Yesterday, the IGN PlayStation Team got a unique opportunity. We all packed into PlayStation Powerhouse Ryan Clements' car and drove down to PlayStation headquarters. There, we played Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, but we also kicked the tires on eight PlayStation Vita games.
Now, many of these were the same demos that have been shown at various trade shows, but this was our first chance to sit down and spend quiet, quality time with the titles. When our play session was over and we were on our way back to IGN, we started debating what the best Vita games were. Did the graphics of Uncharted: Golden Abyss win us over? Did Gravity Rush catch us off guard? Did Reality Fighters impress us?
Rather than put up eight previews rehashing the information you already know from our TGS coverage, we decided to pit the games against each other. Each of us -- IGN Loudmouth Greg Miller, He Only Does Everything Colin Moriarty, and Clements -- ranked the games from "meh" to "OMG" and wrote up our brief impression. Now, we've combined the rankings and averaged them to come up with a definitive list of the games we saw.
Remember, these rankings are only for the eight games we saw -- not every Vita game ever -- and they're based on our personal excitement. We had one tie, so we just put those games in alphabetical order (Hot Shots Golf Vita and Resistance: Burning Skies).
Reality Fighters
Developer: Novarama
Read the Preview
See It in Action
What We Thought
Personal Rank: 8
I want to be interested in Reality Fighters, but I'm just not. I like the idea -- you take a photo of yourself or your friend or someone from a magazine and then make them into a character in the arcade fighter -- but I just can't see myself sitting down and really getting into the game. It's not bad, but it doesn't grab me. Being able to record your own intro and outro for online fights and using the Vita cameras to make your room an augmented reality arena are good ideas, but the fighting looks so basic. It's another game that needs to be priced right to make an impact.
Personal Rank: 8
I've never actually played Reality Fighters, which could be the reason it lands at the bottom of my list. I don't hold anything against it. It never did anything terrible to me or my family. But without some serious hands-on time, I can't give valuable feedback. What I can say, and I echo my friend and co-conspirator Colin Moriarty, is that I understand what Reality Fighters tries to do and I appreciate it. Time will tell if this fun idea, which would surely impress a Vita newcomer, holds up come launch time.
Personal Rank: 8
Listen. I know what Sony is trying to do with Reality Fighters. It's a quirky game that utilizes the Vita's cameras and plenty of other humorous angles to make it interesting to consumers. But every time I see the game, and now that I've played it, I can't help but be wholly unimpressed. I just don't see what the point of the game is, and I'm genuinely unexcited to play it any more than I already have. With such an insane slew of Vita games already announced and revealed, Reality Fighters is inevitably going to have a hard time gaining traction with gamers.