You just got the Playstation Vita. Now what? Use it as a coaster? No, you play games on it you fool! Take a look at these launch titles, and see what catches your eye.

Remember. Release dates are quite literally made at the whims of the publisher.  The following are subject to change without any warning, but in this case, it’s probably unlikely.

Army Corps of Hell

Remember Pikmin? You know. That GameCube game where you control an army of these little plant animal thingies to do various chores for you like carry garbage back to your ship, open a path a wall of dirt, or, best of all, pummel the local wildlife. Now put on a slight Hellish coat on top of it all, and you’ve got Army Corps of Hell.

Asphalt Injection

Didn’t the 3DS have a racing game called Asphalt on its launch day? Yup, and so does the IOS. Gameloft basically ported the IOS version over to this version. Somethings are new, but from the looks of the screenshots, this game doesn’t exactly tax the graphic capabilities of the Vita. Hope you like your racing games 20X more expensive than it should be.

Dungeon Hunter Alliance

And the IOS ports continue. This dungeon crawler originally came from the realm of smartphone gaming, and it shows. Once again Gameloft doesn’t even bother sprucing up the graphics for the Vita, and what we get is a smartphone game as seen on a Vita for full Vita game prices.

Dynasty Warriors Next

It’s Dynasty Warriors. The end. To be fair, this one does have some new touch controls as well. Tapping with two fingers on the back touchscreen nets you a Shadow Musou attack causing eruptions of energy to below your enemies’ feet. Touching the front screen lets out a ball of energy that hits enemies in a straight line. See, Dynasty Warriors doesn’t have to be all about hitting the light attack button until the cows come home.

Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational

Like Dynasty Warriors, you know what you’re getting when you buy a Hot Shots Golf game: A good, fun, arcadey golf game with anime characters.

Little Deviants

Did Nintendo realized that when they made Wii Sports that they would ultimately open the gates for the genre that is the mini-game collection? Here we are at the birth of a new system (sort of) and we already have an entry for the genre. Like many of the first games for the Wii, Little Deviants’ 30 or so mini-games all utilizes the Vita’s various features. One uses the back touch somehow while another uses the Augmented Reality stuff. Not a bad game if you desperately want to get to know all of the Vita’s capabilities.

Lumines Electronic Symphony

A Playstation portable gaming device just would not be a Playstation portable gaming device until a Lumines game has christened it so. For the most part, Lumines Electronic Symphony plays just like every other Lumines, but it does have two notable additions. First up, avatars now have abilities attached to them. Before, they were just a little animated picture that emotes based on how well you’re doing, but now they have an ability that can drastically affect your final score. A new block called the shuffle block randomizes all the blocks that it touches. It sounds like it might be a hindrance, but if you’ve played Lumines long enough, you know that later in a session of Lumines, your pile of blocks get really, really messed up. A little randomizing can go a long way to helping you clear things up.

Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen

Huh. A ninja game not named Ninja Gaiden. I didn’t know those even existed. From the looks of it, this game goes by the old ninja game series, Tenchu formula where the whole point of the game is to pull off stealth kills as opposed to the Ninja Gaiden formula where the whole point is to cover the screen with blood. Trouble is, the ninja video game wars ended a while back, and we all know who the victor was. Can this old ninja formula work despite that?

Touch My Katamari

I dare you to ask someone if they’ve played this game. In fact I dare you to ask a six year old in front of his/her parents. Kidding aside, this eighth iteration to the Katamari series has yet to change at all. The King of All Cosmos once again tasks you with rolling around a Katamari collecting various doodads until it reaches the quota. This being on a new system with unique features, the Vita touch screen lets you pinch the front screen outward to flatten the Katamari so it has a wider profile or pinch inward to make it really tall like a rolling coin so you can catch those pesky birds that keeps flying over your Katamari. Nothing has changed here, which is either good or bad depending on how many of the previous iterations you’ve played.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

Look, I know Nathan Drake is a handsome fellow, but must you have him in the back of your pocket the whole time? You could if you want to with Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Here Nathan goes back to his roots by having another adventure set in the jungle. Add in a bunch of touch controls, namely for melee and Quick Time Events, and some accelerometer gimmicks with insanely pretty graphics, and you pretty much have good picture of what Golden Abyss is about.

Wipeout 2048

For most, the 2048 moniker may not mean much, but in this futuristic racing series, this sets the Wipeout series in its earliest timeline. That means we get to race in somewhat more familiar scenery with a dash of the futuristic, neon-y looking architecture we’re used to from the other Wipeout games. Nothing else has changed though. You still race land-bound, anti-gravity ships at speeds of 200 mph through a rather tortuous tracks with a couple loops thrown in while picking up power-ups to shoot at other ships. Like Lumines, every Playstation gaming system must be christened with at least one Wipeout game because it just wouldn’t feel right otherwise.

The Ports

What’s a system launch without a handful of ports? The following were either ported without any change or ported with some insignificant additional features thrown in because it’s a new system.

• Ben10 Galactic Racing
• Blazblue: Continuum Shift II EXTEND
• EA Sports FIFA Soccer
• F1 2011
• Michael Jackson The Experience
• ModNation Racers: Road Trip
• Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus
• Rayman Origins
• Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
• Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition

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