A shot of some of the great graphics in this game
The Official PSVita of PSoneclassics
The Playstation Vita is something that I’ve been looking forward to since before it was announced. The Vita has a lot riding on it’s shoulders with the giant of portable gaming Nintendo still competing strong, and new comers to the portable gaming scene making It had a soft launch on February 15th and I managed to grab one at my local game vendor. I’ve had it for about a month, I’ve lived with it’s ups and downs and I feel like I can finally give an honest review, and maybe demystify some of the questions adopters might have. Continue on to read the full review!
I can't wait to touch it...
Honestly I’m getting excited for the launch of this thing. The PSVita seems to answer so many requests of Sony’s handheld division. It releases on February 22nd – less than a month away, and I’m trying to figure out what accessories I’ll grab with it.
Current 32gig SDcard price $36 on Amazon.com
Gamestop released the prices for Vita Memory Cards, and the prices aren’t that sexy. I mean they might be small and pretty, but 120 dollars for a 32 gig card? That’s outrageous! On Amazon.com right now you can buy a 32 Gig SD card for $36!
There might be some special reason, like write and read rate, there will be a lot of data going though these little cards at a quick pace, so you don’t want to have future games bogged down by a slow transfer rate (pop in sucks yo). Perhaps they didn’t have enough room for a regular SD card in the PSVita and had to make a smaller version so it would fit inside safely.
Here's what you get, for sale February 15th
Over on the Playstation blog it was announced today that there will be a first edition package for the Playstation Vita, to be released one week before the announced release date of February 22nd of next year. Included is a 4 gig memory card (a mandatory evil for some games we have found, considering there will be no internal memory to speak of at this point), a limited edition case, and a copy of Little Deviants, a Vita title that uses the back touch screen of the device as a main part of gameplay. There are two versions, and at this point it’s only for U.S. and Canadian gamers. The U.S. version will be the 3g version, and retail for $349.99, the Canadian version will go for 299.99 and only contain the wifi version of the console.
Looking pretty
With the new iteration of the PSP coming out this year in Japan and next year in North America and Europe, many people are really excited for the games that have been announced, like Uncharted, Resistance, Persona 4, etc. But there are also games coming out that are multiplatform, mostly ports like the Metal Gear Solid Collection, the Zone of the Enders Collection, and so on. We know the prices of the console itself, $250 for wifi, $300 for GPS, but the question is how much will these games cost?
PSVita-PSP Friendship
This info has been out for a while, Siliconera found out that the PSVita can play ad-hoc mode with PSPs. They received this info while speaking to Square Enix about their Lord of Apocalypse title, the sequel to their Monster Hunter clone for the PSP. This means that if you want to play a psp mutliplayer game with your friends, but you only have a Vita and they have PSPs, you’ll be set to do so. This is obviously something that should have been included and it’s great to see that Sony is doing their best not to separate the player base over their portable consoles. Considering as well that the price of original PSP games is just going to plummet in the next few months leading up to the PSVita release it could make that digital library all the more intriguing for new Vita owners.
Click for the larger version
Just before E3, Konami released an E3 apology video because they weren’t going to attend the Electronic Expo. In this video Hideo Kojima taught us all about “Transfarring” and how the PS3 Version of Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker would share save data with the PSP version. He also showed us the Transfarring logo that you can see in the picture to the right. He stated in the video as well that he thought the Transfarring would start with the PSP version, then he could work on getting PS2 games working with it, and then eventually PS3 games. These are lofty promises but Kojima and his team have made some pretty spectacular technical feats before in the past.
The Playstation Vita is the big reason why I’m excited about TGS this year, and one of the biggest games coming to that platform is Uncharted’s Golden Abyss, a bit of a side story of the main series on the PS3, but it still contains that third person Tomb Raider esque gameplay with great voice acting. In this Video the Playstation Blog shows us a full level from the game (a first for the public). The gameplay looks just as good as it does on the PS3, and the extra touch controls seem to add a little bit to make this title unique in the series.
Coming soon (hopefully!)
Just today the makers of Supremacy MMA a video game I’ve never heard of and don’t care about said they were bringing their shiny new game out for the 360 and PS3 on September 20th, and the PSVita this holiday season. So, for all of you excited for this game, that’s great! But what everyone is really chomping at the bit for right now is a PSVita release date.