I spent a little more time with the Vita yesterday and played an hour or two of Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Uncharted is quite stunning on the Vita. It’s a beautiful game that could be approximated on an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S graphically, but the attention to detail in Uncharted would never be put into an iOS game. (It’s why you don’t mind paying more for a real game on a handheld console.)

Uncharted’s menus are a pain in the ass. Everything is touch. You have to swipe across the screen on the main menu just to get to the “Options” screen. (And the touch is a little less than responsive at times.) There are also lots of instances when you can you touch. You can tap on ledges to jump to them, you can tap on enemies from behind to do stealth takedowns and you can tap on a “weapons” icon on the side of the screen to pick up weapons. All of these things can be done with buttons, but the touch option is there as well. The camera you use in game can be adjusted using the rear touch panel, and I’d say I’ve actually gotten quite used to using that, and it feels better than using buttons would to adjust the camera’s focus.

The overall quality of Uncharted: Golden Abyss is astounding. The graphics are beautiful, the camera is easy to control now that we have two sticks and the voice acting is great. The flow feels cinematic and when touch is used well (like with the camera and charcoal rubbings) the Vita’s new capabilities add to the experience. Using the rear touch panel to rotate items needs to never be repeated in any game ever again though.