Survival games exploded in popularity in the 2010s, providing white-knuckle adventures where players must scavenge, craft, and battle the elements to stay alive. These titles lend an incredible sense of tension and accomplishment when you manage to survive against all odds. For fans of portable gaming, the PlayStation Vita was a haven for fantastic survival titles. But which PS Vita games were the absolute best of the best in the survival genre?
After extensively analyzing reviews and player reception, we‘ve compiled a definitive list of the top 7 survival games on PlayStation Vita. These are the titles that combined clever mechanics, impactful stories, and intense gameplay to provide unforgettable survival experiences. Across horror, action, adventure, and more, these are the PS Vita survival games you need to play.
Final Fantasy XIV Online brought the massive multiplayer world of Eorzea to Vita in 2015. Like the PC and console versions, the Vita edition offered hundreds of hours of quests, dungeons, and raids. It represented the depth and commitment of an MMO remarkably well on a handheld.
The realm of Eorzea itself was hazardous, filled with roaming beasts and monsters. Simply traversing the landscape meant watching your step and keeping an eye out for threats. Taking on quests meant braving dangerous ruins and caves filled with all manner of creatures. Just gathering materials for crafting professions could turn fatal if you attracted too many angry elementals or wild animals.
While offering plenty of structured content like dungeons, FFXIV on Vita excelled at making exploration feel fraught with danger. You always had to be alert and prepared. Few MMOs captured that survival element so well.
Don‘t Starve has become a cult classic survival game thanks to its Burton-esque art style and uncompromising difficulty. The Giant Edition bundled the base game with the Reign of Giants expansion, which introduced seasons.
On Vita, Don‘t Starve retained the tense, unforgiving gameplay of the original. The randomly generated maps meant you never got complacent. Survival depended on scavenging for materials to build the essentials like shelter, firepits for light, and rabbit traps for food.
Venturing out at night was enormously risky thanks to roaming monsters. Wandering through the unknown wilderness required ensuring you had enough supplies and mental fortitude to get back to your base safely. With permadeath looming over you, every venture outside was fraught with tension.
Don‘t Starve: Giant Edition stands as one of the toughest standalone survival experiences on Vita. The combination of randomized maps and permadeath kept it relentlessly tense.
The Resident Evil franchise almost always dabbles in survival elements, and Revelations 2 followed suit with scenarios focused on rationing ammo and items. Set between Resident Evil 5 and 6, Revelations 2 aimed to re-capture the horror atmosphere absent in those main entries.
You played as Claire Redfield, who finds herself stranded on a zombie-infested prison island. With limited weapons and ammo, you had to carefully choose when to fight or run from the wandering afflicted. Items were scarce, forcing you to make tough decisions about using healing items or weapon upgrades. The setting ratcheted up the survival tension exponentially.
Alongside its campaign, Revelations 2 also included the co-op Raid Mode, where players had to cooperatively clear monster-filled levels while minding supplies. Earning higher scores depended on rationing herbs, ammo, and weapon durability wisely.
Hotline Miami became an icon of brutally challenging gameplay, and losing meant starting murderous levels completely over. The top-down shooter was a blood-soaked, neon-drenched survival gauntlet.
As an unnamed killer, you fought through buildings full of ruthless Russian mafiosos and hired guns. Combat was instant kills whether you were stabbing, shooting, or bashing enemies with baseball bats. But they could easily kill you just as fast.
Surviving the string of levels depended heavily on memorization and lightning quick reflexes. Slowly picking off one enemy at a time while avoiding gunfire barely kept you alive. Hotline Miami demanded perfection; one misstep meant a swift death. But the sheer satisfaction of perfectly reacting and executing a floor of enemies made it worth mastering.
Dragon Fin Soup blended action RPG mechanics with survival crafting for an addictive experience. As a ranger exploring the colorful world of Liquid Grain, you took quests and delved into monster lairs while managing supplies.
Keeping your hunger and energy up meant cooking with ingredients from slain creatures or foraged in the wilderness. Frequent hunger pangs reminded you to keep your provisions stocked. Traversing between towns meant preparing enough food, potions, arrows, and other gear to survive random enemy encounters.
While not as hardcore as Don‘t Starve, Dragon Fin Soup effectively balanced its retro Zelda-esque gameplay with survival systems. Keeping your backpack filled with cooked meat and brewed potions brought a steady sense of urgency to the adventure.
It‘s no surprise that the ultimate crafting sandbox Minecraft made its way to PlayStation Vita. The core premise remained focused on survival via crafting and resource gathering. The Vita version represented the beloved build-and-survive gameplay remarkably well.
Punching trees yielded precious wood, while mining revealed iron, coal, and other minerals for crafting. As the first night set in, you had to quickly build a shelter and torch to keep monsters at bay.
Vita‘s control scheme allowed for swift navigation and item switching. The touchscreen made inventory management seamless. Minecraft created an engrossing survival loop of gathering, crafting, and surviving environmental threats. With randomly generated worlds, no two attempts were the same. For on-the-go crafting with survival at the forefront, Minecraft on Vita is unmatched.
The Binding of Isaac became renowned for its fiendish yet addictive survival gameplay, and Rebirth perfected the formula with enhanced visuals, controls, and more item combos. The focus on risk-reward gameplay made each run an unnerving blast.
You needed to venture through floors teeming with horrors to find loot and power-ups to strengthen Isaac. But proceeding meant giving up precious resources at the current floor. Do you cash in the keys and bombs for the next level or keep exploring bonus rooms and shops?
Racing the clock to the boss room before your health dwindled meant balancing offense and defense. Do you grab the damage up or the health up? Rebirth‘s stellar controller support on Vita made dashing around enemy projectiles easier. Combined with portability, it was the definitive way to experience the survival and combat gauntlet.
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth set the gold standard for twin-stick shooter survival games with its addictive loop. No matter how horrendous Isaac‘s basement got, you kept venturing back in hopes this would be your run.
Conclusion
PS Vita might not have gotten as many games as the 3DS, but it was home to some of the most riveting survival experiences in gaming history. These titles challenged players‘ resourcefulness in staying alive against unending hazards. Through scavenging, crafting, and combat, these games provided white-knuckle adventures that made success so rewarding. Any PlayStation Vita owners looking for engrossing survival gameplay need to add these seven gems to their libraries. Just be prepared to make life or death decisions at every turn if you hope to prevail and cheat death. But surviving against the odds is what makes these games so iconic and compelling.
