Unconventional controls are the name of the game with the PlayStation Vita’s launch title Little Deviants. You will use the touchscreen, rear touchscreen, microphone, sixaxis motion controls and even augmented reality to go through 30 different levels designed to get you comfortable with all the Vita’s bells and whistles. For the more traditional gamers you will find some comfort in once in a while getting to use the L and R buttons.
This game could have easily become just a showcase of what the Vita can do, but there is some legitimate fun to be had here. The plot is barely present, but enough to keep things moving along. The opening cut scene shows the Botz shooting down the spaceship containing all the little deviants. After the ship crashes the Botz resurrect Dead ‘Un to help capture the deviants. It is up to you to put your spaceship back together by playing through 30 mini games levels, acquiring a spaceship piece with each completed level. The levels all have point thresholds that need to be hit to move on. You can either get enough points for a bronze, silver or gold spaceship, with the bronze being the minimum needed to continue and everything after that being strictly for gallery items and trophies. But standing in your way are Botz and Dead ‘Uns, which is Little Deviants talk for robots and zombies, who are against you for some reason that is never given…
Visually this game does look very good. The cute cartoony characters and stages come through brilliantly on the Vita’s OLED screen. The only time this game doesn’t look great is during the augmented reality missions. The characters and everything else the Vita adds is still great with the augmented reality, but the Vita’s camera makes the background look terrible. This is just made worse by when you move the Vita quickly and takes away from the experience a touch.
Little Deviants adds some multiplayer to the mix as well. It only lets you send out and accept challenges from friends to defend your honor in whatever mini game you choose. This isn’t by any means instant and becomes just checking to see if you won or not. It is a nice little added touch, but it is no way needed to add to the experience.
Now for some of the negative points. I’ll admit this game had moments of great fun, but it gets repetitive. After the first couple worlds many of the levels just become more difficult versions of mini games from earlier. Still fun, but I’ve seen this before fun. Also depending on where you play most of your mobile gaming this may not be good for you at all. If you do most of your mobile gaming on the bus/train you will look like a borderline crazy person with some of these mini games and an all-out crazy person if you play the augmented reality in public.
Lastly we need to ask if this game is even necessary. The Vita already comes with Welcome Park installed on it, which also showcases the Vita’s bells and whistles and is free. Little Deviants makes it prettier and more fun without a doubt but if you just want something to get acquainted with what the Vita can do you can get off without picking this up. Or you can get the bundle that comes with Little Deviants anyways.
Overall this is an okay game. At first it had moments of what seemed like greatness that invokes memory of Wii Sports. Just having a great time seeing what a new system can do. The main difference being that instead of the family gathering around the TV playing sports together it is me spinning around shooting augmented reality robots scaring those around me. But just like Wii Sports the mini game collection gets boring after a while. Which is why this can’t be fully recommended.
VGChartz's Adam Cartwright: "Many would argue – and I wouldn’t really disagree – that the PlayStation Vita never really had a killer app. There wasn’t that one piece of software that helped change the console’s fortunes. The closest we got was arguably Persona 4 Golden, an early release that received huge critical acclaim, but it was part of a niche series and as such its sales impact from a hardware perspective was muted.
There were missed opportunities along the way, as certain titles had the potential to change the Vita’s fortunes, but the way the final product was delivered (if indeed it was delivered at all) left a lot to be desired and so they didn’t reach their full potential. It’s these games I’m aiming to look at this in this article – 10 games that were missed opportunities on Vita. I’m not saying that every release I’ll be talking out here had the potential to be a “killer app”, but if they had been executed a little better they would have undoubtedly been a key factor in helping the console reach a wider audience."
My soul still aches over the idea of making 3D Dot Game Heroes a Vita series never happening after the dev studio expressed interest in doing so. Could've been a flagship for it, or at least carried it a bit further.
The vita contributed to the ps3 having less support from Japanese devs. I hope sony keep focusing on one console at time like they are now in the future
VGChartz's Adam Cartwright: "There are examples out there of games being developed for Vita that truly make the most of its inputs, coming up with unique ways of interacting with the hardware to make for a memorable gaming experience. It’s these titles I’m looking at in this article – what they are and how they worked on Vita, both in terms of what they did right and what they could have done better."
It’s that time of the month again folks. The time where gamers collectively gather all over the internet to criticize what free games they get this month. So, who plundered the other’s fanboys for all their self-worth and gratification in life? Who was the victor in June? Let’s take a look.
Where the heck do you get Wii Sports out of this game???