Over the last many months I’ve bounced between StreetPass mini games on my 3DS and playing Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F2, followed by Persona 4: Dancing All Night on my Vita.

As far as rhythm gaming goes on the PlayStation Vita, these two are the top choice. They both are fun to play on Easy difficulty, nicely challenging on Normal and time to move on to something else on anything harder (lol). Both of them have excellent music with a soundtracks that will stick in your head and make you want to jump back into the game at the first chance you have. They both also have nice clean interfaces and in the case of Project Diva you have a tuning option in the config to help with tuning your button reaction time to the beats.

Project Diva was so much fun that I tracked down copies of the original PSP import games as well (which you can get translation patches for) to play through. They’re pretty much the same game mechanic minus the touch screen. Great stuff. Also, if you don’t have a Vita and you’re not looking to import (or download) Japanese PSP games you can get pretty much all of the best songs and then some on the two U.S. PS3 releases. Although I think F2 is probably the definitive version right now (I haven’t played the 3DS release though, so I can’t compare) until Diva X comes out.

P4DAN was an odd one. I really enjoyed playing Persona 4 Golden and simply couldn’t imaging how the hell that could be translated into a rhythm game but wow, once I played it I was instantly sold. They actually tie the whole thing together with a sequel story of sorts that follows after Persona 4. While I would say it’s a very strange story, it’s pretty much in line with the Persona series. They brought back all of the original voice actors as well, so it was fun hearing all of familiar characters working through the story.

For the last few years, the majority of my gaming has been happening on handhelds. Between the Nintendo 3DS and Sony’s PSP and Vita systems, this really has been a phenomenal era for hand held gaming. Due to the length of this list though I’m going to break it into more than one post.

Highlights in no particular order:

Patapon 1 and 2 for the PSP/Vita (Patapon 3 was a real disappointment and the first of the series I didn’t bother solving)

I played this series so much that I regularly would joke that PSP actually stood for “Play Some Patapon”. It’s a brilliantly stylized game that combines the genres of Beat and Action Platform with RPG style elements. The music is catchy and the game play is intense to say the least.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss for Vita

A full blown, console quality Uncharted game for hand held. The story is fun, the graphics are top notch. Some of the mini-game elements were annoying but fortunately not required to progress the game. Play control was solid. The story is pretty stand alone and does not require you to have played the other games to follow, but it does add some extra dynamic between Drake and Sully. The game really sets the bar for hand held and I’m disappointed there have been so few games of this caliber for the platform.

Gravity Rush: for Vita

A visually stunning game to say the least. Even with it being free via the PS+ program for a good year, it’s still worth buying just to show some love to the developers. This is the first game in my opinion that truly pulls off frenetic 3-D air based hand-to-hand combat (don’t get me wrong, Zone of the Enders (PS2/PS3) and Omega Boost (PS1) still hold a fond place in my heart and certainly set the bar for their platforms… hmm… all Sony platform games… trend?). Play control took a little bit to wrap my head around but once I was into the game it became second nature. The manga/comic style approach to cinema/story segments was phenomenally executed. Seriously, it’s just an all around great game and a must have for any Vita owner.

(cont…)