Mr. Inkjet hands-on preview

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Because “Mr. Laser” doesn’t have the same ring to it

The PlayStation Vita is brimming with potential and it’s going to take gamers a bit to understand just how everything works. Case in point: Mr. Inkjet, a quirky puzzle game that has you manipulating a paper-doll through various obstacles using the rear touch panel.

Our demo started with us taking a picture to use as our avatar. Because there weren’t a ton of viable subjects around the Sony booth, we used the art book Sony had on hand. But, even that proved only half-useful because we couldn’t manage lining up the target area with the torso of the drawing we picked.

What surprised us was how clear and crisp the image was from the rear-facing camera. We’ve become accustomed to the 3DS’s blurry images, so the quality caught us off guard.

The level we played had us controlling all four limbs of our avatar using four points of contact with the rear touch panel. Pulling our hands and arms in toward our trunk to avoid lasers and other obstacles as we scrolled upward was simple and intuitive, but the level of sensitivity meant we weren’t always successful at keeping our extremities tucked in.

We weren’t sure exactly where the safe zone was for us to touch, and we wound up having six fingers on the back at first. It didn’t hinder our performance, but had we been intimately acquainted with the Vita hardware our time would have been better spent. We liked what we saw and hopefully it forces players into using the hardware in some new ways with each mission.

Jun 29, 2011