official Playstation Vita Thread

[TheLegendOfMart]

That is a real nice case. No doubt. Have a link or price for it?

Looks like its europe only, cant see it on Amazon.

Its the Thrustmaster S.P.F Case for ?14.99

[_neutrino Veteran]

I still want one of these,

also what is the game is this?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Gravity Daze (Gravity Rush EU/US)

[KoL Veteran]

I'm getting the Vita bundle with the 8GB card. If I want to get a 32GB memory card later how do I transfers all the stuff to the new one?

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

I'm getting the Vita bundle with the 8GB card. If I want to get a 32GB memory card later how do I transfers all the stuff to the new one?

There is an official Sony app called Vita Content Manager for OS X or Windows. I believe with that, as PSN accounts are tied to the memory card itself, so as long as both cards are the same account, should just be able to use the app to copy stuff over.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Looks like its europe only, cant see it on Amazon.

Its the Thrustmaster S.P.F Case for ?14.99

Well that sucks, as it looked like the one I wanted. Maybe it will come out in the US soon. Thanks for the info. (Y)

On a completely unrelated note, but not worthy of it's own thread, I had to pick up House Of The Dead 3 for $4.89 or whatever it was (price for + members)

I am a sucker, and I mean sucker, for arcade shooters, it supports move, and actually hoping my Guncon 3 light gun I have is supported as well. If not, I do own Move.

EDIT - Did a little research, and the Guncon is not supported. Oh well. :/

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Gametrailers has a nice little 4-5 minute video about the Vita overall.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/hardware-analysis-playstation-vita/726880

They also review a few of the games. It made me very excited about Uncharted again, really glad I have rented it.

6 days left!!

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Screen difference is pretty big!

[compl3x]

Well that sucks, as it looked like the one I wanted. Maybe it will come out in the US soon. Thanks for the info. (Y)

On a completely unrelated note, but not worthy of it's own thread, I had to pick up House Of The Dead 3 for $4.89 or whatever it was (price for + members)

I am a sucker, and I mean sucker, for arcade shooters, it supports move, and actually hoping my Guncon 3 light gun I have is supported as well. If not, I do own Move.

EDIT - Did a little research, and the Guncon is not supported. Oh well. :/

Light guns only work CRT monitors/TV

[TheLegendOfMart]

Screen difference is pretty big!

dat OLED.....

Glad PSP games looks good with filtering options and second stick support. I bought Gran Turismo, GTA VCS and CTW ready for next week.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

On Amazon the Wifi Vita is the #2 most preordered item in PC and Videogames and the 8GB memory card is #1. UK Amazon anyway. Should be a good load of people to use Near/play online with in the UK then.

[KoL Veteran]

There is an official Sony app called Vita Content Manager for OS X or Windows. I believe with that, as PSN accounts are tied to the memory card itself, so as long as both cards are the same account, should just be able to use the app to copy stuff over.

Ah yeah forgot about the app. Thanks.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Light guns only work CRT monitors/TV

Not correct.

The Guncon 3 I have works on my HDTV no problem at all, I have played Time Crisis a couple of times. It has sensors you set up on the TV itself.

The Guncon 3 utilizes two infrared LEDs as markers, placed on the left and right sides of the screen. An image sensor in the muzzle tracks the markers as reference points for determining where the gun is pointing on the screen. As opposed to the Guncon and Guncon 2, which are only compatible with CRT-based displays, the Guncon 3 supports a wide variety of display types, including LCD and Plasma.

Taken from Wikipedia

And another article from 2007 about how you no longer need CRT's

[LingeringSoul]

So my Vita came in yesterday. I only had about an hour to mess around with it, and about half of that time was spend setting it up, but it definitely seems pretty neat so far. Here are some random thoughts based on my extremely limited time:

• Weight feels really nice. Heavy enough to feel substantial, but not heavy enough to become uncomfortable. It also feels really comfortable to hold, despite my small hands. I found that I wasn't using those little divots that they give you for your fingers, but I didn't really need them.
  
