After what seems like an age since the original announcement I finally managed to get into Playstation Home today which despite all the waiting is only in the Open Beta phase, basically if everyone loves it they’ll go live soon but if everyone thinks it sucks then they’ll keep in in beta and fix the dodgy bits.
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.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: , 360, Avatar, Home, Mii, mmo, nintendo, playstation, Playstation Home, ps3, sony, xbox, xbox 360
In November 2006 Microsoft added the ability to have your Xbox 360 automatically download new Xbox Live Arcade trial games, it’s a great feature but for too long I’ve just let it stack up with millions of trial games and it’s about time I sorted the wheat from the chaff and decided if there’s anything worth buying. I’m going to chip away at my list of 81 games (although some I’ve played and own) until I get rid of all the trials and today’s my first 10…
 Asteroids & Deluxe – Some old rehashes work (Pacman CE) and others don’t. This seems like an utterly pointless remake and doesn’t seem to provide any of the old-school fun it ought to.
 Battlestar Gallactica – Not my cup of tea but seems well put together, kind-of odd that it’s a space flight sim yet you seem to be retricted to a 2D plane.
Bliss Island – no idea what the bloody hell is going on here, don’t seem to be able to actually do much.
Every Extend Extra Extreme – WTF? Seriously, I can’t see the game here – you just wait until you’re surrounded, press A then watch the pretty colours. It seems bizarre to play a game, not have a clue about what you’re doing and still score 7,056,824,249 points.
Ikaruga – Back in the day I used to like scrolling shooters, I always wanted to try Ikaruga but I never got to. The gameplay doesn’t really disappoint, it’s more the narrow vertical nature of it leaves me feeling empty – like I’m wasting two thirds of my TV screen whilst squinting at what’s left trying to work out what’s going on.
Metal Slug 3 – Fun game, a bit silly but definitely not worth 800 points. Oddly this game seemed to screw up my Xbox Live connection I was in a voice chat at the time so I was rather pissed off.
Omega Five – I lasted for about 15 seconds in total and I would rather be punched in the face than play this for another second.
Street Trace NYC – I think the publishers would like it to be “Tony Hawks on Steroids” but it’s actually “Tony Hawks on Life Support”. Do yourself a favour, keep your cash, go on eBay and buy yourself an Original Xbox copy of a Tony Hawks Pro Skater game and you’ll get way more value for money.
 Track & Field – Oddly this is as fun and compelling as it ever was, I’m not 100% sure if I’ll buy it yet but it’s definitely a candidate.
Tron – Terrible, it upsets me that this game exists. It disgusts me that it’s been remade.
So it’s as I thought – they’re mostly rubbish. On a side note, all hail to the glorious Microsoft Points Converter – what an awesome little tool.
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: 360, Asteroids, Battlestar Gallactica, Bliss Island, Every Extend Extra Extreme, Ikaruga, Metal Slug 3, Omega 5, Street Trace NYC, Track & Field, Tron, XBLA, xbox, xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade
So everyone’s buzzing about Microsoft buying Yahoo and I’ve been trying to work out what my opinion is. My first thoughts were that (in Search at least) it’s just one ‘also ran’ buying another ‘also ran’, nothing too inspiring. I still think that’s true but it’s worth underscoring the fact that Microsoft are betting their business on Search and in turn on advertising. Over the last few years Microsoft have started transitioning to a ‘Software as a Service’ model and services in general (think Xbox Live), this is clearly an important extension of that. A lot of people see this as a bid to rival Google in Search but if you start applying the advertising model to IM, Flickr and perhaps even gaming.
