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After this event they'll be holding more in malls around the country. More information here: http://blog.us.plays...-off-this-week/
My friend Cesar and I went down to the event today, damn good time. I have to say, the device is awesome. We got there ten minutes before it started and there was a line going, only a hundred feet or so, but it continued to grow. Everyone was quite friendly. As they opened the doors and started letting people in, the line slowly moved. After we’d moved about ten feet some of the ladies came out and passed out pizza from the event. One of the guys even came out with a Vita tethered to his belt and let people outside in line try out Uncharted. The closer in we got, the more giddy we became.
Event
The event itself was pretty well managed, and everyone was very friendly. They let people in in ones and twos. When Cesar and I got to the door a lady brought us in, handed us a menu of the games, told us a little about what was going on, offered us the option of registering with the community for a chance at a prize. Neither of us got it, sadly.
The place was stylish. Vita and Playstation themed art, nice chairs and sofas, tables with tethering locks. There was a tables with piles of pizza boxes. Staff were passing out energy drinks. They vaguely designated certain areas and tables to certain games, but it was pretty loose. Staff were milling about.
About half way in they started the raffle. I didn’t see what the first couple people won, but they soon pulled out a tall stack of PS3 games. None of them that I saw were all that big; SOCOM, some racing game, some Greatest Hits. The last raffle was for one of the games and a Vita. They called out a number, 537004, no one answered. After a couple calls, they moved on to the next ticket. Someone laughed and said he got it. The staff guy laughed and said “okay, now we’re going to pull another one out. This lucky person can thank Sony AND Destructoid.” This time a guy calmly and quietly walks up with a smile on his face. It was another guy from a press group. After a chuckle, they pulled another name, and this guy was actually given one. The lucky fellow will be getting his on February 21st, one day before the North American launch.
Little Deviants
The first game we tried was Little Deviants, a fun little puzzle game that makes use of the various aspects of the hardware. There were several levels we had access to; I played three of them, there were maybe five or six open.
The first level puts you in a wrestling style ring. Enemies and stars show up that you need to fling through by pinching your character and shooting them like a slingshot. This one was a little tricky to get to work. You would touch the screen with your thumb and the back touchpad with your finger. The trouble in this is that the back touchpad starts just a little above where the surface on the back starts, so I kept touching too low and it wasn’t quite registering. After a little while I got the hang of it though. The physics of it was kind of fun, and the pinch effect looked nice. This was a sorter game.
The second game was a little like the old game Helicopter; a bit more forgiving though. You navigate through a tunnel trying to get to the end. You move your character around using the sixaxis (gyroscope). Touching the sides of the tunnel didn’t kill you, but it did slow you down. There were sharp turns, moving walls that got in your way, and black holes that would suck you in then spit you back out, slowing you down. The goal was to get to the end quickly and gather stars as you went through. A couple levels in the black holes started moving around. At one point I came up to a wall blocking the route off. I was then prompted to touch the back of the Vita to break the wall. Cesar found out the alternative way to get through them, pick up speed and just ram through. This section showed off the graphics better than any other in the game. The layered level design looked quite nice. You had the foreground (walls) and background, then the background was rendered as two layers, giving it depth.
The last level was the one first shown for the game in video footage. You’re set in a field area with houses, stars, and enemies. You touch the back pad and that spot will elevate, forming a hill and causing your character to roll down. At first this felt a bit clunky, but I quickly got the hang of it and was running my ball of a character around accurately. In this level you dodged enemies and collected stars, but the goal was to grab a key then head to the wormhole that showed up.
I look forward to seeing what more this game has to offer. It will be more appealing to casuals, but is still fun. Some light playing which appeals to a large crowd, similar to Little Big Planet. Definitely worth giving a shot, but I hope it comes out at one of the lower price points, or at least not the top one.
Reality Fighters
While playing Little Deviants, Cesar and I saw some people playing Reality Fighters and decided to give it a try next, since it was just a table away. This one’s an Altered Reality game, meaning it makes use of the cameras. As a fighting game it didn’t seem too impressive, but as a display of the system, it was nice. The big showing point is character creation. You start by taking a picture of your face, which the game then maps to the character. You can then customize gender, body build, clothing, hairstyle, and more. You can later buy more clothing and such with points earned in-game. Another thing you choose during creation (and can purchase more options for later) is fighting style. I chose Kung Fu. Other options I remember seeing were Disco, Capoeira, Karate, and I think there were some Western styles. I don’t remember much from the list, but it was a good size. When selecting a style, it showed you a couple combos and specials, and gave the option for button or touchscreen controls. I chose button, never bothered with touch.
