Uncharted: Golden Abyss

Uncharted: Golden Abyss plays much like its elder sibling, Uncharted on the PS3. The player is put in charge of Nathan Drake once more in a sort of stand alone adventure that’s set before Drake’s Fortune takes place.

The first thing that caught my eye was how good the game looked on a portable console. Sony somehow managed to shrink the full-sized PS3 version of Uncharted to fit a smaller screen without loosing detail or performance. Gameplay was incredibly smooth running, hopping, and dangling over ledges, and here’s where the Vita shines in terms of providing a unique control experience outside of the usual stick and buttons. You can choose to shimmy across a ledge by swiping your finger across the touchscreen, while tilting the Vita towards the next ledge makes Nate look and ready himself for the next jump.

Tilting the Vita will make Nate look behind him and ready himself for a jump

Combat was fast and furious, and as mentioned before, anything the PS3 version of Uncharted was capable of, the Vita seemed to match. Another feature that distinguished Uncharted: Golden Abyss was that you can initiate melee combat by tapping on an enemy if you’re close enough. Nate will proceed to punch or kick the enemy, and an arrow will appear on screen beside them. Swiping the arrow in the right direction indicated will result in Nate a special action for that combat sequence; in my case, he threw a nasty uppercut.

And for those who prefer a straight-up game of button mashing, Uncharted does not force you to use the touch screen and you can just play through with the physical buttons on the Vita. However, using the various input methods on the Vita does make controlling games more organic in nature, which is the Vita’s strongest point.

You can't tap to shoot though. That would be too easy, you cheater

Uncharted: Golden Abyss looks to be as fun and engaging as its PS3 brethren though in the short 10 minutes demo, I did miss Nate’s dry humor as he was too busy climbing ledges and platforms.

Gravity Daze

Gravity Daze is an odd one. While Mr. Keiichiro Toyama is known for his horror works such as Silent Hill and  Siren, he has taken another direction for this game. Toyama-san stated that his inspiration for the art direction and game design comes from some French comics he loves. I didn’t manage to dig up his source of inspiration though, but from the looks of the game, I believe him.

The game is designed with a very bright color palette, and populated with buildings that look to be very European in architecture. The heroine of the story, whom Toyoma-san has revealed as being called ‘Kitten’, wakes up at the start of the game with a blank head and lost memories, so it’s your job to guide her through the game and restore her memories while saving the fictional world from a global disaster dubbed ‘Gravity Storm’.

You can see here the reticle at the center of the screen. That's where Kitten will land once you switch off zero gravity mode

Unlike Uncharted which gives you an alternative to playing a standard action adventure with new controls, Gravity Daze shows off some of the more abstract play styles that you’ll probably see being developed for the Vita that makes use of Six-axis and touch as its main control scheme.

Here, the main theme is gravity manipulation. Pressing the Right Trigger sparks off zero gravity where Kitten will float in the air. Tilting the Vita helps you set the direction of her fall, and by fall, I mean resetting her point of gravitational pull. Hitting the Right Trigger again will induce the pull of gravity, and if you aimed at a building, Kitten will hurtle towards that direction and start walking on the side of said building. Pressing the Left Trigger will revert gravity back to normal, where Kitten will fall back to the ground if she was previously walking on any vertical surface.

Combat also makes use of the zero gravity mechanic. Toyama-san showed the press how he destroyed three enemies, known as the Nevi, in a row with a ‘Gravity Kick’ move that’s executed after entering zero gravity. When it was our turn to test out the Vita, I tried to replicate Toyama-san’s feat of skewering three enemies in a row, but found out that aiming at the center reticle of a single enemy was hard enough, so there’s definitely a challenge to play well. Despite the seemingly 360-degree movement and combat, the fluidity and consistency of frame rates were impressive.

Coming down on your enemy with the full force of gravity and acceleration sure hurts

Gravity Daze was the most interesting Vita game among the three that were up for preview, and the gravity mechanics provided some unusual navigation and exploration experience. But, only when the game launches will we know if gamers in general will take to this format.

Little Big Planet

A PlayStation stalwart that’s been on both the PS3 and PSP, so LBP on the Vita isn’t all the surprising. I’ll grant that the game looks really good on the Vita compared to the PSP version, but after so many games, you can’t blame me for feeling a slight loss of enthusiasm for it as one of Vita’s flagship launch titles.

The PS3 version made exploring the stage fun, and the Vita version is no different.

Sure, the multi-touch screen is utilized for some actions, such as holding down a catapult to launch Sackboy into the air to reach a platform ala Angry Birds, and the game  also makes use of  Six-axis to help move environment puzzles, such as sliding a ledge across the screen for Sackboy to grab onto. Sackboy himself looks and feels right at home on the Vita, and the controls were very responsive, but there’s nothing really new or groundbreaking that you haven’t seen or played before.

Still, LBP has always been a superb platforming game, and I’m sure Little Big Planet will not disappoint in those terms. The only thing I’m looking forward to see is if the Vita version brings more creative levels that makes more innovative use of the Vita’s controls.

Little Big Planet never fails to surprise with its unique and quirky levels