Tag Archives: PS Vita

A Vita Owner’s struggle …

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I’ve been a Playstation Vita owner since launch and have been very happy with my 3G unit since the day it arrived

I’ll go so far as to say that it’s become my default gaming device of choice.
Yes I’ve got a PS4, PS3, Xbox 360 and a 3DS XL, but thanks to the arrival of my son 7 months ago and a wife who also likes to use the television in the lounge so time to use those TV tied consoles is slim and precious.
Portable suits me more and more these days, I can fit in a cheeky slice during my lunch break at work or even on my commute, fantastic stuff.

With a more “mature” selection of games and the ever growing collection from Playstation Plus, my Vita gets an almost daily outing

However lately a couple of things have been bothering me.

Firstly, although the indie gaming community is alive and well on the Vita and chucking out quality titles. The big banner blockbuster releases though have seemingly dropped off the face of the planet.
Over at Nintendo you see the likes of Pokemon and all sorts regularly making waves on their handhelds, not so from Sony. This worries me.

Secondly, memory cards … or rather lack of them.
The largest card we’ve been deemed worthy to have in the EU is 32Gb, whilst other markets are treated to a 64Gb variant.
Try to get one of these at a reasonable price and you’ll be in for a shock, that’s if you can find one that’s not being sold by a third party (yes they’re in stock on Amazon for £53, but that’s not coming from Amazon)
Game, the only bricks and mortar retailer in the UK, haven’t had any stock of these on their website for ages and using the stock tracker there’s been none in any of my local stores for the past 5 months.
Given that this is a critical accessory what’s happening ?
The size of game downloads is increasing, and some titles are only getting a digital release in the EU. So on a 16Gb card when a title requires a 3Gb download that’s a heftly chunk of your space swallowed right there.

What we need is memory, lots of it, at a reasonable price.
We need this now
Sony has a prime opportunity to steal a significant chunk of the portable market from Nintendo, but at the moment they’re wasting this and leaving those of us who’ve already signed up flapping in the wind.

So come on Sony, show us Playstation Vita owners some love.
Release those bigger memory cards and get those releases out there.
We love our pocket gaming powerhouse, it’s time you proved that you do too.

Tactical advantage

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So …. It’s been a few weeks now with the and it’s become a regular addition to my bag.

And recently it’s been spending a lot of time in the company of ‘Unit 13’

‘Unit 13’ is a tactical shooter, on a handheld, and more importantly .. it’s actually pretty good.

 

The set-up is pretty standard fair, you’re the new recruit of the squad in question. Your “initiation” is the tutorial for the controls and that’s pretty much it, off you go to take out the baddies …

In a switch to most shooters you get to play all the members of the team, each with their own speciality and successful missions allow you to level up the person in question and unlock goodies for the team.

Unlike most shooters it’s not kill count that counts here, yes in most cases taking out the terrorists is the idea (notice I said most cases there .. ) but this just adds to your score, and progressing swiftly and efficiently boosts the score multipler, and thusly your score. This is the end game, place as high as you can on the scoreboards …

To that end what of the missions, well you’ve got a selection of stealth, direct action, elite and the hellish deadline …. that final one is my personal nemesis, you get a set time to accomplish the tasks set out, so in most cases the stealthy approach will see you failing the mission.

Complete a mission an you’ll get a star rating based on several criteria, get 3 stars or above and you’ll unlock the dynamic mission where objectives are thrown at you on the fly.

Earn enough stars and you’ll unlock the HVT missions (HVT = High Value Target) which sees you hunting down a specific terrorist leader type hiding in the areas the missions are set in. These can take some doing so prepare to dig in for the long haul 😉

There’s a co-op multiplay option available so you and a buddy (or a random stranger) can take on the enemy, but there’s no competative one … possibly a massive omission and deal breaker for many BUT for me it doesn’t detract from the experience.

 

The controls are tight and responsive and that 2nd analogue stick/nub really makes the difference. The touch screen is used to access maps, reload weapons and interact with items where necessary, but these are also mapped to physical buttons too. Personally I found the touch screen made perfect sense for these as it was just a quick thumb move to reload etc. but each to their own 🙂

Generally it’s not the most emersive of games but as a portable, on the go, tactical shooter experience I’m really very impressed and urge you to at least try the demo that’s available before dismissing this title completely ….