The controls were your basic 2D fighter variety. You had three options of where to fight: AR (camera, you fight on your actual surroundings), autumn field, and one that I forgot. You move the PSV around to move the camera. This was a little clunky and had you sometimes move to odd angles. It was too easy to move the camera completely away from the combat. It was especially bad in the AR mode, the characters felt a little disjointed from the scenery, and I had trouble getting the camera to a good angle. It seemed locked into an almost birdseye view, I could not get it parallel with the characters. Hopefully they improve this. I started by fighting Cesar. Neither of us were too great at fighters, so there was a lot of button mashing. After a couple rounds a staff member came up and told us the couple on the couch wanted to play with us. We each went head to head with one of them and got thoroughly trounced. At one point the guy almost took me out without me even touching him. After a couple fights I got better and started using actual moves. We had a couple even fights.
The feature that had Cesar and I excited with this game was the sight of the Infrastructure mode for multiplayer; the function that was rarely implemented on the PSP looks like it may be getting more attention on the Vita. The ad-hoc mode on this game, sadly, had one huge problem. The menu for matching up with another player was horrible. Not only did we have a hard time figuring out how to challenge each other, but the staff member had trouble. That aside, it looked like a decent game, and I think there may have been some depth to it that we didn’t get into.
Little Big Planet
Ah, Little Big Planet, what’s not to love? The game still has it’s same charm, or at least, as best as I could tell. With all the noise of the place, I couldn’t hear the narration, which may not have been in the demo much. Gameplay was still the same, though I couldn’t figure out how to swing the arms. Slapping about your friends is an important part of it, after all. There was still the character customization, the level style, the minigames. Thankfully, they brought back multiplayer, which the PSP version had lacked. We didn’t see a level creator, but I’m sure it’s in there, and we are excited to try it.
What was new, aside from the levels themselves, was the touchscreen controls. You could touch your sackperson to open up the popup menu, and you could actually manipulate the environment with it. A lot of the objects that your sackperson could grab onto could actually be moved about with the touchscreen. Early on I came to a spot with piano keys in the background. My first impulse was to touch them, and lo and behold, they pushed in and gave a note. Upon sliding across them all I realized there had been a door in front of me, and that the sliding motion had opened it. In another area I was given a block to stand on. At Cesar’s prompting I stood on top of it, then dragged it around the screen, moving my sackman around with it. I then realized that I was supposed to use it to get onto a button to open a door, then move the block underneath it to hold it open. Another puzzle had me grab onto a hanging object, then tilt the Vita to cause that object to slide along a track. The back pad came into play too. It was pretty much the inverse of the front pad, I came to an area where I had to push Tetris shaped blocks outwards so I could climb them. The game handled this nicely by displaying a fingerprint on the screen showing where I was touching on the back pad. I really liked this feature.
The only downside I could find was a level in which you’re put in a bubble and have to drag the bubble around the level. In concept, it’s cool. In actual playing, it was bearable, but something one would rather not do too often.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss
God damn, Uncharted, you beautiful. The graphics on this game were stunning. Animation was smooth, textures were gorgeous, the models were good. We had to actually scrutinize it closely for a few minutes to find anything wrong with the visuals, and all we could say was some edges of the character were a little jagged, and the fire wasn’t quite photo quality.
Gameplay was good, for what little it showed. First level was sniping enemies, you could either move the view around with the right analog, or by moving the Vita around. The latter was cool, and worked fairly well, but if you’re moving the scope around a lot it can get bothersome. I had to turn 180 at some points to reach other enemies. In the end I just used the analog. To zoom in and out you slid your finger up and down the right edge of the screen.
The second level dropped you into a burning building. Here you got to try the climbing mechanics of the game. They were good as they were in previous games, with bonuses from the touchscreen. At one point you have to cut through a canvas. To do this you walked up to the canvas, tapped the machete icon that appeared on the right side of the screen, then were prompted to swipe diagonal across the canvas in both directions, then down it. The character then cut through in those motions. When climbing scenery you had the option of traditional button controls or touchscreen. You could tap the next part you wanted to climb to, or slide your finger along the path of claimable objects you wanted to go along. The level given was pretty linear for climbing, but it was still a cool feature.
