Hands-on with Little Deviants on PlayStation Vita

The best thing you can do with a new slab of technology is show off to its potential audience exactly what makes that hardware special.

For the PlayStation Vita it seems that Little Deviants is being positioned as exactly that: a collection of mini-games that will help players come to grips with touch-based gaming on near-tablet sized screens, gyroscopic controls, augmented reality gaming, and how a rear touchpad can be used to provide alternative play styles with Sony's great portable hope.

A few game modes were on offer to sample at Eurogamer Expo, the first of which was a little underwhelming: an augmented reality/gyroscope controlled shooting title in which - get this - the room in which you're standing in real life becomes the game environment.

Shooting through a reticle at invading space craft in your living room is nothing new. The AR Games that came with the 3DS handled this type of play perfectly well.

Still it's a reasonable diversion to impress your nan.

Next was a segment in which you have to tap on the front side of enemies - while avoiding humans - to knock them out of a building and remove them from play.

Once I was reminded that I could use the rear pad to poke the stuffing out of my opponents by the out-of-work actor demoing the game, it quickly became apparent that some targets were facing away from the screen and so would need to be handled with a prod of the rear pad.

It's surprising how accurate you can be without seeing where you're touching. I never missed an enemy in the two minute-long session.

As a proof of concept for this unique input method, it succeeded in assuaging most of my fears that it couldn't be used as an accurate controller for other titles.

Those remaining worries would be obliterated in the final game on offer. The task was simple: guide a creature curled up into a sphere across a map in a manner similar to Marble Madness.

The twist is that to do so you have to touch the back of the unit, deforming the terrain to push up temporary hills behind the ball, causing it to roll.

Obscure late-PlayStation title Moho sprung to mind, although this is a far brighter, far sweeter offering. Pushing up behind the screen to raise the land feels accurate and satisfyingly responsive, and sweeping a finger to affect a whole world is rather empowering.

This mode seems to offer the most potential for longevity, too. It's full of times to beat and shortcuts to find, making it the only game on offer that looked like more than just a tech demo.