Playstation Vita

[dairugger]

its been confirmed that the vita will be region free when it launches this dec in japan. i wonder if the dlc and movies and such will have a problem when you use a japan vita in america next year?

http://psp.ign.com/articles/119/1195...#disqus_thread

From NeoGAF comes confirmation of something we kind of already suspected but didn't exactly know for sure: PlayStation Vita is region-free, just like the PSP and PlayStation 3. This means that you can play a game from any territory on the handheld, and it will work just fine without having to modify or otherwise alter your Vita.

Twitter user @lonelypessimist Tweeted friend of Podcast Beyond Shuhei Yoshida (@yosp), President of Sony's Worldwide Studios. He asked "is it confirmed yet if vita is region free?" to which Yoshida succinctly answered "Yes, it is."


i didnt see a dedicated vita thread, perhaps one can be made?

[kupomogli]

Being a Gundam fan and absolutely no games come to the US any longer, region free is another plus for me. Pair that with the great looking line up of launch and launch window games I'm sold.

Capcom announced Ultimate MvC 3 DLC tied to your PSN account will work on both the PS3 and Vita. It's good that the DLC will work multiplatform, but guess what(and this isn't about the Vita?) More pre release Capcom DLC. Bet it's already done and will be released after the games release.

[dairugger]

it looks like the vita will expand upon what the psp was, and i adored my psp, took it everywhere!, still do.

on another note it looks like the design of the vita has been tweaked slightly from what was shown at E3.
http://psp.ign.com/articles/119/1194436p1.html

its also been confirmed the vita will have a external battery that will last 8-9 hours. i wonder how thatll look..

[The 1 2 P]

This was Sony's way of punking Nintendo for abandoning region free games on the 3DS. And it gives them one more bullet point to put on the back of the box although I doubt they will use it.

[sidnotcrazy]

I am sold on the Vita now.

[kupomogli]

i didnt see a dedicated vita thread, perhaps one can be made?

Edit the topic to Playstation Vita.

Aside from having a ton of amazing games, there is one other thing the PSP did for Sony(not by Sony, but regardless.) I think it pretty much made a name for itself as the console for niche titles because that's really most of what was released when nothing else was coming out. I think a lot of announcements show this seems to have been carried over to the Vita.

So regardless if the Vita loses to the 3DS or not, atleast the Vita's going to have those niche developers on lockdown. :P

[DeputyMoniker]

This was Sony's way of punking Nintendo for abandoning region free games on the 3DS. And it gives them one more bullet point to put on the back of the box although I doubt they will use it.

[badinsults]

It is a big pain in the ass that the 3DS isn't region free for me, as I purchased a North American model, and I live in Australia. It will still be cheaper to import North American games than to buy them locally...

[The 1 2 P]

You should make that your new avatar. It would suit you well.

[duffmanth]

The region free thing is nice, but I was sold on the Vita anyway. I don't know if I'll get it at launch, but probably within the first year? It looks like Sony has addressed all of the PSP's shortcomings with the Vita, the addition of dual analog sticks, what appears to be a solid launch lineup of games, and a price that pretty much everyone expected.

[Lady Jaye]

I hope that Sony has put the on-off button at a better place than on the PSP-3000. It happened way too often that in the midst of an action-heavy game, I've accidentally hit the on-off button and put the game on sleep (not a big deal) or actually rebooted the PSP.

What sells me on the Vita is the announcement regarding the remake of Ys IV. I can only suppose that X-Seed will localize it and if such is the case, I'll definitely pick up the game, even if it means waiting for a while before actually having a Vita.

[Damaramu]

Sold! I was interested in the Vita after E3, but now all this information is out on the Vita I am definitely getting one, quite possibly at launch (something I rarely do).

The PSP is by far my favorite hand held. It is quite a versatile machine, especially after I had mine hacked!

[Nz17]

What are the #1 games for PlayStation Vita? Any PSV recommendations?

[Gametrek]

Only game I could remember is Fatal_Frame because it makes ghost appears in your room via the camera built in. Amazing idea, actually better then the
VR-goggles for Windows/Facebook/Google

[kupomogli]

What are the #1 games for PlayStation Vita? Any PSV recommendations?

