The Playstation Vita Catch-All

Schrensky wrote:

Unfortunately, I think it's a Sony thing. I'll find out soon enough, just ordered a PS3 when it was on sale.

Oh, you'll find out alright! It's worth getting a Plus sub just so that it updates at 4am or whatever.

My vita bundle has arrived! Sending out PSN invites to those I can find.

For new Vita folks, here's the GWJ Vita users Google Doc:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...

Can this be added to OP?

Cobble wrote:

The only reason I would go physical media is to not have to worry about memory space. Other than that not letting go of physical media to me is akin to the people who wouldn't give up cassettes or VHS tapes. Its a changing of the guard, eventually wont be a choice. (Though it will take way longer than the others)

With the PS3, the one I bought came with a 320GB drive. For that and the PC, I'm totally onboard with going all-digital anymore; less clutter to deal with.

However, this is where I'm going to Female Doggo about Sony only packing in 4GB memory cards in the bundles I've seen for the Vita. Seriously, if you expect people to eagerly adopt digital-only, make it NOT a pain in the ass or an extra expense to be ready to go with it. For now, I'll just get the games as gamecards.

Did they not test that 'hold camera up to a bright light' functionality in AC: Liberation? I mean, I'd hate it even if it worked.

Just got my Vita today and added myself to the Google doc.
Only got what came with it so far, LBP and the All-Stars brawler thing. Not sure if PS+ is worth it for me, I don't have a PS3 and there are fewer Vita games available in EU, we only get Chronovolt, Mutant Blobs, Gravity Rush and Uncharted. Interested in the last two so I'll probably give it a try for a month or so.
How often do they change what's available for free?

wahwah wrote:

Just got my Vita today and added myself to the Google doc.
Only got what came with it so far, LBP and the All-Stars brawler thing. Not sure if PS+ is worth it for me, I don't have a PS3 and there are fewer Vita games available in EU, we only get Chronovolt, Mutant Blobs, Gravity Rush and Uncharted. Interested in the last two so I'll probably give it a try for a month or so.
How often do they change what's available for free?

Hard to say for the Vita, since it's only been on PS+ for a week; for PS3, it's been a monthly update.

Oh gosh now AC:Lib straight up crashed on me during a chain kill. "Error occurred during this operaton." Fuggityfuggityfuggity.

If you're wondering why I keep going despite the complaints it's because I very much like most of it!

Slumberland wrote:

Did they not test that 'hold camera up to a bright light' functionality in AC: Liberation? I mean, I'd hate it even if it worked.

Yeah. I hope the Vita survives the "use all the features" phase. The DS eventually settled into a really cool phase where you could use what you needed to use and ignore them otherwise.

Dipped my toes into Wipeout, PS Allstars, and some of the system stuff before blowing through half of Mutant Blobs last night. Simple as it is, I still am having fun with it, mostly thanks to its understated bits of humor. Every new billboard I came across elicited at least a grin, if not a chuckle.

Also, I had a bunch of PSP games sitting on my PS3 (left over from past shopping sprees for my PSP Go) but the only one that showed up in the transfer utility was the one that I downloaded onto my PS3 earlier that night (FFTactics). I know that at least some of them are in the list of "officially supported" PSP games for vita (P3P, Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman, etc). Any insights?

Slumberland wrote:

Did they not test that 'hold camera up to a bright light' functionality in AC: Liberation? I mean, I'd hate it even if it worked.

No, they did not test this "feature", not at all. The trick I've learned is to also rotate the Vita, so hold it up to any moderate light and then start rotating, you'll get it to trigger the next action pretty quick.

Uncharted didn't suffer much from these shoe-horned in features, I thought Bend did a pretty good job of integrating them and not over-using them. AC Lib, on the other hand, does a terrible job of it. I dread finding a letter I have to open, because that's just taking me away from what I really want to be doing, which is free running and poison-darting soldiers.

Man, it certainly is fun to berserk-poison-dart someone in a group and watch the mayhem from the safety of a tree branch.

I've enjoyed my first day with the system. Most of my playtime has been in Uncharted because it has been my favorite series this generation. I know that some people were disappointed in this game, but I am enjoying it so far. While not quite up to the best on the consoles, the visuals look darn good for a handheld, and in spots looks almost as good as the first Uncharted.

The shooting suffers a bit because the sticks don't feel just right, but the melee has improved considerably over the last game in the series. Melee in Uncharted 1 and 2 was fine, but I rarely used it unless I had to or unless it was a stealth kill. In 3, they tried to make melee a bigger part of the game by adopting stuff from Batman, and the game suffered because of it. There were way to many situations where the "improved" melee system would cause buttons to contextually change during a gunfight. I don't want to grapple, I want to roll away from that grenade, etc. This version fixes that problem by making melee use touch controls. I thought I would hate it, but it actually works very well.

I also like the added touch tracing-pathing for some of the more mundane platforming sequences. The only place I am not liking the shoehorned motion/touch stuff is in the return of Sixaxis type balance beams and the rubbings/artifact cleaning minigame.

Has anyone heard anything good or bad yet about the related card game that I keep unlocking cards/card upgrades for?

In addition to Uncharted, I've also tried out the first race in the Motorstorm RC game and the tutorial of Playstation All-stars. Motorstorm RC seems really meaty for something that was a sponsored free game. All-Stars has some potential, but I'm glad I didn't pay retail for it.

Jasonofindy:

I think most people on here actually liked the game. I gushed about it awhile back. I was extremely impressed with the Chase character. As to the shooting suffering, it's actually the best and most accurate for an Uncharted game in my opinion. You have to get used to using the gyroscope to fine tune your aim. I actually didn't realize how it worked until about a third of the way into the game. Once you get used to it, you can become a deadly sniper. It also feels more like aiming a gun. Give it a chance! I liked the touch melee as well and disliked the tree balancing. I actually kind of liked the artifact rubbing mini-game for whatever reason.

