The PlayStation Vita is the $250 handheld that either the world desperately needed or needed not at all. It could go either way in this era of rampant cell phone gaming, where many games are played with nary the press of a button or flick of a stick.
The Vita (reviewed here) gives us a $250-$300 handheld machine with sticks, touch panels, lots of buttons, a fully-downloadable game library (optional; you can buy many of the games in physical stores), lots of online features and, oh yeah, graphical horsepower like we've never seen before in a gaming handheld.
Cool. So what must you play on this thing? Start with these games.
Update 11/12/2012: The quality of titles available for Sony's handheld keeps getting better so we're refreshing the list of what we think are the best games for the PlayStation Vita. New to the Bests for Vita are: Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Need for Speed Most Wanted and Persona 4 Golden. Games that fell off the list include Mutant Blobs Attack, Wipeout 2048 and Escape Plan. They're still good but their replacements are just a wee bit more impressive.
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
Sure, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation brings the massive open-world architecture of Ubisoft's hit franchise to a handheld. The 18th Century New Orleans looks great, too. But, the best thing about the Vita game is how it evolves the franchise's formula to accommodate new heroine Aveline de Grandpre's gender and biracial background into the plot and story. (Read our review.)
A Good Match For: World travelers. Yeah, Aveline switches between French and English in Liberation, but it's her guises that let speak her slip into different strata of society. Unlike other AC protagonists, Aveline can change into three personas with unique abilities. She can start worker revolts as an undercover Slave, bribe guards as a high-society Lady to get into secure locations, and wield the most weapons as the secretive Assassin.
Not For Those Who Want: A rock-solid play experience. Liberation is clearly pushing the limits of the Vita and Ubisoft's new Anvil engine. Problem is, it always feels like that's the case. This game is still an experience worth having but glitches and occasional crashes might mar your time with it.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop | PlayStation Store
FIFA Soccer
Soccer. Football. Whatever you want to call it. It's the console-style FIFA game that people love, with the added feature of the best implementation of the Vita's rear touch panel.
A Good Match for: Sports fans, fans of sports games, whose other options at Vita launch are this, golf (see below) or a forthcoming baseball game.
Not for Those Who Want: Sports games that sync with their home games. This one does not.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
Gravity Rush
Gravity Rush is a delight, an open-world adventure game built around a truly new-feeling mechanic. The protagonist Kat is able to re-orient gravity, letting her fall in any direction. It's something of a mix between falling and flying, and it makes the game a uniquely disorienting, highly enjoyable experience. Combine those mechanical smarts with a wonderfully imaginative, fun story, lush visuals, gorgeous art design and a dizzy, grand soundtrack and you've got a real winner for the PSVita. (Read our review.)
A Good Match for: Crackdown and Infamous fans, people who like their games to look and play differently, jazz-heads.
Not for Those Who Want: Familiar mechanics, deep and involved combat.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from the PlayStation Store
Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational
It's golf with cartoon characters and some of the coolest uses of the Vita as a gyro-enabled camera. Check out this preview we shot.
A Good Match for: People who like golf games, obviously!
Not for Those Who Want: Real golfers and real courses. This isn't crazy Mario Golf fantasy, but it's not Tiger Woods-sim-authentic either.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
LittleBigPlanet Vita
LittleBigPlanet has found a great fit in the touchable, tiltable PSVita—while the game's platforming is as goofy yet imprecise as ever, the level creation tools get a new life on Sony's handheld. It's easier than ever to get creative thanks to the Vita's touch screen, and with the number of tools made available to players, your only limit is your imagination. This one deserves a spot in any Vita library. (Read our review.)
A Good Match for: People who like to make things, people who like messing around with things others have made.
Not for Those Who Want: A precise, challenging platformer, or a game with a lengthy single-player story.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop | PlayStation Store
Lumines: Electronic Symphony
Tetris goes to a rave. That's what this is. This is as much a falling-block puzzle game as it is an interactive electronica concert. Either aspect is cool enough in this game that you can hate the other and still have a pretty good time. (Read our review.)
A Good Match for: The legions of people whose good taste caused them to declare the first Lumines as the best launch game for Sony's previous handheld.
