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Little Deviants (VITA)

Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored
I started playing this game on Thursday 3 April, 2014  //  I stopped playing this game on: Monday 2 June, 2014
Current opinion of this game
I may not be the target audience for this one. It's a collection of mini-games that use pretty much all of the Vita's functionality.

June 2, 2014 11:34:40 AM
I gave this a try on a plane trip a few months ago and... Sigh.

The premise and structure of the game are quite conventional - you basically unlock new challenges that then help you unlock more, and so on. It's a structure I'm feeling a bit tired of at the moment. I'll blame mobile games for that, since they're usually structured like that AND, more importantly - the challenges all start to bleed into each other. That being said, Little Deviants seems to follow the "party game" style. So, there is a fair amount of variation between challenges even if they're all still short and wacky.

Overall I guess my feeling was that the game was trying too hard. Trying too hard to use all the PSVitas features, trying too hard to be cute and adorable, and so on. It just didn't work on me and my experience was probably not they joyous and charming one the designers intended. I'm also probably not the target audience for this game, which doesn't really help.

To be fair, some of the challenges were neat - even if awkward to play in public (let alone on an airplane). For example, there's a nice AR-style turret shooter game. You need to pan around to shoot monsters AND the back camera is turned on, so you're seeing them against a backdrop of wherever you are. It's a cute experience for sure, but not one you'd engage with for an extended amount of time. It's probably got legs for an arcade style setup though?

Hmmm, now that I write this - wasn't there a similar game on the 3DS? My recollection is that it didn't work that well, so the Vita one here is definitely an improvement(better and smoother camera tracking, I think would be the main high points).


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria