Last night I decided to try out Home once again after about 5 months of not entering it. I had to redownload practically everything since it was all updated, it started with a 60MB patch which took some time, after that I was in my room in Home. From there I checked out the world map which shows every available space. Woah, the list went from like five to nearly 30 different areas to choose from. I started background downloading a bunch of them (average space is around 25MB), in the mean time I went to a location I already had downloaded, the RE5 space. Capcom apparently abandoned it cause they promised a sort of museum but it is still closed.

Once the locations finished downloading I began my tour of Home. First I went to the Infamous Home space which is basically a dock from Empire City. Graffiti covers the walls, there are telephone numbers written all over the place. There is a pay phone that you can use, input the numbers you find and you get a message from people in the city. There is a giant screen showing the games trailer and news casts, as well as that douche with the glasses (you know who if you played the game) At one of the ends of the dock there is a game to play, its basically a gallery shooter, you control a cursor and you fire it at enemies as they pop up shooting range style. Its a decent game with score multipliers and special moves. It has its own leaderboard displayed near the game. After you play it you unlock some Home items. BTW because I played the Infamous demo I unlocked Cole's costume so that is what I was wearing.

Not a bad start, next I head over to Burn Zombie Burn. This has a recreation of a graveyard complete with a zombie selling Home items. There is a disco in one of the grave sites which plays a song that sounds very Thrillerish. Not much going on here, there was some maze game but to many people were playing so I couldn't get in. Yes the virtual lines for a virtual game suck. Crappy area.

There was a Guitar Hero space which had a stage. Here you play a sort of simon game where the guy on stage will play a certain sequence of buttons and you need to follow it as long as you can. Other than that there is not much to see, crap.

I kept hearing good things about the Buzz TV space so I checked it out and I was not disappointed. It takes you to a studio where it acts as if that is where they film this fake game. To play you enter the studio, here about 30 are in one room, the camera is top down and on the floor are four different colored areas. Each area acts as an answer to a multiple choice question, you have a certain amount of time to stand in the area you feel is the correct answer. There is a score and instant leaderboards so you know who is in the lead. The questions are fan made so they cover a huge range in topic but they also range from smart questions to complete idiotic ones that a three year old knows. There was a great quiz on Disney which I dominated in. There was a terrible one about horror movies, stupid questions like "who wears a hockey mask". It's uneven but when you get a good quiz it's so much fun. Very recommended that you guys try this.

There was a Namco Museum space so I definetly went in there. It's a recreation of a classic arcade, tons of Namco arcades lined the walls. I was so excited, could I actually play all these games... no. You need to own Namco Museum in order to play the games in Home. Why would you want to enter the Home program to play games you already have on a disc, it makes no sense at all.

Next I went to the Siren home space which takes you to the front of the hospital from the game. It looks like the entrance to a hanuted house, it is such a well designed space. Once you enter you need to go up to the information desk and wait your turn (AHHHHH, so stupid) to get into this escape the hospital game. Only five people can play at a time and there is a five minute limit so you need to wait a while to get in. But it is so worth it! The game is kind of this RE Outbreak like game where you and four other players need to find their way out of the hospital but in your path are the zombie nurses and many locked doors. So basically you need to distract the zombies, go into rooms and look for the keys to doors, or key items like an alarm which you can set to distract the zombies. The camera kind of sucks, clearly Home wasnt decided for small hallways, but they did great with what they had to work with. It feels like a game, you are walking down a hallway and all of a sudden a zombie will burst out of a locker. I died my first two tries, I plan to finish this game sometime today. Awesome area.

EA has like an entire Home complex with many different rooms, two of them have poker tournaments. It's very well laid out, it looks like an EA museum and at the end are poker tables with leaderboards displayed around the area. Again you must wait for the damn games to finish before getting to play, its 8 at a time. Well it's Texas Hold 'Em Poker, it works great. If it was only easier to get into a game this could be one of the best reasons to go into Home, free online poker. If you do well you earn Home prizes and stuff. I went to the racing section of the EA space next and there was a racing game. Its a kart racing game, it has a track that looks like something out of pole position, you race upto four other players, simple fun. There is more for me to look at like a gold complex but so far I am very impressed with the EA space.

After that I checked out this area called Xi, it was home to the first ARG in Home. The game is now over but it allows you to check out the areas that were unlocked as the game went on. One area took you to this game room which had to sides, one was an adventure game and the other a racing game. First I went to the adventure side and it's a text based adventure game. The screen transforms into an old computer monitor and you get a fake keyboard to control. It was a story about a knight and some bandits, it had dragons and monsters, all that good stuff. It was a fun game, there are two too choose from, I did the easy one. The racing game is basically a hover bike game that has graphics that look like its out of Space Harrier. You ride the bike in first person view and steer it with the six axis, your goal is to follow this helicopter in the distance while avoiding trees. It felt like the bike sequence in Return of the Jedi of course less awesome. Decent game and I bet this space was really fun when the ARG was going on.

I ended my night by going to the main central plaza, I visted the mall where people buy virtual items (why). I checked out the bowling alley, same arcade games with the same virtual lines to play them. The movie theater is totally revamped, the lobby now looks like a movie theater and you have ten different screens to choose from, each playing something different. One is a PS3 room, one is a Gran Turismo room, one is for the PSP, and one had an episode of Chris Angel Mindfreak playing. There is a new area called the events area, this area changes depending on what major title is out, as of last night it was a Fat Princess area. You enter this Fat Princes like quiz room where there are hidden pieces of cake around the room and to grab them you need to answer questions about Fat Pricess, the answers can be found by examining the room, for instance there is a statue of a priest and it describes what the character can do. After you get all the pieces of cake and feed the princess you win your very own Fat Princess room ornament. Pretty cool area, I hear that next week they will stream the Game Con converence live in the event area.

Overall its a huge improvement from what I saw months ago. As a program for finding players to launch into an online game with it fails terribly. Only Warhawk does that and I still dont see why you would enter a totally separate program, that is rather slow to start up, just to eventually launch the game you already own that already has a built in friend list. The only way Home works is if its looked at as a virtual theme park, each space is a different ride based on that company or game. It does what a website is designed to do, provide info and advertise a game but it allows for far more interactivity. So many good ideas can come from this, stuff like the Buzz game or the Siren space. There are people that eat up all these virtual items, someone is buyng this stuff so it is a no brainer for a developer to create a space and sell fake junk. I don't think Home will ever live up to how it was first envisioned but plenty of interesting things can come from it. I spent about 4 hours on it last night and I was entertained, I was online with a buddy of mine and we explored Home as if it was a giant video game theme park.

rragnaar said:

SteelAttack said:

I wanna go to the haunted house! Let's go there this weekend, Rag and Dvader.

I'm down.  I suspect the best way to enjoy Home is with other people.

As I said in RoF, its a pain just to get into the game and getting in with friends is almost impossible (about 25 people in a tiny room all pressing X as fast as possible to get a slot in the next available game). Plus if you die quickly you need to wait a long time. Its fun once you get in but everything else about the process sucks. Just warning you.

Animal Crossing > Home

bugsonglass said:

can somebody do a not overlong "ps home for dummies" paragraph?

PS Home doesn't suck ass anymore. Its like a hooker upgrading to becoming a stripper. Soon it will be acceptable as a program.

rragnaar said:

SteelAttack said:

I wanna go to the haunted house! Let's go there this weekend, Rag and Dvader.

I'm down.  I suspect the best way to enjoy Home is with other people.

He just wants to fondle you in the dark and pretend its a ghost.

aspro73 said:

Is it still full of dancing idiots gang-banging (as has been depicted).

Yes.