One of the main reasons why the PSVita failed in the West was the lack of worthy games for the systems. As a result, many of those who own a PSVita, myself included, resort to playing emulated games as the system shines in emulating most consoles up to the PSP. However, there are some great titles for the device and in this article, we’ll be looking at 3 that are surely worth playing!

1. God Of War Collection

Do you like Hack and Slash titles but never got around to playing the God Of War series? Or have you played the God Of War series but didn’t bother with the older games?

God Of War I and II are pretty good games which you should play if you like hack and slash titles (Image Source)

If so, God Of War Collection for the PlayStation Vita is surely the right title for you. This collection includes God Of War I and II, both of which are highly acclaimed PlayStation 2 games which received very high ratings in the 9-9.75/10 range when they were released in the mid-to-late 2000s.

Both games are fully intact although some controls, such as for switching to your secondary blade or to invoke the Rage Of The Titans/Gods, are mapped to the touchscreen as the PSVita doesn’t have L3/R3 buttons. When it comes to performance, they run pretty decently at around 30FPS although I personally found God Of War II to be a tad laggy in places but it’s nothing that renders the game unplayable. Furthermore, you can also increase the game’s resolution to 960×544 (from 720×408) with VitaGrafix although the performance will suffer quite a bit.

If you’ve already played both games and want more God Of War, the PSVita can also play God Of War Ghost Of Sparta and God Of War Chains Of Olympus through Adrenaline as they’re both PSP games.

2. Wipeout 2048

When it comes to racing games, the PSVita’s library is quite medicore with only one Need For Speed game (of which I’m not a huge fan), a badly-received Asphalt title and a few others. Thankfully, one of these few others is actually pretty good and that one is Wipeout 2048, a PSVita launch title.

There aren’t many racing games for the PSVita but at least you can play most of the WipeOut series on it! (Image Source)

Like other Wipeout games, you don’t race with cars but with anti-gravity ships on futuristic tracks. Similar to other racing games, this title has many pick-ups that can be collected while racing and they include boosts, shields and a variety of weapons so that you can spice things up while racing. Furthermore, the game also includes a large variety of ships you can choose from that are divided into separate classes which include speed, agility, fighters and prototypes; all of which handle quite differently and aren’t suitable for all tracks. When it comes to graphics, the game looks pretty nice and is probably somewhere between PS2 and PS3 quality.

After you’re done with this one, you can also pick up WipeOut Pure, WipeOut Pulse, WipeOut 3, WipeOut 2097 and the original WipeOut to play on your PSVita via Adrenaline. Now, you can’t say that the PSVita doesn’t have any good racing games available 😉

3. Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas

Unlike the other two titles, this one isn’t a console exclusive and it was released pretty late in the PSVita’s life landing on May 17, 2017. This title is an action-adventure game with RPG elements that was originally released in 2013 for iOS devices but was later ported to Android, Windows,PS4, XBOX One, macOS, PSVita and most recently the Nintendo Switch. In this game, your character is that of a young boy trying to find his lost father and defeat Oceanhorn.

Oceanhorn may not initially seem like your cup of tea but it’s a TLZ-like game with very nicely drawn graphics!

The game has you visiting a variety of islands that you travel to by a boat that you navigate yourself in order to complete your quest. On these islands, you’ll find numerous monsters you have to send to oblivion, a lot of treasure and many puzzles that you have to solve but they aren’t too difficult or tedious so playing through them should be a breeze. Furthermore, the game has nicely-drawn colourful graphics and a smooth framerate on most devices you play it on (it even runs well on an iPod Touch 4th generation from 2010) so the PSVita port plays without issue.

Finally, this game is also tiny compared to other PSVita titles coming at just 195MB so it might be a good title to play if your Vita’s memory card is filled up with other games!

Conclusion

It is true that the PSVita’s game library doesn’t contain a lot of appealing games for Western audiences but if one looks around and even ventures into Indie titles, there are quite a few games worth playing. Other than these 3 games, I’d also like to give a shout-out to Persona 4 Golden (an excellent RPG) and Killzone Mercenary (FPS game), both of which are games worth playing if you like their respective genre.

If you know some more PSVita games that are worth playing, make sure you leave a comment below below or on Twitter 🙂