At Gamescom 2012 last week, Media Molecule unveiled Tearaway, a game which takes the LittleBigPlanet kernel and adds new elements specifically for the PS Vita. Sony’s new handheld hasn’t exactly set the world alight, but perhaps Tearaway is the first sign that it could in the future.
MM creative director Mark Healey certainly thinks so. In a video interview with Game Reactor (via Beef Jack), Healey said:
“It always takes a while for a piece of hardware, or for the people using that hardware to find out its hidden secrets and exploit it. It’s inevitable that the first run of games are not going to use it to its full potential, I think.”
“There’s a temptation with a new piece of hardware, especially if you’re taking an existing game, to think, ‘Well, how do we use all these new features in our old game?’ which sometimes can work but quite often doesn’t as it can feel a bit bolted-on and just using them for the sake of it. Whereas what we’ve done is kind of the other way round.”
“We have ended up using most of the features in it, but not because we felt we had to but because we wanted to. We found things that just fit in and worked together. We’re like lucky children to get to play with this piece of technology, and hopefully Sony are lucky too in that we’ve come up with something great.”
Tearaway does indeed look great, and it has generated much interest in the gaming press at a time when the PS Vita is struggling to find its audience. A single title will not be enough to guarantee the PS Vita longterm success, but several more AAA titles and the Sony handheld has at least a fighting chance.