• I like the d-pad so far. It has just enough click to differentiate between different individual key presses, which is important when playing a game like Lumines when you need to move blocks by a specific amount of discrete spaces in a very limited amount of time. Unfortunately I don't have any fighting games (yet), so I can't say how easy or difficult it is to pull off quarter circles or half-circles on that d-pad. It's definitely smaller than a Dual Shock 3's d-pad, so I'm a little nervous.
  
• The game installation times are quite short. I was a little surprised that there was an install at all, but Wipeout and Lumines were both done installing in less than a minute, which is definitely a breath of fresh air after the 20 minute ordeals that I've become accustomed to with the PS3. Hopefully all games are that quick.
  
• System firmware update was fast as well. Took about five minutes to download and install.
  
• Touch maneuvers are easy enough to perform, but the touchscreen and touchpad don't feel as "smooth" (for lack of a better word) as the screen on an iPhone. I felt a bit of friction against my finger while trying to pull off dragging and flicking maneuvers. Perhaps it'll feel more natural with practice.
  
• I'm really not a fan of that home screen. I was skeptical when I saw the screenshots, and actually playing around with it has done nothing to allay my concerns. The little bubbles just look really ugly, there's no sense of organization, and the whole thing looks like something that a high school student put together for a class project. The one saving grace of the home screen is that you don't have to use it very often, so that's nice. Going into something like Settings just reveals a simple vertical menu, which is much more pleasant on the eyes. I know that the XMB isn't optimal for touch, but honestly I would take an XMB with clumsily shoehorned touch support over this any day.
  
• Volume control buttons are easy to access, feel really good, and provide more than enough fine tuning of the volume. Coming from the DS Lite with that awful slider, this feels like a massive upgrade indeed.
  

I'm going to play some Hot Shots Golf and Wipeout today, so this should give me a chance to test those analog sticks out. So far so good, though. Oh, and Lumines is awesome. Seriously, I forgot how addictive that game can be. Actually woke up early and started playing that before getting ready for work :).

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

The games "installing" are simply putting the game "homepage" (forgot what Sony's terminology is for them) onto the Vita. You'll notice if you take say the Wipeout game card out, you can still access the Wipeout bubble on your Vita to check friends scores, who's playing nearby and what not.

[LingeringSoul]

The games "installing" are simply putting the game "homepage" (forgot what Sony's terminology is for them) onto the Vita. You'll notice if you take say the Wipeout game card out, you can still access the Wipeout bubble on your Vita to check friends scores, who's playing nearby and what not.

Ahh, that makes sense. I noticed that the Wipeout and Lumines bubbles were still on the screen, but I didn't try tapping on either of them. I assumed I would get some sort of "please insert cartridge" message or something :).

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Nice, sounds like a pretty positive first experience, you filthy rat ******! :laugh:

[LingeringSoul]

Nice, sounds like a pretty positive first experience, you filthy rat ******! :laugh:

:laugh:

Going with the First Edition bundle paid off, especially for this week, lol.

[Boxster17]

My only gripes with it are the camera sucks in low light. Was trying to do some Welcome Park stuff in my room at night and without natural light pouring in it seemed to have some trouble. My room is fairly bright as well, and the crappy 1.3MP camera on my phone seemed to fair better in these conditions. I've also found the back touchpad to be very sensitive. I thought I was tapping fairly lightly on it and they were registering with a lot more force than I would've expected. I'm sure it'll just take a bit of time to get used to on my part. Though this screen continues to impress me everytime I turn this thing on, it's just so gorgeous.

Other than that I've been playing Escape Plan while I wait for Super Stardust bundle to get fixed. Escape Plan has definitely been a lot of fun so far, having only played through 15-20 rooms. Each room is fairly short (as some may have seen from gameplay videos), generally lasting only 20-30s with the occasional one being maybe twice that. The puzzles haven't been anything too difficult so far, though they have been slowly ramping as I finished the first main section. I'm a bit under a quarter of the way through it, so it looks like there's somewhere around 80 puzzles to play in total.

[LingeringSoul]

I've also found the back touchpad to be very sensitive. I thought I was tapping fairly lightly on it and they were registering with a lot more force than I would've expected.

