It's finally here!

My stupid Vita finally effin' showed up. The 2 mystery games that it came with are Touch My Katamari (heh...) and Little Deviants.

Awesome... 2 crappy games. Hopefully I can trick Best Buy into exchanging them for me. Otherwise I'm going to take a bath on the Vita that I "won"...

Initial first impression:

1. It's just slightly to large.
2. The back touch screen seems like it will really be in the way.
3. Screen looks good and big, but I thought it would be brighter.
4. The dash and software appears to be ugly and suck total ass.
5. The very first thing it said to me was "There is a system update" FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
6. The box it comes in is lame looking.
7. The game cases are teensy.
8. $100 for a 32gig memory card is a bit pricey.
9. Capcom and everyone that works there, has worked there or will work there can fucking die a painful death and rot in hell for eternity with their children and pets for not releasing Street Fighter x Tekken for Vita tomorrow. Seriously. If I heard tomorrow that Japan sank beneath the waves taking Capcom with it, I would give a WHOOP while jumping and punching the air in extreme happiness.

More in a bit...

so all in all an unsatisfying reward?

HEY! KATAMARI IS THE GREATEST ACID TRIP TO GRACE THIS EARTH SINCE ACID ITSELF!

I am still on the fence about getting a Vita.

Pariah wrote:so all in all an unsatisfying reward?

No I wouldn't say that at all. That was just my initial impressions from my first 5 minutes.

It's updating now so here's a couple more.

1. It gave me the option to update through my PS3 which would be faster. Naturally the PS3 wouldn't connect to the internet though. (reason to hate the PS3 No. 233)
2. You have to make a trial PSN ID to update before you can use your actual ID... What the fuck? Typical Sony stupidity.

More in a bit.

Metalzoic wrote:

Pariah wrote:so all in all an unsatisfying reward?

No I wouldn't say that at all. That was just my initial impressions from my first 5 minutes.
.

my mistake, sorry about that.

Why is everything that comes from Sony more difficult than it needs to be?

1. Even holding it out at arms length you can notice the jaggies in the menu. Definitely lower resolution than it should have.
2. Plugged it into the PS3 again and got an "Unkown device connected" error. Typical. Fucking. Sony. Although running a system update on the PS3 should fix it. Problem is the PS3 is a PS3 and multiple router/modem restarts later it still can't connect to the internet for some mystical Sony reason.

You've got to be kidding me.

The Users Guide is digital and built in which I thought was pretty awesome until I actually selected it...

...and found out that instead of storing it on the system it is just a URL link. Which means instead of quickly being able to look something up you
1. Need a wireless internet connection.
2. It needs to boot the browser app.
3. It needs to load each page like a website.

Not a big deal at all, but typical, zero thought put into it, Sony.

UPDATE: The browser is very sharp, clear and jaggieless.

Sooo... why the hell is the dashboard jaggy? Why is it not as sharp and clear as it could be?

The dash does feel like it was designed by the janitor... maybe it actually was?

For some reason everything you pick from the main dash (apps etc...) then takes you to another screen where you have to tap a start button to actually launch it...

...Why doesn't it just launch when you initially tap it? Why do I have to do this twice?

PS3 finally connected online. Updating now.
Sweet! At some point tonight I might actually get to try a game on this thing!

Wow.
Sony should be absolutely ashamed of the camera built into this thing. It's fucking terrible. Embarrassing.

So is sony going out of business or what?

I forgot how slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow PSN is and how long it takes the PS3 to update.
Even on my 50 meg connection.

chunckylover53 wrote:So is sony going out of business or what?

I wouldn't be the least bit upset if they did.

Finally updated.

Got it connected to the PS3 went to transfer over my DD PSP games and...

Only Killzone works?
How the fuck can that be? My Patapon games and What did I do Lord games are Sony 1st party... How the fuck can they not be compatible?

I'm going to kill somebody...

Wait... What the fuck?
It won't let me transfer them straight from my PS3, but it will let me re-download them directly to the Vita (At a snails pace PSN speeds... FUCK.)? Seriously... this is getting comical.

