile title available on PlayStation certified devices and Vita, and although a lot of core gamers will dismiss it based on its design and content, the child-friendly visuals and anthropomorphic penguins hide what's actually quite a challenging puzzle game, and a title in the same vein as old favourites like Chu Chu Rocket.

Legendary designer Keiji Inafune has dabbled in macabre video games before. He's most well known for co-creating Mega Man, but he also has Resident Evil, Onimusha and Dead Rising production credits under his belt. Since leaving Capcom, he's decided to dive back into darkly atmospheric game design with his latest project, Soul Sacrifice.

There seems to be quite a comment dislike of touch screen gaming. Whether it's justified or not, or how experienced those that repeat the tired old complaints are with the input method, I'm not sure, but even the most die hard detractors must realize their are exceptions to the anti-touch rule. Draw Slasher might be one of those exceptions, for while it's not perfect, it manages to entertain and challenge without ever feeling uncomfortable or annoying.

There aren't a great many titles on the Vita that feel specific to that platform. Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a decent game that manages to shrink the Uncharted world into a portable package, but those with access to the PS3 trilogy would likely prefer to play those. Gravity Rush is not only exclusive to Vita, but it's entire gameplay structure feels custom made for the device, from the beautiful graphics to the unique gameplay.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss was the first game shown on the Vita, and with good reason. The graphics are excellent - not a million miles away from what we've come to expect from the PS3 entries in the series - and the gameplay just seems to scream "look, the Vita can do it as well." All of the attitude, humour and gameplay favourites return from the home console iterations of the franchise, so all in all, Golden Abyss should be at least as good as the original Drake's Fortune.