My Home Review, be it short op 00:06

This review is coming from a person who has used Home since closed beta from August 2008 to current day, extensively almost every day since. Home is a very hard platform to review to its beta nature, but based on the many days, weeks and months of continuous use, I feel its time to have my take, be it very short in terms of experience.

Playstation Home has been one of the most hyped and looked forward to application to have ever graced the Playstation in my opinion. Its caused a lot of controversy, both in the media and gaming community in terms of its many delays and promises.

Starting way back when I received my closed beta email, luck was on my side. Could not believe my eyes as I sat on my computer checking my emails at 11pm on a Sunday night. First launch into the game and was greeted by open spaces, and a lot of excited people, and strangely my first bug which was absolutely no sound. Very first person I met I had tonnes in common with, scarily so. Using the animations for the first time was hilarious, since open beta arrived a lot were changed and removed.

Was interesting as I commented on some ones 'avatar' creation by its means of ugliness, with only the community manager only feet away without me knowing. My ignorance for being in a virtual world became suddenly apparent. Have to be careful in Home, moderators are present at most times, not in large quantities, but are there whenever a report is selected via the select button, as they come to the rescue, that’s at least my understanding.

Moving swiftly from the closed beta and into open beta, this is where things for me became problematic with the amount of constant abuse from users. Closed beta was a lot of fun, private in a way, use of headsets in public spaces was fantastic, having mixes of music and talking was intense at times, but was all fun. Having met a group of people since closed beta and now having gotten to know them all to varying extents, this has caused some what an addiction. Prior to Home it was very difficult to find gamers to identify with, especially as the private message system is so chore like. And as it seems now, having met so many great personalities in Home, playing videogames online with people who you have common interests with is great fun and makes online play more worthy, rather with complete randoms.

During closed beta compared to open beta, there has been certain amounts of content updates, not as much as I was expecting. For example, the main areas, The Shopping Center, Home Square, Bowling area, Theatre are still mainly present in their previous states, bar added new features such as the Helicopter Hit game in Home Square and other content such as regular screen/trailer changes. However some of the newer spaces are fantastic, Red Bull being a personal favorite as I had been 1st on the world leaderboards for a considerable time (until beaten, now currently second) giving users a motivation to interact with the environment in new ways whilst remaining a social platform. Strangely coming 1st in a platform whereby masses of people can see your PSN name leads to many spam messages, mostly in niceness, some in complete hate which I find funny to read. Having your name mentioned on the welcome news screen also has its flaws, depends how you view it, I found it rewarding giving advice to strangers fom all over the world, however dealing with this is the users choice.

Other spaces of note, The Far Cry space, currently a worthless area, infact most areas in Home are places to talk without much to do in them at the moment. However I find talking to people the most rewarding thing, learning about people, how they interact, how I interact. Its interesting to see people run around trying to ‘pull’ avatars, approaching female avatars who are male in real life and friend requesting them based on their avatar. Makes no sense, but this indicates the current state of young society, a lot of users are still under the 16+ age restriction of Home.

New areas just released are the Xi phenomenon. A build up of Home PDA messages written in obscure coding and random maintenance hints. Its still causing lots of hype, both in Home and real life (large billboards in London for example). Both real life and virtual worlds are blurring according to the famous Jess who’s been the base of driving the Xi experience forward via hype. Its all very interesting stuff, missions to keep people doing things mainly every other day. 20 missions all in all, spread maybe over 3 months in total. Its hard to say where it is leading, but its been successful in its deployment so far.

There has been a lot of debate regarding content differences in the three main regions, Japan, USA and Europe. So much so, there has been a lot of instigation in interactivity between Home devs/mods/managers. This is something that makes Home great in which users can interact with ideas being brought forward via official playstation forums. Europe’s debate seems to lye in the focus of SCEE, and the general feeling is the alienation of users is dividing the regions. Lack of female content causing some hostility amongst the increasing numbers of female users of Home, something which may have been overlooked.

Ive always found Home weird to get used to, and am still finding it weird having ‘silent’ conversation with users. Meaning the text for example is hard to get points across sometimes. Another thing be it bad or good is how time passes when using Home. There have been days, where I have used it for hours and hours on end. Mostly talking absolute rubbish.

Then there is my personal want, which is Home’s main intent as a gaming social network. Which is playing games together with people. Home game launching has been implemented by only a few games, Warhawk and Resident Evil spring to mind. Its there, and it works, its just larger multiplayer games such as Little Big Planet and Killzone 2 are both screaming out for Home launching. It works very well, find some players, ask them to add into the current game set up, then press launch game and should all meet in an online game match. Then when you have finished, it places you direct back into Home whereby you can chat about the headshots and grenaded corpses you have just managed. Clubhouses are a good indication of friends and meet ups, infact its uses are becoming more and more experimental, quiz nights, virtual parties, Ive done them all, and are genuine fun despite some ignorance by none users of Home. Just a bit of harmless fun and an escape from the norm. All I can say really is its different, but is this where virtual and social networks are heading?

