Tearaway

At six to seven hours, Tearaway isn’t the longest game in Vita’s library, but it packs in more joyfully realised ideas than many games manage in three or four times the runtime. It’s a beautiful, brilliant game, but it’s more than that: it’s the first great Vita game... It’s a game that refixes Media Molecule as the misshapen jewel in Sony’s wonkily sketched crown, one that shows immersion isn’t about story or spectacle but the simple pleasure of play.

Tearaway has been a long time in coming. Its features, when first announced, sounded too good to be true. Now that they’re actually here, and they’ve outdone themselves, both with better-than-expected performance and some additional, completely unexpected elements. It’s both a pity and a joy that Tearaway was released for the much-reviled and uncommonly-owned PS Vita, because the 3DS certainly wouldn’t be able to deliver the same experience.

Be warned, though, that even when you follow the instructions, some of these are incredibly tricky propositions, but if you've got the patience, it's worth the effort to take the theme of connecting worlds to that next step. The fact that it's so tempting to spend time creating these paper models is a testament to how appealing and attractive Tearaway is. It's just a shame that one of the Vita's best experiences feels as long as a piece of paper is thick.