I was hyped up about the Vita because I loved the PSP but the Vita really turned out disappointing. Here's what I think is worth looking into though.

Dungeon Travelers 2. I think this is one of the best dungeon crawlers ever made. It was released on the PSP in Japan, but this is exclusive to the Vita in the west(atleast the physical release is.) This is the kind of game that unfortunately you have to play alone as a lot of the story scenes and the enemies you defeat are half naked women, or fruit, however the gameplay itself is amazing.

On Dungeon Travelers 2, you get five character classes and eventually you'll get three different characters for each of these classes. Every one of these classes has a tier one tier two, and tier three class, but each of these tiers of classes can go into multiple different classes. All classes for instance, fighter as example can upgrade to a paladin or a dark knight, then on tier three they can upgrade to a valkyrie, samurai, or another dark knight. Each tier class has a lot of different skills to purchase to really customize how that character build will be. So you essentially have four different versions of every single class, EXCEPT for the mages. The mage class has three tier two classes and four tier three classes.so you have six potential variations of your third tier class. So you have 16 end game classes with 22 total variations dependent on your tier two classes, skills that you'll carry over from the tier two classes.

Uncharted Golden Abyss. The input lag on this game is bad, but if you can get around that and get around the forced Vita stuff, this is a great game. It really is a must play Uncharted game.

Uncharted Fight For Fortune or what I like to call Uncarded. I almost never buy digital only but I bought Fight For Fortune. Fight For Fortune is a really good card game that might not have the depth of a game like Yugioh, but it's also significantly better balanced.

Soul Sacrifice Delta. There's an import of this game that has English on the cartridge. While Soul Sacrifice is the original release, Soul Sacrifice Delta adds more bosses and more content that you can play through. Everything in Soul Sacrifice is handled with a lore book, so it really cuts away most of the busy work that Monster Hunter has in town. Soul Sacrifice is also all about the spells instead of weapons. As you win missions(or break boss parts,) you'll acquire new spells and these spells can be combined to increase their uses. When you level up by saving or sacrificing enemies you'll either increase your defense or you'll increase your attack, increasing the amount of DPS you deal or increasing how much damage you can sustain.

Freedom Wars. This game is kind of pointless on the Vita now that it's receiving a console release for not only the PS5 but the Switch as well, Sony is now third party with games like Freedom Wars, Patapon, and Everybody's Golff on Switch. Freedom Wars has a lot fewer monosters than any of these other hunter games, but the games are both ranged guns and melee weapons as well as a bit of Just Cause grappling thrown in. It's a great game with just too much of a grind against the same monsters over and over being its only major issue.

Unit 13. This is a military shooter/stealth game with a lot of different mini stages. The cool thing about this game is that it's actually score based, incentivizing you to play through these stages quickly and skillfully for higher ranks. Each soldier might have their own specific perks making them better in one specific aspect.

Siralim 2 and Mystery Chronicle One Way Heroics. Only released physical by LRG and these games are also on PS4(with Siralim 3, the better game, not on Vita,) but these are games that you can potentially, and likely, hit 50-100 hours or more especially if you like them. These aren't graphical spectacles and there's really no reason that these need to be playable on a console if you're more interested in playing these games on handheld.

Siralim 1 is also on Vita but I'd just say right now to just completely ignore it. Siralim 3 is the better game but there are some minor changes in the second game that have been removed from the third that are kind of redeeming for the second game, but overall the third game is the better game. So the Siralim series in general, and each game is the same in this aspect, has you choosing what kind of mage you are for your castle. While your main character does not participate in combat, your mage class is customization towards your monsters. A death mage for instance can gain skills to help your temporary summoned monsters start off by being summoned into combat from the start, increased stats etc. Your nature mage can increase the stats of your monsters the fewer monsters that you have altogether or the more of the same class of monster that you have. The sorcery mage allows monsters to cast any spell at double the MP. Chaos mage allows monsters to cast spells of not only their own class but the class that is weak against their class, or adds a percentage chance that spells will trigger when you attack. Etc, etc, etc, etc. There's more than what I've stated but these are just some generalizations what the classes allow you to do.

