Home is here! After waiting for countless months with fairly few details on what exactly Home is, it’s finally here! To build up my expectations, I’m going to pick a screenshot at random and base all of my presumptions on that:
Okay, so…nothing is happening. No, wait! I see one lady doing a crotch thrust at another lady. At a party that’s only ladies. Except for that one guy, who I think is about to do a cartwheel up the stairs. How illuminating!
4:41 – Alright, Home Home Home. Where is it…ah, Sony put an icon for it right on the XMB, no asking, no explanation. That’s kind of presumptuous of it. At least it’s only 77MB, and it asks to be installed.
4:45 – Wait, I spoke too soon, the first thing Home does when you start it up is ask to reserve 3077MB. You 20GB PS3 users might want to make note of that. I’ll give it the space, for now. I’ll even accept the End User License Agreement without reading it, a habit that I’m sure will result in having my kidneys forcibly removed one day.
4: 48 – Okay, now Home is playing a fun minigame with me. It’s called “count the connection errors.” So far I’ve gotten two, the plain vanilla “connection error” and the uncommon “request timed out”. It’s like an MMO launch, except I'm not 100% sure I even want to connect at all.
4:54 – Read error! That’s three. I’m totally winning at Home.
5:12 – Response parse error. That’s four. This is probably a good time to remind everyone that when a company releases free software as a “public beta,” that’s code for “don’t be surprised if we bone the launch.”
5:29 – Things to do while waiting for Home to start working:
- Find and clean up the Bluetooth headset that fell behind the printer six months ago. Ugh, I don't think I want to put this in my ear.
- Check out Echochrome’s newly updated trophy support.
- Dream of having something better to do on a Thurday night than reading the words “request timed out” over and over.
5:49 – Wow, I’m actually connected to Home. Only took 68 minutes! Time to create a character. I’m choosing “Preset 4,” because I love fauxhawks and wife beaters.
5:51 – Got rid of the fauxhawk and wife beater. There’s really not very many clothing options, but otherwise avatar creation is kind of ridiculously detailed.
5:55 – I just found out that Home has four sliders just for types of wrinkles. Creepy old man, here we come!
6:00 – I think I’ve done a pretty good job of making an incredibly scary man no one in Home will want to hang out with:
So let’s go in, shall we!
6:02 – I’m dumped in an apartment with nicer furniture than my actual furniture and a killer view of the coast. I am told I have to dance. Home revels in my humiliation.
6:05 – More boring tutorial stuff. Home makes you download each environment individually. I go to the Central Plaza (rated EC for early childhood) and dance like no-one’s watching.
6:07 – Someone insults my mother. Early childhood, indeed. I go to the mall.
6:10 – Cowboy hats are 50 cents. Ottomans are a dollar. That’s real money, mind you. Summer houses are $4.99. There’s video playing on the wall advertising Qore. I try to play chess, but all three tables are taken. This is not my favorite mall.
6:15 – The Home Theater is really crowded. A guy on a Bluetooth headset is wondering aloud why he can’t punch people in the face. I watch a trailer for Twilight. This is certainly…something.
6:20 – Time to go to the bowling alley. There’s an open pool table! I play pool with some guy.
6:27 – I get murdered at pool. I think the other guy is using some kind of pool-bot. Yeah, that must be it.
6:29 – The bowling alley has an arcade. I play a curious single-screen version of Echochrome where all you do is put down holes and jump pads to avoid enemies. There're other games, but I can’t get at them because they’re occupied.
6:36 – I suck at bowling.
6:47 – I spend a few minutes in the Uncharted and Far Cry 2 sections of Home. There are some interactive games and such in the Uncharted section, but they’re all being used. There’s as far as I can tell nothing to do in the Far Cry area besides look at a map and some character bios. A bunch of twelve year olds talk about beer and pot. 50% of the text boxes are asterisked out as the kiddies try to beat the profanity filter.
That’s about all the Home I can take. After playing it for an hour, I still don’t really know what it’s about. In its defense, if Sony continuously changes up the free casual game content it offers at the arcade in the bowling alley, I would consider going back in. But I would have to fight my instincts to do so, as the whole experience feels like entering into a Sony-controlled future dystopia where everyone wears the same baseball tee. I hope the community does something with it, because as is it’s not really a place I want to go.
Related Links:
Heading Home: Revisiting the Curious Case of Playstation Home
The Curious Case of Playstation Home
The Strange Case of Hype