So, everybody and their dog got themselves a Playstation Vita. Which of course makes no sense. Dogs, unlike cats are absolutely terrible at videogames and my neighbour’s German shepherd while pretty talented in some other fields (like barking and shitting in the street) never won a single Street Fighter match against me. And I let the stupid animal play as Ken, for crying out loud!!!
Anyway, Playstation Vita launched in the United States Union and United States of Europe three days ago and since everyone is publishing their first impressions, Tap-Repeatedly! knows its duty is to do the same. But also to go against the grain. Because you see, opinions are indeed like assholes, they stink unless they are your own and we fully intend to give you ours which may be slightly less enthusiastic than most of what you can read at most western websites dealing with videogames.
Of course, in Japan, where Vita Launched several weeks ago, the sales of the newest Sony’s handheld gaming system started at “unimpressive” and then kept dropping week after week. Japan, it seems, does not love Vita despite Sony’s efforts to learn from the mistakes made with the PSP as well as the mistakes Nintendo made with its last year’s 3DS launch. Playstation Vita is designed to get in the ring with modern mobile phones and tablet computers, boasts a modern, touch-based, app-fueled interface, has self assured online capabilities and social media integration and comes along with a very generous launch line-up of hardcore-friendly games both on physical media and in digital form.
Still, in Japan it sells like canned poodle turds. Actually, canned poodle turds probably sell better due to Japan’s positive attitude towards wacky sexual fetishes, but the point is, week in, week out, Vita is constantly outsold by its predecessor, the PSP, a console everybody pronounced dead many years ago. That’s simply not an encouraging launch despite brave face Sony’s execs have been putting on every week.
The thing is, I suspect Japanese consumers simply do not care about the apps and social media that they already have on their phones, while most of the games the western press has been salivating over are resolutely uninteresting to the Japanese gamer. Uncharted? Rayman? Motorstorm? Escape Plan? What are you on about, roundeyes? I would venture to say that Japanese audience is more likely to gravitate towards the port of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or exclusive titles such as Gravity Daze yet these have not so far been identified as killer apps. Once Monster Hunter is officially dated for Vita we will probably see the tide turn but until then, I think it’s safe to say this system will be more successful in the west.
It is not my intention to give you a comprehensive, well balanced review of Playstation Vita. For that, you have other websites and blogs with people paid to care and sometimes even paid to stay positive even in the face of adversity. Instead, I will give you some random thoughts based on my three day ownership of Vita as well as on the frustrating knowledge that my job is going down the can in the coming months, that my erectile disfunction is not merely a passing indulgence as I have been explaining to my wife and that the lack of respect I receive from my coworkers, relatives and cats probably does mean I am doing something wrong in my life.
For the tl;dr crowd here’s my summary and prediction:
Playstation Vita is ridiculously overpowered for a portable games console and aware of it. It tries to be a paradigm shifter and actually replace a lot of your other hardware but still avoid compromising anything related to gaming here. It supports a wide range of physically and digitally distributed games catering to hardcore and (slightly more) casual crowds, is reasonably backwards compatible and unafraid to expand its portfolio with apps. Its systems are strong and interface ambitious yet acceptably efficient. However, by cramming a lot of expensive hardware into a box and keeping the price relatively low, it’s a big risk carrier for Sony. Especially when compared to Nintendo’s 3DS that definitely seems to be better focused on its core strength – providing awesome gameplay. This is similar to the PSP-DS relationship and for all Vita’s abilities to let you buy, download and play console-quality games on the go and let the whole world and Facebook know about it, it will fight a tough uphill battle to recuperate the incredible costs its development must have produced.
Technophobic git
I should probably lead by saying that I am somewhat of a Luddite. Sure, you would think otherwise judging by the fact that I tend to buy gaming systems on their launch dates but this is merely down to the fact that I love games and hate money. Other than that, I have a healthy critical attitude towards new and emergent technologies. That is to say I keep my shotgun loaded and never turn my back to robots.