Not for Those Who Want: ... their games to be more tough than meditative, who need their game sessions to terminate before they get to their bus stop.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | GameStop
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Through some type of digital alchemy, Criterion has managed to take the full console version of Need For Speed: Most Wanted and bring it to the Vita, with only a few graphical concessions. The only concession is that it only allows for four multiplayer racers instead of eight. All that and it (theoretically) ties in to your EA account and allowing you to earn Autolog points on the go. Whether played as a companion to the big-screen version or taken on its own, Most Wanted is the Vita's strongest racing game, and a great showcase for the tiny handheld's not-so-tiny power. (Read our review of the console version.)
A Good Match for: People who like to drive really expensive cars really fast.
Not for Those Who Want: A game that's about anything other than driving really expensive cars really fast.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop | PlayStation Store
Persona 4 Golden
Japanese high school never seemed so much fun. Persona 4 Golden, a remake of the critically-acclaimed PlayStation 2 role-playing game, combines a social simulator and a hardcore RPG with surprisingly addictive results. Take midterms in the morning, eat steak with your girlfriend on the roof for lunch, then head to the mall after school to fight off shadow monsters in a dangerous world that exists inside televisions. Just another day in Persona 4's Japan.
A Good Match For: RPG fans who want something different than the standard fantasy or sci-fi fare, or Persona fans looking for a good excuse to replay the fourth one.
Not For Those Who Want: Something short. Persona 4 Golden will take you something like 70-80 hours to beat—and that's before you start New Game Plus.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop | PlayStation Store
Rayman: Origins
We loved this cartoony, musically-amazing side-scroller on the PlayStation 3 so of course we love this shot-for-shot port on the Vita. (Well, shot-for-shot of the singleplayer.) We can take this one with us. And hug it. So maybe we love it even more.
A Good Match for: People who enjoy running from left to right while sometimes hopping, i.e. fans of Super Mario, Sonic and all good side-scrollers. This one is fun and a beauty.
Not for Those Who Want: Black and white. (See: Escape Plan.)
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
Sound Shapes
Is it a game? Or is it a musical instrument? This side-scrolling platformer mixes art, music and level design into something more than just a game, but does it matter? It's awesome, and that's what counts. As players make their way through the levels, the "coins" they'd be collecting in a Mario game instead cause musical sounds to begin to trigger, and the more of them they collect, the more complete the backing track becomes. With levels creatively designed around tunes from Beck, Deadmau5 and Jim Guthrie, the music never gets old, and the levels never do either. Pack that in with a level-creator that works well with the Vita's touch screen and lets you build your own compositions, cloud-saving that allows cloud saves to the PS3 version, and you've got a musical game that's not like anything else out there.
A Good Match for: People who love platformers, music fans, anyone who is into indie games, people who like creating things.
Not for Those Who Want: A story in their game, complicated mechanics, a game they can play on the bus without headphones.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from the PlayStation Store
Super Stardust Delta
It's a twin-stick arcade shooter. On a portable gaming system. That has twin sticks. This is a descendant of Asteroids, Space Invaders and so many other games that were just about shooting down space enemies to earn a high score. But this one has the visual fireworks to make it one of the most dazzling handheld games ever. (This game is download-only; read our review.)
A Good Match for: People with two thumbs.
Not for Those Who Want: ... a storyline, an adventure or anything else you wouldn't expect from an arcade game.
Here's how it looks in action.
Purchase from the PlayStation Store
Where Is My Heart
It's not too much of a stretch to say that Where Is My Heart? re-invents almost every convention of the platformer genre. There's still running and jumping in this adventure where a family of three monsters tries to track down their lost home. But those actions happen in a fractured landscape where going right can put you on the top of the screen. WIMH blends the sense of displacement created by its 2D Escher-ism with a clever mechanic that lets you rotate the paneled blocks of the gameworld around an axis. It's funny, intriguing and disorienting all at once, just like life.
A Good Match for: Genealogists. You literally can't get anywhere worthwhile in the game without plopping one monster relative on top of another's head and sometimes, you'll transform a monster or three into a ancestor with special abilities. Danish developer Bernie Schulenburg made a game that serves as touching metaphor for family ties and players will probably think about the loved ones who helped them jump to life's next level as they journey deeper into the experience.
Not for Those Who Want: Stomping onto enemies' heads. Where Is My Heart? is gentler than most other Mario-style games and the thrill comes from cracking the environmental puzzles of each level.
Here's how it looks in action.
NOTE: This list will be updated if and when we discover better games. We will only ever list 12 games, at the most. And, in the case of the Vita, we will give this list another pass this week to incorporate some of the best downloadable PSP games
