Neither the touch screen nor the joysticks work in the Twitch app; instead, you’ll use the D-Pad to navigate to your menus and other selections, pressing the X button to select them. The app itself is fairly snappy, and while videos load slowly, they do appear after a short delay. You can browse for titles on the main screen using the touch screen, D-Pad, or left joystick. Search the catalog with the triangle button to find just the right film or TV show to binge. The interface has ratings and info, just like modern mobile versions of Netflix. If you’re a serious fan of the anime art form, this app will keep you pretty happy on your PS Vita. You can watch videos for free with ads, or log in to your Premium account. There’s also a 14-day trial you can access on the Vita screen. The main interface consists of two sections, one with drums and pre-made keyboard sequences, and one with bass sequences. On the drum/keyboard screen, you tap the screen up and down a column to choose how that specific instrument sounds (bass drum, hi-hat, snare, cymbal, keyboard). On the bass screen, you tap buttons to choose the specific sound and sequence while moving the symbol around onscreen to change its parameters. You can change the main note the bass sound hovers around (called a “keynote”), too. A settings button lets you set the scale and tempo on the fly. You’ll see the temperature, “feels like” rating, and precipitation overview, with a high/low readout and a percent chance of precipitation on the left-hand side of the screen. To the right, you can watch a live weather video from a random location, or pre-recorded videos in a Weather On Demand section. The sound is distorted, with the former, but the latter is fun to see. You can pull up a rain, ice, and snow radar map, too. You can zoom in and out on the map with the PS Vita shoulder buttons. It will track how many “successful” wake-ups (defined by you turning off the alarm within 5 minutes of it sounding) you and other users have completed in a row, and will place you on a leaderboard based on how many times you’ve done that in a row. You set up an alarm time, repetition, sound and volume, then decide whether it will be a regular alarm or a Club alarm. If you choose the latter, you’ll need to stay connected to the internet and leave the Vita on the app screen while you sleep. The standard alarm doesn’t require a network connection. The app also has a timer you can use, with big, easy-to-read numbers on it and virtual buttons you can use to set the time increment. If you want to gamify your alarm clock or just use your Vita as one, Wake-up Club is the way to go. The touch screen, D-Pad, and left joystick all navigate through the interface, while the gaming buttons do various things, too, like clicking through to hashtags and user names. Photos are supported, too, but GIFs are relegated to a static frame. Still, if you need your Twitter fix on your PS Vita, LiveTweet is a fairly full-featured way to do it.
