Handheld Wars Week 8 - LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens

I have these two and played them parallel just a couple of few months ago, comparing them to each other as I went along. The verdict was an overwhelmingly clear win for the Vita version in every single regard.

The 3DS version first of all is the worst of the bunch by far, polygonal and texture detail is a mixed bag with most things being fairly low quality and only a few standout things looking any good, some special effects are either missing completely or of low quality with heavy pixelation and muddy blurriness, the framerate is constantly unstable and far too often gets so choppy it's borderline unplayable, what's even worse is when you activate the "3D" feature and the framerate drops to less than half of what it is when you play in "2D", quite often making it completely unplayable as a literal slideshow at even less than 1FPS, the "3D" also removes what little anti-aliasing you had when playing in "2D", making it look even more low res and pixelated on the already low res 400x240 3DS top screen, almost to the point where it starts looking like an older DS game, all this with significantly longer load times than the other versions have.
The controls are also worse, thanks to the choppiness they become less responsive, especially when the action intensity goes up and you need the controls to be responsive the most, of course, and some control methods are completely absent thanks to the 3DS' lack of a top touch screen, instead the bottom touch screen is used for menu navigation and switching characters etc. and it feels like a total waste, as always.
The audio is compressed but not completely awful, you can hear stuff just fine but it lacks depth.
The compression for pre-rendered cutscenes is also not the best and they are all in "2D" only, as in no "3D" effect has been added to them for this version, which is a shame as other games have done that just fine, like the older LEGO Star Wars III The Clone Wars for example.

The Vita version, as sadly stated earlier, is not a port of the superior stationary console version that Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4 for example had, which it easily could've handled, it is instead an enhanced port of the 3DS version. The good thing is that it makes for a very easy direct comparison between the two.
The visuals are upgraded nicely with far more detail overall, a high and solid framerate, more special effects like motion blur and high detail shadows and all this with notably shorter load times. At times it even looks and feels like a proper genuine HD generation game, just like all Vita games should.
The controls are also much better, as the game runs smoothly there's much faster response time and you have touch screen controls that actually work rather well, giving you more options on how to control the game.
I'm not a fan of touch screens and motion controls in general, but when they're done well and I can use them no problem I'm willing to give them a pass, in some rare cases I can even downright enjoy them, and when testing them for this game on Vita I was able to play through entire missions using only the touch screen controls with no to minimal issues, so I'm definitely giving them a pass for this version.

The game itself wasn't that great to begin with and the downgraded version made for smart devices, 3DS and Vita was an even lesser version than the one stationary consoles got.
So while neither of these two portable versions were massive hits, at least on Vita I was able to enjoy the parts that were actually good and the parts that weren't as good were at least playable without any additional technical issues, so I could get past them with minimal effort.
Sadly the same could not be said for the 3DS version which only served to highlight the issues the game had and ruin any potential fun the game would've offered otherwise, especially sad are the major problems with the "3D" feature, it could've been something that made up for all the other shortcomings and problems but instead it added a new problem and made the worst one even worse still, rendering the "3D" feature virtually unusable.

With all this in mind I can only give the 3DS version a 2/5 overall, at worst it's an unplayable mess and even giving it a score as high as 1/5 feels generous, and at best it reaches up to a mediocre 3/5 as many of the issues are constant throughout the game even at the best parts.
There are much better LEGO games on the system, like LEGO Star Wars III The Clone Wars as mentioned earlier for example, which despite also having some issues like framerate drops at times still manages to do a far better job in just about every other regard, I'd give that game a 4/5 overall, had it not been for the minor issues I'd given it a solid 5/5, so yeah, it's a much better game than LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens is on 3DS, that's for sure.

The Vita version I give a 4/5 overall as it's a perfectly okay game for the Vita, while not fantastic it's definitely good enough to be enjoyable and have some fun with, at worst it's only a mediocre 3/5 but the best parts I dare say reach all the way up to 5/5, they may be few and far between but thanks to how much better this version is overall, at least it manages to reach that high when it's at it's best, so the good foundation where all the technical issues have been fixed allows it reach a higher top peak as well, giving it an overall higher final score as a result.