I mean, I still use Windows XP on my desktop at home and at work, I never owned a laptop computer and none of my telephones could be described as smart. The one I am using now has been passed down to me by my wife who owns an iPhone and a BlackBerry and it can go to the Internet (not that I know how to make it) and take photos but doesn’t know what apps are and only has mechanical buttons. It works for me, though as I really only use it to make phonecalls and type the odd text message to one or few of my coworkers. If I wanted to send you a photo of my penis I wouldn’t know how, for crying out loud!!!
I do not have a Facebook account or any other social media account (in fact I deleted my last.fm profile when I realised it was spying on me… took me four years though). My Steam friends list is comprised almost exclusively of strangers who I befriended while playing Left 4 Dead. I don’t even know what half the buttons on the remote for my DVR are there for and sure as hell if I needed to I wouldn’t know how to tell my DVR to record a show for me.
I am telling you all this so that you understand my position on most of Playstation Vita’s features. My attitude towards consumer-level technology is that its evolution is mostly profit driven, with only small concessions made to the actual needs of the end user. Now, sure, Apple became the word’s richest company by inventing stuff that then generated the need instead of satisfying the existing needs, but you have to remember that Sony is not Apple. After all, they posted a two billion loss in 2011 and you can bet their gaming division had their fair share in there.
But with Playstation Vita they have really, really tried to make a product that will satisfy many of its imagined users’ needs, a powerful game-centric portable piece of hardware that actually looks like it can compete with tablets in many fields where it matters: the ease of use, the sense of being connected, the social aspect of gaming (and living), the convenience of buying stuff on the go… I can sure appreciate the efforts invested. I am just not too sure they were invested wisely.
The Absence of Memory
Let’s start with the obvious, like the fact that ever since they got into gaming business, Sony has been steadily raping our dignity (and arse) by selling us incomplete products. Yes, ever since Playstation launched, Sony has stoically refused to provide storage media in the box, pretending that somehow, magically the bloody thing is fit for purpose even though for the most part it can not do what is advertised on the box: play fucking games. Seriously, we’ve been through this with Playstation, Playstation 2 and various PSP versions. The exception made with Playstation 3 with harddrives generously supplied alongside the consoles was of course somewhat sullied when Sony refused to also include a HDMI cable with a 600 Euro console that boasted 1080p video output as one of its main strengths. Classy.
Anyway, the invention of yet another proprietary storage format to be used with Playstation Vita (because we have not been humiliated enough with memory stick shenanigans they pulled with PSP) is insulting seeing how the reason not to use a widely spread and relatively cheap SD card format is clearly so that Vita Memory Cards – outrageously expensive of course – can recuperate some losses made by selling the console itself at an affordable price. But what is more insulting is that yet again, they sell these cards separately.
Now of course, by now I fully expect Sony to pull shit like this – Playstation Vita is only 250 dollars, folks, but to actually make it play games or, you know, do anything, you have to buy a separate storage solution that can set you back more than 100 bucks – but combine it with the crappy weather that has been plaguing Europe over the past several weeks and my launch day console was delivered to me without any storage solution with the promise that I will hopefully have a chance to buy a memory card tomorrow.
I did, of course, but my first impression on Vita is of course tainted by the fact that on my first day of ownership I could not play any games on it, could not download any of the stuff I purchased online, could not use it to take photos of my penis or even to listen to the music. Sony needs to stop this crap as well as stop lying about the prices. The wi-fi only model that I bought set me back some 300 Euro – which I expected, everything is much more expensive here than in the US – but until tomorrow, when I spent another 45 for a 16 Gb memory card I could not use it for anything resembling its purpose.
As an aside, I was briefly thinking about perhaps spending an additional 50 Euro for a 3G model but after learning that the 3G traffic will be limited and remembering that this service still costs and arm and a leg over here, I decided against it. Perhaps in three years, but not now.
