Will AC: Liberation finally provide a truly epic portable experience?

The trailers I've seen look pretty damn good, and I'm hoping it will live up to it's home console counterparts in terms of an expansive freeroaming world & immersive gameplay. My dream is to have a portable action adventure/wrpg that's close to the quality of current home consoles, as I have lots of long bus & train rides and I'm not really a fan of short puzzle/platform/sports/driving games. I want something I can really get engrossed in, with lots of exploration and sidequests. So if Liberation provides that then I might consider shelling out the £250 for a Vita, although I'd be worried about how few other must-have games (for me) have been announced. With the exception of Killzone (some time in 2013?) and Bioshock (2014?) I haven't really seen anything else that's got me excited.

But supposing Liberation is a real console seller, it's not out for another 2 months. What do I play on the train 'til then? I still have my old psp, but it's been gathering dust for ages. I've played GOW & Crisis Core to death. Ditto Killzone & Resistance. I have my Square psone rpg classics, but with the exception of Vagrant Story they're feeling a bit stale. And most of the rpgs for the psp seems annoyingly cutesy or too old school or both. I was hoping for FF Type-0 to tide me over (it's one of the reasons I bought a psp), but it seems like it's never getting a translation, and I'm not going to play it in Japanese as understanding story & dialogue is important to my enjoyment of a game.

What's the closest you can get at the moment to a decent action adventure/wrpg like Assassin's Creed on a handheld? Something with a fantasy/sci-fi/historical setting along the lines of Fable, Mass Effect, Fallout etc. Obviously the graphics will take a hit, but it has to have a bit of eye candy. And plenty of exploration. I'd even consider getting an iphone or 3DS if someone could point me towards a good enough game. This is surely what the psp and ps vita were made for?

This looks the closest to a console like experience besides the God of War ready at dawn games.

I am looking for: -Platforming that isn't almost completely automated. It is obviously designed to be more fun to watch than play, because while the character is doing all sorts of crazy stuff on screen I'm just holding a button and a stick direction. You're only vaguely in control. -Combat that requires you to think. The enemy AI is completely braindead. Instead of attacking all at once they surround you and attack one at a time, watching as you slaughter their comrades as they wait their turn. It's like a bad 80s kung fu movie. And the actual combat mechanics are no better. They are again about flash over substance. It rarely matters which attack buttons you press or what order you press them, the counter is insanely overpowered, and the camera is constantly interrupting the flow in the name of showing you how elegant their animation system is. -The repetition is still a huge issue. Like too many other games these days, AC games are made to be watched instead of played. I feel like I get the same experience watching someone else play it on Youtube as I do with the controller in my own hands. Because the gameplay isn't deep enough to drown a flea.famicommander

You could say the same for Batman Arkham's combat. I hope you're not expecting DMC/GoW calibre of combat out of AC.

Arkham is also extremely overrated but the combat is a few steps above Assassin's Creed. And I wouldn't exactly call God of War or DMC4 good combat systems either. DMC 1 and 3 sure, but not 4. I would call games like Bayonetta, Shinobi PS2, and Ninja Gaiden Black the top of 3D action combat. And no, I don't hold every game to such a high standard. The problem is AC doesn't meet any standards. It doesn't challeng my reflexes, it doesn't challenge my pattern recognition skills, it doesn't test my critical thinking, it doesn't test my anticipation, it doesn't encourage creativity. It essentially gives me no reason to play it. Even shallow games like Arktham City at least require basic thinking and timing. AC is lowest common denominator. famicommander

Yeah I said DMC not DMC4 for a reason. Arkham may be a little bit better, but it's still just twitch reflex combat like AC.

Few action games will deliver anything similar to Ninja Gaiden for sure, do you have NGS on PSV?

Please Fami enlighten us with your favorite gameplay mechanics.

I agree that the combat in parts of the Assassin's Creed series has been flawed. The reliance on counter attacks in particular is often ridiculous. The rooftop/platforming sections are too easy, and the escape segments can get frustratingly messy. The more strategic elements can also become really tedious (waiting for a group of monks to walk round and round - wtf?).

I tend to rate it more as a sandbox/open-world game (like GTA with horses in place of cars) rather than a pure action game like God of War. Yes, the action in GOW is much more satisfying. But the game is also pretty damn linear. Once you've worked out the way through, that's it. All you can do then is scale up the difficulty of combat. There's not the same scope for exploration and interaction as games like AC, the same freedom to meet objectives in different ways (hopefully that will translate to the Vita). There's not the same incentive to just stop and appreciate the game world, crouching on rooftops and looking about - or to collect things, explore cities, fulfill optional tasks, and replay. The story/dialogue is also much more extensive, even if it isn't top quality. I felt much more engaged in the Crusader Holy Land/Renaissance Italy than I did in mythical Greece, purely because of the detail & scope.

The GOW games were the best things on the PSP in my opinion (didn't even try the psp AC), but I blew threw them in around 6 hours each, and felt little incentive to replay. I don't think I'd buy a vita just for games like that, unless there were lots of them (is the Vita even getting a new GOW?). What I appreciate about games like Assassin's Creed is the game worlds themselves - the variety of gameplay (however flawed), and the freedom to explore, to take it all in. I can imagine spending far more time with such games than with the likes of GOW or Devil May Cry. There are definitely games that combine combat and exploration better (Mass Effect and Fallout for example), but so far all I see on the Vita is Assassin's Creed. I suppose Bioshock has quite a rich game world & some rpg elements, but I've heard that they've ceased development until they finish Infinite, so who knows how long that'll be in coming. Other than that, there's Killzone (I'm not really into Call of Duty - I prefer my shooters set in fantasy/sci-fi). Hopefully they won't screw that like they seem to have done with Resistance. It's need to be a full game with extensive campaign to make it a console seller, rather than just a handheld tie-in like Killzone Liberation (which was still a good game).