So I Bought A Vita

Yep. I saw this very quickly turning into a PSP situation for me, where I just kept putting it off and putting it off, waiting for it to drop in price to a comfortable level for so long that eventually I realized I'd may as well just wait for the Vita to come out.

But Sony's strategy of continually giving away Vita versions of PS3 games for free and extending PlayStation Plus to Vita at no extra cost is nothing short of brilliant. I didn't even realize how many Vita games I already own until recently, and that's ultimately what pushed me over the edge.

So I bit the bullet and got the Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified bundle, not because I wanted Call of Duty but because I figured I could just trade it in to GameStop and get a game I'm actually interested in.

I've been messing around with it for a few days now, and here's what I think so far:

• I'm way too OCD for screen protectors. I spent literally an hour and a half putting this one on because there's a bubble in the top-left corner that doesn't affect anything except that it's driving me insane.
• The Vita is a super slick device. Everything from how gorgeous the screen looks to how responsive the touch controls work is really impressive.
• The way the Welcome Park application turns teaching you all the features of the Vita into a set of time trials is cool, but now I'm going to end up spending all my time in Welcome Park obsessing over getting my times down instead of playing actual Vita games. I will become the greatest Welcome Park player in the world.
• It astounds me that the Facebook application is so bad when the Twitter application is so good.
• I had fun playing some of Rayman Origins on PS3, but eventually it lost me. After playing the demo of it on Vita, it seems pretty clear that this is the place to play it. It is so goddamn good-looking.
• Seriously, I cannot get over how awesome the screen is. I keep having to wipe my own drool from it.

• Waking up and playing PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale without leaving my bed is great, but I'm pretty sure it means I'm never going to be able to get up and get ready for work on time again.
• Also: in my first match online in the Vita version of All-Stars, I was playing against a Big Daddy and a Good Cole. Big Daddy and I were matching each other kill for kill and went into 4x Overtime, but I finally pulled ahead by a mile so he quit just before the match ended to nullify it. Seriously? Just take the loss, dude.
• The analog sticks are pretty disappointing. They're too small and too sensitive, so I feel like there's no finesse to them. I'm finding myself naturally using the Vita's stellar D-pad whenever I can instead.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified is an abomination. There's no story mode, just a series of missions with boring cut scenes before each. But the controls are so awkward even with two analog sticks and brain dead AI that I can't even make it past the first mission. And yet, in my first and only online match, I went 20:4 because everyone else was having more trouble than me.
• Declassified doesn't even come with a box, presumably out of spite to make sure I can't trade it in for as much.
• Frobisher Says is a delightfully weird WarioWare-esque palette cleanser after suffering through as much Declassified as I can take for one day.
• I just can't wait for my 32GB memory card to get here. Right now I'm trying to avoid playing too many games knowing that I'll have to transfer it all over to the bigger card soon, but good lord I cannot wait to jump into Lumines: Electronic Symphony.

So far, I really, really like the Vita. I can definitely tell why people would be bored with it by now if they bought it at launch, but for me, there's so much I want to play that I can't imagine being bored with it for a very long time.

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