The Touch of Evil
I did mention that my wife owns an iPhone, right? What I am trying to say is: I am familiar with touch screen interfaces. I do not love them but I understand their purpose and I even accept that sometimes they are the optimal solution. Playstation Vita comes with two touch sensitive surfaces: its screen and its rear panel, and judging by the way its interface and some of the high profile launch games are designed, this is what Sony deems to be their ace in the hole.
Which is fucking bizarre when you remember that they sold the machine to the hardcore gamers almost solely based on the fact that it features two analog sticks and a hi-res screen.
Let me explain: most of my touch screen mileage comes from using my Nintendo DS and 3DS consoles. However, these consoles both have two screens (with only one being touch sensitive) and their interfaces are always (meaning in the system and in most/ all games) based on the combination of touch screen and mechanical buttons usage. As it is, I find this to be the sanest and certainly the most comfortable way. With smartphones and tablets you have no buttons so the touch screen is the least awkward solution and you accept it because there is nothing better available. But Playstation Vita has a D-Pad, four face buttons, a select and a start button and two shoulder buttons. That’s twelve mechanical buttons right there and yet its interface is entirely touch-based. This infuriates me for several reasons:
It’s not elegant: I have to put my fingers on the screen all the time which not only leaves marks but obscures the display and in case of, say, Internet browsing makes things unnecessarily complicated. I was trying to open a message in my inbox last night and kept clicking the wrong link. Sure, I zoomed in after three unsuccessful tries, but even there I had to do it by tapping the screen even though I have not one but two analog sticks idling at the sidelines.
It’s not ergonomic: Vita is a huge piece of hardware and holding it in one hand while fingering your way through its interface is not very comfortable. Apps are closed by swiping the screen rather than having at least a virtual button on them (that is if you hate mechanical ones that you have lying around and costing money) and a lot of the time you have to make big, clumsy gestures to do something that you would do in half a second without thinking if only you could use mechanical buttons. Touch screen interfaces should be more natural than buttons, but to me they are not and anyway this “natural” feeling should not come at the expense of efficiency and speed. After all, there is a good reason why after all these decades of using mouse pointers on our desktops, we still have keyboard shortcuts built into every OS worth its salt.
It’s confusing: you see, with mechanical navigation, you usually use one set of controls for navigation (say, a D-Pad or a stick) and another for operations. So when you move the pointer to a clickable point on screen you usually have the opportunity to read the information about it before you decide on the operation you want to take. So you can at least decide to either activate the function, or move on. With touch based interfaces, as envisioned by Sony, you are supposed to blindly tap at stuff and learn through your mistakes. For instance, in the main menu of the game Escape Plan, I simply had no idea which stylish icon represented which action and since its interface is entirely touch based, I had to tap all of them and then reverse the decisions I made until I got the desired results in the end.
The Ecstasy of Communication
So I came home from the shop on my first day and booted the system. The initial setup made me put in the location and the date/ time combo and then asked me if I already have a Playstation Network account (curiously, the rebranded Sony Entertainment Network is nowhere to be seen).
Me: Why, of course, Sony, I certainly have one, nice of you to ask!!!
Vita: Do you want to connect this console to your account?
Me: Nothing could make me happier, you little tease!!!
Vita: The firmware on this system needs to be updated before you can access your account online. Please update the firmware to the latest version and then connect to the Playstation Network.
Me: You what???
Vita: The firmware on this system needs to be updated before you can access your account online. Please update the firmware to the latest version and then connect to the Playstation Network.
Me: But, but, but… Sony!! It has not been 24 hours since launch! Are you telling me my firmware is obsolete even though this thing has barely left the factory floor? The dirty, sexy factory floor, you little minx!
Vita: The firmware on this system needs to be updated before you can access your account online. Please update the firmware to the latest version and then connect to the Playstation Network.
Me: Jeez, you’re no fun when you’re like that, Sony. OK, let me update the firmware, surely there is a one-touch solution that will take me directly to the firmware update.
Vita: …
Me: …
Vita: …
Me: OK. There is no way to go straight to firmware update from here. No sweat, baby, I’ll do it manually, you just wait here and keep yourself lubed. Let me press the (virtual) back button.
