Re: PS Vita

I'm not too ready to write the Vita's obituary just yet. I know it hasn't had an exactly stellar year but if you think of the PS3 at it's first birthday things were looking pretty grim. The AAA titles had almost completely failed to materialise and the flagship shooter (Resistance) was a miserable affair. At one stage it was looking like we'd never have anything to compare to Halo or Gears. I think Motorstorm was the only year one title that properly impressed me.

The Vita has followed a similar story. There's been a little more hype around some of the AAA titles but it's really only the shooters that have failed completely. People seem happy with the versions of Mortal Kombat, LBP Karting and Uncharted. assassin's Creed Liberation wasn't a breakthrough but it wasn't a disaster either. For me the biggest issue is (once again) the slow trickle of games we're getting. The launch was nice and solid but then we went almost half a year before anything worth buying turned up. And with such paucity of games available, when one does particularly badly (Blops:De), it really stands out.

I personaly think the Vita is never going to grab success by attempting to mirror the PS3. Dumbed down versions of full PS3 games are always going to be second best and the reviews will always focus on the bits that are missing but available in other versions of the game. If we hadn't come across Uncharted before Golden Abyss then it would have blown our minds. It's an amazing game on a handheld. But compared to it's bigger brothers it just disapoints. Vita needs it's own identity and with features like double touch pads, two cameras and motion control, the devs really need to get a bit creative.