Alright guys,
So as some of you may know, Sony are setting up "pop-up shops" so to speak, to promote the Vita, there calling them PS Vita rooms and they hit Manchester this weekend.
They had a pre open party on Thursday night and opened to the public Friday 12pm and at 12.01, lol, I walk though the door!!!
The shop had been properly kitted out with Vita signs all over the show and small booths with pretty much all the launch games for you to try. I would say, all in all, there must have been around 30-40 Vitas running, the Manchester shop is over 2 floors.
There were booths showing off the AR stuff, i think it was reality fighters didn't get there, booths showing off the PS3/Vita cross play using Wipeout, Near was being demoed and there were loads of staff around willing to take on any questions you may have had, a good set up to be honest!!!
So, I walked in and grabbed the first vita I saw, which was running Little Deviants, some game where you had to pinch the front and rear touch panels a flick a ball around, good but not what I wanted to see, where was Unchartered!
I pressed the Playstation button and cancelled out of the game and found the memory card, a 16Gb one, had demos of pretty much all the launch games, I found Unchartered, started it and some chick came over and told me "I wasn't allowed to play it down here as Unchartered was being demoed upstairs", so I went upstairs, lol.
Being one of the first people in, I could get on any game I liked really, I had a quick look at someone playing Fifa, very smooth looking, LBP, the guy didn't know what he was doing on it, had a quick 3 laps of wipeout, just what you would expect and then I got on Unchartered.
Now, I am no way any kind of fanboy, be it Sony or Nintendo, I have a 3DS and I have a Vita on preorder. I have a 360 but I don't have a PS3 so I have not played an Unchartered game before but have seen lots of game play vids and stuff. It plays fine, the graphics are great, fire looked good, smoke looked good, motion aiming worked well, touch climbing worked well and I must say, I was Very impressed. I finished the demo, don't really want to spoil it for anyone, and as there was now quite a cue behind me thought I best had leave it now!!
I then ended up sitting down with one of the staff and for the next 3 hours, yes you read that right!! talk about the vita.
Now let me talk about the system. Some of the Vitas on show were retail machines and some debug units or demo units. The demo units were version 1 and the retail units version 4?? They all looked exactly the same but I must say, the Unchartered machine I used was a Retail unit and the one I had access to while talking to the staff guy, was not. There was a massive difference with the analog sticks. The retail units had much more spring in them over the demo unit and felt alot better. This may be because it hadn't been used as much, I don't know, but they just felt better.
The system itself is a good size, nowhere near as big as I thought it was going to be. The face buttons on the other hand are alot smaller, say the size of a pencil ,diameter. The sticks are quite small to, maybe the size of a 5p, but work great. The shoulder buttons are nice and I can confirm they are pressure sensitive, another lad who was sat with us tried it out by holding his revs at the beginning of modnation racers just to try them, he also said he had Unchartered on PS3 and it was very comparable.
I do however have a couple of downer points???
The screen, though beautiful, is nowhere near as bright as I thought it was going to be? By holding the PS button, it opens up a menu where you can change some things quickly, like brightness. The brightness slider is analog so to speak, not predetermined points to set to, you slide it and let go where you want it set and on the brightest setting I still expected more??? This by no means makes the playing experience bad, but when you read all the reviews about the Vita, they all seem to go on about how bright the screen is. May be this is because it isn't backlit and for this fact it is impressive, but I just wanted more, but lets think of our battery life ay!! lol.
All the Vitas were hooked up to headphones, probably craps ones, but I found the volume to be very low. Bear in mind it was quite noisy in there but still, I even asked the staff guy if there was any way to turn it higher, and this lad did know his stuff. He did look into some menu but we had a demo unit and not everything was accessible. This may also be down to european volume levels, which for some reason have to be set much lower than say the USA???? time will tell.
And really the last little thing I have to mention is how the screen just seems to attracted finger prints!!! I'm not even joking when I say this and I would highly recommend that anyone getting a Vita to GET a screen protector because we're going to be wiping the screens an awful lot, trust me.
And that really, is that, if anyone wants to ask anything, I will try and answer, but all in all, me going to try the Vita has just made waiting till the 22nd feb even longer, really looking forward to getting one of my very own now!!.
Just 2 other things!!!!!!!! The staff lad said that Call of duty will be released WITHIN the launch window, so thats within 3 months of launch, he also said it was going to be COD 3 but didn't know if it will be tweeked in any way??? He also said that the tech guys would not tell him what was coming for the mystery expansion port on the top of the Vita but he said they were very excited about some of the things they had seen????? who knows!!!!
Happy gaming guys and roll on Feb 22nd, cheers!!!!
