Hands-On With The PlayStation Vita

For those of you that don't know, I have two jobs outside this whole blogging thing. It's much harder to make a living off blogging then just getting a regular 9-5 job. One of my two job's is working at the local GameStop, selling games, talking about games, playing games, it's a good time and I really enjoy it.

Recently a customer came in who is a friend of the stores manager, and he had just imported, from Japan, a shiny new PlayStation Vita. He gave me the chance to play it, and since there was no other customers in the store at the time, I agreed and played with it a bit. He had brought Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 with him, as well as a few demo's he had downloaded.

Here are a few thing's I garnered from messing with the Vita:

• The face buttons feel quite small, but are responsive. Because I had been gaming my whole life, I didn't find it hard not to press two buttons, say X and Square, at the same time, but it may take some getting used to for new gamers.
• Both analog sticks felt good, but did not click. My guess is that R3 and L3 will just be replaced with either the front or back touch-pad inputs.
• Front touch screen is very responsive. The user interface for the system menus basically all come down to the touch screen, and it's a screen that doesn't frustrate you too often.
• The system was large but felt quite light, especially for it's size. Looking back, I wish I could have taken out one of the used PSP 3000's we had for sale to test how the weight stacked up against it in your hands, but it felt quite good.
• The gyroscope for the system worked really well with the game I played. I'm guessing that the system uses the gyroscope as well as the cameras to make it more accurate, like on the 3DS.
• D-Pad felt great, and worked quite well for Ultimate MvC 3. I have always been a fan of the PlayStation d-pads, and this one feels just as good.
• The games are going back to cartridges. No more UMD's. The carts are quite small, smaller than the 3DS carts even. The memory cards are smaller but are proprietary, meaning you have to buy specific memory cards just for the system. You can't use older MemoryStick's.
• It's a glossy system. I hate anything that is glossy, as I hate fingerprints and dust and such being all over my tech. If I were to buy this, I'd be wiping it off every 3 seconds.
• The Gravity Rush demo (Gravity Daze in Japan) was loads of fun, and is one of the games I'm really interested in for the Vita.

I still don't think I could see myself buying one at launch, but my first impressions of the system are quite good. I may wait for an eventual redesign, or maybe wait for a few more games I really want to come out before I buy one.

So far there has been a lot of games announced for it, and here are the one's I really want:

• Persona 4: The Golden
• Untitled Bioshock game
• DJMax Technika
• Dream Club Zero (ha, that will never come out here...)
• Gravity Rush
• Little King's Story 2
• Otomedius Excellent (portable bullet-hell, ho!)
• Plants vs. Zombies (again)
• Touch My Katamari
• Tales of Innocence R

The PlayStation Vita launches February 22nd and will cost $249.