Little Deviants Review

Little Deviants is a game developed by Bigbig Studios and published by Sony Entertainment. It’s a game that I feel has been made to showcase the myriad of different functions of your multi-talented VITA. In fact it seems to use all the features possible. It’s a whole load of mini-games put into one neat package.

The background story to Little Deviants is kept to a minimum. A space ship full of the titular Deviants is shot down by some nasty robots and crash lands on a strange cubist planet full of cubist humans. The robots follow shortly after and decide for some odd reason to raise the dead to help crush the blobs that are the Deviants. Players must take control of the Deviants and guide them through the mini-game levels to win back spaceship parts so they can escape the planet.

The audio and graphics in Little Deviants are pretty nice, not in a jaw dropping way but they do look good. They have that cartoon-like appearance and the colours look vibrant. The Little Deviants always have their mouths wide open and look pretty funny. The zombie-style enemies are all nicely detailed and have some quite amusing features. The backgrounds to the levels are all clean and simple looking.

The controls all change depending on which mini-game you are playing, and are all there to show off the myriad of control options available for the PlayStation Vita.  One type of level requires that you successfully navigate your Deviant by rolling him to a vortex-type exit. This is done by using the back touch pad and manipulating the terrain to roll your Deviant around. There is also a touch screen variant of whack-a-mole, where you use the touch screen and even one mini-game that involves a bit of singing.

Now, everything sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Technically, this game demonstrates pretty well all the alternative control options that the Vita has. However, after a while having to constantly move your Vita around you realise that this is not a game for relaxing with as it requires a fair bit of effort. Think of a Nintendo-Wii style game in your hand. Its gets very tiring and takes a lot of the enjoyment away after a while. There is some fun to be had here though, it’s not all bad, the games are at first pretty enjoyable and as I have said already they look pretty good and are amusing.

Little Deviants is a title that’s difficult to recommend. The games within are fun, but there is not enough here to make this package stand out. Yes, it does show off the capabilities of the Vita in a pretty decent way, however, all the current releases seem to be demonstrating these features pretty well and possibly better in their own ways. These features can also be pretty well demonstrated for free by playing the AR games you get in your welcome pack when you purchase the Vita.

If you are a fan of mini-game compilations, or like chasing a high score, then you may find some enjoyment here. Ultimately, however, there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to the Vita launch line up, and with Lumines and Star Dust Delta out there as cheap downloads, this game doesn’t stand much of a chance.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Playstation Vita code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.