The front touchscreen seems to be more sensitive than what I'm used to as well. I had a few accidental presses just in the home screen while I was fiddling around with my headphone wires. On the bright side, text entry with the keyboard was a very pleasant experience thanks in large part to the sensitivity. I never felt like I was having to hammer down on the screen like I did with my old HTC phone. Touch typing isn't really possible given my small hands, but I expected as much.

And yeah, that screen is so nice. I forgot to say that before, but damn, it is beautiful indeed.

[Boxster17]

I just found I had to be very careful when playing some games, Escape Plan especially given the way the scoring system works (you get more stars for the faster you complete it and the less amount of gestures you use). I found myself having to redo some rooms because I'd see the black circles pop up and realize that I accidentally touched the back.

Other ones like Little Deviants one of the first games you need to kick people out of these doorways using either the front or back and sometimes when reaching my finger across a doorway to hit the middle one on the back, part of my finger would touch another part and I'd end up kicking out the wrong person. These are the sort of games I'll be playing all the time but I've just found it taking a bit more getting used to than I expected.

[compl3x]

Not correct.

The Guncon 3 I have works on my HDTV no problem at all, I have played Time Crisis a couple of times. It has sensors you set up on the TV itself.

Taken from Wikipedia

And another article from 2007 about how you no longer need CRT's

Cool. I thought all light guns were incompatible with HDTVs. Thanks for enlightening me :)

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/ps-vita-sony/726995

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

:laugh:

Going with the First Edition bundle paid off, especially for this week, lol.

(Y)

Trust me, I almost pulled the trigger on upgrading to the first edition bundle more than once. Especially since it was a birthday gift from my wife, I could have pitched in the $100 from my own money pretty easily. I just ultimately decided to take that money and put it towards games, etc. It was not an easy decision to make, but honestly Little Deviants is ultimately what made it a fairly easy decision to make. I just had zero interest. That and I knew I would never use 3G. So as incredibly tempting as it was, I was able to show restraint. With all that said, definitely envious of those who did not.

Cool. I thought all light guns were incompatible with HDTVs. Thanks for enlightening me :)

Not a problem. And it actually works way better than one would think. It is the same premise as move with the PS Eye, but it is 2 sensors on the left and the right of the top of the screen. Not cameras. Easy to setup, and much more precise than I ever expected it to be. Thing is only a handful of games actually supported it, so really was a very specialized purchase. I actually happened to pick it up on an Amazon Gold Box Sale for $45.99 if I recall correctly. As I said have always been a sucker for arcade shooters, so it wound up being a very surprisingly good purchase.

I actually did check out House Of The Dead 3 today after work using Move. Old school arcade shooter in all regards, which I actually really dug. I just am bewildered why it is only a 3/4 screen. It does not fill the screen, and there was not a single option to adjust it that I could see. But that was the only downside of it. I played through the campaign by upping the lives and continues to the max of 9 each, and wound up playing through the entire campaign in 29 minutes with an overall grade of D. :huh: :laugh: Going to definitely going to play it here and there for a quick fix of fun. I see they have a ranked option as well.

So BOT, I will admit one of my main concerns about the Vita is the back touch controls, and I do hear a few gripes about them, so I am curious to see how they play out. I am assuming I will eventually figure out a way to hold it where it is not even an issue, but I would be lying if I said I did not feel it could potentially be an issue at first.

[Boxster17]

These are not the sort of games I'll be playing all the time but I've just found it taking a bit more getting used to than I expected.

Kind of left out an important word there though I'll just add that I'm enjoying Escape Plan the more I play it. The puzzles are definitely starting to get a little challenging now, but the trial and error part of isn't frustrating at all given the deaths can be quite humorous from time to time and the levels are fairly quick.

Also another minor grip is I don't like the animation they do when you set a custom background picture. For the animation they do a fade to black and then to the picture, when they should just fade from one picture to the other as it just seems a bit awkward to me personally (it feels almost like it's loading when I don't think it is). Using the normal backgrounds though it looks great as it'll do a gradual fade from say blue on the first page to a red on the second, so I may just end up using those (just a bit disappointing given I usually like to personalize things like this if I can).