PS4 Remote Play hands on

On 10/20/2014 at 09:38 AM by TheMart22

Hello fellow Pixlbits,

I hope everyone had a pleasant weekend. Unfortunately, like a punch-drunk boxer too tired to stand, I find myself stumbling into Monday and another week of working for the man. At least my weekdays have been going quickly as of late.

This weekend I decided to test out the PS4 remote play feature on the Vita. To start with a positive, I’m happy to report it ran like a treat and was simple to set-up. My intention was to play Diablo III while watching football on the TV and while this sounded like a good idea, I did have some issues with the operation.

Remote play

For anyone who has played a Vita, the potential issue is quite apparent in that there are no L2 or R2 shoulder buttons on the handheld. Instead, the Vita substitutes the upper left and right portions of the back touchpad for L2 & R2 respectively. Being kind, I’ll only go as far as saying that this does not work very well with the fast paced nature of Diablo. While I typically have not noticed any sensitivity issues playing Vita games, I found that the back touchpad was either too slow in picking up my touch or did not read it at all. This proved infuriating as R2 is a major command in Diablo III.

The other issue I ran into quite frequently relates to the Vita’s front touchscreen replacing the front touchpad of the Dualshock 4. While this substitution makes perfect sense, I found that I repeatedly opened the Diablo III menu screen unintentionally by barely caressing the side. Perhaps my hands are too big but it proved a challenge to use the analog sticks comfortably without any contact whatsoever with the screen. I’ll note here that I own the original OLED version of the Vita and am unsure if I would have the same problem with the newer version. As you can imagine, it’s rather annoying to have the menu open up every five seconds while you’re trying to concentrate on the on-screen madness.

So, while I’ll say that the remote play functionality of the Vita ran smoothly and without fault, in my opinion, it is far from suitable for every game. Of the PS4 games I own, I could see it working well for Pix the Cat & Road Not Taken but I can’t see it being frustration free for Destiny, FIFA or MGSV. Just a heads up…

Let me know if anyone else has messed around with remote play? I’ll like to hear how your experience went.

Later

Ranger1

10/20/2014 at 10:45 AM

I got nothing. No Vita, no PS4. But I figured I'd drop in to say hi. Hi!

TheMart22

10/20/2014 at 11:41 AM

Haha hello to you too! Way to bring a smile to my face

Super Step Contributing Writer

10/20/2014 at 08:14 PM

Yeah, not having trigger buttons to work with in GTA III or Vice City when I play with my 360 controller on Steam is frustrating as it is, but at least I can map the aiming button to one of the non-trigger shoulder buttons.

I'd imagine using the back of a Vita as a substitute is not much of a substitute. But also, I feel like this blog was a long way of you bragging about your "big hands."

10/21/2014 at 07:15 AM

Haha, you got me Joe. Damn!

VisuaLIES

10/20/2014 at 11:28 PM

I can never get a good connection. Maybe it's my crappy internet, or maybe something's configured wrong, but I always get a lot of lag and signal drops. I tried connecting directly from vita to ps4, but that only works from an adjacent room (any further and the signal degrades), plus I have to make the vita "forget" my wi-fi connection/password, which makes it a pain to reconnect later. I heard the Playstation TV is even worse, but I'll try that out as soon as I get my hands on one. I don't do a lot of online gaming, so I'm not going to spend the money for faster internet, but it would be nice if this streaming stuff worked as advertised.

10/21/2014 at 07:17 AM

That's interesting. I'll have to try it elsewhere in the house then as I was literally sitting right in front of the PS4 while playing. Our internet connection is generally good so I'm curious to see what impact that has.

KnightDriver

10/21/2014 at 02:22 AM

I remember being excited about the interactivity of PSP and PS3, but then I never really used it. I do like this cross-play idea though. Continue your game on the go and then play on the TV when you are home without losing your save. I like that.

10/21/2014 at 07:21 AM

I'm in the same boat as you in that I'm not sure I'll ever really use it. With the experience not being exactly the same, I'd rather just play specified Vita games on the handheld and not bother with an inferior experience of the PS4 titles. Cross-play would also interest me but I'm not sure how many titles trully use it. I remember an MLB game advertised to use it a few years back but haven't heard much since.

10/21/2014 at 04:53 PM

Also, I used to think playing handheld games on the big screen was a must-have feature, but now I really appreciate the design of handheld games and want to experience them in their intended medium. That being said, cross-play is cool. I was just thinking about Borderlands 2 on Vita, but I don't think it's saves carry over PS3 or 4.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

10/21/2014 at 06:24 PM

i wish this worked better. I hate having to use the touch pad of the Vita when I play borderlands on vita.

10/22/2014 at 07:16 AM

Agreed. It just ends up leading to frustration with how inaccurate it was (For Diablo anyway)

goaztecs

10/22/2014 at 10:59 AM

The remote play was such a promising feature since the talk of playing Playstation games on the PS3 to the PSP. I haven't purchased a PS4 yet but after reading some negative feedback about remote play, I'm disappointed that this feature's problems haven't already been solved.

10/22/2014 at 11:23 AM

I think it's more of a hardware issue than a software one. I really don't understand why they wouldn't mimic the PS4 by putting four shoulder buttons on the Vita if they knew they wanted remote play functionality. That's just common sense to me.

10/22/2014 at 11:48 AM

Right? Just add the extra shoulder buttons already. Maybe if Sony releases the Vita II.

NSonic79

10/28/2014 at 12:36 PM

doesn't seem as helpful as the PSP on the PS3 for remote playing of PSone titles. Still a nice novelty if you don't need to use the R2/L2 or front touch screen.

10/31/2014 at 08:31 AM

Yeah, better than nothing I guess but I don't really get why there wasn't greater forethought in their design. First world problems I know but still

PixlBit

PS4 Remote Play hands on

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