Perhaps this title is a little too throwback to truly demonstrate the Vita’s power. Even though the visuals are hitting all the sweet spots for the target audience, there’s no getting around the fact that the general animation during basic combat is very limited and the 3D visuals lack the wow factor of other PS3 ports.

There aren’t many features to speak of in this boot scootin’ boogie with its four different modes — Normal, Perfection, Freeze and Rehearsal. The Rehearsal mode is a rather weak and watered down practice session where you simply go through the routine without being scored. Since this game’s dance routines free flow as one number instead of being broken down into segments, the ability to tackle the song piece by piece in inaccessible. Perfection mode is simply the same as Normal mode except you’ll only be rewarded points for hitting “Great” moves.

In this unique 2D physics-based game, players will launch little smiling globs of coloured goop toward same-coloured bombs. If the gooey mass drips and splatters around the bombs for a short period of time, the bombs detonate in a colourful explosion. Explode all of the strategically placed bombs and the stage is cleared. But clearing the stage is only the bare minimum; the true goal is to aim for the biggest point score possible by achieving various “stunts,” which are specific methods of igniting these explosives. Perform different stunts in a row to create combos and score multipliers and watch the points stack up.

There are three difficulty settings that affect the sensitivity of the controls as opposed to the intensity of the actual battles. When playing in Simplistic mode, you’ll get the easy-to-fly experience where quick moves, spins and turns make for a straightforward arcade-style shooter. Cranking it up to Realistic requires much more finesse and care. Turning incorrectly can easily put you in a top-spin that you’ll have to recover from and damage to the plane becomes a critical factor in keeping your bird in the air. Obviously, Simulation is for the experienced connoisseur of flight where even target locking is disabled, thus calling for bona fide skill. A different set of options also determines whether or not ammunition and fuel are unlimited if you’re feeling ballsy enough.

Since the camera doesn’t always follow the back of your characters, there’s a sense of confusion when aiming the firearms. You may think you’re facing a horde of zombies, but when pulling up to fire, the camera often shifts to face an undesired direction. This is because the camera was originally facing the enemies and your character wasn’t. This automatic camera move is something you can turn off in the options, but the alternative is heavy manual camera management that detracts from the action. In either case, it’s bothersome and drags down what is an otherwise fun game to play.

So what’s new in Hayabusa’s grab bag of pain? Word on the street is that he’s still a ninja with a sweet list of moves to slice and dice enemies with. Most of the techniques and controls from the previous two installments are present here with a fair share of tweaking. You still have a light and heavy attack along with the jump and shuriken on the face buttons. Blocking and dodging are done with the left trigger, and this time, the bow can be pulled out by holding the left bumper while using the right trigger to shoot your arrows. And as before, when the move list unlocks as the game progresses so does the game’s potential to kick some serious ass.