Is the Vita slowly dying…or is it finding its audience and gaining a passionate following? I finally buy a Sony Playstation Vita and here are the reasons why YOU may want to as well!
In this video I talk about all the highlights of the handheld, including the 900 games you can play on it, Remote Play to the PS4, physical vs digital releases, the hardware improvements over the PSP and more. And then I also talk about some of the drawbacks like the lack of 1st party support and expensive SD memory cards.
Video Transcription:
Metal Jesus here, and I’m back again asking the question, why did I now finally just buy the PlayStation Vita and why you may want to as well? Let’s take a look.
All right, so first off, let’s go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room, and that is, of course, Nintendo and the 3DS. I have a 3DS right here. As a matter of fact, I have two of them. And I also have a stack of games. And before the comments of this video go nuts with Nintendo fan boys and fan girls, let’s just all agree that the 3DS is very successful, and there’s lots of games for it. And if you like Nintendo games, you should go out, and you should buy a 3DS, because it’s a great handheld. But that’s not what this video is about because, see, for me, as a fairly big game collector and maybe even if you are not a big game collector, maybe you agree that sometimes it is really cool having many different systems for many different experiences. And that for me was a realization that I came to with the PlayStation Vita. I love the 3DS, but sometimes there’s other stuff out there. So let’s talk about this.
One of the big revelations for me with the Vita was there are over, literally, 900 games for it. Now, I know that’s going to freak people out, and let me explain. That’s because it has backwards compatibility with a lot of different things. For instance, there is PlayStation 1 games. There is PSP games. There’s the minis. There’s a bunch of previous generations that you can play on it. But there’s also indie games that are available that are designed specifically for it. And there, of course, is the big retail games, the games that you can buy at a GameStop, that you can get in a physical form. There is a lot of entertainment to be had on the Vita. And so that was my number one concern is I don’t want to buy a new handheld if I’m never going to play it. Well, I play the PlayStation Vita quite a bit.
So let’s talk about the games. Now, the misconception is there aren’t any new Vita games to be released. But you know what? That is 100% wrong, much to my surprise. I had no idea. But almost every week, there is a new Vita game being released somewhere. And the great news is that the Vita is region-free. So if it’s not being released in North America and you really want to play it, you can typically buy it and play it on your Vita no matter where you are.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that if you are a big fan of JRPGs or Japanese games, there are a lot of them being made for the Vita. A lot of them are actually being translated to English too. So it’s a very cool system for that.
Also, I happen to be a PlayStation Plus member. And one of the great things about that is that Sony releases new games for free every month through that service, whether it’s for the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 3, or the Vita. And so there is always something new to play on it.
You guys know me. I’m a big game collector. And I much prefer physical games in my collection. I want to have them forever. I want to be able to put them on the shelf. And when I started looking at the Vita catalog, I was alarmed because the space that retailers are dedicating to Vita seems to be getting smaller and smaller. And so one of the reasons why I wanted to jump into the Vita now is because, obviously, there’s a lot of good games that I wanted to play. But I also feel like physical releases may disappear sooner than, say, they did for the PSP. The PSP hung out for quite a while. But I think the Vita, Vita games are going to get really hard to find, especially if you want them physical.
So for me, it was very easy to come up with a list of games I wanted right at the gate. As a matter of fact, this one right here, Trigger Happy Havoc, it was a game that basically came out that a lot of people said that you must play. And here is its sequel. This is nowhere to be found in the Seattle area at GameStop. I did a search on their website. Within 100 miles, there were zero copies. So I lucked out on this one. I actually found it at a pawnshop. But that just gives you an idea that if you want physical games, the Vita may get hard to collect for very quickly. So that was part of the reason why I’m like “Wow, I got to get on this right now before maybe a couple years from now, I won’t find anything.
To my surprise, one of the really cool things about the Vita is the remote play. Now, I knew about this, but I didn’t know if I’d actually use it, or I didn’t exactly know how it works. But basically, it allows you to remote-play with the PlayStation 3 or the PlayStation 4. I happen to have both. But it’s really on the PlayStation 4 where I think this thing really shines.
To give you an idea, essentially, with the very few clicks of a button, you can basically see your entire PlayStation 4 display on the Vita. And that’s neat. But the thing it allows you to do is play all of your PlayStation 4 games. And I got to tell you, the first time I fired up Dragon Age Inquisition and played it on my Vita sitting on in another room from my PlayStation 4, it was amazing. Essentially, it’s like having Dragon Age Inquisition on the Vita. Now, there is occasionally maybe a little bit of lag. But honestly, it’s totally doable. You rarely notice it. It’s very, very infrequent. And it probably depends on maybe your router. I have a recent router, so I don’t notice very much lag.
