Most of the games I give extended blog space to are games I’ve researched first before buying, and I spend a lot of time playing them, so it’s rare that there are any that I actively dislike. With Playstation Plus’ monthly free games, I get access to all sorts of games, good and bad. The following two were ones I was keen to play, but couldn’t stick with, so its not fair for me to give either a verdict, suffice to say I would recommend neither.

Virtue’s Last Reward

Developer/Publisher: Chunsoft/Rising Star Games Released: November 2012

Played on: PS Vita (also available on 3DS)

This game sounded interesting and was on my “to buy” list for the 3DS. Thankfully I got it free on Vita before I spent any money on it. I only played it for an hour or 2, and in that time I enjoyed the puzzles I faced, despite a clunky control scheme. However the story and characters that seem to talk FOREVER were lacking anything interesting to say, and you spend your time in between puzzles clicking through pages of rubbish dialogue. Maybe this game gets better, it has a strong reputation, but I couldn’t stomach anymore of it.

Little Big Planet Karting

Developers/Publisher: United Front Games/Media Molecule Released: November 2012

Played on: PS3

A Little Big Planet Karting game sounds like a smashing idea. I was hoping this would be a Vita release, I love playing racing games on the go, but the game looked good on PS3.

The game had a bad start for me. I was playing alone, but the screen was split in two like there was a second player. After some fooling around, it turned out that the game thought my PS3 remote was a controller, and I had to remove the batteries to get it to recognise me as a single player again.

The racing itself was ok, but I lost interest very quickly. Between the annoyance of having to remove batteries from my remote every time I played, and knowing in the back of my mind that I could be playing Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS which was infinitely more fun, I soon uninstalled Little Big Planet Karting.