TOKYO and CHIBA, Japan – Wired.com's staff came into Tokyo Game Show excited to get our hands on the PlayStation Vita. One endless bus ride, an aimless excursion on a boat and lots of polite rejections later, we were no closer than when we began.
Sony is launching PlayStation Vita in Japan on December 17 with 26 games, many of which were in its booth on the Tokyo Game Show floor. But the extremely long wait times to play games usually put a crimp in any media outlet's attempts at covering all of them. What game publishers usually do to ensure that we can write as much as possible is hold separate game preview events off the show floor.
This is what Sony said it would do for Vita, but it didn't turn out quite the way it was promised. All in all, I was only able to play three games – none of the new ones, but only games that we'd already covered at E3 months ago.
Thursday: The Boat Ride From Hell
During my initial tour of the show floor on the first "business day" of Tokyo Game Show, when the show is not yet open to the public, I noticed that there were already long lines for all the Vita units at the Sony booth. The only way to play a Vita was to stand in line for 50 to 70 minutes – per game.
As things looked grim, Sony of America came to the rescue. I was invited to a special "Vita Media Event" taking place later that evening. The plan was to meet at a nearby hotel at 5:30 and take a shuttle bus to a nearby harbor. At 6:30 we would be on the water playing Vita, and by 9:30 we'd be on our way back to Tokyo.
6:30 to 9:30. In other words, a three-hour tour. That should have been my first clue.
At 5:25, I sat in the lobby of the APA Hotel in Makuhari with dozens of foreign game journalists. It was my Twitter feed brought to life. Some had camera crews, others were still carrying bags of Tokyo Game Show souvenirs. All of us were sitting and wondering aloud when Sony representatives would welcome us onto the waiting buses.
By 6:00 we were on the buses, but still idling outside the hotel. I worried about the delay, but according to the invitation the boats were "25 minutes" from the Makuhari Messe convention center. There was still plenty of time to get to the water by 6:30.
One hour later, I became suspicious enough of the journey to tweet my dismay. Either our driver was lost, or he just felt that now was the best time to practice his three-point turns. In a bus. Contact with the second bus confirmed they had already disembarked and transferred to smaller vehicles. Where were we headed? 1up.com's editor-in-chief Jeremy Parish had an inkling.
At 7:30, we reached the drop-off point where the second bus had long ago dropped off its passengers. The site looked familiar, and at this point we all realized that we had passed these vehicles earlier only to return to them after our extended detour.
We were beginning to think that we just could have walked it. Indeed, one fellow passenger had directed a friend to the boats using Google Maps. She got there before we did by taking the train and walking for half an hour.
At 7:38 I see the boat. I expected we would just be walking around inside it playing games at our leisure. Instead, it was a floating dining room where half the guests were sitting with their backs to the wall. No walking. No standing. Just eating.
We were supposed to have cast off an hour ago, and I was worried about the time. In my mind, I pictured a happy ending to the trip. Perhaps we would ride the boat long enough to eat our meal, then disembark at a hotel where piles of Vitas would await us? Then I could just hop on a train when I needed to go home. Content with my imaginary scenario, and with nothing to do but wait, I sat down and ate sashimi and tempura.
Another hour passed without incident. I still hadn't heard any news about our destination other than that we were going to Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. I could see Tokyo Tower outside the window of the boat. Were were we almost there? I began calculating which train was the latest I could possibly get on to make it back to my bed for the evening, because we clearly were not going to be finished by 9:30.
Actually, it was already 9:30 when the boat finally stopped. In the middle of the water. Wearing our special boat slippers (all our shoes were in boxes downstairs), we were invited to go up to the roof to enjoy the view. It was suggested that Sony reps would bring Vita units upstairs.
That was when it hit me: We're not going anywhere. This is it. The Vita units had been here on the boat the entire time. But as the representatives started to pull them out, I saw that there were approximately six of them for a boat filled with over sixty members of the press.
The first Vita I saw was exclusively showing a hands-off demo. I couldn't even see what game it was, as a swarm of press crowded around and started filming it, some with their mobile phones. I asked a Sony representative if we could actually play with the Vitas.
"Some of them," was her nonchalant response.
I went upstairs to see if I could find a Vita there. No. I came back downstairs and decided my best bet was to simply hover near the first Vita I could find. With a little luck, I might squeeze my way into landing some hands-on time.
I got lucky.
Wipeout 2048 is not, as you might expect, the 2048th edition of this PlayStation racing series. It is merely set in the year 2048. Director Graeme Ankers told me that a near-future setting allowed the race tracks to feature more familiar architecture inspired by real cities such as New York.
"Imagine what New York would look like in thirty years," he said. I told him that, as a pedestrian, I'd be pretty pissed if Manhattan has 90-degree angle racetracks when I'm an old man.
The game takes your photo at the start of the race, a nice reminder that Vita has a front-facing camera and is always watching you. In multiplayer matches (up to 8 players, Graeme said, including cross-play with the PlayStation 3 version) that picture will seen by the other racers.
