Vita 'Welcome Park' teaches system basics, includes trophies

By Andrew Yoon, Dec 22, 2011 1:00pm PST

What if you've never held a smartphone before? How will you know how to use the touch screen? How will you know how to use the system's built-in gyroscope and camera? Thankfully, Sony's upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld comes with a series of tutorials that teach you how to take advantage of the system's unique and not-so-unique features.

"Welcome Park" is a collection of mini-games, each highlighting a specific feature of the system. For example, Digit Chase has you attempting to tap numbered bubbles in sequence. The app takes advantage of touch, multi-touch, and the Vita's admittedly bizarre rear touch features.

Sound Loop lets you use the microphone to record sounds. Then you can tilt the system to remix the audio. Skate Axis (pictured above) has you controlling a skateboarder on rails. You must tilt and shake the system to avoid oncoming obstacles. Snap + Slide lets you use the camera to take a picture and turn it into a slide puzzle. "It's a quick, intuitive way to generate Earth's most hated puzzle," Joystiq's JC Fletcher noted in his hands-on.

Finally, Hello Face lets you take pictures of faces, only to get rewarded with quotes from Dostoevsky. "Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart." Bizarre.

While these games are likely too simplistic to be of interest to hardcore gamers (or anyone that's used a smartphone ever), there is one reason to "master" this mini-game collection: it contains PSN trophies. Given the simplistic nature of these games, it might be an easy way of boosting your PlayStation trophy level.

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