Thorzilla
November 25th, 2008, 06:40 AM
http://www.fotosps3.com/albums/playstation-home/home-beta.jpg
Recently, I've been given a chance to participate in this closed beta about to become open beta for eveyone's joy. This feature has been delayed several times, and has had an overdue launch for more than a year. Want to find out what the whole buzz is about? Read on!
What is Home? Many people seem to have a general misconception about what Home is. To clarify, it's not a game. It may look like a game, but it's not. It doesn't have trophies, doesn't have shootings, doesn't have life points or mana. It's not even listed in the Game section under the XMB but in the Network one. Then, what is Home? In short, Home is the PSN. Not only you can hook up with new people from all over the world, but you can play games like pool or bowling with them. We are also given the chance to watch the latest trailers from the latest videogames and movies. Home also features a couple (unopened) stores that will allow us to purchase anything from clothes to new rooms, or so it seems. To sum it all, it's a PSN virtual world.
Going Home. The download was a very small 77MB file which really surprised me that it would be that small. As soon as I installed it, Home asked me to reserve around 3G of drive space which made me wonder. To my surprise, every place I entered had to be downloaded once to my drive, although the download can be done in the background. It's a nice feature to soothe the wait, but it's deffinitely a small turn off but completely understandable from the point of view of comfort. Developers will probably find it easier to update section by section, which only benefits us users in the long run, as we will have to load only a part of Home, not the full feature once again.
http://gamelosofy.com/wp-content/uploads/pshome1.jpg
Customization. As soon as we enter Home, we are given the chance to fully customize our avatar. Those familiar with The Sims 2 will feel Home. This customization can be done in two ways. The short way, we will be choosing our clothing like shirts, pants, accessories, shoes, hats and a pre-made face, while those feeling a bit more adventurous will customize their avatar features like weight, height and face. Choosing clothes is easy enough; however, customizing your avatar's features is missing something. Sure, it's a beta, and it's not necessarily the final product, but it needs some tweaking. Besides the fact that some of the tools to customize your avatar feel "half full", those that are there don't feel easy to use. Sure enough, it's easy to manipulate your face's features with the left and right analogue, but it doesn't seem properly organized. You will find yourself rotating your avatar back and forth, asking yourself "What did that do?" or "What does this do?" although the description of the tool is there. The idea is deffinitely there, but in the practice, it doesn't seem too user friendly. That aside, we are given the choice to add very tiny little details like front wrinkles, mouth wrinkles and even freckles which really adds up to the customization.
Once we are done with our avatar, we are taken to our room, with an astounding setting. Our default room feels simple, clean and "chick" and has a very nice balcony with a great view of the harbor below. As well as with our avatar, we can fully customize our room, even giving us the chance to change the wall's color and art. Although we can't seem to have many different items in the beta, there will be many more available after Home is released. The customizing tool has some good ideas, but as it happens with the avatar customization, it's just not completely there. For freaks of having everything perfectly lined up like me, they will find one hell of a hard time rotating items trying to get them in the perfect paralel position. This is a feature that needs to be implemented inmediately. Besides that, everything works just fine.
Places to visit. We can do quite a few things in Home, though some of them are closed or not completely functional as for now in the beta stages like the stores. When we step outside, we are taken to a very attractive little park in the middle of what seems to be a mall. There are all kinds of advertisement posters like R2, Riff, GT5P and Warhawk around as well as two screens with different videogame trailers playing. In the middle, there is a small, quiet spot with chess boards under the sound of a calm flow of water from the water chanel. This is our meeting spot, where all of Home places lead to. The shopping mall, the theaters, the bowling and all rooms all lead here.
http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/ps3_home_1.jpg
The shopping mall. What seems to be a link between the Playstation Store and Home is not open yet. Entering a store leads us to a screen with our PSN account and out shopping cart where we will be able to purchase clothing, items for our room and even newer rooms in the future.
The theaters. It works wonders. Videos load quickly and it could perfectly substitute the trailers section in the Playstation Store in the near future. The design of the theater is spot on and really feels like a real theater. There's already a section for sites like Eurogamer and a few movie trailers, but the gaming section was disordered. Posters from different games were portrayed in the entrance to any movie rooms, while the trailer shown had nothing to do with them. The theaters could use some final touch ups, but overall, it works great.