Each class will also start with two different monsters. You'll be able to acquire all of these except for the one you'll get as a death mage(and that might just be in Siralim 3.) When, who knows, and I'll get to that. Because as you continue playing through any Siralim game, you're always unlocking things. You might find your first artifact, basically a weapon or armor that increases stats or even adds a second trait to your character. What are traits? Traits are what each of your monsters has, and each trait is where your party build comes in. Since each monster can have an extra trait that's tied to a piece of equipment, you can have a total of 12 traits(*) There are over 700 monsters in Siralim 2 and with over 700 unique traits you have a very wide variety of class builds. The reason for the * is because each party can have a single nether creature and nether creatures have up to four traits(including the artifact.)

So on any Siralim game, you're always unlocking something and on the second game there are these work orders that are available to increase the size of your castle and continue to unlock new areas of the castle and I think that's where the second game is better than the third game. That and the blood rites which exist on the third game but in a different form(and that form is actually completely different and better than you could have hoped for.) So the second game has this shop keeper area that you'll build up and you'll eventually start inviting more and more shopkeepers into your castle, every time you come back from a dungeon these items are reset. This is something that's missing in Siralim 3 because on Siralim 3 you still do find shopkeepers but you find them in the dungeons themselves and they sell a couople pages of items from all categories not two to three pages of items from each individual category.

Also on Siralim 2 there's blood rites which add a lot of different "punishments" but some of the punishments are actually really useful on their own.

Additionally, each game has changes to monster traits and I feel like there's some really good ones in Siralim 2 that don't make their way to Siralim 3. Thylacine is a hound class which is also the name of the developer. This monster gains the traits and increased stats from all of the other hounds in battle and every battle you only fight using this one monster. If you think about it, this would be pretty great for a nature mage when the stats also increase for each fewer monsters you bring into battle. So get a lot of bonuses on top of even more bonuses.

Between all the castle enhancements your building up, each individual new monster with a new trait you're getting, finding artifacts, spell gems which there are hundreds(think materia,) all the different castle unlocks like blood rites, spell gem customization, monster summoning, even a gate that allows you to fight the games gods themselves, etc. The game has you constantly unlocking new things.

If there's one thing about Siralim 2 that was such a chore to work around it was this power resolve that was required to do a lot of things. If you wanted to breed monsters you were required to use 20% if you wanted to choose a new portion of the castle to build you had to use 20%, etc, and while you could go into the dungeon and max out your power in which you gained 2% per battle, it was a huge annoyance that this was a resource you had to deal with alongside all the other resources that you also had to deal with. It was the most annoying resource. However, even without that resource you still have all your other resources that you'd run out of, so it only became a big issue if you wanted to do a lot of breeding.

While I'd say Siralim 2 and 3 are 7/10 games, I'd recommend these games all day long for what they offer.

Mystery Chronicles One Way Heroics. You'll hear people say that One Way Heroics is definitively better than this game, and I'd argue that both games have aspects that make them better than one another. The only difference between each game outside of the graphics obviously, is that One Way Heroics has a very wide field of view, that you can see a massive amount of the games visuals all at once, while Mystery Chronicles One Way Heroics only has where you can see maybe 12x8, 10x6(?) something pretty small in comparison. Now. The reason that's a positive imo and I'm pretty sure what Chunsoft was going for with this change when they bought the rights to the game, was that being about to see such a large range, you could see all the danger coming towards you already and you could easily avoid the more dangerous enemies if you weren't prepared, lower HP, etc, the enemies wouldn't be aggro'd towards you at the time so at that point they'd be easily avoidable. You'd see the exact pathway to get through dangerous areas, etc. With the smaller field of view, much smaller, you can't exactly avoid hard enemies like you could in the original, you have an idea of the map that's ahead but you don't know exactly what might come up in your way to block your path. It makes it for a much more challenging experience in that regard while the rest of the game is identical in every aspect.

