Topic: Remote Play

So I'm going to be honest, I've had my Vita since 2013 and not once have I played through a PS4 game through Remote Play. Every time I tried it out, it just used to lag so badly that it wasn't worth it. Not to mention that the Vita lacks triggers compared to other options such as the Switch. However, yesterday I was buying some games and I've been wanting to buy Steins;Gate 0 on the Vita ever since I finished the first game because I prefer to play visual novels on handhelds. The thing is that I already bought the game on PS4 since it was so cheap and this was before I became interested in the series. If I'd known that the game was going to become one of my favourite games of all time, I wouldn't have bought it on PS4 and just gotten it on Vita along with the first game. So anyway, I thought why not try playing it through Remote Play on my Vita as it would be pretty much the same experience. And the game worked flawlessly! I played it for about an hour and there was no lag or audio issues, it was pretty much like playing the game natively on the Vita, which I've never experienced before.

Mind you I was playing through a Wi-Fi connection instead of local wireless because it works better. But despite Wi-Fi working better in the past, it would still lag in most games I played. So I thought, is it because I was playing a visual novel since these games are not so demanding to stream? I then proceeded to try out other games and I booted up Resident Evil 0. It lagged so much. At that point I thought it was the case of visual novels being less demanding. However, I did some research on Reddit today about people having issues with Remote Play as well. Several suggested that there's a Remote Play setting on PS4 that you need to change in order for the Wi-Fi connection to be more stable. I checked that setting, turned on Remote Play and all of a sudden, it works flawlessly for both Steins;Gate 0 and Resident Evil 0.

The thing is that the people on Reddit said to uncheck the box, but I had it already unchecked and the connection was still poor. I checked it instead and it worked better. The setting is to make sure that every time you connect to a PS4 through Remote Play, the Vita would always connect through the internet and not local wireless. I have no idea why this would matter since I was still manually connecting through the internet and it still lagged.

Now granted, maybe every time I've tried to connect through Remote Play, my internet could've been having issues at that point in time. Considering RE0 works flawlessly right now, I don't know if it's because of my internet working better now or because of that change in setting. Either way, I think I'm finally going to give Remote Play on Vita a shot now after almost a decade of not using it at all. As long as it keeps working fine, that is.

So now I'm wondering, do any of you actively use Remote Play on Vita or do you also have the same issues of it lagging so badly that you've given up on that feature?

@LtSarge interesting... I've always heard negativity about remote play but if it's the case that you can get it running well like that consistently, that's a real selling point.

I've been 'umming-and-ahhhing' about getting a Vita for a while. Maybe this could be the deciding factor for me.

@LtSarge I used to use it quite a bit actually. It was great for RPGs. Unfortunately it doesn’t work with the PS5!

@colonelkilgore Same here, I've never gotten it to work and others I've talked to over the years have stated the same. The thing is that I was just listening to a podcast from 2013-2014 and at the time, these guys I was listening to had just bought Vitas. They said that they were playing Destiny at work from their PS4 at home. I was like, how's that even possible without any lag whatsoever? So I thought, I have to be doing something wrong, I have 100 mbps download and upload so it's not like I have poor internet or anything like that. I figured there must be something on the systems I have to change in order to make it work better and maybe this was it.

I booted up RE0 again now, played for about 10 minutes and it still works great. No lag, no input delay, no audio issues, it's like I'm playing the game natively on Vita, which is bloody awesome. Granted, I don't recommend playing any PS4 games on Vita, especially not those that constantly use the triggers. RE0 doesn't really utilise the triggers that much. For example, the left trigger is used as a shortcut to open up your map quicker. How triggers work on Vita is that you touch either the top left or the top right corners of the screen for the input. For a game like RE0, it works out brilliantly.

So I'm not sure if this will work or not, but I remember Sony adding a PS4 Remote Play app on PC/Mac a couple of years ago and that could maybe be a good way for you to test out that feature before investing in a Vita. Just make sure to go to Settings on your PS4, scroll down to Remote Play and make sure the second box (I believe) regarding always connecting through the internet is checked before trying Remote Play. If it works great on your computer, then it should work great on your Vita as well (in theory, I haven't confirmed this for myself). Unless maybe wired internet connection on PC contra wireless connection on Vita is going to have an impact on the results.

@nessisonett Wait, PS5 doesn't have Remote Play at all? Well, it does make sense considering Sony has abandoned the Vita and if I recall correctly, every developer needs to make sure their PS4 game works through Remote Play before shipping the product. So maybe removing that aspect has made it easier for devs to release their titles on PS5.

I think this makes me appreciate Remote Play on PS4 even more. Good reason to keep your PS4 then, at least for now!

@LtSarge PS5 has it on PC, Android and iOS I think. Just not on Vita.

@nessisonett Ah, gotcha. I guess Vita is just too good for Remote Play on PS5.

I used it a bit around Christmas 2018 (I think?) When I had various trips planned and needed to log on and play a few rounds of crash team racing to do the monthly quests/get wumpa coins etc. While I was away

It worked well enough for a bit of CTR, not necessarily massively competitive play. I wouldn't have played a proper single player game with it because the lag would ruin it for me.

I had the PS4 on a wired connection and I sat right next to whatever wi fi hotspot I was using when I was awat

@ralphdibny Since you're mostly playing on Xbox now, I'm guessing you don't have much need for Remote Play on Vita anymore. But would you ever consider trying it again if you found a way to remove the lag?

