Playstation Home Review (BETA)
It’s been too long in being released, and the one thing that the majority of PS3 owners have been so eagerly awaiting.
Playstation Home is finally live around the world……and it’s still hard to get onto it!
I am keeping in mind that this is only the BETA version, so it’s nowhere near as big or popular as it will eventually be, and you can tell. This is but a taster of what’s to come, with a few hiccups until the full version is available.
When the Home icon appeared on my XMB (Cross Media Bar), I thought it was Christmas Day. So I downloaded and installed the 77MB file and pressed ‘X’ to get it going!
A note to you all, you will need 3GB of HDD (Hard Drive) space on your PS3 to save additional data for the environments.
Error C-9013 or something like that popped up on my screen! WHAT?!?
Can’t connect to the server, or I was logged out! I can only imagine that these errors were coming up because of the amount of people trying to connect at once! It was like the 17:15 train home had been cancelled for a year and there were no trains till now and a billion people trying to get onto 2 carriages!
I suppose I can let Sony off…for now as it is only the BETA.
Since then, I have been able to log on a couple of times and have a play around, and I can see this being very impressive once it’s up and running properly.
The first thing you do is create your avatar by moulding the shape of your head and facial features and then dressing your avatar.
The attention to detail is quite good, but I managed to get a more lifelike image on Pro Evo 5 than I did on Home.
Once you’ve created your avatar you’re in your apartment with a few select items of furniture that you can move around anywhere within your space. Maybe even sit down…..great! Now what?!
When you’ve finished playing around in your ‘Home’, you get to step out into the virtual world, but don’t expect everything to be open! So far there is only a theatre which plays a few trailers, a bowling alley where you can hear annoying music and you can play bowling or shoot some pool. And then there’s the shopping mall where you can buy (with real money) more items of clothing or additional furniture – prices start from 59p for clothing items and furniture up to £3.99 for a different themed apartment.
The first time you try to go into these environments (including the Home Square), you will have to download the information in files of around 150MB upwards and is the reason I mentioned the 3GB of free HDD above.
The loading times after downloading the files can be a little annoying but it’s good fun when you get in to where you want to be.
I think we’ve been a little short changed here in the UK as always, as in the US of A they were meant to be able to go into themed environments like Uncharted:Drakes Fortune and Resistance, but obviously us Europeans can’t! Apparently America is a bigger place than Europe and has more PS3 owners!! Plus, apart from Bowling and Pool, there are no other games to play!
You can talk to anybody you see with either the head set or by typing a message just like you do when you want to send a message to a friend through the XMB. There are pre-loaded quotes like, “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “Oh look America have sold Europe out…again”, which saves you typing out a message with the online keyboard through your controller.
There’s also videos and advertisements in the main square which connects all the three existing places together, and there’s a silver gate with the Home logo on, which I think will be unlocked in the future for additional content. You can also get your avatars to act out different emotions or dance moves! There has been a selection of people dancing to the tune that plays on the PSP advert!
My first impression of Home is that it could be something amazing and quite addictive. But I just hope that Sony sort out the server errors as they’ve had long enough to think about these scenarios and little things like this shouldn’t be happening in a BETA. I do think that advertisement boards in the Home Square are a nice touch as to keep players informed of things available of the Playstation Network.
Unfortunately we won’t be able to start the ‘Zath Community’ yet! But once the full version is available, it’ll be full speed ahead. So keep continuing to leave your Online_ID and we can all add each other in preperation, and maybe meet up on Call of Duty if you have it!
I know I’ve taken a few cheap shots at Home, but I can see what Sony are trying to do and just hope they don’t leave us another year before the full version is available.
3 out of 5
Ender
Related Pages:
- Playstation Home Released!
- Sony PSP Mini Games To Be Playable On Playstation 3
- Sony Playstation 3 To Get 3D Gaming (CES 2010)
- Playstation Move Announced (PS3 Motion Controller)
- Uncharted 2 Online Multiplayer BETA Review (PS3)
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Comments: 1
2:44 pm 9th July, 2009
firstly none of these things actually happend which is stupid, the trophy room never came out, they got rid of the Lobby and they changed everything to make it crap
Comments: 174
3:25 pm 12th July, 2009
I wasn’t aware that those things had been dropped (but then I don’t have a PS3), but goes to show that there clearly hasn’t been much publicity about this.
It makes you wonder just how much Sony has spent on this online stuff and still manage to get it so much more wrong, especially in comparison with Microsoft who themselves don’t have a great history when it comes to the Internet/online services.