The bowling. Bowling, arcade, pool...what else does Home need to spend a good time with our friends online? Pool plays good. It's simple, but pretty well done and we can play with one of our friends or any complete stranger we meet. Bowling is good; and though I'm not a big fan of the sport myself, I found it fun to play with people. Arcades feature little, fun minigames such as short levels of echochrome and ice breaker that will probably get boring in the long run, but are fun to play every once in a while just to beat your friend's high scores. Again, we also have the usual advertising posters and promotional videos around for us to watch.
The community. Now it gets hotter. Home's comminity is very diverse, ranging from hispanics, to canadian or american. If you get bored, it's because you want to or just because you are completely anti-social. I had the chance to meet a few american people, some english, scottish, french, spanish, mexican and puerto rican people today. Communicating with them with the controller is quite slow if we choose to write a full message for them. We are given the choice to choose a few pre-made messages like "Hello" and "Follow me". We can plug a USB keyboard and type whatever we need to say; or if we feel lazy, a bluetooth headset will do. We can also emphasize what we say with a wide rande of emoticons such as dances, cheers and actions that look amazingly fluid and well done. This doesn't mean that Home is going to be all flowers and gloss. I found out quite a few stalkers and inmature kids running around the place yelling all kinds of obscene, sexually related phrases to the poor female minority around. Something Home will NEED are moderators, just like in a forum. This will help to keep a good level of decency around by temporarily banning these individuals from Home. In general, everyone was very friendly and open, raving in front of the Wipeout trailer TV or playing some pool.
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/849/849118/playstation-home-20080201112703019_640w.jpg
Conclussions. Although Home is far from perfect, it's a product that I feel to be ready to release. Despite the fact that a few features seem missing or that are not that good, like customization options and the lack of ingame soundtracks or any form of musical device we can all dance to, Home is one hell of a feature. It's not a game, but a networking tool that Sony provides us to meet new people with our own interests. I found it very, very fresh and new to be Home. It feels like a mix of PSN, Facebook and Second Life and it feels very right. For everyone doubtful about this, don't worry; no feature like this was big from one day to another. Soon, Home will grow and we will be able to enjoy what the true Home experience feels like.
I would like to give a big thanks to my man snowhawk who provided me with this new feature in the PSN world by sharing.
Recently, I've been given a chance to participate in this closed beta about to become open beta for eveyone's joy. This feature has been delayed several times, and has had an overdue launch for more than a year. Want to find out what the whole buzz is about? Read on!
What is Home? Many people seem to have a general misconception about what Home is. To clarify, it's not a game. It may look like a game, but it's not. It doesn't have trophies, doesn't have shootings, doesn't have life points or mana. It's not even listed in the Game section under the XMB but in the Network one. Then, what is Home? In short, Home is the PSN. Not only you can hook up with new people from all over the world, but you can play games like pool or bowling with them. We are also given the chance to watch the latest trailers from the latest videogames and movies. Home also features a couple (unopened) stores that will allow us to purchase anything from clothes to new rooms, or so it seems. To sum it all, it's a PSN virtual world.
Going Home. The download was a very small 77MB file which really surprised me that it would be that small. As soon as I installed it, Home asked me to reserve around 3G of drive space which made me wonder. To my surprise, every place I entered had to be downloaded once to my drive, although the download can be done in the background. It's a nice feature to soothe the wait, but it's deffinitely a small turn off but completely understandable from the point of view of comfort. Developers will probably find it easier to update section by section, which only benefits us users in the long run, as we will have to load only a part of Home, not the full feature once again.
http://gamelosofy.com/wp-content/uploads/pshome1.jpg
Customization. As soon as we enter Home, we are given the chance to fully customize our avatar. Those familiar with The Sims 2 will feel Home. This customization can be done in two ways. The short way, we will be choosing our clothing like shirts, pants, accessories, shoes, hats and a pre-made face, while those feeling a bit more adventurous will customize their avatar features like weight, height and face. Choosing clothes is easy enough; however, customizing your avatar's features is missing something. Sure, it's a beta, and it's not necessarily the final product, but it needs some tweaking. Besides the fact that some of the tools to customize your avatar feel "half full", those that are there don't feel easy to use. Sure enough, it's easy to manipulate your face's features with the left and right analogue, but it doesn't seem properly organized. You will find yourself rotating your avatar back and forth, asking yourself "What did that do?" or "What does this do?" although the description of the tool is there. The idea is deffinitely there, but in the practice, it doesn't seem too user friendly. That aside, we are given the choice to add very tiny little details like front wrinkles, mouth wrinkles and even freckles which really adds up to the customization.