After you finish the game, there is an excellent post-mortem article up on Gamasutra. It's very interesting, particularly the changes they ended up making to the Chase character.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

You have to get used to using the gyroscope to fine tune your aim.

I honestly didn't realize that the gyroscope did anything for aiming except with the sniper rifle and have just been using the right stick like on the consoles for the other guns. I'll have to check it out, as that should help considerably with the "feel" of the current stick setup.

Jasonofindy wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

You have to get used to using the gyroscope to fine tune your aim.

I honestly didn't realize that the gyroscope did anything for aiming except with the sniper rifle and have just been using the right stick like on the consoles for the other guns. I'll have to check it out, as that should help considerably with the "feel" of the current stick setup.

It's actually possible to turn it off, but I think it's on by default. You might check the settings to be sure. It really helps with the magnum. When you're pulling off headshots left and right, it's very satisfying.

wahwah wrote:

Not sure if PS+ is worth it for me, I don't have a PS3 and there are fewer Vita games available in EU, we only get Chronovolt, Mutant Blobs, Gravity Rush and Uncharted. Interested in the last two so I'll probably give it a try for a month or so.
How often do they change what's available for free?

They just announced the EU December content today, the Vita details are below:

12th December: Big Sky Infinity (PS Vita and PS3)
19th December: Mortal Kombat (PS Vita)
21st December: Knytt Underground (PS Vita and PS3)
Additional offers and savings TBC

Titles removed from IGC:
19th December: Chronovolt (PS Vita)
21st December: Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack (PS Vita)

Personally I think plus is well worth it, even if I did not have a PS3 the subscription is easily worth the price of one game.

Wow, you folks get Mortal Kombat for free next month? That's pretty sweet.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Wow, you folks get Mortal Kombat for free next month? That's pretty sweet.

It's also very telling of just how bad the Vita is doing. Hopefully this can encourage sales.

SuperDave wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

Wow, you folks get Mortal Kombat for free next month? That's pretty sweet.

It's also very telling of just how bad the Vita is doing. Hopefully this can encourage sales.

I don't agree. I'm not saying the Vita is doing good, but Mortal Kombat being offered for free on PS+ is not an indication of the health of the system. Sony *just* launched PS+ for Vita, they're trying to get people to sign up for the service. In addition, Mortal Kombat has already been discounted twice, and been on sale at least 3 times, which are all calls made by Warner Bros. not Sony.

If anything, this is an indication of the fact that Mortal Kombat is an old game now.

SuperDave wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

Wow, you folks get Mortal Kombat for free next month? That's pretty sweet.

It's also very telling of just how bad the Vita is doing. Hopefully this can encourage sales.

I know that in my case it worked. The appearance of all the games on Plus had me looking at Vita prices again and directly led me to finding out about the Amazon deal over Thanksgiving. Hopefully, Sony sold A LOT of systems this way. The fact that Amazon didn't appear to sell out until near the very end of the 6 hour sale has me wondering if they sold slowly or if Sony actually moved a very large number of systems.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

It's actually possible to turn it off, but I think it's on by default. You might check the settings to be sure. It really helps with the magnum. When you're pulling off headshots left and right, it's very satisfying.

No, it was turned on. I just never even tried tilting the system when aiming anything but the sniper rifle. Thanks for mentioning this. I would have probably played the whole game without realizing I could tilt to fine tune my aim with the other guns.

I was able to sell my used copies of Uncharted and Gravity Rush, and my extra copy of Persona 4, all to co-workers who had bought new Vita's on the Black Friday sale. Hardly a representative sample, but they certainly sold a few.

I keep getting an error when I try to load my cart Gravity Rush saves into my digital version. Any ideas?

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I keep getting an error when I try to load my cart Gravity Rush saves into my digital version. Any ideas?

Are they local saves or are they local saves that have been synced to the cloud? If they are local, you could sync them to the cloud, delete the local saves, then try to download the cloud versions. It might be worth a shot. You would probably want to back them up to the PS3 or PC first, though.

psoplayer wrote:

Also, I had a bunch of PSP games sitting on my PS3 (left over from past shopping sprees for my PSP Go) but the only one that showed up in the transfer utility was the one that I downloaded onto my PS3 earlier that night (FFTactics). I know that at least some of them are in the list of "officially supported" PSP games for vita (P3P, Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman, etc). Any insights?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthre... is the best list of compatibility I've found.

@Jasonofindy: MS:RC wasn't made because of a sponsorship, that's just the supported release model they used. The only reason I stopped playing it is because I could never get used to the drifting challenges. It's still in my top 10 favorite games for the year.

ahrezmendi wrote:
SuperDave wrote:

It's also very telling of just how bad the Vita is doing. Hopefully this can encourage sales.

I don't agree. I'm not saying the Vita is doing good, but Mortal Kombat being offered for free on PS+ is not an indication of the health of the system. Sony *just* launched PS+ for Vita, they're trying to get people to sign up for the service. In addition, Mortal Kombat has already been discounted twice, and been on sale at least 3 times, which are all calls made by Warner Bros. not Sony.

Sony has been pretty generous with Plus, giving out even their marquee games like LittleBigPlanet and Infamous 2. I think they've just realized that the stable income that comes from having people subscribed to PS Plus is better than the hope that year-old games will still have strong sales.

Do we have any idea how the Vita is doing? Seems like there's been a jump (speaking anecdotally) since the various sales this last couple of weeks.

It did really well in Japan recently, but we all know how insular their sales can be based on game releases.

I'll be very interested to see how much of a sales boost it got from the Black Friday deals. If it was big, I bet Sony will boast about it.