Errr...

Instead of Vita they should have named this system We're Fucking Morons.

On the plus side it looks like my PSP games might actually work! Even Street Fighter Alpha max 3 Electric Boogaloo!

Happy again...

Ah, No Heroes Allowed has already dL'd and installed.

That is much, much faster than the PSP could do it and faster than PSN normally goes. So not to shabby there. Lookin' up!

Damn. What did I do to deserve this mi Lord Dl'd already too.

Then again it's only 23k.

Patapon 2 just started and it says 21 minutes left...

Hmmm... On a 50 meg connection what does that work out to?

Any questions from anyone while I DL my PSP games or should I just run to Best Buy?

Well fine then. I'm out.

The only handheld stuff I've ever done was pokemon back on the gameboy color....I got a PSP in a trade a couple years ago and got rid of it after a week,it really suffered from only 1 analog stick if you could even call that blister inducing thing an analog stick

it REALLY sucked trying to play prince of persia with 1 analog stick,and the graphics were shit.Haven't watched much Vita stuff...

did it even come with a memory card?I heard they're expensive.

I'd honestly get rid of those games and try to get something else.

Dunno if you're into creepy stuff but there's a multiplayer Silent Hill called Book of Shattered Memories or something...looks cool.That's the only thing I've seen that I would want on it >__>

are the graphics good?PS2 quality or better?

Yeah, I was always mad that the PSP only had one nubbin'...

No. It didn't come with a memory card (or internal memory) at all. I bought a 32 gig card for $100 and also picked up UMvsC3.

The 2 games I already exchanged at Best Buy for $60 in PSN gift cards so I can DD some stuff.

I haven't seen the Silent Hill game at all, but graphically it is quite a step up from the PS2. Setting resolution aside, it comes pretty damn close to current gen consoles from what I've seen. Personally I haven't tried a game for it yet becaause it took forever just to set it up and transfer my games over.

It's still downloading shit and the idiotic thing seems to download about 10x slower when it's in sleep mode... genius Sony. Genius.



And thanks for the tips Frost. That helped!

>__> what was that stuff about with the chinese symbols?It makes the cpu faster?

This might make me buy more PS3 games even though I hate that fucking shitty system.
http://psp.ign.com/articles/121/1213470p1.html

Remote play sounds pretty sweet so long as there's a decent wifi connection available.

Lots more to add. For now I'll just say that, for the most part, I'm liking it. The positives seem to outway the bad.

Metalzoic wrote:Lots more to add. For now I'll just say that, for the most part, I'm liking it. The positives seem to outway the bad.

Well thats good to hear, since the first page of this topic was all about how terrible the thing was.

I would say it's great just because it has 2 analog sticks now.

Frostbyrn wrote:That might have actually made sense before Google translate well

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Uzae_SqbmDE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

and Ned Beatty got raped. I think.

Terry Corp. wrote:

Metalzoic wrote:Lots more to add. For now I'll just say that, for the most part, I'm liking it. The positives seem to outway the bad.

Well thats good to hear, since the first page of this topic was all about how terrible the thing was.

Might have spoken a bit to soon there. I spent a bunch of time playing with the apps, settings, photos, PC client etc... today and without a doubt I can say:

Some of the worst UI design, functionality design and software design I've seen. For the most part the dash and functionality are actually a big step back from the PSP.

This really confuses me. After all the refinement the PSP and the PS3 have received in the form of function, usability and features you would think the Vita would build upon that and offer an even more refined experience.

It doesn't. In a lot of ways this feels like a companies first attempt at a system.

It's weird.

so can we now say that it sucks?

Pariah wrote:so can we now say that it sucks?

Well, we can say the Dashboard, Sony software, UI and Functions (camera, photo viewer, content manager, music player etc...) mostly suck.

However, it's really for playing games and so far the games, graphics, screen, controls, sound, and PSN (yep PSN, can't believe I just said that...) definitely do not suck.

More to come.

Well I got to play with one for 15 minutes and I have to say that the hardware itself is impressive. Graphics are also stunning. My main issue was how bad the loading times were. Took a good minute to load up most games.

