Is it that bad?

There's no place like Home.

Ok here are my lastest impressions, cut and pasted, this is from the new update:

Ok so I spent some time with this and it wasnt so bad, but the real reason why is cause Namco Muesum is a free beta in the JPN store, so I got that. It comes with trials of Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug and Xevious (So that is where the LBP level is from!!) As you play them you unlock gifts to be used in home. I got arcade machines for Pac-Man and Galaga to put in my apartment, sadly you have to be officially in the beta to use the arcades within home. I got some other cool stuff like a Pac-Man shirt. So stuff like this is really cool, needs lots more of it.

The new plaza is nice, like the little UFO game in the pond. The mall scares me, wtf, seriously all that for sale. They even have another home location for $5. And WTF is up with the clubs, they will charge you for it, WHAT? They were free in the beta. Seriously its stupid. As usual chess is packed so you cant play it.

The Uncharted location was up so I went there. They have three locked doors with keypads, you need to find the code. I noticed a machine making beeps in a certain order. It was actually beeping out one of the codes. It leads to a room with Uncharted artwork and videos. Cool idea, it was like a easter egg hunt for clues, but overall a rather pointless space. I endedmy stay at the theater, waiting forever for the video to load. It was fun though cause the theater was packed and a bunch of us created a dance train in front of the screen. It was pretty funny seeing everyone in a line, dancing. The video was a damn trailer for Twilight, what happend to the game trailers. Still needs tons of work but playing games to unlock stuff = good. Need more of that.

Now that was me talking about some of the new stuff I saw which was ok. The truth about Home is that it SUCK ASS. At its current state there is no reason at all to get on. They charge you for almost everything, want to buy clothes or furnature, it costs real money. At least you can play arcade games and unlock items which is the only good idea it has going for it right now. But to play those arcade games or any games like chess you have to wait in a virtual line for the virtual person who is playing the virtual game finishes, WTF!!! I cant ever play chess cause there are only 4 chess boards and everyone is on them. There is no sharing of media yet, there is no game launching, no awesome warkhawk planning room. No exlusive videos or content. Nothing, there is no reason to enter home at this time.

As ragnar pointed out in the GS thread, its has no personality. As he said LBP is a far better place to hang out in a community. He said that if this was Nintendo it would have the charm of an Animal Crossing. Home is none of those, its boringville. Complete waste of time, it has such a long way to go they might as well focus on getting it right for the PS4.

Dvader said:

Now that was me talking about some of the new stuff I saw which was ok. The truth about Home is that it SUCK ASS. At its current state there is no reason at all to get on. They charge you for almost everything, want to buy clothes or furnature, it costs real money. At least you can play arcade games and unlock items which is the only good idea it has going for it right now. But to play those arcade games or any games like chess you have to wait in a virtual line for the virtual person who is playing the virtual game finishes, WTF!!! I cant ever play chess cause there are only 4 chess boards and everyone is on them. There is no sharing of media yet, there is no game launching, no awesome warkhawk planning room. No exlusive videos or content. Nothing, there is no reason to enter home at this time.

As ragnar pointed out in the GS thread, its has no personality. As he said LBP is a far better place to hang out in a community. He said that if this was Nintendo it would have the charm of an Animal Crossing. Home is none of those, its boringville. Complete waste of time, it has such a long way to go they might as well focus on getting it right for the PS4.

That sounds bad, especially the money part? I thought that maybe they could have you earning virtual points in games like trophies and spend virtual cash? Real money? Fuuuuuuuck. But you might up with some special stuff like LBP Street fighter costumes eventually. The chess board thing is weird, maybe they are going for realism?

rragnaar is right, if nintendo did it, it would have the charm of animal crossing, but it would also probably be so limited and convoluted to connect that no one would care. But they might give you nintendo posters of mario and link to put in your pad though. Only the program would be so fucking big, no one would be able to fit it on the wii flash drive anyway

Personality is an easy thing to fix though if you ask me. What if they do free things up? What if they drop the payments system and do actually get some great exclusive content up?

darthhomer said:

Thanks for reading that GG.

I need to post more stuff - I took at least 100 pictures about Home, and they're all practically uploaded. I just need to sit down and write the narrative for the blog. Don't worry if that statement doesn't make sense. It will soon enough

....

Actually, that might be a VG Press exclusive - I'm still writing up my 12 games of the year for GS.

