IMPORTANT EDIT: For the Walking Dead game, a voucher code will come INSIDE THE PS VITA BOX. The download voucher for the other 3 games will be SENT TO YOUR EMAIL. Amazon.com wasn't very clear about this and many people gave the bundle a bad review because of this confusion. Now on to my original review...
Wow, what a deal. Off the bat, you get Uncharted: Golden Abyss (8.5 from IGN), Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (8), All of the Telltale Walking Dead episodes (9.3), Retro City Rampage (low 5.3) and then if you get a PS+ subscription, at the time of this post, you get Gravity Rush (7.5), Wipeout 2048 (7), Soul Sacrifice (7.7), Oddworld Stranger's Wrath (8.8), Hotline Miami (8.8), and Sine Mora (9) all for free. Or if you have PS+ already, just sign in with your current PSN ID and you are good to go.
If anyone tries to tell you that the PS Vita doesn't have any available or upcoming games, or that the games aren't high quality, check out this list and decide for yourself.
All mention-worthy releases that scored above a 7.0 on IGN in order. Western (USA, EU, AUS) markets only.
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (9.5)
Super Stardust Delta (9.5)
Telltale's Walking Dead (9.3)
Persona 4 Golden (9.3)
Stealth Inc (9.2)
Tearaway (9.3)
Terraria (9)
Rayman Origins (9)
LittleBigPlanet Vita (9)
Guacamelee! (9)
Flower (9)
PixelJunk Monsters: Ultimate HD (9)
Lumines: Electronic Symphony (9)
MGS HD collection (9)
Dokuro (8.8)
Dead or Alive 5 Plus (8.8)
Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut (8.6)
Ys: Memories of Celceta (no IGN review yet; 85 metacritic)
Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention (8.5)
MotorStorm RC (8.5)
Blazblue (8.5)
Dragon's Crown (8.5)
Mortal Kombat (8.5)
Injustice: Gods Among Us (8.2; although Vita version not so good tbh)
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale (8)
Rainbow Moon (8)
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (8)
Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus (8)
Dynasty Warriors NEXT (8)
Murumasa Rebirth (8)
MLB 2012 (8)
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (8)
Killzone Mercenaries (8)
Atelier Totori Plus (7.8)
Soul Sacrifice (7.7)
Oddworld Stranger's Wrath HD (7.5)
Gravity Rush (7.5; score should be higher imo)
Unit 13 (7.5)
Virtual Tennis 4 (7.5)
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (7.4)
Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate (7.4)
NFS: Most wanted (7.4)
Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (7.4)
Atelier Meruru Plus (no IGN rating; 73 on metacritic)
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (7.2)
Modnation Racers: Road Trip (7)
Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed (7)
F1 2011 (7)
Doki-Doki Universe (7)
Army Corps of Hell (7)
Divekick (7)
I left out a lot of indies that scored >7. Sorry if I missed something.
Confirmed upcoming games for western markets (most between now and Sp 2014):
Gravity Rush 2
Soul Sacrifice Delta
Demon Gaze
Conception II
Tokiden: Age of Demons
Borderlands 2
FFX HD
FFX-2 HD
DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Dead Nation
Hatsune Mikune: Project Diva F
Minecraft
Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z
Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable
Hyperdimension Neptunia PP
Project Phoenix (2015)
Ragnarok Odyssey Ace
Soul Saga: Episode 1
The Walking Dead: Season 2
The Wolf Among Us (Telltales like Walking Dead)
Localization hasn't been confirmed yet, but will be - trust me ;)
Corpse Party: Blood Drive
Disgaea 4: Return
God Eater 2
Zero Escape series 3rd Installment
Atelier Rorona (complete remake)
Hyperdimension Neptunia re;birth 1 and 2
DanganRonpa 2 and Another (if Trigger Happy Havoc sells ok)
Hyper Goddess Faith Noire
Confirmed Games that have a chance of localization, but don't get hopes up
Final Fantasy Agito
Monster Hunter: Frontier G
Phantasy Star Online 2
Monster Monpiece
Steins;Gate
`Tales of R' games
Multi-Console Functions:
There are many games available for 'cross-play/cross-buy'. This is where you buy the game and can play it on the PS Vita, PS3, or PS4. You can even continue from a save state on a different platform by transferring the save file or by storing the save file in the PSN cloud. If you own a PS4, you can do what is called 'remote play'. This function sends the video output from the PS4 to the PS Vita, which acts like a controller and monitor for the PS4. Playing on your big screen TV and your girlfriend wants to watch a TV show? No problem. Continue playing the PS4 game on your PS Vita. Gamespot recently tested this functionality and played Battlefield 4 seamlessly almost 50 feet away from the PS4 console! This means you can essentially bring the PS4 into the next room with you.
