Ten... PlayStation Vita launch games Reg Hardware Mobile Week Sony has made sure the Vita doesn't suffer from the same lack of games the Nintendo 3DS did upon release, so there's a broad set of launch titles to keep fans happy. Combine that with dozens of third-party offerings and you have a quality bunch to pick from. I had to narrow down ten from a collection …
Superstardust Delta was given a Recommended badge and a 85% score when it was listed as a £35 game.
Now you have corrected the price to it's £6.50, it still gets the same score?
How does that work? I knew EL-Reg's scoring system is pretty meaningless when it's paired up with sloppy journalism, but this is taking th biscuit surely.
If you read the text of the review it talks about how inexpensive the game is... the price was corrected as there was a mistake in the input, but I never once thought it was priced at £35. As somebody who has visited the Housemarque studios in Finland, it's one of the franchises I'm most familiar with and gave it a lot of time.
I double checked the launch prices after your complaint yesterday though and other than the Stardust error, any other games to change from the prices we had previously received, had actually increased a fiver or so. All have been corrected now.
I agree, Escape Plan is superb and for a tenner it's great value for money. As with Super Stardust: Delta, it shows you don't need to fork out excessively for great content. Unfortunately it seems Fifa and Uncharted are that expensive because publishers know punters will pay for them regardless. Still, I wouldn't say Vita games were too overpriced - some bring a lot of bang for the buck.
Can't trust review scores these days. It's a far cry from the likes of Crash, Amiga Power and the original ACE where people who played games day in day out could give an honest score in an era before the games industry would withdraw all future review copies and advertising in return for a bad score.
This happened even back then. I remember reading an article in CU Amiga magazine (IIRC) almost exactly 20 years ago that described the pressure put on them by some unspecified publisher because they had dared to give the game something like 89% (the rules for most mags in general back then were 90% or over was "award" level stuff, under 70% was quite weak- ratings were skewed towards the end of the scale even then).
IIRC they said that the review was withdrawn.
No they did not close because of their accurate scoring, They closed because the Amiga games scene had died on it's backside.
They did of course attract a load of enemies and lawsuits. Only one lawsuit succeeded and that wasn't review related. More here - http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/dissent/dissent.html
I am willing to be pursuaded that £40 is a good price for a Vita game. But at that price they have to offer the same level of gameplay as I would expect from its big brother.
£40 for 6 - 8 hours of gameplay is just a rip off, regardless of how good the game may seem. If you want to charge that much you have to get closer to 15 - 20 hours to begin to make it good value for money. That is what I would expect from a PS3 game at that price. I picked up Skyrim for £35 and have easily reached more then 50 hours worth game stunning gameplay, and they want £40 for 8? No thanks.
You can't compare Skyrim though, there are plenty of full-blown PS3 titles with 8 hours gameplay that cost £40 too. Apparently less than half of gamers even complete a game, so epic titles like Skyrim are becoming an expensive prospect most publishers aren't willing to take a risk on unfortunately.
OK fair point, but I would argue that more people should be hitting back at publishers over the price. We just seem to happily accept that £40 is the price of a new game these days without questioning if that really is good value for money.
I don't deny that the production values of a lot of modern games are just staggering, but there comes a point that I think that all that goes out of the window when it takes me just 8 hours to complete. I don't think it is asking for much to see a game that is costing me £40 to last longer then a week. They are ultimately the titles that I will rent, wait to drop in price or pick up used.
I didn't purchase any of the 3 uncharted games for example, they were all rented off Lovefilm. I think they are a great example. They are stunning games, absolutely stunning. But over in less then a week with very little in the way of replayability.
I think the Vita is capable of delivering on really high end, quality and long games, and I would pay £40 for them. But I wouldn't pay £40 because someone, somewhere has arbitarily decided that they are worth the same as a PS3 game.
Reading that back it sounds a cold way of looking at something that I love and takes up the vast majority of my free time! But at £40 a pop its not a cheap hobby! I am forever grateful that Lovefilm makes continuing that hobby so much more affordable!
When you put things into perspective, though, the prices are usually fair. When you buy a new DVD you can pay over a tenner for it, for a return of roughly 2 hours. It's just the price of entertainment.
When these products get old, you get 'em for a cut price, be that games, movies or even physical music sales.
Way I see it, if you get more than eight hours for £40, you've had your monies worth and anything else is a bonus. A trip for two to the cinema can easily cost the same.
When has £40 not been the standard price point for new big hype titles though? (Or for some £50)
Personally I have paid a lot of money for a few games in the past, Skyrim, Civ 5, one of the Europa Universallis extensions, Arsenal of Democracy... a few others. But normally I'm happy to wait a good while before getting a game, and most big hype games arn't worth the space they take up on a remote server.
Then I'm not a big title player, I'm just going through the psn market place and getting all the jrpgs.
Another thing - I find the idea of measuring a games value solely or predominantly on how long it takes to complete. Of course you want it to last a decent amount of time, but at the same time I'd much rather have 8-10hrs of a stunning game than 50+hrs of mediocrity.
Of course, 50hrs of stunning is nice on the rare occasion it happens....
Couple of points...
Firstly, if you're talking about Uncharted, then the PS3 version is generally quoted as having "around 10 hours" of gameplay. I've seen the Vita version quoted as "8-10" hours not the 6-8 that's being bandied about here, so it's pretty much comparable to the PS3 version. Now, you can debate if that's long enough for a game these days, but it's not short for an Uncharted game.
Gameplay wise it's very much the full fat Uncharted, it's not been compromised for the handheld from my play through so far (only 3 chapters in). All that said, £40 still feels like a lot for a handheld game to me and I won't be buying many others, if any, at that price. Well - maybe LittleBigPlanet when it comes out.
The other point I'd make is that the £40 price point seems to be reserved for the big name titles - there is plenty available in the £5 - £20 range, including Motorstorm RC and Escape Plan which are both excellent value.
Obviously I've bought mine for the wrong reasons and should take it back immediately.
Or perhaps I just don't share your blinkered views. FYI, from what I've read Ridge Racer is a crock of shit. Lumines doesn't interest me in the least. Happily there's plenty of other games for me to play :)
Why are you being such a jerk about it?
I never said anyone should only play certain things, or take their PSV back.
I urged people to try games they may not have done. I was also pointing out el reg has reviewed 10 games here, and missed off two "biggies".
You've read Ridge Racer is bad, but anyone reading el reg wouldn't know that! (Personally, I like Ridge Racer for many reasons, but I can see why people think it's too simplistic a racer.)
So back to my original message, I see you haven't played either game. Hey, at least try them eh? I think Lumines at least has a free demo.
OK, maybe I had the sarcasm turned up a bit too high...
The problem with any "Ten..." round up is that inevitably some things are going to be missed - as I posted earlier in the thread, I think Escape Plan is a massive omission as for my money it's the best title on the machine.
Hmm. Looking at the prices for my local Odious cinema:
Chronicle - 83m - £9 for an adult ticket - cost £6 p/h.
U3 - 600m - £35 - cost £3.50 p/h
If you accept that videogaming is a comparable entertainment medium to seeing a film in a cinema (and given the budgets many games are developed with, and the size of the industry this isn't an unfair comparison), it's wayyy better value.
600 minutes on Uncharted 3
Bit more than that.
You miss a lot on one playthrough, so do another run, then might as well do it on crushing. Not many trophies left so why not? And that is before doing the multiplayer. I think it took me well over 20 hours getting towards 30 to finish all on the single player, not got so much into the MP as Uncharted 2 however. I worked out Uncharted 2 has cost me about 10p an hour including all of the DLC.
Last game I played with only 1 whole play through was Rage.
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