One Way Heroics itself is a roguelike, a true roguelike, but instead of randomly generated rooms with exits to the next floor, there's a darkness that's destroying everything from the left and you keep moving towards the right. The darkness only moves so fast unless you as the player go forward too much in which case the darkness will then speed up, but if you're not as far forward as you can go, it moves at the same speed. This turns the roguelike genre into what seems like more of your standard RPG adventure, where you're running through a large world map full of towns, dungeons, etc as you make your way towards your goal. The goal either being, destroy the fallen angel, make it to the end of the east, or make it to the end of the world where monsters get more and more powerful. You have a large amount of different classes that you can use and you can even get allies that take the same spot on the map as you do but they will take damage if you're attacked from the back.

The classes themselves are again, completely different in design. You have the swordsman who once a day can go berserk and take off huge amounts of damage, has a good combo rate, but once berserk ends, his HP drops to nothing and you have to get it back up. There's more than one knight, but the first knight is one of the better characters in the game having good defenses with shields and a lot of very defensive abilities that can be used once per day. The dark knight uses abilities that deal damage to themselves in exchange for high amounts of damage to the enemies. Various mage types that use energy/hunger to cast highly damaging/recovering/support spells. Characters like the pirate who gain more attack and swimming than others so can easily make their way across any piece of water eventually without any movement cost, but at the expense of having low and less charisma gain. The adventurer is probably one of my favorite classes, but there's one problem here is that while they can eventually lockpick everything as well as swim and climb mountains without any penalty, these are the very first levels they acquire, so their statistics overall are very low for a long period of time. However, this is a class that has abilities like jump and sprint, so with a little bit of skill and luck, you can out run any enemy like you're the Sega arcade classic. Since lockpicking also gives you experience points they can still gain experience without even fighting.

This is another game that you can just sink hours and hours and hours. Very samey but just really good. Maybe it's because I like the roguelike genre, and by roguelike I mean actual roguelikes so thinking about my next actions, etc, like a TRPG is really enjoyable to me. The games have a lot of strategy to them and when you're stuck in a bad situation that you have to figure out how to get out of but you have no teleport potions yet somehow survive through some really tricky manuevering and skill usage, it's an awesome experience. If you're on a computer I've linked to the exact time to start watching the video below for an example of getting stuck in a situation I had to get myself out of, and that's one thing Mystery Chronicle One Way Heroics has over the original with the smaller field of view.

https://youtu.be/4hIVC1mEVk8?t=304

[kupomogli]

Oh, like Uncle from Jackie Chan says.... One more thing.

I did want to say one more thing about Siralim 2 and 3. Siralim 3 is absolutely better and if you own a PS4, there's no reason to ignore the physical version of Siralim 3 which is hands down the better game. Siralim 3 has a faster movement speed, an option to have a pop up appear above your head about the actions you do in a dungeon whether it's gaining resources, destroying a worthless background effect, etc, most of them will just come up as a pop up that does not slow the game down at all. The blood rites while losing what they do in the second game which are a positive, allow you to sacrifice any creature to gain the legendary crafting material for its specific trait so getting the exact trait you want to add on any weapon alone is worth the upgrade. Hundreds more costumes that you can swap into, my current costume is a hot dog with mustard on it. Even though there's a lot of traits missing from the second game that I do like, the third game also has more monsters which means more traits, there's even a Nemesis Orb which allows you to fight a harder version of any boss which is also based on the difficulty of the floor you're on and each of these drop three unique traits. There are holiday traits(which may exist in Siralim 2 I actually don't know,) etc. So Siralim 3 is by far the better version.

BUT. Siralim 2 if that's the only physical version that you can get, and that is all you can get on the Vita aside from the original, it is still definitely worth it. It's just not Siralim 3.

Scalpers are stil selling these great games(Siralim 2, 3, and Mystery Chronicle One Way Heroics) at a loss on Ebay, they may never be super expensive, but they're the hiddenest of the hidden gems for sure.

[Leo_A]

i wonder if the dlc and movies and such will have a problem when you use a japan vita in america next year?

I'm sure any movies would be region locked.

