Sony’s current handheld gaming system PlayStation Vita may not have enjoyed that much popularity among fans, but it seems like it has its own special advantages when tagged alongside the newly released PlayStation 4 in the form of Remote Play custom button options.
While Sony has been backing the Remote Play for most of the PlayStation 4 games this year, the company has also delivered on the promise so far with games like Assassin’s Creed 4, Need for Speed Rivals and Battlefield 4 which are working just fine on the handheld device.
The advantages for the same were recently a topic of massive discussion among fans on Reddit (where else?), where, as an answer to a query regarding the use of the “front vita screen as extra mapable buttons,” user russellbeattie stated: “1) Yes, you use the front screen. 2) No, you can't choose how big the front screen buttons are or tweak them in any way 3) I bought a grip for my Vita which really makes it much more comfortable for me to use as a controller, though obviously your preference may vary.”
“4) Resogun would be perfect, but there are no button layout options, and the bomb is a bit hard to activate - since you need to be able to use it quickly, this definitely takes away from the game 5) I think it's a very viable system, but it depends on your tolerance for lag, need for precision, etc,” he added.
The user also stated that after writing the initial answer to the question that was featured on the thread, “it dawned on me to go try Resogun again and mess with the button options. It doesn't show the Vita like CoD, but does let you customize the layout. Much better!”
Another user wrote: “Yeah in Resogun you can map the keys, one by one, which is pretty sweet so you can map them to the X/O buttons/whatever combination you want!”
Additionally, on the topic of taking screenshots and sharing them in remote play by pressing the select button, russellbeattie confirmed that sharing screenshots “doesn't work on the Button Guide screen and would require me to upload each picture to Twitter or Facebook individually in order to use them.”
“It seems Sony has disabled Vita's integrated screen shots for Remote Play, so I had to use my camera phone which wasn't wonderful. Second, according to the PS Vita docs, when you press the PS button on the Vita and choose the 'Button Guide' on the pop-up menu bar, it's supposed to list the various layouts which you can choose from if custom layouts are supported by the game.”
“But for Call of Duty, even though the button guide showed a single layout with only the back touch panel as buttons, the game was definitely using the front touch screen. This is why I looked around and discovered the custom button options which pictured the Vita. Apparently games can detect being used by remote play, and adjust accordingly,” he added.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 released on Nov. 15 in North America and Nov. 29, 2013 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.