Can imagine the huge possibilities Home can bring for the future, Second Life has shown mass gatherings of strangers around the world. Home in my opinion is beyond this, graphically in the sense of a constant as in the Playstations processing power. And its main intent in which it’s a gathering of Playstation fans. My honest opinion, based on the future and current experiences, Home deserves better yes, but in terms of a score, its hard to judge. It’s a beta still after all, meaning constant experimentation and reports of bugs in which enables the experience to get better. Home is what you make of it, basing an opinion based on a couple of hours spent there is merely nowhere enough to base judgement on.


Note to self : This was a result of complete and utter boredom

Missing from action op 13:02

Ok, so my PS3 has now died from the yellow light of HELL. So I will be lurking the forums, until i find ways of getting a free replacement. Worst case scenario is robbing someone, but im not that was inclined. ;)

So yes, as you can probably tell Im fuming. Second time this has happened, and the fact i read about it just yesterday make me think my PS3 genuinely has a poltergeist. Combined with duck killings and clubhouse paranormal activity, Im thinking its a case for HomeBusters. Oh, wait, I cant arrange a meeting, COS IM NOT LOGGED INTO MY PS3!

Sorry for the absent-ness from the Wednesday night clan match on KZ2, my dead PS3 has decided to gobble up my copy and wont even regurgitate now, even when sticking my finger down its throat.

So to summarise :

Bug Summary :

• Pay a crap load of money into a launch PS3
• Buy crap loads of games/PSN games
• Get a refurb 60GB first time round, 'out of the kindness of their Bruce Forsyth hearts'
• Then get told the 3 month warrenty for this refurb has passed, when they never had it on record

Recreation Steps :

• Let your PS3 randomly decide to pick the perfect timing and prevent life of PS3
• Phone Sony up and be polite
• Phone Sony again only this time, with a lot of pent up Big Bad Wolfness :|

ps : this is milnerant

New layout for Blog! op 11:58

Hello people!

I haven't posted anything on the blog lately, but that doesn't mean I've been doing nothing. As you can see I've made some changes to our Home Blog.

The standard layout templates provided by Blogger were kinda boring, I looked around the web and I found this template. I hope you like the new color scheme, and the new stuff I added; like the 2 news feeds, search function, and the link list.

It took me ages of tweaking the layout. CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) isn't one of my best talents, I've tried other templates I found. But this one is the one I really like, and gave me the least headaches trying to edit it.

I hope all of you guys like this new layout, DON'T TRY EDITING THIS LAYOUT! If you try and change one thing, all the other things get ruined. Feel free to comment on the changes I Made.

PS: Don't forget to TAG your messages with some keywords, in order to make the search function work properly!

Enjoy!

RISHI-O

Free T-Shirt on Home this Thursday op 20:36

Minor post here

Coming this Thursday to european Home users

you are in for a treat

Along with the 2 new stores we are to get SCEE are giving us the pleasure of a free avatar top

A list of what we can choose from has yet to be said

but if its free i aint complaining :)

I have finally done it! op 19:22

I dunno how, I dunno when, but I have done it. Apparently I have finally broken the KZ2 server! Victory is sweet I have to say.

The Godfather II Space come to US home (EU unconfirmed) op 16:29

Ok i finally found some proof for The rumoured Godfather II Space for the US Home Region

So from what we can see it looks like a Bar maybe it will be a space related to a specific place in the game we have yet to see

But EA who are developing this are a name to trust so hopefully it lives up expectations and i for one being a fan of the godfather games and movies hope that EA do this justice

And i will post pictures of the space when it is released

NOTE:This is uncofirmed for all regions apart from US

EDIT by RISHI-O:

Link to the official Godfather II game!

I IS BEEN BANNED op 16:26

Yeeees and it has to do with posting gay porn on Home.

So guys, Mods don't like gay porn! Watch out for that! :D

That said, I don't have much to post for a month :(

The Wonders Of Xi op 18:14

As we all have been recently graced with the Xi space known as "the hub"

Today we were treated to a veru curious picture regarding xi(picture below)

Now this picture reminds me of the GDC 2007 version of home but mixed with the version of home that we now have

May be a colabaration who know's but this does raise some questions as to what to expect from it below is a quote from the pictures uploader

"Now, you know I love new things. New = interesting = entertainment. But I suppose what we are talking about here is *the unknown*. Fear of change. Some people thrive on it - the pragmatists and the mad, if you ask me – but when it comes down to it, I’m far more comfortable with what I know: the comfort movie I’ve seen 30 times, the exact same chili recipe every time I see my family. The comfort of the familiar.
The unknown is scary because eventually luck always runs out.
I look at this picture of… who-knows-what? Is it a place? They tell me it’s mutating and while everyone else is popping veins trying to find it, I can’t help thinking that maybe we should hold back. Maybe our luck has finally run out."

Confused.So am i but what i noticed is near the top right there is clock is it of any significance ?

After another exploration of the hub i came across this (Picture Below)

Now this was took by myself after going to the Xi door and altering the camera.

What it is is a 5th holopod but it is nowhere to be seen within the hub area so makes you wonder was this the missing texture ?

EDIT by RISHI-O:

Check out the Xi Wiki page!