Pros
- Near PS3-quality 3D graphics
- Great mix of traditional, touchscreen and motion controls
- Dazzling sub-HD OLED screen
- Strong built-in apps and exciting games line-up
Cons
- Expensive for a handheld
- Unimpressive battery life
- Minor issues with Remote Play and media support
BUY SIMILAR PRODUCTS TO THE SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT NULL
Key Features
- Review Price: £209.00
PS Vita – Introduction
The Sony PS Vita price has dropped to around the £200 mark on its UK
launch as the company banks on a dedicated mobile gaming console. “It only does everything” used to be the slogan for Sony’s Playstation 3, but it’s a phrase that could apply just as well to PS Vita. It’s a Swiss army knife of mobile gaming hardware, with so much power and so many built-in gadgets and gizmos that it’s hard to imagine any type of game it couldn’t cover and it any type of gamer it couldn’t satisfy. Whereas the PSP simply aspired to being a PS 2 in your pocket, PlayStation Vita wants more. It has the screen, the dual analogue sticks and the graphics power that hardcore gamers demand, but also the touch functionality, cameras, tilt controls and quirky download games to reach those looking for something less traditional. It’s all games machines to all men.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/PLayStation-Vita-4-1.jpg
PS Vita – Design
The physical design is an evolution of Sony’s PSP Slim and Lite, the front dominated by the whopping 5-inch screen, with the dual analog pads to either side, the D-Pad on the left and the face buttons on the right, in a layout that will immediately seem natural to anyone famiiar wth a dual-shock 3 controller. Of course, PS Vita has only two shoulder buttons, modelled in clear pespex to maintain the unit’s elegant lines, but – as we’ll see later – this is less of an issue than it might seem. The Vita feels light and comfortable in your hands, and while the position of the sticks takes a little getting used to, it’s a very easy handheld to use for long periods – much more so than the rather cramp-inducing 3DS. At 280g, it’s comfortably light as well.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/PSVITA-Image-02-3G-2.jpg
PS Vita – controls
The physical controls work perfectly. We had some minor doubts about the accuracy of the right analogue stick while trying to aim in Uncharted: The Golden Abyss, but in other titles it doesn’t seem to be a problem, and the feel is just right; arguably one step closer than the 3DS analogue stick in giving you what you’re used to from a full-scale controller. For FPS games it’s going to make a massive difference. And while you might miss the L2 and R2 buttons in some games, it’s unlikely to be a huge problem, for the simple reason that PlayStation Vita has what you might almost call a surfeit of other controls.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/playstation-vita-3-1.jpg
The most obvious is the capacitive front touchcreen, which is fast, responsive and multitouch aware. Uncharted and many of the PS Vita launch titles use it regularly, both to provide handy onscreen buttons or menu controls, and as a means for swiping or pinching gesture controls. Then there’s the rear touch panel. Prodding it without seeing what you’re doing feels a little unintuitive at first, but once you’ve used it to push ridges in the landscape to roll a pint-sized monster around in Little Deviants, the potential starts to become clear.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/19531LD-RollingShores01-2.jpg
Then there’s the Playstation Vita’s tilt controls. You can use them in the expected way, tilting to steer in Wipeout 2043 for example, but they become useful in other games as well, allowing changes of view in the Pool game Hustle Kings, or providing an excellent means of fine-tuning sniper shots in Uncharted. Most of all, they come into their own in the Augmented Reality shenanigans of Little Deviants or Reality Fighters, with the former having you rotate physically on the spot to blast alien invaders from the real world skies that surround you, while the latter uses them to control the view of the bout happening on your floor or coffee table.
PS Vita – Augmented reality
And it’s augmented
reality that makes the most sense of PS Vita’s dual cameras.
With a 0.3 megapixel resolution they were never going to be much cop fo
photography, and low light performance is predictably poor. Yet Sony’s
initial efforts at making AR gaming work are great, bite-sized chunks of
silly fun. Reality Fighters, for example, allows you to digitise your
face, map it onto a CGI body, and then whack ten tons of stuffing out of
Vita-owning friends or CPU-controlled opponents in the real-world
environment of your choice. The fighters sit quite convincingly within
the landscape in front of the lens, and while it’s a novelty act, it’s
certainly a good one. The same goes for Little Deviants, where the
action in the shoot-em-up segments takes place in the space around you.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/19523LD-BotzInvasion01-2.jpg
PS Vita – Screen, speakers and connectivity
There
are some minor disappointments with PS Vita. While games will
be available at retail on SD-card sized cartridges that slip into a slot
at the top, download titles and any music or video files you transfer
will end up on a smaller micro-SD sized card that slips into a covered
slot at the bottom. However, instead of a regular micro-SD card Sony has
opted for a proprietary alternative, available at roughly double the
price. This might be good for the anti-piracy and profits, but it does’t
do the buyer any favours. The connector and cable used to charge the
device and connect to a PC or PS3 via USB are also non-standard.
