Playstation Home Alone 2: Lost in PSN

So Brother N pointed out to me today that the Home Beta launches globally today, so there really is no need for me to give you a detailed review of Home's features as you will find out for yourselves in the coming hours................

That doesn't mean I'm not gonna talk about how fucking BOOOOORING it is. Man! I know its not a game but when you bring something like this out on an "entertainment console", forgive me for expecting a little entertainment. I mean, come on. Draughts?! Really? Is the Home universe set in the 40's? I mean it was sorta fun, but fun in the way that it is only fun because nothing else is fun at all. Like when your bored at work and you play minesweeper, or you miss the train so you play snake on you Nokia 3210. Listen to Brother N, Sony. Noone wants to play pool in a virtual world! We can do that at the local bar, and drink delicious drinks too.

One thing I thought was going to be kinda cool was the movie theatre which allows you to watch trailers for games and movies etc. Great idea, until they make you sit there watching a progress bar of your clip of choice download with no background download option. WOOOOO HOOOOO! Fun City Sony! More effing progress bars and another fine example of your achingly slow download speeds over PSN. Once it finally does download, rather than watch the clip in full screen, you have to watch it in a virtual movie screen complete with curtains and front row seats about half the size of our own screen. That's ok though because you can change it to full screen......... oh wait a minute..... NO YOU CAN'T! Good thing I have a reasonable size HDTV, too bad for anyone still using a smaller SD set though.

It does however sport pretty sweet looking visuals and a half decent physics engine which brings back the question, why waste it on draughts and pool? Do something entertaining with it like some over the top mini games we can play while we wait for noobpwner69 to get online so we can play....... something together. There is seriously more fun in LittleBigPlanet's Pod than there is in the WHOLE of Home.

So far.

With all that said, Home to me does have some possible potential, but its going to need a tonne of interesting and fun improvements if its to appeal to gamers. All they need is the FUN patch.

Mr Metal

ps. At least the character customization is good................. If you like looking like every-fucking-one else. Do not even get me started.

Playstation Home Alone

Just checked my inbox, as you do, and found an email with the subject "Your exclusive invitation to join us in PlayStation Home" sitting there for me.

Woo? Not sure yet. I will have to wait until I get home tonight to see but Ill be sure to post my findings when i do. I'm looking forward to checking it out.

Anyone else get an invite yet? Or will i be "Home Alone"?

Mr Metal

PS: The link is for the kiddies. It may have been a bit before your time. Its one of the greatest stories ever told. An absolute cinema classic.

Tom Nook is my mount

Animal Crossing Wii is going to be an MMO eh?

Tricky one. I had a lot of fun with Animal Crossing on the DS, it's cutesy pointlessness, endless collection and real world clock gave it an a powerful addictive quality.

The advantage the DS version had over it's Gamecube counterpart was the connectivity. I really dug venturing into other people's towns to get some sweet sweet foreign fruit. It's a really cool concept, but hanging out with two 13 year olds calling each other 'd00d', chasing each other with butterfly nets was not what I wanted from the experience. I scammed their fruit and I was out of there.

I didn't know anyone else with the game, so I jumped on the net, found a chat room, swapped friend codes, added them to my in game friends list, waited for them to open their gates and finally joined. Kind of a lot of work just to gank stuff from prepubescent Ninty fans.

So are Nintendo going to loosen their very strict 'protect the kiddies' policy and let us hook up with randoms? Or are they going to take it in a different direction and stray from the traditional Animal Crossing method?

My theory is Animal Crossing will take Sony's Home route. Each player will have a small town, but all town's are part of a larger world. To make it the 'MMO social network', you'd think there will need to be come kind of central hub. A capital city perhaps?

Either way, I'll be the one in the mad pirate hat, collecting shit, grinding for bells.

-Brother N-