*forwards thread to Sony corporation*

Thought I'd throw in a second opinion, as the only other Vita owner here.....(?)

Got mine on launch day here in the UK, and yeah system updates/downloads were a little sluggish - but I put that down in part to it being launch day and a spike in users, as well as my router being an absolute dick all afternoon (not Sony's bad).

Anyways, since then the connection has been much more stable and download speeds have improved for me.

With that said, Metal - I've heard that manually putting the device in sleep mode (by pushing the power button once) can have some detrimental effect on downloads. However, if it times out into sleep by itself (you can adjust the waiting time in the settings menu) then it won't be affected. Might help if you're still finding it slow.

Build quality of the hardware is fucking sublime (barring one small, unimportant detail that regardless just made me go "really?"). Found it to be a good size, and more comfortable to use for extended periods than perhaps any other handheld I've used (including, most recently, the 3DS which would give me cramps after a short while).

On first impressions, I was a bit awkward about holding it without hitting the rear touch, but have to say that in practise it hasn't been an issue. The analog sticks feel great, but did take a little getting used to.

Screen is amazing, cameras are indeed arse (although, for their purpose in AR apps they're absolutely fine. Still, wouldn't have hurt to have better ones).

I have to agree that the menu is pretty pants - not sold on the bubble thing at all, and it looks quite nasty. Although, one criticism that I see quite a bit - and just don't really get - is having to make two 'presses' to launch a game/app/whatever.

You can make both presses in seconds and launch stuff quickly if that's what you want, but I like the option of the 'live screen' that the first press takes you to. It gives me access to all aspects of the game - friends and my own activity in it, dlc links, web links etc....it's like a little hub of links and info that I think is really neat. Like I said, it's so easy and quick to bypass if that's your thing. Just seems odd that it's pissing some people off so much?

Load times so far have been longer than desired, but again, in practise I've not found them to be too much of a bind. Hopefully it'll improve with post-launch software though.

So yeah, beautiful build hampered at the moment by an asinine UI - but this can be tweaked through updates etc. so I'm not too bothered. I'm also not too bothered because I've not spent too much time rooting through them, as I've been using it for it's primary purpose - playing games.

And playing games, is where - for me - it has fucking excelled.

So far I have the following:
Uncharted
WipEout 2048
Modnation Racers

And download titles:
Super Stardust Delta
Motorstorm RC
Escape Plan

The 'home console' feel of Uncharted and WipEout is amazing - especially with some decent headphones. The screen size and clarity, solid controls (dem sticks!) and technically excellent visuals all make for a great experience. Gameplay wise, I've been having a great time with both.

Modnation, sadly, smacks of a rushed port - unresponsive menus and slightly fuzzy visuals, for a start. The core gameplay is still fun, though.

Also, it allowed me to do this so I can't really complain too much:

Spoiler:

Not spent as much time yet with Stardust (great visuals and audio - tight stick control) and Escape Plan (great art direction, maybe a bit fudged touch controls?) but Motorstorm RC is proving a very addictive time waster.

As a whole then, I have some minor gripes but they are being far outweighed by the positives of just playing games on this damn thing. Love it to bits (glad I traded my 3DS in to pay for it, too.....) and looking forward to seeing new titles come through - expecting second generation software on this baby to really shine.

In the meantime, looking forward to LittleBigPlanet and Gravity Rush. Any questions, please shoot

Sony is the king of awkward UI's. I used to like my PS3, but now I cant stand the POS.

I'd like to thank Robots for the nice second opinion and write up. I trust Metal for the most part, but I like hearing from multiple sources.

Thanks Terry, it's good to have a bit of discussion on this

I think for the most part that Metal and I agree anyway - the functionality of the menus etc. leaves a lot to be desired, but once a game's up and running it's fantastic.

I think that's most important in the end, anyway

Sym wrote:Sony is the king of awkward UI's. I used to like my PS3, but now I cant stand the POS.

I missed you Sym!
Although I liked that you liked the PS3 and I despised it. Made for some good discussions. You already know that I hate the XMB dash and the PS3 in general, but I almost feel bad if you do now too...