Amazing Value:
$189.99 for the system along with 10 FREE, GREAT games up front if you have PS+, 4 if you don't. 6/10 of these free games are full releases, all with IGN ratings ranging from 7 to 9.3! Free games are available to claim EVERY MONTH with PS+, meaning that your video game library will continue to grow over time. Once you claim a free game, its tied to your account forever. However, you must have a current PS+ subscription if you want to revisit those games in the future. PS+ gets discounted all the time. I just bought two discounted years of PS+ for $29.99 per year on Black Friday. My PS3, PS Vita, and future PS4 now all have PS+ for the next two years, and I paid the price of one new PS3/PS4 video game. Spending $29.99 a year on a membership that throws free games and discounts at me left and right is a worthy investment. I feel like I could honestly rely solely on the free games that come with PS+ and be completely satisfied throughout the year. I see 50-75% off other games all the time. Most PS+ subscribers will say that they've earned the cost of their PS+ membership back 5, 10 or even 20 fold. If you miss the $174.99 price over the 2013 Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, $199.99 is still amazing - FAR BETTER VALUE than 3DS right now. The PSN online store is reasonably priced as well. The digital formats are cheaper than their physical counterparts in many instances (like it should be). Want Valkyria Chronicles 2 from PSP to play on the Vita? $9.99 for digital, whereas it costs $20 new for the physical copy. Want Parasite Eve from PSOne? $5.99. Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lion from PSP? $9.99. Resident Evil 2? $5.99. Final Fantasy 7? $9.99. Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross? $9.99. Dino Crisis 2? $5.99! For 3DS, Nintendo barely has any games on their eShop and they are primarily made up of old NES and GBC games. Want Super Metroid to play on the 3DS? Too bad, 3DS doesn't have SNES games available to download for some reason. Don't get me wrong, I do like my 3DS. It is also a great platform, but the Vita has a huge advantage over the 3DS when it comes to its online shop. On top of everything else I mentioned, Sony added a Black Friday deal where customers got $10 back on every $60 spent on PSN store and many games were discounted due to it being Black Friday! When you take advantage of all of the stackable deals offered by Sony, suddenly everything becomes very affordable and you find yourself with more games than you can handle, without burning a hole in your wallet.
Longevity:
PS Vita is less than two years old, so it has a lot of time left (prob 4-7 more years; hard to estimate). Sony's biggest problem right now is its failure to put forth a decent marketing campaign for the PS Vita. You had to hear it from me, some random guy on Amazon.com, to find out how good of a deal this thing is. Some people say that this console is dead. I disagree - The advent of PS4 connectivity and cross-play will revive this system. PS Vita sales have been stronger since September and I'm sure they are selling like hotcakes on Amazon and other sites with the amazing deals currently available. Sony decreased the MSRP to $199.99 from $299.99, making it more affordable. The bundling of PS Vita with PS4 in Europe (also coming to US in December) is further going to boost PS Vita hardware sales by a few hundred thousand or maybe even a few million over the next few months. Sony also recently announced that it is going to launch a ~2.4 million euro marketing blitz across Europe to further revive the PS Vita console and to attract 3rd party developers between now and the beginning of 2014. But even if PS Vita died tomorrow and no further games were released beyond those already announced for 2014, look at the selection I listed above! - That's enough to keep anyone busy for a very long time. Either way, there's no way devs will stop making games anytime soon. Developers are still making games for the PSP almost 9 years later! That translates to late 2020 if the same happens with the Vita. The PSP was out for over 7 years before PS Vita was released. This means the Vita wont be succeeded by a 3rd generation Playstation handheld until late 2018 if history repeats itself, which it should because console generation times have been getting longer. In North America, the time between PS and PS2 was 5 years (1995-2000), PS2 to PS3 was 6 years (2000-2006), and PS3 to PS4 was 7 years (2006-2013). PS Vita came out in North America just in 2012.
Memory Card Woes, Content Manager, Cloud Storage:
I only have one gripe with the PS Vita - the memory card. We live in an era where we can buy 1TB HDDs for $60, 32GB flash drives for $10, 32GB SD cards for $20, and many tablets and phones come standard with 8-32GB of storage. Heck, the PS4 comes with 500GB of HDD space! The 4GB memory card that comes with the PS Vita? Put it on Ebay and get $8-10. Put that money towards a $40 16GB memory card (try to go 32GB if you can!) if you don't want to constantly have to uninstall and re-install games. A full title on the Vita takes ~2-4 GB of space, so yeah... 4GB is nothing. There is no way you are going to be able to store your 10 free games on this small memory card. However, there is something called 'PS Vita Content Manager' - hook your PS Vita to your PS3, PC,or MAC (also coming to PS4) and transfer saves, game downloads, and media that you currently want to use. If you haven't run out of space on your memory card, the content manager is still useful to back everything up in case you lose or break your PS Vita. Those with PS+ are given 1GB of cloud storage for game saves which is more than enough for >98% of gamers. Saves usually don't take up more than a megabyte (1000 megabytes in 1 GB). These new improvements, along with a recent price drops in August, made the memory card less of an issue, but it still sucks given that you pretty much NEED to upgrade and you will pay more money per GB of storage than any other device I can think of other than the iPhone! Oh well, every platform has its drawbacks...
Edit: 16Gb and 32GB memory cards have been popping up for $19.99 and 39.99, respectively, over the past two weeks. Snag them at these prices if you can.
New PS Vita Coming Soon - But Beware:
Playstation just released the next version of the PS Vita in Japan and will probably bring it over to US and Europe in early 2014. Don't be fooled - Although it is a bit slimmer and has 1GB of internal storage, the primary difference is the use of a cheaper screen to make it more affordable for the general public (OLED to LCD) - A tactic akin to the recently released 'Nintendo 2DS' that is only $129.99. Lower price, reduced quality. For PS Vita, the sacrifice is in the form of less vibrant colors and decreased image sharpness. Even with this sacrifice in hardware quality, the price of the new 'PS Vita 2000' unit probably won't be able to match this amazing deal at $174.99 with 4 free games that you see in this package. So right now, you can get the better version for a (probably) better price. You will want the OLED screen that comes with the current version - it is a lot better. The reason your HDTV is LED or LCD is because a full sized OLED TV would be way too expensive. Youtube comparison videos don't do it justice. Why? Because you are watching the Youtube video on a LED or LCD monitor.
Conclusion TL;DR - Do yourself a favor and invest in a PS Vita. In my opinion, this is one of the best gaming deals available (maybe with the exception of the PS3, which also benefits from PS+ free games). Buying this bundle was the obvious choice for me. I hope I made it easier for you as well. If you are thinking about buying this for someone else - I guarantee it will make an amazing gift.
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