Vita: Do you want to connect this console to your account?
Me: But, Sony, you just told me… wait, this is a test, right? Let me see what happens when I say no…
Vita: To proceed you need to create an account, on the next step you will be instructed how to create an account.
Me: But… er… I already have one, you see… Oh sod it…
Anyway, in the end I had to create a temporary account so the bleeding thing would allow me to update the firmware so that I can connect my actual account to the console. You know the account where I have over fifty games and a shitload of DLC that I paid hundreds of British pounds for. But at least the info box told me that now that I updated the firmware, I can shoot videos using Vita’s crappy camera and that I can also use Google maps. Now, I am sure this is useful to an extent, after all, ladies on the Internet get tired if I only send them pics of my penis, so I can now send them videos and then use Google maps to find their house and spy through the windows, but I bought Vita as a gaming system.
Luckily, buying games in the Playstation Store is piss easy. That is, if you want to buy Vita games. If you want to buy PSP games that are for the most part fully compatible with Vita, well, there is no option to see the latest arrivals because, even though this category exists when accessing the store through a PS3 console, it is nowhere to be seen if you’re using a Vita. There are only top picks and alphabetical lists. Why would Sony make it harder for us to buy games that we can play on the actual system we are using to look for them is beyond me.
As is the fact that there is no easy way to see how much money you have in your Playstation Store wallet. Since I live in the country that doesn’t exist according to Sony’s world map, there is no store for it and I am forced to use the British one. But since my credit card is not British, I must pre-purchase virtual British pounds in physical shops and then put them in my electronic wallet in the store. Which is OK, I am not complaining, at least I am safer from hackers. But for whatever reason, while I can easily see the balance in my wallet if I am using a Playstation 3 to access the store, Vita has only one way to see the balance and that is to try and purchase a game.
Which is obviously clumsy and counter intuitive. I imagine this is some kind of Sony’s half baked way of ensuring that whoever picks your pocket and unlawfully ends up with your Vita will not be able to, you know, buy any games for your account. Wait, what?? How does that make any sense? I mean, really, this money can not be used for anything else than buying stuff in the Playstation Store and moreover, Sony makes you type your password every two steps when you first start using the store so why not just password protect the wallet, rather than obscure it so much?
On a positive note, though, purchasing is quick and easy, downloads are comfortable and can be performed while you do something else, like playing another game and at least in this sense, Vita performs excellently. Also, it makes sure to inform all my non existent PSN friends about what I purchased, downloaded, installed, played, what trophies I achieved etc. This is all easy to customise and if you’re paranoid that someone’ll use your trophy data to blackmail your daughter into slavery, you can make all of it invisible.
Speaking of obscuring info, and I am jumping from topic to topic here, like a rabbit on PCP, Playstation Vita will give you no numerical data related to the remaining battery charge even if you shit in its USB port. Not that I tried… well, it was just a little turd, but anyway, what’s the deal with that? Yes, there is a green bar in the top right corner of the screen and I am aware that the percentage figures we are provided by most of our gadgets are wildly inaccurate but leaving it out completely just makes it look like Sony has something to hide. And, really, I am sure that there is something in the constitution about the person’s right to manage hers or his battery charge so what is this bullshit, Sony? Sure, when you plug the Vita into your PC USB port and then go into properties, you will get a numerical value for charge but it will not be updated unless you unplug and replug the console. I mean, what the hell?
