As you may or may not have seen or heard, on Friday, February 3rd, The Destructoid Show had their first ever live show in front of a live audience! I was there in attendance for the show, and I got to play a few PlayStation Vita games as well.

First off, the show was really fun. Max and Tara kept their usual charm, even while being in front of a live audience. The first part of the show was like their regular news segments they do every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The second part of the show had Max, Tara, and several other Revision3 hosts talking about the PlayStation Vita and some of the different games they had to offer at the Vita Hill Social Club.

If you haven’t watched the whole show yet, do so! You’ll see yours truly at several points, including when Tara gave me a uDraw tablet and a couple games and Max says I’m cosplaying as him. Watch it here!



The Vita Hill Social Club was a really nice place. They had a couple PS3 stations, one of which you could try out the cross-platform compatibility of Wipeout, while the other had Uncharted 3 playing on those Sony 3D split screen TV’s. As for the Vitas, they had a menu of games that you could choose games to play from. The staff would stop by every so often and ask if there was a game you’d like to play, and then bring you a Vita with the game you wanted to play installed on it.

I didn’t play with the Vita’s main UI much, but I did like what I saw of it. All of the menus are touch controlled, which is kind of a surprise at first. But the way the UI is laid out, it all ends up working pretty well being touch controlled. As for the Vita itself, I was afraid that with all the buttons and sticks that it would end up being bulky. I was surprised to find that it actually fit pretty well in my hands and it wasn’t too much to handle.



As for the games, I checked out four different games: Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Wipeout 2048, Sound Shapes, and Reality Fighters. Uncharted was pretty fun. I wasn’t very excited to play it only because I had never played an Uncharted game before, so it was overall a new experience for me. It played pretty much how I expected Uncharted to play, with some touch controls thrown in like having to swipe the screen to cut a sheet up that was blocking my path. Wipeout was, well, Wipeout. The game was fun, but it wasn’t anything new. I expected it to have accelerometer controls, but when I tried those it didn’t work. It was most likely a control setting turned off by one of the previous users. Sound Shapes was neat, but was also kind of boring. There wasn’t much of a challenge in the game until near the end of the demo. I think the full game may be a little more fun, since the demo was trying to ease me into the challenge of the whole game.

Reality Fighters was the most interesting game I played. I started out with making a new character using my face. I then added costume pieces, picked a fighting style, picked a stance, and made a few other customizations. I played through the story mode for a while, and it was pretty neat. The only thing I didn’t like about Reality Fighters was the fact that the overall camera used an augmented reality twist to it. When you start a match you have to press the X button to “lock in” the characters. If you move the Vita, the camera moves. If you move it in a direction too much you can’t see what is happening. It’s not too bad, but with a handheld device where you’re moving it around and pressing buttons, the camera took a little getting used to.



Near the end of my time with Reality Fighters, Anthony Carboni came up and said we were going to go to a bar and drink all the beers. This was a challenge I needed to take part in. I followed him and several other Revision3 personalities to the bar where we attempted to drink all the beers. I didn’t drink all the beers, but I sure got drunk.



Overall, the Vita felt like a solid portable that has a lot of potential. None of the games sold me on the device, but they were fun nonetheless. My only concern for the Vita is that it has the cameras and the front touchscreen and back touchpad and accelerometer and probably a coffee maker somewhere in there. Reason this concerns me is because I feel that developers may either over utilize the device and make games that are overall confusing to play and control, or just make basic games that don’t use any of the extras the Vita has to offer. I hope I’m wrong about that, but we’ll see in the coming months when the Vita is released and more games come out for it.

As for the event itself, I had a great time, and it was one of the best days/nights out I’ve had in a long while. It was great to see Max and Tara again for the first time since PAX, and it was also great to meet some of the other Revision3 people like Anthony Carboni and Zac Minor. If The Destructoid Show and Revision3 decide to have another meet and greet event in the future, I will definitely be there.