Burn The Rope review for PS Vita

Let’s be honest: the question when it comes to Burn The Rope on the Vita isn’t, “Is it any good?” Chances are, you probably already know the answer to that. After all, it’s been downloaded millions of times for free from Google Play/the Android Market, and millions more for 99 cents (give or take a dollar) through Apple’s App Store. As much as I love my Vita, I can’t ignore the odds that most people who own Sony’s handheld have probably already played Burn The Rope in some form somewhere else.

As such, the real question most people reading this probably have are: why should I spend $4 on a Vita game when I can get it for under a dollar elsewhere?

Truthfully, I’m not sure that you should, since Burn The Rope on the Vita is almost exactly the same game as you’d get on your smartphone or iDevice. You have a rope with bugs on it, you touch it, it starts a fire, and you turn the rope so that the fire keeps burning upwards. If you’re lucky, you get 100%. That’s all there is to it.

I mean, yes, there are some features on the Vita version that make it slightly different. You turn the rope by dragging your finger across the screen in this version, rather than having to turn your whole device around in circles. There’s no question that’s an improvement over the original. You can also zoom in on various spots by pinching the rear touchscreen and moving the rope around with your left stick. That’s less of an improvement, since whatever advantage you gain from zooming in, you lose from it not being a particularly precise or responsive feature.

Oh, and the Vita version has trophies. If you’re the kind of person who prides him- or herself on having more of those, then you’ll find another sixteen you can snatch up here — though, it should be noted, a platinum isn’t one of them.

Don’t get me wrong: Burn The Rope Vita is still a fun game. It’s easy to see why it thrived in the casual gaming marketplace: it’s based on a simple, straightfoward concept, but at the same time it’s got the kind of incentives — in the form of a a gold/silver/bronze medal system based on what percent of the rope you burn — that make easy to become addicted. If, for whatever reason, you haven’t played Burn The Rope before, then by all means download it to your Vita, because you’ll definitely get your $4 worth. But honestly, if you have played it before, then there’s no way that on-screen turning, rear touch zooming, and the promise of up to 16 trophies make it worth picking up again.