I decided to give Remote Play a proper go yesterday evening in a different room and so I had to connect through the internet. Apparently I was connecting through local wireless before and for some reason, that works great now compared to years ago. Anyway, the internet connection was a bit less than flawless this time, I managed to play through half an hour of Steins;Gate 0 without any issues, but when I played Resi 0 for half an hour, the stream did become a bit pixelated when I was going from room to room. It didn't affect the gameplay or anything, but I did notice the streaming was slightly worse with an internet connection that through local wireless. Either way, I'm convinced now that I can play games on PS4 (or at the very least these two games) and on my Vita and switch between the systems like the Nintendo Switch. Which is incredible to me and this will definitely encourage me to play more games on PS4 that I don't feel like playing on the TV, such as visual novels. I have the entire Zero Escape series on PS4 and now I can finally experience them on the Vita.

I wonder if I can play through Yakuza or Judgment on the Vita. I'll have to give that a go one of these days!

@LtSarge not using remote play on Vita doesn't have anything to do with playing on Xbox. It's just that I don't have a use for it anymore. I needed it to do the CTR monthly event requirements while I was away at Xmas a few years ago.

To be honest though, I can't think of a single Xbox or PlayStation game that I'd want to play on a small screen. It's just not as immersive, the sounds not as good and the graphics aren't as good. If I was away then I'd just wait until I get home to play whatever big screen game I was playing.

Functionally, for me, remote console gaming could only be useful for things that have an arbitrary time limit. Like the CTR monthly events, or indeed now the MS Rewards on Xbox (I still need to set that up).

If I really wanted to play a game while I was away, then I've got a bazillion handheld games in my backlog that have been neglected due to the fact I have been gaming on consoles and TVs instead!

Even on Switch, I mainly use it in docked mode. It's hard to explain my reasons for using the ability to go handheld on Switch or use remote play on Vita. I wouldn't play the main portion of a console game on handheld but I might choose to do grindy stuff handheld. Like levelling up, hitting targets, stuff like that I guess. Maybe even repeat playthroughs. Once I've experienced the story in the best way possible on a big screen then I wouldn't mind doing collectibles/second playthroughs in handheld. Not that I play many competitive console games, but I also wouldn't mind playing them in handheld.

There are games in quite happy to play handheld, stuff like Picross games and I'm slowly working my way through that Sega Picross on Switch. If anything though, I'm the opposite. I want to play handheld games on the big screen!! I hacked a PSTV (the TV based Vita system) so I could play Uncharted Golden Abyss on the big screen as it wasn't compatible with PSTV. I also used it to play other handheld games on the big screen such as MGS Portable Ops and Splinter Cell Essentials. I'll probably use it to play other handheld entries in series I might play in future such as the Vita/PSP iterations of Resistance, Killzone, Jak&Daxter, Ratchet&Clank etc

Edit: just to add, with remote play, I'd have to plan ahead and make sure I leave my home console on rest mode/stand by so I could actually connect to it. It's not something I like doing willy nilly, especially as the PS4 standby is just basically the console switched on. It seems to be able to do everything except display a game to a monitor lol. But yeah, worse case scenario for leaving everything plugged in and switched to rest/stand by is that I come back to a burned down house and best case scenario is that I've had a power cut and it's messed up all my hard drives. I don't mind doing it every now and then but I'm not going to go out every day with all these devices being unused but still sucking up juice and adding to my electricity bill

So I've been using Remote Play on Vita more recently and today I discovered some cool things. Up until now, I've been streaming PS4 games in 30 fps because I thought that if I increase it, the stream will get more pixelated. Well, turns out that if I connect via Wi-Fi and turn up the frame rate to 60, then the stream quality becomes even better! Since I've been mostly playing Steins;Gate 0, i.e. a visual novel, on a local connection, I didn't really notice any issues with the stream. However, when I tried out other games, such as Child of Light on PS4, it felt rather slow to play and the output would become pixelated quite often. Then I decided to turn up the frame rate and connect via Wi-Fi and holy crap, the game became so smooth and there were no issues with the stream at all! Like it's genuinely really good and now I want to try out all kinds of games through Remote Play.

I did some research online and apparently some developers had created custom controls for the Vita whenever it connected to a PS4 game via Remote Play. Some examples are the aforementioned Child of Light, Fallout 4, Skyrim and Far Cry 4. Sadly, I haven't found a list of games that have custom controls but I'm genuinely impressed that there are games that work well on Vita, especially now that it streams wonderfully. I doubt that newer PS4 titles have that since it's probably mostly games that came out when the Vita was still being supported. But can you imagine playing a game like Far Cry 4 or Skyrim on the freaking Vita? That would be so awesome! I'm even interested to try out other games that don't rely heavily on triggers and I believe Judgment is one of those games if it's anything like Yakuza. I've also looked up videos on YouTube and Shadow of the Colossus is another title that was mentioned to work well on Vita!

Man, it's so weird rediscovering this feature and realising that it's actually really good. I remember having issues with it back in the day, but maybe that was because I didn't have fast internet, didn't connect via Wi-Fi or used the proper settings for the stream. I'm genuinely excited to give Remote Play a proper go this time around!

Decided to try out Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry (which is basically a lite version of AC4) on Remote Play and holy crap, it plays like a dream! No issues whatsoever with the stream and the game even has custom controls, so the L and R bumpers on Vita are automatically mapped to the L2 and R2 triggers on the DualShock 4. How is it possible that I've missed out on all of this for so long? I wonder how many more games have custom controls, like surely if Freedom Cry has it then AC4 must have it as well.

I play allot of PS4 games on my IPad using remote play. Just love it. One of the many perks of playing on Sony.

Remote play makes up for there being no PSVITA 2 in my book.