Vita?

Yesterday and today the backup system seems to have got it's arse in gear and started moving tapes around properly - I hope it's going to stay this way and it's not just found another way to torment me. However, the signs are promising.

I went insane last week and bought a used PS Vita. I swore to myself I wouldn't, but I succumbed after thinking back to my old PSP and how I enjoyed a lot of the games on it. I regretted it almost immediately but now I've actually used the device, I'm quite impressed with it. Basically it's a big fat PSP with two little analogue sticks and a touch screen and a weird touch panel on the back. The system software is rather odd and things like the browser and map applications are slow and strange but the actual games are pretty good and the ergonomics of it are great.

So far I've played Rayman Origins, which is absolutely stunning, and the strangeness that is Touch my Katamari. I played the one on the PSP and it was camp and weird enough then, but this version takes the campness level up to 11. The King of All Cosmos is a rather strange person, that's all I'm saying, and drops innuendo like there's no tomorrow.

The 3DS might be doing OK after a rough start but I'm not sure about the Vita, at least not until they drop the price. The market seems to have moved on from dedicated games machines to the crappy little 99p games on the various phones. I can see why people like them, but I think touch based controls can only go so far and you end up with something like GTA III on the iPad - impressive but unplayable. I don't know if they will drop the price of the Vita though, since they can't be making any money on it as it is - it costs £220 and has the same hardware has a phone that costs three times that.

Another thing I like about the Vita that probably nobody else will ever care about is that it's nicely assembled with a modular construction and standard screws, so if they break they should be pretty easy to repair. Here's a nice detailed teardown of one on iFixit.

Bad things are of course the stupid non-standard memory cards and non-standard charging port. Typical Sony in that regard really. Sony is quite a bipolar company in some ways, making nice devices but then crippling them with proprietary standards.
 
Right now the last thing I need is another games machine after I swore to cut down on the Xbox, but at least the Vita is easier to play in small doses, and is less likely to lead to long snack consuming sessions in the armchair. At least I hope so.

Some guy played  Civilisation II for ten years to see what would happen - the answer is basically 1984. Interesting discussion about it here.

I was thinking about the triathlon we saw in Blackpool. It would be great to be able to do something like that, but I can't swim, can't run very far and would probably have trouble with the bike part. But they do a duathlon where you do a 5k run, 10k on the bike and another 5k run.