Top 5 most inappropriate places to play on your portable

Today's handhelds present us with an incredible opportunity that we now take for granted: the ability to play home console-like games anywhere in the world.

Whipping out your 3DS or Vita on the bus for a spot of Resident Evil Revelations or Unit 13 is a delight. They're both big games into which you can invest hours upon hours of your time, so being able to put in some serious minutes here and there en route to work can prove a godsend.

However, just because you can play them anywhere, doesn't mean you should.

In some places and at certain times, it's completely inappropriate to free your Vita from its travel case captivity and boot it up gleefully. But, how do you tell whether that venue or this board meeting is the right place for a quick session of Mario Kart 7 or not?

We don't have all the answers here at Pocket Gamer, but we do have our own top five no-go places for gaming on the move.

Say you're visiting mad uncle Jack in an insane asylum with your family. "Cripes!" you think, "sure is bleak and depressing in here... I know! I'll catch a few Pokemon: that'll cheer me up." With this act of boredom-breaking 'brilliance', you may well sign yourself up for a spell in the loony bin through a case of mistaken identity.

We're all passionate about the games we play, and very occasionally that manifests itself physically. From a highly visible frown while concentrating on working out a puzzle, to shouting at the screen at how unfair a boss is, right through to involuntarily tensing muscles while swinging around a particularly tricky hairpin bend.

Now, imagine if a person in the medical profession were to see you, hunched over and gazing at an inanimate object, pulling faces, talking out loud to no one in particular, and twitching. You'd be certified faster than that man in town who barks at strangers and eats wasps.

Besides, even if you don't get locked away, it's kind of unfair to play games around people with straitjackets on, isn't it? How are they meant to join in the fun without the use of their hands? You meanie.

Goes without saying, doesn't it? The last thing you should be doing while the dead are being buried or cremated is having fun. And this definitely includes hunting for treasures in Uncharted: Golden Abyss.

Not that wakes necessarily have to be entirely sombre affairs, of course, because, heck, you should be free to celebrate someone's life after its drawn to a close if that's what he'd have wanted.

It's just that unless the person going into the ground is Shigeru Miyamoto - which, as everyone knows, will never happen, due to his infinite supply of 1ups - searching for Star Coins in Super Mario 3D Land midway through the funeral march is just bad form.

It's also too noisy a pastime to go unnoticed in a large echo-heavy building. The last thing fellow mourners want to hear is "Misereatur vestri *click, click, click* omnipotens Deus *click, click, click* et dimissis peccatis vestris *click, click, click*".

There's a caveat to this entry. If you're poorly and stuck in a hospital ward for long stretches of time, interactive entertainment can be an incredible tool for speeding up the recovery process. How? By providing much-needed mental stimulus. It's why we have great organisations like Child's Play.

If you're only a visitor, though, maybe you should leave the PSP at home. Firstly, you're there to provide emotional support to a loved one, and ignoring them while you grind out levels in Persona 3 isn't going to keep you in her good books for long.

It's the casual conversations game fans have with others that will land you in boiling water most promptly, mind. As a community, we tend to speak in extremes, describing something as "the best" or "the worst" without thinking about what those words actually mean.

"No matter what I do today, I just can't seem to beat Will Wilson's times on MotorStorm RC. I'm having the worst Tuesday ever," you say, just as a terminally ill OAP trundles past in a wheelchair. Awkward. I think it's called 'perspective' or something.

Ah, the magic of new romance - so delicate, so exciting. If you've built up the courage to ask out that special boy or girl, the first date is make-or-break territory. No pressure, then.

Within seconds, your date will find out what kind of a person you are, and whether you are a prime candidate for continued romancing. The first date is not the time to get lost in the world of Ivalice, thus instantly alienating the person sitting opposite you.

Even if you know with 100 per cent certainty that your potential partner is interested in your favourite hobby, it's too much to expect her to have also brought her Vita along for an ad hoc session of Reality Fighters set against the background of the best table at Les Pantalons Fancie.

Should a minor miracle have happened and you've both got the same hardware and games with you, then by all means laugh and remark upon what a coincidence it is, but, again, refrain from playing them.

I can hear the cries of disgruntled gamers already, but, no, the bathroom is now out of bounds for portables. The throne of power used to be an excellent place for a couple of rounds of Space Invaders Extreme, but this simply isn't the case any more.

The reason? Increased connectivity on the latest devices. Sure, you can turn these network features off, but will you remember to do so every time you spend a penny? Probably not.

Before wi-fi became a standard feature of handhelds, you could stealthily nip to the water closet and take care of business in Tetris for ten minutes without those you share a home with being any the wiser. With your Vita and 3DS able to 'let' your friends know exactly when you're online, however, suddenly your - ahem - dirty little secret could be public knowledge.

But, the social stigma of others knowing you game on the loo is nothing... nothing compared to the embarrassment of having Asphalt Injection snap a picture of you mid-strain during an online race for the whole wide world to see.