Severed Hopes: The Last Great Vita Game

The 2014 Playstation Experience was the first videogame convention I ever covered. I was fresh-faced, new to the scene and excited to get my first chance at gaming coverage direct from the show floor. My first appointment was with a Vita game, at a moderately sized booth with a few chairs, tables and a general low-key vibe. Having never picked up a Vita before, I started my demo of Severed, and was so immediately sold on it that I went and bought a Vita three days later in anticipation.
Over a year later, Severed finally comes out this week, a Playstation Vita exclusive game at a time when that has become a rarity more than a common occurrence. Developed by Drinkbox Studios, the same team behind Guacamelee!, Severed makes excellent use of the form factor and design of the Sony handheld, in a way few others have managed to do. It utilizes both the touchscreen and the computing power of the Vita to create something that wouldn’t work as well on any other platform.
Essentially, Severed is the perfect Vita game. It just came at the end of the system’s life.
The Playstation Vita launched in Japan five years ago, with a North American release a short while later in February 2012. It was everything you could have wanted from a Sony handheld—powerful, slim and a battery that could easily sustain a small star for several eons in rest mode. It packed in two analog sticks and a touchscreen, as well as a responsive back panel to accommodate for only having two shoulder buttons. The Vita was a system build to explore new concepts in handheld gaming, to experiment with game types not previously possible and to put some “oomph” in a handheld form factor, in an industry that was looking increasingly towards mobile.
But the games rarely came. Only a few titles released at launch, and the Vita failed to find any significant “killer app” to convince wary consumers to buy it. Those few titles that did make use of the system were often Sony developed; games like Gravity Rush and Tearaway stood alone, and now sit more comfortably in the ecosystem of the Vita’s older sibling, the Playstation 4, as remasters.
Enter Severed, Drinkbox’s hail Mary for the Vita that breathes more life into the system than any game in recent memory. It’s a tale of a girl who loses her arm and family to mysterious forces, who must fight through a demented and torn land to free her loved ones.
Releases on the Vita have always skewed towards ports, or games already releasing elsewhere and making an afterthought appearance on the Vita. The few games truly exclusive to the Vita were niche titles, ones that wouldn’t always appeal to a wider audience, and even some of those (like Persona 4 Golden) were remasters of other games from previous Playstation generations.