Hands on With Playstation Home
After much anticipation from the mass public about Sony’s answer to Second Life, We finally get the official Beta release of Playstation Home. Here are my first impressions and why i think it is a much better model then SF. Oh, and i have a link to my Picasa gallery that has pictures and captions! click the pic before reading my review:
|
|
| PSHome |
Okay. I hope the pictures weren’t too awful, but it was the best i could do on short notice. Time for my hands on review of PS Home.
Graphcs and Speed: Graphics are indeed high def. Everything is clear and colors are vivid. I really like the scenery. It all looks very nice, but speed is another thing. I had times where the screen would lag when i was trying to type out messages, and if you’ve used the PS3 keypad thing, you know how long it takes to get any words out. This is not made easier and still takes forever when holding a conversation with anyone (if you find anyone willing to talk, that is…)
Social Activities: So far, there’s running/walking around, dancing, bowling, a club, and running… so, pretty much what you would expect from a virtual world. Nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing that really caught my eye as being fun. The people do nothing more than yell at everyone or speak another language that no one else happens to know. Overall, its going to take some time before PS Home starts to get fun.
Appeal: For anyone out there that doesn’t own a PS3, this will not be selling point. For those that do already have a PS3, this will take up your HDD space. 3gigs of it actually, which, for my 40gig model, is a small chunk that I would have rather used for music and funny videos, but I wouldn’t say it isn’t put to good use. PS Home does have a nice feel to it and can be enjoyed in small doses. Not something that can be played like a game, but if you have friends in your list already, this is a great way to get to know them better and actually hang out online. One thing I am going to try out is putting my bluetooth headset on and trying to communicate over the Home network like i do with normal games. If that works, i would find this to be best way of talking to your PS3 buddies.
Overall: I like Home. Its new, so there some aspects that need to be molded a bit more, but its still better than Second Life. If you have the space and the time to download, please take try it out for yourself. You won’t be too disappointed.
Oh, one other thing. Why do i have to download packs to get into a room? 25mb pack to get into the bowling alley over my connection took Ten Minutes. thats quite awhile when you are running around trying to discover everything….
