Playstation Vita Review

The Playstation Vita comes with a decent amount of pre-installed applications, and some of the more useful ones are available for free from the Playstation store.

While the Vita comes with Augmented Reality (AR) cards like the Nintendo 3DS, you can’t use them until you download some free simple games from the Playstation Store.  The first of these games are Cliff Diving, which transforms your desk or table into a mini pool that a diver jumps into.

The second one is Fireworks, which displays a house or building onto your desk and you launch and detonate fireworks with the touchpad.  Of course both of these games respond to motion controls, so the angle of these objects change as you move the Vita around.

The third free AR game is Table Soccer, which creates a virtual soccer field wherever you want.  Also available is a static model from the Resistance franchise that you can move around.

One of the more useful downloads is a Netflix client, which lets you stream movies and TV shows from the Netflix catalogue, and of course you must have an active account to use it.

Social applications

To really compete with tablets and smartphones, the Vita also has some social applications.  To get the most out of these you really need to have a 3G version of the handheld; otherwise you have to be in a hotspot and connect to it.

There is a decent Facebook client, but unfortunately is a very basic client so you can’t play FB games. LiveTweet lets you update your Twitter feed and browse your Twitter account.

The Foursquare client lets you check in at places on the go, but again this usefulness is severely limited unless you have 3G enabled.  The same holds true with the Flickr client, which lets you take photos from your Vita and upload them in real time to your account.

The last of the free applications is Music Unlimited.  This is a pay service that you can use to stream unlimited music (as long as you have a subscription), and it does come with a 30-day free trial.  Be wary however: any application that requires a credit card for a “free trial” is never truly free.  The app does have the ability to cache songs you like to your memory card for times when you don’t have a network connection.

Next we look at graphics and games…