Finally, and needless to say, the sound from the build-in speakers is a
little thin and weedy (though still better than most smartphones we
could mention).
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/IMG-5572-2.jpg
All
is forgiven, however, when you see that PlayStation Vita screen. An
OLED number with a 960 x 544 resolution, it’s a beauty; crisp, clear,
with vibrant colours, deep blacks and brightness to spare. If it doesn’t
have a true 720p resolution or quite the intense clarity of the iPhone
4’s Retina display, it still goes way beyond the sub-SD resolutions
we’re used to in gaming handhelds, and – at the 5in screen size – it’s
hard to tell that it’s not HD. It’s an exceptional screen for watching
movies or playing games on, and about as good as you’re going to get
without moving up the scale to a tablet device.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/Vita-new1-2.jpg
While
you might have expected PlayStation Vita to embrace the XMB interface
of the PSP and PS3 (not to mention numerous entertainment devices), Sony
has gone for a new user interface. It’s based on the LiveArea a series
of vertically scrolling screens with large smarties-shaped icons, which
summon odd post-it note launchers that you literally peel off the
screen to shut down. When more than one launcher is open, they stack in a
3D view across the screen for easy access. It’s all a little odd, but
it fits PlayStation Vita’s touch-friendly approach perfectly, and makes
it easy to switch from app to app when you need to.
PS Vita – Apps
Beyond
games PlayStation Vita has a range of apps pre-installed, mostly
focused around media playback or communications, with more to be
available at launch. WelcomePark is a nice starting point, giving you a
selection of tutorials and augmented reality activities that get you
used to the main features of the device. Meanwhile, the Friends, Group
Messaging and Party apps give you means of checking up, organising games
with and chatting with PSN friends. Finally, the Web Browser, while
lacking flash funtionality and not feeling particularly brisk, is a big
improvement on the PSP’s or PS3’s efforts for the simple reason that it
has a touchscreen keyboard for text entry and touchscreen controls.
PS Vita – Near
The most intruging PlayStation app
is Near. This searches for other PlayStation Vitas in your viscnity to
tell you what other players are playing, what they think if they’ve
rated the game, and what trophies they’ve unlocked in game. There are
also mechanisms to win gifts in game and share these with contacts using
Near, or even leave gifts in a specific location if – unlike us – you
stump for the 3G Vita with its built-in GPS.. At the moment Near is an
interesting take on social gaming, though a slightly useless one if – as
is the case in this instance – there is no-one with a Sony Playstation Vita
within a ten mile radius. Hopefully, this should soon change.
PS Vita – Media playback
For
media playback, Vita will happily display photos in the most common
file formats (JPEG, TIFF and PNG), plus music files in MP3 and AAC.
Playback quality is excellent. Movie file support is a little more
limited, with just MPEG-4 supported. This is fine if you simply plan to
buy or rent movies from the PSN store, but if you want to copy across
files from a PC then you’ll need to spend a little time converting.
What’s more, PlayStation Vita won’t automatically downscale HD files you
purchase from PSN for the smaller screen – it simply refuses to copy
them across.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/Playstation-Vita-1.jpg
To
make things more annoying, while the PSP’s old MediaGo Windows
application would do a limited amount of rescaling and conversion for
you, PlayStation Vita’s new Content Manager Assistant does little more
than set up a USB connection and tell Vita in which folders to look. All
the actual copying is managed from the Vita end of things.
