PS Vita turns 4 years old today; what's your favorite game?

Sony’s PlayStation Vita launched on Dec. 17, 2011 with the promise of bringing the AAA experience to the palm of your hands. The major problem turned out to be that not a whole lot of gamers want a AAA experience on the go. They want it on their big TV screens and PC monitors, and with some disappointing financial figures to support their argument, Sony slowly backed off from those sky-high promises.

Instead, thanks to Sony’s hands-off approach, the PS Vita has evolved in its own right, following the flow of trends wherever the path of least resistance has taken it. Some adapted it into their machine for niche JRPGs and weird Japanese dungeon crawlers, while other turned it into a sort of portable indie game player. I fall into the category that crafted it into a console which lets me take my favorite PSOne Classics wherever I want, a real lifesaver for the system by quadrupling its library.

Unless you were looking for that AAA handheld experience, chances are you found a way to make the most of your PS Vita, and it is very much a gaming device made by you, prioritized by you, and, ultimately, is designed to meet whatever gaming needs you require from it. I like the PS Vita a lot for this customization, and that’s why it’s probably the platform I play the most these days.

Of course, with all these options, it makes narrowing down a favorite game quite difficult. No question, my absolute favorite game “on the PlayStation Vita” is my all-time favorite classic Suikoden II. I’ve played this wonderful game twice on my Vita since it launched last winter, and I intend to do so many more times in the future.

However, that’s not really a fair choice since it’s not an original piece of software for the system. In fact, even my favorite PS Vita game isn’t a original piece of software since that is Persona 4: Golden, a retooled version of the PlayStation 2 masterpiece made with portability in mind.

Super Meat Boy is my favorite indie game on the PS Vita, but I fell in love with that on the Xbox 360 and haven’t used my Vita to play it yet. Likewise, Hotline Miami is the indie game I’ve played the most on it, but most see that as a PC experience.

I’ve also used the PS Vita to enjoy The 3rd Birthday and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, but that’s a PSP game and a PSP port of a Super Famicom game.

Looking at my library, the only original game released exclusively for the console that I can say I’ve loved is Ys: Memories of Celceta. I have Gravity Rush, but issues with my battery limit me to just 30 minutes of play, so I’d rather wait for the PS4 remaster to finally fully dive into that title. The brief bits are great, but not enough to form a full opinion on.

Yeah, that leaves Ys: Memories of Celceta as my favorite game for the Vita. It’s the game which pushed me over the edge into buying the handheld, a good old-fashioned exclusive title I could play nowhere else, and it’s probably the only original and exclusive title I’ve played on it to date. Strange considering how many hours I’ve sunk into taking my Vita with me everywhere I go.