And I imagine downloadable content for PS3 software will have some region limitations just like it does on the PS3. Download an expansion pack from the North American PSN for a specific game while owning the region free European release of the game won't work, for instance. The expansion will install to a folder like "Game X (North America)", but the European disc copy will be looking for a folder called "Game X (Europe)" and won't see it. You have to match your patches and expansions with the region your retail game or download came from, even though they're the same game and the same download.

And I imagine you'll continue to not be able to use a credit card with an account from a different region just like PSN does today (Although you can just import a points card to work around that).

I bet it will be pretty similar to how the Playstation 3 and PSN on the system operates. You're pretty free to do what you want and play what you want, especially now that PSN points card have become available that you can import to easily make purchases from other regions. That was the biggest roadblock early on to fully enjoying the region free nature of the PS3.

This was Sony's way of punking Nintendo for abandoning region free games on the 3DS. And it gives them one more bullet point to put on the back of the box although I doubt they will use it.

Considering that the Playstation 3 is region free for games and that handhelds (including the PSP) have traditionally been region free, I really doubt it has anything to do with the 3DS.

[G-Boobie]

So you guys can argue about whether or not theoretical people have had issues with the PS3 all you want: I'm on my third unit, which would be my fourth if I didn't pay to have my 60 gig fixed. I had to mail it to Chicago because when I contacted Sony to confirm that I'd get a backwards compatible unit in return for my busted backwards compatible unit, they couldn't guarantee it.

I lost one to the YLOD and my girlfriend's died so completely that it wouldn't even switch on. Utterly inert.

And no, Frankie, we don't smoke, we dust every week, the consoles sit out in the open with no vents covered and plenty of ventilation, there are no children pouring juice into them, etc.

I'll wait until all the inevitable kinks are worked out of the Vita. I haven't had the best reliablility experience this generation.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

So you guys can argue about whether or not theoretical people have had issues with the PS3 all you want: I'm on my third unit, which would be my fourth if I didn't pay to have my 60 gig fixed. I had to mail it to Chicago because when I contacted Sony to confirm that I'd get a backwards compatible unit in return for my busted backwards compatible unit, they couldn't guarantee it.

I lost one to the YLOD and my girlfriend's died so completely that it wouldn't even switch on. Utterly inert.

And no, Frankie, we don't smoke, we dust every week, the consoles sit out in the open with no vents covered and plenty of ventilation, there are no children pouring juice into them, etc.

I'll wait until all the inevitable kinks are worked out of the Vita. I haven't had the best reliablility experience this generation.

*sigh*

I didn't deny that PS3s break down (YLOD, etc.) and I wasn't about to challenge you or anybody who has had issues with their PS3.

I'm personally on my second 60GB PS3! (FYI Sony presently guarantees a model-for-model replacement on all hardware repairs, so 60GB BC owners rest easy if repair is needed)

Ultimately, electronics break down via regular, standard usage.

Hell, EVERYTHING breaks, there is no perpetual anything.

I'm on my 6th XBOX360, 4th PS2, I lost count of how many PS1s I owned during that system's peak popularity, and I take excellent care of my hardware.

I merely challenged the notion that some type of extraordinary hardware failure is or ever was a quote-unquote "significant" issue in the history of the system akin to what we've seen in other systems (especially its contemporary the XBOX360)

Sony happened to officially be on record with a statistic of -1 percent failure rate pre-2007.

I didn't make that statistic up but if some sample data from a 3rd party company of 2000-something PS3 owners in 2009 says differently, fine, we'll use that data. No problem.

That data still doesn't add up to something statistically "significant", and that's not my opinion, that's a by-the-numbers fact.

Now, NES1, PS1, PS2, XBOX 360, those are some systems that come to mind when discussing systems designed with significant flaws which ultimately required a drastic hardware revision with some measure of intent to alleviate hardware failure via regular usage.

[98PaceCar]

I'm pretty sure that the standard definition of statistically significant is 5%. Being at 10% would be easily significant in that case. Just because other similar hardware has a higher rate doesn't change the fact that the PS3 suffered a high rate of early failures.