PS Vita – PS3 connection
The
same holds true when you use a PS3 as a hub, and we had a couple of
issues getting PlayStation Vita to connect to our console, with the two
refusing to hook up. Unplugging the USB cable and plugging it back in
again seemed to fix things, however, and we expect this is the sort of
teething issue that a firmware update will soon sort out.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/PSVita-USB-Cable-tif-jpgcopy-2.jpg
PS Vita – Remote Play
The
final killer app in PlayStation Vita’s armoury should be Remote Play – a
development of the feature in the old PSP. It’s a great idea, enabling
you to play selected media and games on a Playstation 3 and stream them
to Sony’s little box of tricks, so that you can enjoy them with the living room TV switched to
another channel or turned off. Unfortunately, when we say ‘selected’ we
mean it. In testing we couldn’t get Blu-ray discs or PSN video files to
stream, and the only PSN video service we could get to work was Vidzone.
Games support meanwhile is limited to a handful of titles, with
PixelJunk Shooter being the only one in our games collection to pull
through. This is disappointing, but it’s the kind of thing that might
also change with future firmware updates and future game releases.
PS Vita – Battery life
The
last issue that might cause a few frowns is PlayStation Vita battery
life. It was a problem for Sony with the PSP and it has even been a
problem for Nintendo with the 3DS, but it seems that there’s no magic
way to create a big-screen gaming device with lots of processing power
at its disposal and not result in something that consumes juice at an
unseemly rate. Actual battery life will depend on the activity you’re
engaged in or the game you’re playing, but you won’t get much more than
three and a half hours of Uncharted before the supply runs dry, though
on the plus side the system holds up surprisingly well when put to
sleep.
PS Vita – Games
PlayStation
Vita does not disappoint when it comes to games. PSP always promised to
deliver full-scale console gaming on a handheld, but only with a few
titles did it ever deliver. The 3DS promises much the same thing, and
with Resident Evil: Revelations, Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land it
has delivered, but with one important caveat: the console in question
is a Gamecube. With PlayStation Vita, Sony has got impressively close to
producing a handheld with the graphics performance of a PS3.
Playing the most impressive of the launch titles – Uncharted: The Golden Abyss –
it’s clear that it hasn’t got the same polygon pushing power or access
to the most advanced texturing, particle or lighting effects, but it
still looks, sounds and plays like the first Uncharted on Sony’s current
generation machine. The jungle scenery is lush, the water effects
convincing and the shadow and lighting effects put it squarely in the
current generation. Nor is there a real sense that you’re running
through heavily cut-back environments or fighting against spectacularly
dumb opponents. There’s very little to cue you in to the fact that
you’re playing a handheld game.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/Uncharted-2.jpg
And
this is a theme that echoes across titles in the launch line-up. There
are some nice PSN titles that put more emphasis on the touchscreen,
cameras and tilt controls, but Vita is at its best when it’s showcasing
console-quality games like Uncharted: The Golden Abyss, the dazzling
Wipeout 2048 or the gorgeous physics-defying action game, Gravity Rush.
With its large screen, dual sticks and potent 3D graphics hardware, it
does more than any handheld before to close the gap between mobile and
console gaming. We’ll talk about this in more detail when we come to
review the individual games.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/wipeout-2.jpg
And
it’s this that should sell PlayStation Vita to gamers. While it’s
competing for the same cash as smartphones and tablets, the simple fact
is that nothing – not even the iPhone 4S or iPad 2 – delivers games that
look this good and play this well, or does so with proper,
console-style controls. Unless Apple hits us with clip-on gaming
accessories for iPad 3, Vita should have the upper hand here for some
time. Nintendo’s 3DS has the edge on price and a growing library of
excellent games, but after Vita it feels comparatively underpowered.
Even having played through Resident Evil: Revelations with the Circle
Pad Pro accessory, we’re left impressed with what Capcom has managed on
the hardware, but wondering how much better a Vita version would have
looked.
image: http://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/54/2012/02/Vita-new1-2.jpg
PlayStation
Vita isn’t cheap and we still need to see more games that take
advantage of its power; the upcoming Resistance: Burning Skies and
Bioshock and Call of Duty projects will certainly help the cause.
Nonetheless, this is currently the most exciting mobile gaming platform
on the planet, and one that deserves to reach a bigger audience than the
old PSP ever did.
PS Vita – Verdict
Impressively
powerful and astonishingly feature-packed, PS Vita is – at
least for now – the ultimate handheld games machine. With its
touch-capabilities, augmented-reality cameras and motion-sensing
capabilties it’s a versatile little beast that should inspire some
innovative developers, but it’s at its best playing big, immersive
blockbuster games, where it brings the handheld and big-screen console
gaming experiences closer than they’ve ever been before.
