VITA

2. retail games are roughly between 1-3GB, indies 100MB-1GB. check that the games you want can be played on the PS TV as some are blacklisted - sometimes for good reasons (e.g. game uses Vita touchscreen) and sometimes for no good reason (Danganronpa in EU, some PS1 and PSP games)

not sure if it's too late now (did they close ps mobile yet?) but if you have the chance buy Oh Deer Alpha NOW, it is an amazing outrun style game for 49 cents

I got one for Christmas. With just the stock 8GB card, so my experience has been limited thus far, but I dig it. Almost everything peripheral to the actual game playing seems like junk (countless errors trying to connect to and download from the PS Store, remote access to music and video on my PC doesn't work at all, lots of browser errors and time-outs) but I've come to expect that from my PS3 so I'm dealing. The ease of stopping and starting a game (either via navigating between windows/apps or just turning the Vita off) is perfect, as I'd been thinking that the inconvenience of finding a save point in a game would be incompatible with my need to, like, get off the train and go to work.

I've been slowly accruing a collection (through PS+ and deep discount sales) and also intentionally sidelining most of the crossplay games I've bought with the intention of eventually snagging a Vita, so I have easily 100+ Vita-compatible games to dig into now. I'm totally spoiled for choice and a little paralyzed. So naturally I've been spending most of this week playing the decades-old FF1 (transferring my saved game from the PS3 was pretty painless) and Chrono Trigger. Oh, and Touch My Katamari. Having a good, portable Katamari game just about makes this thing worthwhile all on its lonesome.

Okay, an extended Katamari jag this morning was my first physical experience of overplaying a game. Headache, blurred vision, nausea, all the stuff they warn you about but that I've always scoffed at. And I've played a lot of games for way too long before with no ill effects. Don't know if it was just that game specifically or staring at the Vita screen for too long but that's something I'll need to be mindful of.

we might just get double-digit ILX Vita owners before Sony gives up on this thing entirely

Sony technically has, yeah? I thought I'd read that only third-party developers were making Vita games at this point.

I'm way into it. It's nice to be able to play games on the train and it's nice that a lot of the games seem geared towards shorter playtimes. Beyond the Vita-specific games, there are a ton of PS1 and PSP classics I haven't gotten around to. PS3 cross play and cross save has been pretty painless on the games that support it. Remote play (even leaving aside the fact that only like seven PS3 games support it) is pretty much a laggy bust, unfortunately.

I can't even imagine what magic lies ahead once I can afford to buy a memory card larger than the perfunctory 8gb one that came with the system.

agreed, the Vita library is super stacked; you are in for a good time. I would have guessed that Sony would have wanted to keep memory cards cheap in order to incentivize people into buying more stuff on PSN, but maybe proprietary memory cards are the harsh truth of being the company that runs an Amazon Prime-level awesome deal like PS+

proprietary memory cards are the harsh reality of a company with a history of shitty proprietary formats, from DAT tapes to minidisc to ATRAC to MemorySticks. The prices they charge for their Vita memory cards can be 8 times the equivalent microSD card, fuck supporting that bullshit.

yeah but that screen

A lot of Sony's practices which seem like unfair cash grabs are ultimately and counterintuitively geared towards disincentivizing the consumer from giving Sony even more of their money. Like, for instance, if the PS3 could support more than a 1TB drive or if I could save all of my downloaded PSN games to an external hard drive for later retrieval and installation, I would buy literal shitloads of games. But I'm pretty much limited to buying a more sensible amount of whatever will actually fit on my console. If 64GB Vita cards weren't so expensive, I'd buy several of them and happily fill them up. So because Sony wants to charge $100+ for their proprietary nonsense, they've potentially lost out on hundreds of dollars more in game sales. And I'm just one Vita owner.

I really need to upgrade my memory card. So many games to try but I can only park a handful on my system at a time.

Zero search results for Orgarhythm! Haven't played too much yet but it's kinda great. A real-time strategy/rhythm game with a dancing god and his dancing troops taking down enemies on the beat.

if I could save all of my downloaded PSN games to an external hard drive for later retrieval and installation

pretty sure that the online content is redownloadable forever, including the PS+ content

which is odd and irritating because, even if not gaming, it's worth going in and clicking on each game to add it to your library... even if you don't own that platform, because if you later own it, all those clicks become useful

holy shit - 2k apparently released a port of Enemy Unknown a few days ago! apparently it's pretty buggy but this + Earthbound showing up just in time for my trip to Knoxville for Big Ears is delightful news

and now it looks like the GOTY edition of Civ Rev 2 is coming out on Tuesday, lord have mercy

FYI, y'all, I've taken to combing through the Vita listings in the PSN store every week because I always seem to find sale items that aren't listed on, y'know, the weekly sale page. That seriously has to be the most inept corporate website I've ever encountered.

Seconded, only i now have too much back inventory to even check anymore

For instance, Earth Defense Force 2 and the new Corpse Party are both currently on sale and neither is listed as such.

I inherited one of these; is there anything I need to be playing?

EDF 2 and Persona 4 Golden

There are two Zero Escape games available... Virtue's Last Reward and and Zero Time Dilemma. The first one, 999, may also be, I can't remember. Tbh I've only played ZE2, but it is surprisingly fantastic.

Big, big, big second on Persona 4 Golden. Pretty much one of the only JRPGs I've had the patience to complete in the past ~5 years (this, and Tactics Ogre PSP, and Persona 3 Portable, pretty much).

Danganronpa 1 and 2 are fantastic as well.

A bunch of stuff you may have played on other consoles, are very good on the Vita... Spelunky, Everyday Shooter, Telltale stuff (Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us), Fez, Hotline Miami, Dragon's Crown... if I think of any more I'll post but that's almost 20 games, should keep you busy (esp. with the length of Persona 4).

And then there's the PSP library you can play too...

I honestly don't think I've played all that many Vita exclusives, tbh. I have a bunch but I still haven't upgraded past the 8 GB memory card so that limits my options. I use it mainly for PS1 classics/old stuff in general and anything cross-platform. It's a pretty great portable RPG machine, if that's your bag. I've been playing a lot of XCOM and Dragon's Crown lately.

I can imagine that people might pooh-pooh the Vita out of hand for its dearth of impressive exclusives, but it's pretty cool to be able to play a lot of those non-exclusive games on a handheld platform, imo. RPGs, f'rinstance, that I'd likely never get through at home but that I can easily chip away at an hour at a time on the train.

i have been playing the first persona game. it is not a very good game. it's interesting the ways it seems to have been retrofit in light of the success of the latter iterations tho