So as some of you may know, Sony are setting up "pop-up shops" so to speak, to promote the Vita, there calling them PS Vita rooms and they hit Manchester this weekend.
They had a pre open party on Thursday night and opened to the public Friday 12pm and at 12.01, lol, I walk though the door!!!
The shop had been properly kitted out with Vita signs all over the show and small booths with pretty much all the launch games for you to try. I would say, all in all, there must have been around 30-40 Vitas running, the Manchester shop is over 2 floors.
There were booths showing off the AR stuff, i think it was reality fighters didn't get there, booths showing off the PS3/Vita cross play using Wipeout, Near was being demoed and there were loads of staff around willing to take on any questions you may have had, a good set up to be honest!!!
So, I walked in and grabbed the first vita I saw, which was running Little Deviants, some game where you had to pinch the front and rear touch panels a flick a ball around, good but not what I wanted to see, where was Unchartered!
I pressed the Playstation button and cancelled out of the game and found the memory card, a 16Gb one, had demos of pretty much all the launch games, I found Unchartered, started it and some chick came over and told me "I wasn't allowed to play it down here as Unchartered was being demoed upstairs", so I went upstairs, lol.
Being one of the first people in, I could get on any game I liked really, I had a quick look at someone playing Fifa, very smooth looking, LBP, the guy didn't know what he was doing on it, had a quick 3 laps of wipeout, just what you would expect and then I got on Unchartered.
Now, I am no way any kind of fanboy, be it Sony or Nintendo, I have a 3DS and I have a Vita on preorder. I have a 360 but I don't have a PS3 so I have not played an Unchartered game before but have seen lots of game play vids and stuff. It plays fine, the graphics are great, fire looked good, smoke looked good, motion aiming worked well, touch climbing worked well and I must say, I was Very impressed. I finished the demo, don't really want to spoil it for anyone, and as there was now quite a cue behind me thought I best had leave it now!!
I then ended up sitting down with one of the staff and for the next 3 hours, yes you read that right!! talk about the vita.
Now let me talk about the system. Some of the Vitas on show were retail machines and some debug units or demo units. The demo units were version 1 and the retail units version 4?? They all looked exactly the same but I must say, the Unchartered machine I used was a Retail unit and the one I had access to while talking to the staff guy, was not. There was a massive difference with the analog sticks. The retail units had much more spring in them over the demo unit and felt alot better. This may be because it hadn't been used as much, I don't know, but they just felt better.
The system itself is a good size, nowhere near as big as I thought it was going to be. The face buttons on the other hand are alot smaller, say the size of a pencil ,diameter. The sticks are quite small to, maybe the size of a 5p, but work great. The shoulder buttons are nice and I can confirm they are pressure sensitive, another lad who was sat with us tried it out by holding his revs at the beginning of modnation racers just to try them, he also said he had Unchartered on PS3 and it was very comparable.
I do however have a couple of downer points???
The screen, though beautiful, is nowhere near as bright as I thought it was going to be? By holding the PS button, it opens up a menu where you can change some things quickly, like brightness. The brightness slider is analog so to speak, not predetermined points to set to, you slide it and let go where you want it set and on the brightest setting I still expected more??? This by no means makes the playing experience bad, but when you read all the reviews about the Vita, they all seem to go on about how bright the screen is. May be this is because it isn't backlit and for this fact it is impressive, but I just wanted more, but lets think of our battery life ay!! lol.
All the Vitas were hooked up to headphones, probably craps ones, but I found the volume to be very low. Bear in mind it was quite noisy in there but still, I even asked the staff guy if there was any way to turn it higher, and this lad did know his stuff. He did look into some menu but we had a demo unit and not everything was accessible. This may also be down to european volume levels, which for some reason have to be set much lower than say the USA???? time will tell.
And really the last little thing I have to mention is how the screen just seems to attracted finger prints!!! I'm not even joking when I say this and I would highly recommend that anyone getting a Vita to GET a screen protector because we're going to be wiping the screens an awful lot, trust me.
And that really, is that, if anyone wants to ask anything, I will try and answer, but all in all, me going to try the Vita has just made waiting till the 22nd feb even longer, really looking forward to getting one of my very own now!!.
Just 2 other things!!!!!!!! The staff lad said that Call of duty will be released WITHIN the launch window, so thats within 3 months of launch, he also said it was going to be COD 3 but didn't know if it will be tweeked in any way??? He also said that the tech guys would not tell him what was coming for the mystery expansion port on the top of the Vita but he said they were very excited about some of the things they had seen????? who knows!!!!
Happy gaming guys and roll on Feb 22nd, cheers!!!!
