Game Review: The Quiet Collection (PS Vita)

While many Vita owners haven’t mourned the demise of PlayStation Mobile, the closure of the service back in September 2015 marked the loss of over 500 games and apps to PS Vita owners. While a large number of these titles were below par releases and certainly won’t be missed, there were some real gems amongst them and many gamers missed out on the chance to own some fantastic games. Sadly many of these are now lost to Vita owners with few developers making plans for native PS Vita versions, having moved onto other platforms disillusioned with their experience with Sony. That’s not the case for everyone as Mike Oliphant from Nostatic Software decided to bring all four of his adventures in the Quiet, Please! series across to the PS Vita in one collected volume…

If you’re unaware of the games, all four titles (Quiet, Please!, Quiet Christmas, Vacation Vexation and Candy Please) are 8-bit styled old-school adventures following the escapades of a young girl who is – for the first three games in the series – just trying to get some peace and quiet and trying to relax while it seems as if the whole world is against her! Using a simple control system, the game involves puzzle solving through finding and using objects scattered around each game’s environment, reminscent of many of the early arcade adventures from the halcyon days of the Spectrum and Commodore 64.

It has to be said that these games are not for everyone. Some will complain about the look of the games (“damn indie 8-bit graphics”) and others will criticise Nostatic over this being another non-AAA title for coming to the Vita, but to be frank, as I said in my reviews of each of the titles individually, all four are fun and challenging adventures. They will appeal to nostalgia buffs and anyone – like me – who grew up in the 8-bit era, but also those who can appreciate the charm and character of the game and can see these for what they are. Games don’t have to have millions of polygons flying around the screen in 60fps 3D to be entertaining. They don’t need to have retail packaging as long as it’s something that will leave you feeling fulfilled and having enjoyed the experience playing them and all four of these games meet that perfectly.

They’re easy to pick up and play and selecting the games is simple enough. Upon loading there’s a menu with a choice of all four titles (although there’s no other title screen to speak of) and each individual game has its own titles, credits etc – exactly the same as the PSM originals. In fact, all four games have been left unaltered from their original releases apart from some minor tweaks and an extended story to Quiet, Please! and upon quitting each game you are returned to the game select screen. The only other addition are trophies! One trophy is awarded for the completion of each game and three additional trophies are available for bonus accomplishments within Vacation Vexation, making a total of seven. Nothing spectacular but it should keep some happy!

As a release, this was very close to getting a maximum 10 score from me but just a couple of things held me back. During play, I encountered a bug with Quiet, Please! that I hadn’t seen before with the PSM version of the game which rendered it impossible to complete when an object disappeared from the game. Fortunately, with it being one of the shortest in the pack it wasn’t too hard to restart from scratch to complete it, but it still proved frustrating. The lack of a save function from the first two titles (present on the PSM releases) has been carried forward and again while Quiet, Please! and Quiet Christmas are short enough to complete in one sitting, it may be irritating to some. The games are still great and will keep new players occupied for quite a while and the return play of Vacation Vexation makes up for the lack of any replay value in the core games themselves.

Ultimately though, if you’re looking for some brain-taxing fun, you can’t go wrong with this package of games and for those who complained about PSM not having trophies, there are even seven here up for grabs too! A great value bundle and I only hope that we see more like this in the future.

At A Glance