Little Deviants is a thin mini-game compilation
that shows off the PlayStation Vita's unique properties and how they can be
integrated into games.
It's
a showcase game that shows you bit by bit everything the PlayStation Vita can
do and how those features can benefit gameplay. I wasn't sure how the
back touch pad would work with games, but after seeing some of the neat things
that Bigbig Studios did, I was sold on it as an additional input.
Unfortunately,
Little Deviants is a mini-game collection that shows you everything it's
got in the first 30 minutes. You'll do the same handful of activities over and
over again in specific-themed worlds for several hours on end until it all ends
in a shoulder shrug. It's not a poorly made game by any means, and you can see
the developers really tried to deconstruct the Vita's functions and create
games around those functions, but it just doesn't get the blood flowing.
In this mini-game, you play a PlayStation Vita.
I've
never played a game where I've felt the mini-games were excessively long, but
Little Deviants manages to to somehow overstay its welcome with some of its
games. You'll go through 10 or so areas in some of the games and death on the
final area means you have to go back through the entire thing again. In the case
of the Speeder levels, you're dodging and weaving your way around obstacles for
what feels like forever before you make your way across the finish line. I
would have liked more hectic, fast-paced mini-games akin to WarioWare.
Here
are a list of some of the activities and how the Vita's unique features impact
gameplay:
- Shover is a game that has you use the front and back touch panels to exploit an enemy robot's weak point and shove them out of a house-like structure. The house has tons of doors and they each open at random revealing a robot to hit or a friendly character to avoid. I enjoyed how the touch pad really comes into gameplay and allows you to attack an enemy via the front touch screen or the touch pad.
- Corridor are games that have you tilt the Vita to guide a deviant ball around a course, past enemies and to goals or to collect items. They're like the old wooden box and ball games your grandpa loved.
- Speeder levels have you steering a vehicle through a fast-paced obstacle course while avoid a killer beast rampaging behind you. These levels feel like they go on forever.
- Rumble games have you fighting bad guys in a wrestling ring. You pinch and pull your deviant back like a slingshot before setting them loose across the ring to kill the baddies.
- Cloud Rush is a skydiving mini-game that has you diving through rings, ala Pilotwings.
- Botz
Blast is a game that uses your real world and the Vita's back camera. The room
or area you're in become the backdrop for a frenzied shoot-em-up fest against
invading robots. Everyone in the room will think you're absolutely nuts as you
spin and angle to shoot bad guys. Just tell them that what they're not seeing
is that killer robots are all around the room.
Real estate is war.
There
are a handful of other mini-game types, but for the most part they are variants
on the games I've listed.
Little Deviants should really have been the
pack-in game for the PlayStation Vita for all versions (not just the first
bundle packs); it's a tough sales proposition at $30 and I wouldn't recommend
it on its own, but if it came as part of the system when you bought it, it
could have been a great way to show off the system's many functions.
