I'd like to take a minute before you read to explain some things. First, Mass Effect: Survivors is going to be a bigger undertaking than Denial of Self, so as a result it will take longer to write. Second, I am not perfect on Mass Effect canon so while I will consult the wiki whenever I have a debate,but keep in mind that this isn't any official material thus I probably will make a mistake or two. Third, I chose the characters I did for the story because they won't have any "wait, but that isn't how they acted in the game" moments -- or worse, a Dave Fiolini-esc "oh, so that last minute change is why" cascade. Alright, now that I've got that list over with:
You see the sky coming at me, rushing like an ocean. It's pretty for a minute, then the gunship turns towards me as it descends in free fall below. They're not spending a lot of time trying to aim, just shooting like a bunch of fucking idiots.
You keep up a mass effect field as you glide closer to the hulking mess. You've already got one engine torn off and the other is barely hanging on. One of the soldiers inside opens a door and starts trying to fire his rifle. You rip it away then embed it in his skull. He plows into the other door, opening it. The agents inside fly out as the air sucks them out.
You coil up and brace yourself on the side, glancing upwards. Three more gunships are on your tail, and they're charging to fire. You smash down on the nearest armor plating, then rip it off of its bolts.
You glance at the nearest gunship, trying to line up the shot. As its main cannons open up you throw the plating into its cockpit. You can see the blood spill out from the pilot as the ship suddenly loses altitude and begins falling.
You make a quick jump, using the crashing ship to reach the next one. You tap the cockpit window as you climb up it. The batarian pilot curses to himself.
As you reach the top you take in a quick breath. Then you plow in the biotics like a drill, ripping through the roof. As you drop down through the guards start firing. You send them all crashing into the walls like toys and rip a gun out of their captain's hand. You shoot him twice, once for each eye, then shoot a third shot into the pilot's head.
You rip the pilot out of the seat then set the gunship on a new course. Fuel reserves are low, so you've only get one shot. As you jump back out of the hole, you can see the other gunship. It's just hovering there, silent. You watch it warily as you get closer, the alarms for your present ride going off as the fuel turns to nothing.
The preview for Mass Effect: Survivors ends here.
Alright, on to the PS Vita impressions. I haven't gotten to play any full Vita games (I'd need to actually own a Vita for that), but I have gotten to play the demo kiosks in Target and Gamestop. In my experience, the best one so far has been Gravity Daze. It's controls are slick and handle well, the gravity bending is -far- better than Dark Void or similar games. I don't even care if the protagonist does seem to get her powers from a Gravity Shifting Cat (seriously, I think that's its in-game name). The boss battle in the demo actually requires some basic thinking, the air-based strikes handle well, and you can even just toss citizens around if you want.
Next is Escape Plan. I can't entirely recommend or condemn Escape Plan -- it's flaw is its main hook. I know that sounds confusing but let me put it this way -- it feels like this was a game meant for the iPhone, but got bought up for the Vita. Controlling the back pad is confounding and the puzzles almost always require either prior knowledge or dying repeatedly. In most games I wouldn't deeply mind that (Stealth Bastard did the same thing), but in Escape Plan there's already long enough loading times.
I'm going to take a minute and just say: what is with these load times? Only Mass Effect 3 on my PS3 takes -this- long to load. I can load Dead Space Mobile and start playing it in the time it takes a Vita game to get to the main menu for a game. This is my only real issue (besides the back-screen touch pad) with the hardware itself, but its a pretty big one since the main shtick is that you have instant on-the-go gaming. Okay, back to the games.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss barely held my interest, as once again there is a clear example of Uncharted trying to not be what it is. The demo doesn't have any shooting, the platforming's not exactly anything new, and the whole new addons like a camera just feel shoved in for the sake of being shoved in. Also it doesn't help that the graphics actually looked inferior to Gravity Daze, Little Deviants, and Escape Plan.
The worst game demo I played though was, unfortunately, ModNation Racers: Roadtrip. The graphics are severely lacking in polish and don't look much different from the PSP version of the game. Instead of just making the game's UI center around touch controls, it feels like all the of touch controls are just put in at awkward points. Sure you can draw a track and raise and lower terrain, but I was also expecting to be able to drag my character's eyes around his head as I wished, or being able to adjust the size of things like I would adjust the size of a browser page on an iPhone. Touching -is- technically involved in selecting things, but it just all feels very unpolished and hastily put together. I also can't forget how the game actually slowed to about 7 FPS to 10 FPS in a test race. Not an online race. Not a campaign race. Not a quick race. A test race in the editor, which makes the least demands of the game since power ups are disabled and all the AI does is run back and forth around the circuit. At first I was planning on it being my first purchase when I get a Vita, now I don't plan on even downloading/buying it. I've got copy of the PSP version of ModNation racers for free from the PSN being knocked out, and I'm betting I'll get far better performance out of it.
Little Deviants I only got to try a short while, but it seems like it'll be good for if you want a tutorial or something casual to play. However I think that once you get a handle on the controls via the game, you'll have little reason to return as it doesn't have that addictiveness that games like Cut The Rope have.
I have yet to try Wipeout or the sports game demos, but considering I wasn't a fan of the Wipeout demo on my PS3, I don't have high hopes. Apparently though, FIFA does a good job of adjusting to the PS Vita, so I'll give it a shot.