Hardware and firmware
The device may look big, but it fits in your hands well. As soon as it was in my hands it felt as natural as holding my PSP2k, never thought about the size again until the pocket test. That being said, it is a bit big for pockets. Granted, these were some of my slimmer jeans (not skinny jeans or skintight, but not loose. The device fit in, barely, but didn’t leave room for anything else, and was bulky. Unless you have pants with good sized pockets, preferably cargo pants, don’t expect to carry it around in them. The memory card is indeed proprietary, and won’t be cheap. It’s a unique card that only works with the Vita, and the cost will be comparable to what the Pro Duo used to cost. If I remember right, the 4gb will be around 40USD and the 32gb will be around 120USD. There are other sizes too, and I might be off on the prices. Price listing for them and other accessories is available online. The cameras are not too impressive. In a day when smartphones regularly have 5-8mp cameras on the back and 1-2mp frontfacing, this thing only has VGA for both. Still, it’s cool that it’s built in.
Now that we’re done with the bad, let’s move on to the good, and boy is it nice. The analog sticks felt so very, very nice. And they’re actual analog sticks, not sliding nubs like the PSP has. Oh, and there’s two of them. Didn’t seem like you could push them in like you can with the PS3 though. The shoulder buttons also felt nice to use. Volume and power buttons are placed along the top edge, keeping them out of the way of fingers and palms. The power button functions much like the sleep/screen on button on an Android phone. The PS button (home button) makes a return, and works pretty well. It’s on the left side, start and select are on the right. The D-pad and buttons have been shrunk a bit, but are still comfortable enough. The screen is smooth to the touch, but a bit of a fingerprint magnet. The touchscreen was pretty accurate. Both front and back are capacitive, but what touchscreen isn’t these days.nintendo Sixaxis was nicely responsive. They had the game card slot covered and locked, so I couldn’t look at that at all.
The interface was pleasant. Plenty of polish, moved smoothly, a bit of customization, and some lessons from other touchscreen devices. We started with two pages, but could add more, bringing it up to ten. Each page had a lot of spaces that you could put an icon on. You could remove and rearrange the pages. They scrolled vertically. Once you loaded up a game or app, hitting the home button would bring you back to a page placed to the right of the column of home screens. Hitting it again brought up a multitasking screen, similar in function to alt+tab, but with the look of Windows Vista/7’s windows+tab function. To exit the game/app you put down your finger on the corner of that window and peeled it down and left. Not a very good description, but you’ll be able to see it in the video, when I upload it.
The systems came loaded with a few apps, camera, gallery, music player, web browser, Near, and a small game pack. Near looks cool, from what they’ve shown in press releases. It will show you your location on a map, and show other Vitas detected nearby, let you send messages, and even show you what they’re playing. You need to be signed into the PSN to use it though, so I wasn’t able to test it out. The camera was basic, but worked well enough, same for the gallery. What really impressed me was native screenshot capabilities. Hitting the PS button and start at the same time takes a screenshot. Looks like they really did listen to the fanbase. Amusingly enough, one of the staff members didn’t know about this. He saw us messing with the camera and gallery and started talking to us about it. I told him how excited we were about screenshots, and he was surprised, asked me to show him how to do it and where they were saved. The music player seemed standard enough. I couldn’t see too much about it, since there weren’t any songs loaded. It did include “recently played”, “frequently played”, and “recently added” categories.
The web browser was alright; though it seemed to have some troubles with quickly adapting to changes when you zoomed in and out, though that might have just been from my connection wavering as we were in a bit of an odd spot for reception. They didn’t actually have any network set up for it, probably to avoid certain features being used early. Being the techy I am, I pulled out my Android phone and turned on my wifi hotspot, allowing me to actually try out the browser. The staff guy had assured us that the system would be flash capable, and was getting Flash 10, but when we went to Youtube, it said Flash wasn’t installed. Could just be a firmware update thing, or that it hadn’t been activated on that system. Oh yeah, the firmware was at version 1.05.
Settings seemed kind of basic, some things I would have liked to see more options on. I wasn’t able to find a battery percentage or battery life remaining anywhere.
A small gallery of pictures I took. More pictures and video when I can get what Cesar took. They were very accepting of people taking pictures and video. One of the staff members got a kick out of us standing it next to our PSP1k and PSP2k. I think we might have made one of the staff a little nervous with all our fiddling with the firmware, settings, and hardware though. =P
It was a very fun event and the device is amazing. I highly recommend you go to it if they hold one near you. I’m definitely getting a Vita, and I’m almost tempted to get it at launch, but I just can’t bring myself to buy a launch system.
This post has been edited by Jask: 05 December 2011 - 06:05 AM
