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.

Review???

Ok, so I was fortunate enough to pick up 2 high profile releases this morning, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise. I've been looking forward to these games, especially Mercs 2. I'm also lucky enough to have Tuesdays off. I'm set for a super day of quality gaming.

Unfortunately tomorrow we have a house inspection and the lawn had not been mowed for a number of weeks, thanks to recent rain fall and lack of equipment.

So brings me to my review of.............

The Briggs and Stratton Sprint 375 Lawn Mower.

The Sprint has all the features you would expect from a standard lawnmower wrapped in a nice fire-engine red chassis. Straight off the bat, it starts with ease. Just hold down the throttle and pull the cord. Too easy. It also runs off unleaded petrol, so there is no messing around with 2 stroke mixes. The engine noise was average but definitely not recommended for 7am starts, unless you want angry neighbors.

I started my tests on the front lawn which could be described as "regular shabby". The Sprint handled this area with no hassles whatsoever. It got into the nooks of the yard pretty easily also which is very handy.

Then onto the back lawn, which could only be described as "The Degoba System". The twin blades tore through the larger areas of the lawn with ease, even made light work of the thicker weed like patches. In the 3-4 hours of use only needed to be filled twice.

My only gripe is with the throttle, which needs to be held down while mowing, much like a bicycle handbrake. With the smaller areas, it wasn't an issue but as soon as a little more elbow grease was needed i found that holding both the handle AND throttle created a bit of hand discomfort.

Apart from that, its a great mower. I would recommend it to anyone with a small to medium level yard. People with larger, uneven grassed areas would do better to look elsewhere.

All up, i would rate The Briggs and Stratton Sprint 375 Lawn Mower 4 wasted days off out of 5

Now I'm off to play Mercs 2. Ask me to mow your lawn and I'll kill you.

Mr Metal

Yard work simulator

Now its time for Brother N's Hasty Review!(Patent pending) where your host judges a game entirely on his very limited time with it.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam
Huh? Ok I admit, I haven't ever picked up a Dynasty Warriors game before, and I pretty much skipped the intro (as soon as I saw the campy talky anime heads and a guy named 'Master Asia' I hammered the start button) but what the fuck am I doing here?
I'm a big robot, and other big robots charge at me, and slice them with my robot sword. Slice slice slice, robot robot robot. Repeat. And then repeat some more.

Call me paranoid, but I'm willing to bet that somewhere in Japan, a tiny robot gardener is being guided by my movements via satellite as he hacks the weeds in the garden of a wealthy Japanese family.

If you like endlessly chopping things, this could well be your game of the year.

-Brother N-