The problem I have with blogs here is that since the move, blogs aren't as visible as they used to be. I can drop a crappy comment in a GS blog and instantly get 8 comments, even if its bunk. Here people have stopped blogging because there aren't enough responses, there aren't the responses because it's never clear - unless you go looking for them, where the new blogs are. Yeah I know it's as easy as clicking profile, but it was on the front page before and we definetely had more interaction at Insert coin.

So, there is voice chat in Home right? How does it work in who you meet up with? Is it only friends or do you run across random people? Any funny/creepy guys yet?

Cool Stuff:

- It's basically Second Life with less customization, but better graphics and mini-games.

- I like bowling, I like pool, I like video games about the two, so I just spent seven hours playing that alone.

- Unlockable gear.

Not Cool:

- They actually charge for stuff. It's only a few cents here and there, but I'm just going to stick with unlockables anyway. On the other hand, so much is free in comparison.

- The bowling physics are wacky, and the racking machine resets the pins too early, so good luck pulling off a challenging split, or knocking down slow pins.

- The text is censored left and right. You can't even use some of the preset macros that Sony made because they contain curse words! If this feature can't be turned off, it's the stupidest thing EVER, and I'm going to be going out and buying a headset out of spite so I can drop N-bombs everywhere. How do you turn this off?

In Closing:

- Worth the download. Bowling is awesome, and it caters towards all kinds of people. Wii fans here would like it.

- I didn't know there was chess! What other games are there outside of the Bowling Alley and where can I find them?

The bowling uses an old arcade scale system. First, you move left or right to decide where you want to throw from. Second, there's a scale the moves across the lane that determines which direction you want to throw in. Third, there's a scale that goes up and down that determines how hard you throw the ball. Last, there's a scale that moves left and right that determines the amount of curve. The scales move fairly sloowly, so it's easy to line up shots the way you want to.

Pool's very basic. The only play mode is Solids and Stripes (I don't know if that's the real name of the game, but it's usually all I play, anyway). When shooting, you get two views to work with, a first-person view which has a marker that tells you where the white ball will first hit, and an overhead view where you have to aim manually.

There's three types of arcade games in the Bowling Alley arcade. Two are fairly unique, and the third is a rehash of Breakout with boss battles on some levels.

IGN Impressions:

Chris' Take 
If I had to describe Home in one word, it would be "boring". Yep, I'm bored to death with Home. I've only found two things that are entertaining for more than about 30 seconds: griefing and trying to enter the Matrix (read: break the game). 

Other than screwing with people or trying to break out of the intended space of my apartment, I haven't found a single thing that keeps my interest for more than about a minute. The theater just shows the same videos over and over, and it's just stuff that I can find online in a much higher resolution. The games in the arcade cabinets aren't very good and are only worth checking out for a second - they're not entertaining enough to really sink any time into. Pool is about as basic as can be. The billiards game in GTAIV was quite a bit better than what you'll find here, and any number of free Flash pool games online are leaps and bounds better than it. Bowling is just OK, but it's certainly not enough for me to come home from work and say to myself, "I really feel like some Home bowling. That would be much more fun than Dead Space."

I understand that the point of these games is to help encourage people to talk while playing them, but that won't happen at an arcade machine unless you're waiting to play. And who is going to stand around to wait to play Carriage Return? 

The problem here is that while the experience on the whole is supposed to be there to incite conversation, you only really exist while you're logged in. If you're not currently in Home, there's not an easy way for people to interact with you outside of sending you a message, which you can just do from the Cross Media Bar anyway. 

What it really needs is some sort of messaging space where you can leave gifts for people, write on a whiteboard, put stickers on their apartment door, etc. It should act more like a college dorm, where people leave notes for each other and can decorate their doors, which other people can still check out if you're not home. As it is, if you're not currently logged on in Home, you don't really exist.

Really, if I felt like having conversations with people I don't know, I would much rather do it on a message board somewhere. At least you're then capable of stepping away for a bit and can come back to where you were and see what others were saying when you have time. 

I know that a whole lot more stuff is coming, like the Red Bull flying game, which looks like it could be OK, but what's here now is, to be perfectly honest, a giant waste of time.

3 more pages here: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/938/938179p2.html

gamingeek said:

You can...... pretend rape people?

See Yarcofin's post for details.