And also, the display is beautiful on the Vita. That is a really nice bonus that not a lot of people talk about, but it’s awesome. Also, I guess you can do remote play over the Internet if you have your router open to the specific port that it needs to get through. So you don’t even have to be in your house. You could be anywhere. As long as you have a WiFi connection, you could be playing games that are PlayStation 4 games on your Vita.
Also, I guess you can watch movies. So if you have Blu-ray movies or movies you’ve downloaded or whatever, you can do that on the Vita. And that’s pretty cool.
What about the hardware? Well, thankfully, Sony learned their lesson with the PSP and fixed almost all of the things that people didn’t like about the PSP on the Vita. For instance, the Vita has two really nice thumbsticks, which is awesome for first-person shooters or all those kind of games. Also, there is no UMD anymore. They all went to flash drive, and flash drives are very quick, very big. So you have a lot of really big releases on it. And they look fantastic.
There are two versions of the handheld. There is the original, and then there is the slim, which I bought. And you may be asking, why did I buy the slam over the original? So a couple things now here is that the original had a very nice screen, a beautiful expensive screen on that that Sony swapped out for the slim probably as a cost measure. And honestly, yes, the original looks better, but the thing is that the slim is lighter. And it’s noticeably lighter. So I actually went for the slim for that reason. I do care about that when I’m playing games especially for a long time.
The thing is, though, is that the slim can be a little bit harder to find as I could not find a used one in the area. And I don’t know why. But there’s lots of originals, and then there’s a slim. The other thing is a slim also has slightly better battery life. Not super important, but, again, just kind of keep in mind that those are the two versions of it out there.
So what are the downsides to the Vita so far? Well, the most obvious one is is that not everyone is taking advantage of the system. I think Sony probably bit off more than they could chew when they made the Vita. In many ways, it’s too powerful. I think their idea behind this was that you would have these big game developers putting millions and millions of dollars to make a portable version of their game, and it would look fantastic and play fantastic on the Vita. The problem is that’s very expensive to do. And so I think a lot of AAA developers look at that, and they’re like “We’d love to do it. The hardware’s awesome. It’s just that it’s going to be expensive, and who knows if it’ll sell well?
And so in some ways, I feel like Sony has had to learn to position the Vita in a in a different way. It’s very inviting for any developers to make really awesome games on it. And that’s what you’re seeing now. People are experimenting with the touchscreen on the back. They’re starting to play with it a little bit more, but you don’t see a ton of those AAA games anymore on it. Personally, I don’t care. I can do remote play. I can buy the PS4 version of it and play it on Vita. So that’s a solution to that.
But it’s a little bit disappointing. I’d love to see like, for instance, Grand Theft Auto 5 ported to it. I think it’d run perfectly on it. It’d be really cool. But it’s not necessary.
The other thing, and this is a big bummer about it is that for whatever reason, Sony uses proprietary flash drives for saved games and downloading. And it’s stupid because it’s about twice as expensive as the generic normal SD drives or SD cards that you would buy. So it’s a little bit of an investment in the beginning. You have to buy the system. Depending on what you get, you might get a free one. But if you want to download and use it a lot, you may end up having to get a 16 gig or 32 gig flash drive for it. And it’s unusually expensive. Personally, I’d love to see Sony drop the price of those. Just drop the price, Sony. That way, you have plenty of space on it. And you’ll end up buying more games. You’ll download more games through the store. It’s the way they should go.
So in the end, the most important thing to me is, are there games I actually want to play on the Vita? And the answer is yes. I’ve only owned it a short time, and already, I have a stack of games that I’m dying to play. I’ve actually played a bunch of these, finished a couple, but I’m really looking forward to diving into them and playing them. And there’s more coming. So do I recommend you get a Vita? For me, actually, I would say absolutely. I think it’s a surprisingly awesome handheld. And it fits nicely with the 3DS. Again, it’s not a either-or thing. Why not have both? Because they’re two very different experiences. And I really like them.
Now, if you’re looking for more information about the Vita, one website I would highly recommend is the vitalounge.net. They have daily news, reviews. They have articles all about the Vita. I check it daily. It’s a great site for any Vita information.
As always guys, I want to thank you for watching my channel and thanks for subscribing. Take care.
If you have a Vita, I would love to know what games you think I should have in my collection. Please post a comment down below. I also want to mention that this video was supported by my Patreon contributors. They got to see this video early. And honestly guys, I greatly appreciate the support. If you would like to help support my videos and my channel, go to patreon.com/metaljesusrocks. Thanks a lot.