In Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Drake is hired by a shady, obnoxious man called Dante to go on a treasure hunt. As per usual, the hunt doesn't exactly go smoothly and Drake winds up in the middle of the jungle with a new love interest by the name of Chase. There's no indication as to where this fits into the timeline of the other three games, but roving reporter Elena is completely missing this time. Bend Studios has done a solid job of staying true to the series' roots, delivering a cinematic, character-focused experience from top to bottom. You do all the things you do in other Uncharted games - monkey your way across canyons, solve mysteries, and engage in cover-based combat.You wouldn't know, from playing through the game, that it was made by a different developer.
The Vita's new gameplay mechanisms - the aforementioned touchscreen, rear touchpad, and gyroscope - are unavoidable. If you want to play the whole game through without getting fingerprints all over your Vita, you're out of luck. All of those features are compulsory at several different points in the game. Personally, I thought the use of those features was inventive - for example, you're required to take pictures of landmarks as you go along, and to adjust the zoom on the camera you have to drag your finger up and down on the rear touchpad. At other points, you have to make charcoal rubbings of engraved objects, which you do by rubbing your finger over the touchscreen. I recognise that some people aren't going to want to use those features at all, but their implementation was interesting. Golden Abyss makes use of absolutely everything the Vita has to offer.
The game must also be pushing the Vita's graphics and processing power to its limits, as well. While it's not really comparable to the later PS3 games, the visuals are remarkable for a handheld device, and probably on par with the graphics of the original in the series, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the animation, or lack thereof, in the characters' hair. Faces move and express emotions, but the hair framing them is dead still.
My only critiscm of the game is the lack of multiplayer, however the single player campaign is of a good length only slightly shorter than its big brothers on the ps3 and collecting all the hidden objects and chasing trophies is going to take a vast amount of your time up.
All in all i couldnt have asked for or expected a better game to launch the playstation vita with. Hopefully there will be many more adventures with Drake during the vitas LONG life cycle.