Home Preview
by Shak Hussain - November 29th, 2008
The Home public beta was recently released to thousands of PlayStation 3 users and PlayStation Beyond was able to grab a code and try this new social gaming network out. Here's what we thought...
When you start downloading Home, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the small size of the install package, which is only 77MB. However this only downloads the absolute minimum of Home, also known as "Your Apartment". When Home has been installed it will appear as an icon in the "PSN" section on your XMB, just above the PlayStation Store icon.
On starting up Home you will be given a character customization screen, which allows you to customize your character to your choosing. The ability to customize is not very good; in fact there are a few games that allow you to customize your characters to a much larger extent. Also for some reason there doesn't seem to be an option to give your character a beard, and the clothing available is very limited. In any case, when you have finished making your character you can move about your apartment and when you walk to the exit a dialog will pop up asking to download the "Home Square".
Unfortunately every area in the game downloads separately, and there is no option to fully download all the areas at once. This can be a little disconcerting a times because you have to stay in Home to actually download these areas, although you can move around and download the next area in the background, most of the time you have nothing to do.
The beta consists of 5 main areas; the Apartment complex, the Home Square, the Bowling Alley, the Shopping Complex, and the Theatre. The Home Square is just a small lobby that you use to get to other areas in Home, but it does have a couple of nice features. The Home Square has a seating area where players can practice and play Chess or Checkers with each other, but that's about all there is available.
The Bowling Alley is by far the most interesting area in Home, as you can play Pool, a small collection of arcade games (the beta only has three) e.g. Ice Breaker, echochrome (although this is just the demo) etc., and of course Bowling. As is the case when you want to play Chess, you have to wait your turn for all of these games, which can be a little annoying at times.
The Shopping Complex was completely dead in the beta, but it was possible to check out some of the shops, even though there were no items available for purchase. The shops are what you would expect to be in Home; a clothes shop, a furniture shop and that's about it. If you want to buy something from these shops, a PlayStation Store-like interface pops up and you will be able to purchase whatever items you need.
The Theatre simply has a few screens with the latest trailers for movies and games, the new Watchmen trailer debuted exclusively in one of these screens. When you go into a Screen you basically just start downloading the trailer, but instead of being able to do this in the background or watch while you download, you have to wait and watch the progress bar finish. This can take a very long time depending on your connection, so most of the time it isn't even worth going to the Theatre, unless there is some sort of exclusive trailer available.
The social networking part of Home is one of its main features. You can talk using headsets or simply type out messages using the on-screen text input, and you will be able to use the new chatpad also when it is available. The problem with this is that the only privacy available is within your own apartment, talking outside in the other areas means people can eavesdrop on your conversations if they are near you. Another major obstacle is that the maximum number of people in one area of Home is 32 players, meaning it is not as "social" as you'd expect. If the number of players in a lobby exceeds 32, you are automatically connected to another server.
As you can probably tell, the Bowling Alley is the only interesting area available in Home, obviously the game lobby areas have not been implemented yet so we will reserve our judgement till Home is available completely. There are a few good features in Home, and there should be a lot more when it is released to everyone by the end of the year. However it is hard to tell whether this will be as much of a runaway success as other similar social gaming networks like Second Life or The Sims, but we certainly hope it is.
Home is scheduled for release by the end of the year exclusively on the PlayStation Network.
