I will continue playing my Vita for years to come. With my Vita I could happily retreat to my bedroom, playing my games and hiding from family, effectively killing two birds with one stone. Visiting in-laws, for example, do not want to watch me explode super mutants in Fallout 4. I often find myself in situations where the mature game I’m playing is inappropriate for the people in my house.
In addition to playing Vita games, I’ve long used my Vita as for its remarkable Remote Play capabilities. I played so much Trails of Cold Steel that I could hear Alisa shout “REAN!” in my sleep. I’m afraid to look at how many hours I’ve put into that thing. I picked up Civilization Revolution 2 for 99 cents (along with X-Com) in a Humble Bundle, and have been on a three year quest to platinum it (still not even close). I’ve put over 100 hours into Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (and don’t get me started on the sequel).
Of course, that list of Plus games doesn’t include the giant collection of games I’ve actually purchased.
One of my favorite vacation activities is to pull out my Vita and download a couple of games that I haven’t tried yet from my ridiculous backlog (which is at least five times as long as the above list). The Vita is a great little system, and there are tons of games in my library that I have never had time to play. I find the quality of the list rather stunning: While there are far too many games in my library to list them all, the following are some of my favorite titles that I have received via the PlayStation Plus program. The early days of Plus, when they would give you an “instant game collection” just for signing up were…awesome. With the Plus program winding down for Vita in March of 2019, I took a quick scan back through my Vita library to see what all was hiding in there from the past several years of Plus accumulation. It has been through PlayStation Plus that I have developed an extremely robust collection of games for the Vita.
While there have been plenty of not-terribly-exciting titles included with the Plus offerings for Vita, there have also been some real gems, many of which have been cross-buy with the PS4 (meaning that members have received both versions of the game). After I picked up the Vita, I made a habit of going online on the first Tuesday of every month and jamming on the Download button next to the month’s free games, whether I was planning on playing them immediately or not. While Sony gets maligned by the fan community for a lack of Vita support, they should at least be given credit for their continued support of the device via the PlayStation Plus program. The folks at Chucklefish tossed Vita fans a nice treat with the release of Stardew Valley in May 2018. There are more games available for PlayStation Vita than the average gamer could play in a decade.
Along with all of the new titles being delivered by companies like XSEED and Kemco, Vita is also capable of playing a ton of older PS1 and PS2 era titles, as well as most of the PSP library.īrowsing through the PlayStation Store, I always snicker a little when I think of all the people that I have heard say “There aren’t any games for Vita”. In recent years, the Vita has become an indie and JRPG machine, with new titles released at a steady rate of a few a month. While Borderlands 2 was one of the last “AAA” titles released for Vita, there has been a steady stream of indie content flowing onto the system ever since. I bought my first PlayStation Vita on May 13, 2014, with the release of the Borderlands 2 bundle.