Browsing for Concubine
Still shit. You hated it on PSP, you hated it on PS3 and it’s back on Vita. Sure, touch controls make it a little more manageable and Vita’s ridiculously big RAM makes load times a little less torturous but support for Flash and HTML 5 is still absent. So… no YouTube. No Internet porn. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Managing (dis)content
No surprises here: if you want to move music or photos of your penis between your Vita and your PC, you have to install a content manager on the PC. Now, with music, this is almost reasonable, from the point of view of copyright owners at least – they can use it to torture you with DRM and make you hate them even more. But why can’t I just drag and drop my own photos Sony? Why do you need to make it all just slightly overcomplicated so that I decide I don’t give a shit? My wife’s telephones can send a photo to her Facebook wall or email it to anyone in the world within seconds of it being taken, ensuring all shenanigans of our cats are being published in near real time, but my Vita needs a special software to put them on my PC and despite all its aspirations to being social-media friendly, it never made an attempt to ask me whether I would like to email or Facebook any of the photos I took with it. And, while I am still here: I cannot but wonder if Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft even understand why Apple is so successful. They are so fucking scared of the idea that we will pirate their precious games that, since they can not remote kill our consoles if they suspect we are playing unlicensed games, their solution is a zero tolerance policy on any code that does not comply with the latest firmware update. In other words, they refuse their services to us, cutting off all their online content from the user unless the user updates the firmware on the system to the current official version. Now, we’ve grown to accept it over the years but that just shows how gamers are more akin to sheep than to modern warfare advanced warfighters answering the honorable call of duty on the battlefield. My wife has a jailbroken iPhone as that is the only way for an iPhone to be used in our country and she has never updated its iOS even though Apple periodically politely reminds her there indeed are never versions out there. But at the same time, Apple does not cut her off from App Store or iTunes and she keeps using an outdated version iOS and spending her money on Apple’s goods. That is good business, my friends, whereas my Vita made sure to tell me that I will not be able to access my hundreds of dollars worth of software that I’d legally purchased in their store unless I update the firmware and therefore enable it to record video and install the Google maps app. Surely, this makes no sense – people who had to choose between keeping their Playstation Store access (and purchases made) and keeping Linux on their Playstation 3s were fucked, pure and simple. I just wonder what else Sony has in store for us.
Games? Oh, yes, games.
Well, I am still waiting for some of the games to be delivered to me. BlazBlue and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom are on their way from Hong Kong while Lumines and Rayman are somewhere on the border waiting for our customs officers to rape the truck drivers and shit in their mouths before they can proceed. So, the only cartridge based game I currently own for Vita is Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Luckily, a bunch of games can be bought digitally and I will certainly purchase Ninja Gaiden once I get over the fact that it costs the same as the boxed version but can not be loaned to a friend or resold. So I only got Uncharted and let me tell you – Sony stopped bothering providing any kind of paper manuals with their boxed games: you get the box, the cover page and the cartridge for your fifty Euro, asshole, what else do you want?
And really, I only bought it because it’s a graphical showcase. I mean, I like Uncharted games, own and have completed all of them, but much of their allure is due to the fact that they are big, cinematic, widescreen experiences that I can fully enjoy on my living room sofa. Did I ever want Uncharted as a portable experience? Not really, but I am ready to give it a chance. I play a lot of games on the move on my PSP/DS/3DS but most of them are games made with portable platforms in mind and I tend to think that most “true” console games ported to a handheld system are cases of an unfortunate mismatch. Even though I own them all, the only GTA for the PSP that actually felt right on that system is the Chinatown Wars one. Resistance, Silent Hill, Manhunt… all these games are much better on a proper living room console than on PSP and this is not due to just better graphics.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss certainly has awesome graphics but I find that much of the downtime that I can tolerate on Playstation 3 pisses me off on Vita. Characters standing around and talking while camera pans to show us the landscape is simply not something I value in portable titles. Gameplay is. And while Uncharted does not exactly lack in this area, it can not compare to “proper” handheld classics I have loved in the last five years – from Patapon to SMT: Devil Survivor, from Super Mario Land 3D to Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes – it simply uses too much time to talk and look good when I just want to fucking play.
It’s actually no wonder that in the three days I have owned Vita, my most played games were fighting games for PSP: Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, because they are both one on one fighters, don’t waste time on talking and pimping their looks (even though they both look stunning even today on a bigger screen than they were designed for and actually have stories) and have awesome, pure gameplay.
But OK, I have also purchased Escape Plan and while this game is a showcase of sorts, it is certainly not without problems.