Once we are done with our avatar, we are taken to our room, with an astounding setting. Our default room feels simple, clean and "chick" and has a very nice balcony with a great view of the harbor below. As well as with our avatar, we can fully customize our room, even giving us the chance to change the wall's color and art. Although we can't seem to have many different items in the beta, there will be many more available after Home is released. The customizing tool has some good ideas, but as it happens with the avatar customization, it's just not completely there. For freaks of having everything perfectly lined up like me, they will find one hell of a hard time rotating items trying to get them in the perfect paralel position. This is a feature that needs to be implemented inmediately. Besides that, everything works just fine.
Places to visit. We can do quite a few things in Home, though some of them are closed or not completely functional as for now in the beta stages like the stores. When we step outside, we are taken to a very attractive little park in the middle of what seems to be a mall. There are all kinds of advertisement posters like R2, Riff, GT5P and Warhawk around as well as two screens with different videogame trailers playing. In the middle, there is a small, quiet spot with chess boards under the sound of a calm flow of water from the water chanel. This is our meeting spot, where all of Home places lead to. The shopping mall, the theaters, the bowling and all rooms all lead here.
http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/ps3_home_1.jpg
The shopping mall. What seems to be a link between the Playstation Store and Home is not open yet. Entering a store leads us to a screen with our PSN account and out shopping cart where we will be able to purchase clothing, items for our room and even newer rooms in the future.
The theaters. It works wonders. Videos load quickly and it could perfectly substitute the trailers section in the Playstation Store in the near future. The design of the theater is spot on and really feels like a real theater. There's already a section for sites like Eurogamer and a few movie trailers, but the gaming section was disordered. Posters from different games were portrayed in the entrance to any movie rooms, while the trailer shown had nothing to do with them. The theaters could use some final touch ups, but overall, it works great.
The bowling. Bowling, arcade, pool...what else does Home need to spend a good time with our friends online? Pool plays good. It's simple, but pretty well done and we can play with one of our friends or any complete stranger we meet. Bowling is good; and though I'm not a big fan of the sport myself, I found it fun to play with people. Arcades feature little, fun minigames such as short levels of echochrome and ice breaker that will probably get boring in the long run, but are fun to play every once in a while just to beat your friend's high scores. Again, we also have the usual advertising posters and promotional videos around for us to watch.
The community. Now it gets hotter. Home's comminity is very diverse, ranging from hispanics, to canadian or american. If you get bored, it's because you want to or just because you are completely anti-social. I had the chance to meet a few american people, some english, scottish, french, spanish, mexican and puerto rican people today. Communicating with them with the controller is quite slow if we choose to write a full message for them. We are given the choice to choose a few pre-made messages like "Hello" and "Follow me". We can plug a USB keyboard and type whatever we need to say; or if we feel lazy, a bluetooth headset will do. We can also emphasize what we say with a wide rande of emoticons such as dances, cheers and actions that look amazingly fluid and well done. This doesn't mean that Home is going to be all flowers and gloss. I found out quite a few stalkers and inmature kids running around the place yelling all kinds of obscene, sexually related phrases to the poor female minority around. Something Home will NEED are moderators, just like in a forum. This will help to keep a good level of decency around by temporarily banning these individuals from Home. In general, everyone was very friendly and open, raving in front of the Wipeout trailer TV or playing some pool.
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/849/849118/playstation-home-20080201112703019_640w.jpg
Conclussions. Although Home is far from perfect, it's a product that I feel to be ready to release. Despite the fact that a few features seem missing or that are not that good, like customization options and the lack of ingame soundtracks or any form of musical device we can all dance to, Home is one hell of a feature. It's not a game, but a networking tool that Sony provides us to meet new people with our own interests. I found it very, very fresh and new to be Home. It feels like a mix of PSN, Facebook and Second Life and it feels very right. For everyone doubtful about this, don't worry; no feature like this was big from one day to another. Soon, Home will grow and we will be able to enjoy what the true Home experience feels like.
I would like to give a big thanks to my man snowhawk who provided me with this new feature in the PSN world by sharing.