Terry Corp. wrote:I'd like to thank Robots for the nice second opinion and write up. I trust Metal for the most part, but I like hearing from multiple sources.

Coolio!

MADEWITHROBOTS wrote:Thanks Terry, it's good to have a bit of discussion on this

I think for the most part that Metal and I agree anyway - the functionality of the menus etc. leaves a lot to be desired, but once a game's up and running it's fantastic.

I think that's most important in the end, anyway

Yep. Sounds like we're pretty much on the same page.
Gaming on this thing is fantastic. Anything else... not so much.

But let me get a bit more specific.

The dashboard: First let me say that I do prefer it over the Psp/Ps3 XMB dashboard. It is basically a copy of the iPhone, except the icons are round, floaty bubbles and the pages of them slide vertically instead of horizontally. Each page/panel is also customizable with a color or photo etc... It's simple, It's smoothish and it works.

Here's my issues with it. Firstly the graphics on this page are jaggy as if the dash itself doesn't run at full resolution. The circular icons are noticeably rough and jagged. This, to me, is beyond lame. The dash should be a showcase for how nice, beautiful, sharp and clear this screen is, instead it makes it look bad... especially considering how much time you spen in the dash.

Second, I absolutely hate the 2 presses to start something issue. It drives me nuts. That is all.

Third. It's cool that these screens/panels can be customized with photo's. Problem is how shitty the Vita handles it. On the PSP you can crop, tweak, resize, rotate and adjust a photo as you set it for a background... Not on the Vita. No adjusting here, it just centers it and that's it. OK, there's a workaround. Go into the photo viewer and crop/tweak it there, save another copy of it and set the cropped copy as the background. Or, adjust your picture within the viewer and then take a screenshot of it, save the screenshot copy and use that as your background. A big, stupid pain in the ass, but it can be done.

However, no matter how you do it whenever you assign a pic as a background the Vita either changes its format or changes its resolution so that the pic will be lower quality, lower resolution, have bad artifacting, have bleeding color etc... What the fuck?!? Why the hell does it take a picture that looks stunning on this screen and completely fuck it up simply because you assign it as a background? Fucking Sony...


Oops didn't mean to type so much. I'll leave it at that for now.

Hmmm Found this.

The console will reencode any picture you use as wallpaper with a critically low jpeg compression quality and make it fit in, like, 50 KB. Presumably to avoid the many buffer overflow security issues that were present in the early PSP days.

This makes some wallpapers look rather ugly. If you don't notice or don't care, good for you.

Original Gameboy>all other handhelds

Yea the PS3 used to be good, until it started getting bogged down with the slowest updates in the history of man. That really killed it for me.

I liked the PSP gui. I still have the original PSP, jailbroken, and it works fine, except the on/off switch is almost rubbed off. You can at least say Sony makes durable things.

Only problem with the PSP is there don't seem to be many good games. I have the potential to get any game that's ever been released for it for free, but I don't because none of them look that interesting... Though I also have the ability to get any game from any portable before the DS and also nes and snes on it and I still mostly just use the thing to read Cracked.com so I guess I'm just a picky games player.

So whats the final verdict?

Final verdict:

Overall, I'm really liking it. Like other Sony products these days it feels only partially finished. Like they rushed it out figuring they'd patch/update it to work right later.

Still though the screen is big, bright and awesome (outside of the dash).

It already has some excellent games, it can also play most of the PSP games so it has many excellent ones there too. (especially the what did I do to deserve this games and the Patapons!).

It has twin sticks (even if they don't feel as sturdy as the PSP nub.

D-pad works good (even if it and the buttons aren't as good as those on the PSP)

PSN works worlds better on the Vita then the PSP.

Dash is easier, faster and better to use than the XMB.

Lame that not everything works right out of the gate, but once it has a few updates it should be much better. When it comes to games, graphics and controls it rocks. Once Remote Play works with all PS3 and PSN games I can see myself buying many, many DD games just so I can play them through the Vita.

Good stuff!