Its awesome visual design is certainly a great selling point – my wife, normally in love with her iPhone actually gasped when I showed her this game – and the facts that it is neither a port nor a spinoff, like many of the Vita launch titles, boasting high production values but sold for merely ten pounds all work into its favour. Lastly, it is basically a puzzle game looking like an action game that uses touch controls exclusively. That is some bold shit right there.
Unfortunately, the implementation of touch controls really leaves quite a lot to be desired. For a game that has no other input mechanism than touch controls and that makes a point of keeping the statistics on how many gestures you used for each room, its repeated misinterpretation of my input is simply inexcusable. The touchscreen gestures are bad enough (obscuring the beautiful graphics to boot) but the rear pad action is simply clumsy. Not only that it is impossible (or at least very hard) to control both analog sticks, the front screen and the rear pad at the same time – which the game demands in some scenarios – but also the light touches as I move my fingers against the back panel are sometimes interpreted as taps and the game either makes me fail the stage or records more gestures than I actually made. Bad show.
I also purchased Motorstorm RC and… well, this game at least understands that it needs to be about gameplay and that it makes sense to serve the gameplay in small, easily digested chunks with well designed mechanical controls. I am normally not a racing games enthusiast but Motorstorm games have been consistently good and this one continues the trend.
I also wanted to buy Super Stardust Delta because I have a Vita preorder token that grants me a five Euro discount on one of four games in the Vita store, but of course, Sony had to make it extremely complicated to actually get this discount. First the website that I had to register at, www.psvitafirst.com simply gave me a 404 error message. Then I managed to reach the preorder initiative page on Sony’s general website, shared my email address with them once again and then I was told that the code for discount will be sent to me “closer to the release of PS Vita”. Three days after the said release. As I type this, it still hasn’t arrived. Unless it cleverly masked itself as a penis enlargement spam message, of course. Now, I know Sony have been very bad with these codes and their forums are full of people who had preordered the console and have not received the codes, I just never thought it would happen to me. I guess Sony’s slogan – make believe – actually does have some deeper meaning.
Email the author of this post at meho@tap-repeatedly.com.
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Well, one good thing about your difficulties in updating the firmware is that the extended sex metaphor was hilarious.
That’s the part of sex that I am really good at: metaphores!
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Thanks for the fun (and opinionated) read. I got a few good laughs out of that.
There seems to be a high rate of raping and public defecation in your country, Meho. Take care outdoors!
Reading your impressions of the Vita after reading Mat C’s (at BnB) was quite hilarious. I found his review to be very fair and balanced, and overall enthusiastic, whereas yours was mostly entertainment. The world needs both, so thanks to both of you!
I really want a Vita for no reason other than I actually have some money in my bank account right now, and why not waste it on a bajillionth gaming device that I don’t need?
Mat also got a Vita? My God, this is the priciest dedicated handheld device in history of pricing and yet, tappers are all over it like flies on poodle turds soaked in honey!!!
You are of course right on all accounts, Max, getting accross the street here and not stepping into a turd or being anally violated is turning into an art. But then again, life without art is hardly worth living.
And, yes, I didn’t feel like writing a “normal” review/ impressions piece because there is an abundance of those on every single gaming site. So this was supposed to be more of a stream of consciousness, Hunter S.T. having a bad day type of a write-up. In short – yes! Entertainment!
Honestly, I think my (non-existant) Vita would have gone through the window if I’d encountered all those issues on launch. Any time I switch from my PC to my Sony UpdateStation 3 I’m reminded why I love my PC as a platform and Steam as a service because I don’t have to put with all those little (but numerous) irritations. I don’t use Apple products much (apart from my Mac at work) but I’ve no hope that Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft will learn from them because, well, they haven’t already. As nice as the XMB is, it’s all the tosh surrounding it that spoils things. Something I will say that I like about Sony though is that they use actual prices in their store rather than fucking Microsoft Points or whatever it is that Nintendo use.
Anyway, great write-up Meho, nice to read such a candid (and funny) piece.