So, what’s the verdict?  On balance, it’s a definite ‘meh’ with a handful of annoyances.

My first annoyance started with the character creation screens, they give you endless options for customising the face but an absurdly small number of choices for clothing and hairstyles (most of which make you look like a weirdo or someone you’d love to punch).  It definitely doesn’t have the slickness of either the Nintendo or Microsoft equivalents and Sony’s aim for a little more accuracy means that whilst my Mii or 360 avatar look kinda-sorta-almost-ish like me, my PS3 avatar just looks like somebody else.  In fact I’d almost rather have a generic RPG character creation engine like the one in Oblivion, my PS3 guy looks no more like me than an Argonian.

On first entry into Home you’re put into you bland but theoretically swanky apartment, forced to endure a clunky tutorial (I’m not sure if it crashed, ended naturally or whether I quit) and left to explore.  Here comes my second problem with Home, with the initial install (77mb downloaded at the PS3′s standard bitrate of 300 baud) includes only your apartment so when you come to explore you have to choose which ‘area’ you want to go to and spend five minutes pacing the floor of your tedious apartment whilst it downloads.  This is classic Sony, why make life easy when you can make the user do the work for you?

The areas available right away in the beta are a movie theatre, a bowling alley, a shopping mall and a central space through which you can access the other locations.  I had a little wander through all of them and I think the one I most enjoyed was the central square, it’s quite a good place to meet-up with people and in the background there are some giant billboards that play trailers, this might seem like ramming ads down your throat (it is) but it works and can be enjoyable – I loved the Loco Roco 2 trailer.

Once I’d watched all of the trailers I thought I’d try and chat to  someone, the problem is that I (like most people) don’t bother with voice chat on the PS3 and (like most people) don’t have a keyboard plugged in.  The result of this is that you’re stuck with the pre-canned phrases or using the on-screen-keyboard, I tried this but whoever I spoke to got fed-up of waiting for me to type and wandered off.  I wasn’t that bothered really as I doubt most people in there are worth talking to, I was in the public areas of Home for no less than three minutes before I heard one avatar asking another “can I touch your nipple?”.  Nice.

Despite my criticisms the basic premise, structure and execution of Home are actually quite good, it feels like an MMO or at least it feels like Phantasy Star Universe without the gameplay elements.  There are some teething troubles (choppy framerate in busy areas) and there’s nowhere near enough open space to hang out in than I’d expected.  I also like the fact that you can customise your space but it’s absurd to make people pay for that priviledge, as soon as I realised that a yellow rubber duck costs £0.59 ($1 or thereabouts) I walked right back out of the store and thought “Not.  Going.  To.  Happen.  ”.

I’ll be very suprised if the micro-transaction route takes off, I could see bundles working (e.g. ‘Contemporary’ furniture pack or a whole wardrobe of clothes from GAP.  But I don’t think the Second Life model will work so well.  Personally I think that this whole consumer-gouging practice is counter productive, it would make more sense to me if companies like Diesel, DKNY, FCUK, Ralph Lauren, YSL, etc. actually paid Sony to give some of their virtual clothing to the gaming community for free – that’s how advertising’s supposed to work, it’s meant to be free to the victim viewer!

The big question is – what is it for?   I can see friends coming in here to chat before playing games, although it could do with some kind of social networking component for that to become really useful.  If I think about my own behaviour though the picture isn’t so rosy, I don’t play online (that what the Xbox 360 is for), will I buy furniture and clothes in here?  No.  Will I watch trailers in here?  No, Gametrailers or YouTube are easier.  Will I try and make new friends in here?  Hell No.  Will I go back in there before the next major content release?  Probably not.

This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.

Having never tried a MMORPG before I didn’t think the demo would last that long, 8 hours later – I realised I was wrong. The game is pretty accessible, even for a noob like me – the most similar game I’ve played is probably Final Fantasy VII on the original Playstation. The controls are easy enough to pick up and the missions I tried mainly consited of bashing-up monsters, though the combat system here is real-time rather than turn-based. Using real-time combat makes it feel a little like a hack’n'slash as well as an RPG which I prefer as there’s no time waiting around for players/monsters to make a move, I understand this might actually put some die-hard RPG fans off but I think it could also bring in some new players who don’t usually go for RPGs.

Being new to MMORPGs I was very pleased with the whole notion of interaction with others, I liked the way that you could collaborate and trade but not fight (as it would always end up in chaos). Private Custard and I went through a particularly beefy mission which would have caused us some serious gried had it not been for some other players joining our party and sharing the pain we were going through – a great demonstration of how MMOs work.

One neat feature is that the game allows players to perform certain actions to express emotion as opposed to just using keyboard (or voice if in the same party), these include Waving, Laughing, Crying, Bowing, Jumping and Dancing. The most fun part of the whole night was the dance-off that we managed to get going in the main lobby – through the night it involved at least 20 people dancing and up to a hundred or so watching. Personally I think it’s a great thing that people from all over the world can get together online and coordinate to achieve something so completely silly – no guns, no arguments, no fighting, not even any bad language – just silliness. I do however acknowledge that it’s more than a little bit sad.

Please see video above or visit page on YouTube.