Well, it looks like Rayman has found the perfect home. And no, we don’t mean an arrangement of padded boxes for each of his disembodied appendages, however comfy that may sound. From the get-go, Origins is a feast for the eyes on Vita’s OLED screen – and a criminal amount of fun.
This is the fighting-game equivalent of necking a bottle of out-of-date cough syrup and watching your favourite ’80s cartoon. UMVC3 is a brutal assault of colour and flashing lights, shying away from tournament fave Street Fighter’s studious action in favour of physics-defiling three-on-three combat that has as much to do with slapstick comedy as martial arts.
Of all the Vita launch games, this is the trickiest to review – and I say that having played almost all of Golden Abyss in one sitting, going steadily madder as I wiped dirt off Drake’s artefact for a tenth consecutive hour. But this is a much stranger package. Priced lower than any other boxed launch game (Amazon currently has it at £17.99) this is reflected in the content you get: just three tracks and five cars.
Had an EA Sports suit had jumped into a Delorean, travelled back in time and shown me Vita’s first footy sim a couple of years ago, I’d have been both ‘flabber’ and ‘gasted’. In short, this portable FIFA looks every bit as pretty as Andrea Pirlo’s dashing jawline. Reviewed in isolation, it’s also a surprisingly robust package. Sadly, it just can’t quite compete with its purple-nosed PS3 gaffer.
The PS Vita is here. After last night’s midnight launch it’s in the shops along with the first wave of games. Here’s out round up of all out PS Vita reviews for your reading connivence.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss PS Vita review
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 PS Vita review
ModNation Racers: Road Trip PS Vita review
Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend PS Vita review
Reality Fighters PS Vita review
Everybody’s Golf PS Vita review
Wipeout is a PlayStation classic. From the PS1 original that introduced the concept of classy grown up gaming, to this latest instalment – it’s been consistently fast, exciting and part of Sony’s lifeblood. Oh, and extraordinarily pretty in a ‘metal sleds on jets flying past neon’ kind of way. If you’ve somehow missed out on the series then here’s a quick primer: it’s quantum levitation condensed into racing form. Or, in non scientician speak, b*stard bloody fast future hovercraft grand prix goodness.
Before they announced LittleBigPlanet Karting, this was LittleBigPlanet on four wheels. A cute little racer that build around a community of gamers creating and designing their own tracks, racers and cars. Now it’s it’s getting a second lap as PS Vita racer. It might be smaller but it still packs in all the same sparkling creation tools to provide one of the most exhaustive course designers we’ve ever seen.
You may not be a beautiful or unique snowflake, or indeed your grande latte, but you are someone who has the ability to wrap their face around a pixelated fighter and battle it out in an underground location of your choice, Brad Pitt-style. Thanks to Vita’s cameras and augmented-reality tech, it’s possible for your fighter to brawl on whatever surface you desire – be it table, toilet or golden retriever. It may appear gimmicky but it’s enjoyably hilarious, as well as a glossy demonstration of the power of Vita’s AR features.
Here’s the quandary for any Formula 1 game – the sport attracts a special breed of hardcore fan so caught up in rear-blown diffuser measurements and 107% rulings that nothing short of an actual F1 car could ever sate their desires.
Appealing entirely to these superfans is madness, because for the mainstream crowd your game becomes more unwelcoming than a cuddle with Bernie Ecclestone. A good F1 game lives and dies by its ability to find the balance between convincing sim and compulsive racer, and striking that balance on a handheld platform is about ten times more difficult.
We pit the two Sony racers against each other on Vita’s starting grid. The question is, can a cutesy karter keep up with the blisteringly fast, futuristic speed demon? Find out, as we give you a WipEout 2048 review and a ModNation Racers: Road Trip review in one convenient head-to-head. Our future dollar’s on the one with all the quantum levitation.
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