Players can choose between traditional stick-and-button racing controls and motion-tilt controls in which the Vita's rear touch panel acts as the gas pedal and the touchscreen activates your weapons. Turning the Vita like a steering wheel is neat, but I performed much better by just using the analog stick.
And that was almost the end of my Vita gameplay time. Within minutes of getting my hands on Wipeout, we were asked to all sit down so the boat could turn around and return to the dock. Luckily, there was a Vita floating around near my table.
Sound Shapes, the new musical game by Everyday Shooter creator Jonathan Mak, was handed to me on a Vita without any context or tutorial to guide me. That made for a good first impression; too many game demos err on the side of over-explaining every possible input. Sound Shapes just let me explore, and I had a better time because of it.
If Sound Shapes has a plot, it was not apparent in the level I saw. I'm not even sure what the playable character is supposed to be, other than "round" and "sticky." One button jumps, another retracts his "legs" so that the character can freely fall without clinging to anything.
As you explore the world of Sound Shapes, the music changes with each object you touch. I would be more specific about this music-heavy experience, but the Vita's speakers were no match for the din of a boat full of people who by this point had given up on beer and moved onto whiskey.
The simple graphics and hints of musical grooves were appealing to me, although the demo seemed to lack challenge. Very few hazards exist and, much like the Wii game Kirby's Epic Yarn, "death" is little more than a set-back of a few seconds.
It was 10:30 before we returned to the shore and past 11 by the time the buses rolled. I made it back to the train station just in the nick of time – about fifteen minutes later, and I'd have had to crash in an internet cafe in Makuhari. Six hours wasted, and all I had to show for it was having played two brief Vita demos. Standing in line would have been more efficient.
As it turned out, that's what Sony would ask us to do next.
Friday: Please Get In Line
Early Friday morning, Wired.com's staff met at the entrance to Tokyo Game Show and I debriefed them on the last night's debacle. We decided to go down to the Sony booth en masse the minute the show opened and try to find a Sony Computer Entertainment America rep who could get us more play time.
Although many game publishers have international staff members at their booths, Sony did not. We explained to the Sony Japan reps our situation, asking if there were any media-only areas to play the games. No, they explained. This answer then changed to "Yes there are, but you need an appointment." Could we make an appointment? No.
Please wait in line, Sony told us. The line stretched out of the building.
I placed an international call to a Sony U.S. rep who had put together the boat ride. We were not the first people to ask him about getting access to the Vita, he said. He told us that he would put our names onto a list that he was planning on sharing with the Sony Japan representatives at the booth. He would call us back within the hour, he said. He did not. A later email explained that he had talked to the booth staff but and that they would "try to help."
Saturday: Reality Sets In
Tokyo Game Show opens early to the media on the weekend "public days." When I got to the Sony booth on Saturday morning, the lines for all Vita titles were already over an hour long.
I spoke to the staff to see if my name was on a list. Three conversations later, someone agreed to escort me to the "priority" line to skip the rapidly-expanding crowd. Wonderful! She walked me through the chains and handed me to a man who brought me straight to a demo station... for Wipeout 2048.
I pleaded with them to let me play another game. Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3? Gravity Daze? No? Okay, what about that station there? It was Reality Fighters, the other game nobody in line wanted to play.
Reality Fighters might best be described as a game for those who felt that the augmented-reality shooter Face Raiders on the Nintendo 3DS was too childish. The basic concept is the same: A photo is mapped onto a computer model and becomes a playable character. But while Face Raiders only used faces to create a shooting gallery, Reality Fighters maps the faces on full-bodied characters for a 2-D fighting game.
In Reality Fighters, the faces are just the beginning of the create-a-fighter process. Body shape, clothing, weapons and fighting style are all customizable. In the end, my guy wore an astronaut helmet, a Hawaiian shirt, a shield and the bottom half of a rubber monster suit. As a "disco" fighter, his martial arts attacks were all based on popular dances of the 1970's.
Turning the Vita sideways lets you view your character up close, and these close-up images can uploaded onto the Internet. The attendant actually mentioned Facebook by name, which surprised me given the social network service's relative lack of popularity in Japan.
Once the game actually starts, Reality Fighters becomes a lot less interesting. You must physically move your Vita around to view the arena. Whenever I tried to concentrate on pressing buttons, my arms drifted downwards to relax, so the characters would drift out of view. And the novelty of mapping faces onto fighting game characters is diminished by the fact that the faces are nearly impossible to see during the battle.
Reality Fighters is definitely good for a few laughs, but it's hard to see the novelty lasting. The 3DS game Face Raiders was similarly simplistic, but it was free with the purchase of the system. I doubt I would have paid money for it, which Reality Fighters will certainly require.
The demo over, I asked if I could move on and play something else. I was told that I would have to wait in line from now on. Sony was actually turning people away from the Vita line. The line was full; the people at the end of the line would be standing there for the rest of the day.
It was 10 a.m.
See Also:- Sony Will Launch PlayStation Vita Dec. 17 in Japan
