yea i play Rayman Legends, Killzone: Mercenary, Uncharted Golden Showers and lots of indie games on my vita too. dat oled screen, so pretty pretty
I love the Vita hardware a ton, as it's probably the best piece of hand held equipment I've ever played games on... and while I have a 3DS XL I don't particularly enjoy the hardware as the touchscreen is pretty bad, the screen is super low res, and I think for 99% of games the 3D effect makes the picture significantly worse and adds nothing to the gameplay.
However, overall I think the 3DS has some of the best hand held games of this generation, though I probably play the Vita more because of the sheer quantity of good games (the myth that the Vita has no games is unsurprisingly false). In fact, I'd say the majority of my favorite games this year belong to hand helds rather than PC master race/console peasantry.
Some of my favorites in order of happy happy time...
Nintendo 3DS
1) Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds: I've already talked about this game earlier, but I'm incredibly impressed by this game. The "painting" gimmick actually made me rethink how I looked at dungeons and the ability to rent items at any time opened the world up from the first hour mark. Thankfully, LBW does not rely only on nostalgia and instead brings plenty of new ideas into the fold while removing the annoying tutorial partners that haunted Link over the last decade. It also used the 3D effect to great effect in a way that affected gameplay as well. Oh, and did I mention the music...?
2) Fire Emblem Awakening: Great SRPG in the vein of FFT, although the story was more anime cliche than self-serious political drama. Although the plot felt pretty generic and the characters were all typical anime tropes that hardly ever changed (and only character development involved were also anime tropes), I still liked to see how different characters would react with one another when paired up, and the overall game became pretty challenging in later levels. Great art style and music overall, and I surprisingly kept the 3D on for most of the game.
3) Super Mario 3D Land: The only other game I can think of where the 3D effect improved the game and gameplay. This game was mostly a joy to play, but I do think it held your hand for way too long... the "real" game didn't start until after you beat the main game, which unlocked an entire new 100% of the game that no longer treated you like a baby.
4) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies: I'm a sucker for the PW games, even though I didn't enjoy Apollo Justice: AA as much as the original trilogy. I'm surprised by how smoothly all the characters and animations made the transition from sprite to 3D artwork (though speaking of stereoscopic 3D, I hardly used it as it made all the characters more jaggy). The story was as silly as expected, but I liked all the characters and appreciated the way you could control 3 different protagonists (each with their token special abilities, such as psyche locks). I even played the silly DLC trial where you defend an orca in court...
5) FF Theatrhythm: Yeah some people might laugh this one off as a play on nostalgia by S-E, but I can't believe just how much I played this game. I was pretty addicted in min-maxing my party for some odd reason (yes, in a rhythm game), but I loved playing through some of my favorite music from FF4 and FF6, plus countless others.
6) Some other notables... SMT4 (story was so dry and boring that I lost interest a few hours in), Rhythm Thief (good concept but incredibly dull characters and story and the mini games were pretty hit or miss), Paper Mario (also lost interest a couple hours in), Mario & Luigi Dream Team (great game that I haven't spent enough time in), New SMB 2 (decent platformer with very little creativity, Rayman Origins/Legends blows it out of the water), Animal Crossing New Leaf (fun for a few days, but once I left the world I had no desire to return). And I still haven't played my copy of Pokemon Y....
PS Vita:
1) Guacamelee: I can't praise this game enough... probably my favorite "Metroidvania" style game since, well, Super Metroid. Great unique art style with a fun melee-centric combat system to match, while new moves help both in battles and in exploration. The characters and animation are superb and even the combo system has the precision necessary that you'd expect from fighting games (with a fighting game style combo challenge room to boot). Excellent, excellent, and worth playing on Steam now if you don't have on Vita.
2) Dragon's Crown: I'm one of those guys who doesn't care for some of the exaggerated figures on the characters, but I can't escape how beautiful the overall world is. The gameplay is fun but can get a bit stale after a few hours... until multiplayer kicks in. Multiplayer makes this game come to life, and you'll be able to grind to your heart's content, while new skills and equipment ensure that you can change your play style to your suiting. Unfortunately, the game sometimes crashes, once erasing an hour worth of progress for me.
3) Virtue's Last Reward: I actually beat 999 and VLR on my 3DS, but I'd recommend the Vita version (since it's free with PS+ and does not have the game breaking save corruption bug). Visual novels are hit or miss, but I loved the Higurashi games so I was happy to play a new VN with a good premise. Some of the deus ex machina and plot contrivances got a bit hokey, and I still enjoy the original 999 better, but overall I had lots of fun with VLR.
4) Super Stardust Delta: Indie games are a huge reason why my Vita has so much play time, but the king of all indie exclusives has got to be SSD. I can pick up and play, expecting a 15 minute game, only to be sucked into an epic 3 hour battle against the high score.
5) Other indie games: Super Crate Boy, Spelunky (so great on the Vita...), Hotline Miami, Lumines, etc...
6) Persona 4 Golden: Unfortunately I have not spent enough time with this game, but it's next on my list! Great JRPG from what I've played so far though, and much better than SMT4.
7) DJ Max Technika Tune: I can't believe they fit all this on a Vita cartridge! Lots of music and content with just as much customization as previous DJ Max titles. I still prefer the traditional controls of the PSP DJ Max, but the touch controls on TT work pretty well too.
8) Puzzle games like Dokuro, Machinarium, and others
9) LBP Vita: As MNS said, the best version of LBP...which for me doesn't say much, since I didn't like LBP on PS3. Surprisingly, I do somehow enjoy the Vita version and I pop the game in now and then for slapstick humor on the go.
10) NFS Most Wanted: Graphically impressive but I can't help feel bored by the overall driving, esp as progress is kinda muddy since you can find cars at any time.
There are way more indie games I like on the Vita, but they also aren't exclusive so I won't name them all.
Games I have and are probably awesome but I haven't played yet: Killzone Mercenaries, Uncharted Golden Abyss, Gravity Rush, AC3 Liberation, Sly Cooper, etc...
Also, while I mostly played Rayman Origins and Legends on PC, I played some of Origins on Vita once it was free with PS+... and I have to say, it looks amazing on the OLED screen!
iOS favorites:
Tilt to Live 2
Ridiculous Fishing
Year Walk
Device 6
= First Letter of My Happy Hour Dealer's Name
= First Letter of my favorite food
= number of letters in my username + 1