As an industry gaming has grown to be larger than both the movie and music industries and the power to be able to sell-through ads into the Xbox dashboard and even into billboards and scenery inside games could be a huge market. I’m not sure that we (the public) will find out but look for signs of an API allowing developers to integrate Yahcrosoft ads into games, the buzz about in-game ads has been building for a while but it’s been crying out for a standard for developers to work to, well – here it is. On top of all that remember that there’s plenty of other cool stuff in the deal including Flickr (note that things like this are exactly the reason I stayed away from Flickr). It’ll be a while before this actually make a difference but keep your eyes open…
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: gaming, Merger, Microsoft, Search, xbox, xbox live, Yahcrosoft, yahoo
I’ve given up, that’s it – I finally admitted that the PS3 is worthless as a games console and I’ve traded-in all of my PS3 games. Admittedly I only had three, but those three are often the subject of much adoration from Sony fanboys desperate to justify their expenditure, for me they break down as follows:
Resistance Fall of Man
A passable FPS, would’ve stood out about 5 years ago but now feels dated. Clearly a first-cut by a developer used to creating kiddie platformers, I mean no disrespect as the Insomniac guys because they seem quite amiable but on any other console this would’ve gotten lost amongst all the other titles.
Motorstorm
I can’t say too much about this since I only played it a few times and each time I did a few laps and almost died of boredom, the feel of the game was pretty good but the arbitrarily difficult physics (‘smack into something solid and survive’ vs. ‘barely clip something and get trashed’) got on my nerves and at no point did anything make me want to persevere, hell – Need For Speed Most Wanted had me hooked for longer.
Warhawk
What can I say? After so much raving from the community I thought “this is a game I have to buy” so I did. I really should stop being so optimistic. For starters the whole SixAxis control method is way to spongy, I just seemed to flop around and not really get very far so I turned it off only to find that it’s the game that’s a bit weird and I find the third-person perspective made me feel so disconnected from the experience. On the plus side I will say that the maps are nice and big (though that seemed to make for long games with low kill counts) and the connection seemed to be very smooth even for very large matches (when managed to get into a game).
So now I’m left with my PSN titles – Super Rub-a-Dub (I love it), Tekken Dark Resurrection (I love it), Flow (it’s OK) and Calling All Cars (thoroughly disappointing). I don’t really plan to buy any more PS3 games until I’m certain that they’re any good, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune seems to be getting love from the community but the rest of the top games on the PS3 are multi-platform anyway so I’ll just stick with the 360.
This blog post has also been cross-posted on my specialist gaming blog, hosted on the Gamercast Network.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: 360, Motorstorm, ps3, PSN, Resistance Fall of Man, Video Games, Warhawk, xbox
I was just posting in the Call of Duty 4 thread over on Red Rant and mentioned that I think COD4 deserves a spot in my Top 5 First Person Shooter games, that lead me to start wondering - what are my Top 5 FPS games? It’s a tough call as it’s my favourite genre of video games so it’s like choosing between children, to make life easier I’ve limited this to the multiplayer (deathmatching) aspects of the genre. Here goes…
- Red Faction 1 (PS2) – the geomodding was great and the game had a wicked pace.
- Unreal Tournament (PS2) – the first uber-fast run & gun FPS that I played on a console (loved the PC version too), foe a while it was in class of it’s own.
- Halo 1 (Xbox) – I know the sequel had Xbox Live but nothing ever beats the System Link games I used to play with a bunch of friends at the regular mini LAN Party events we use to have.
- Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360) – a recent release but one that feels instantly familiar yet adds all sorts of cool features to the genre (the Perks are brilliant).
- Ghost Recon Series (Xbox, PS2 Xbox 360, PS3) – much more tactical than all of the above but these games gave an immense scope for teamwork in the co-op modes.
One game many would expect to see on this list (and many would feel is conspicuous by it’s absence) is Perfect Dark, I didn’t own an N64 until a couple of years ago and so never played Perfect Dark back in it’s glory days. Consequently when I tried to play it I found the stubby single-analog control method to be extremely odd and impossibly frustrating so I couldn’t be bothered to play any more.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: COD4, FPS, Halo, PS2, Top 5, xbox
I’ve not long since got back to my hotel after attending an event in Washington DC hosted by the Microsoft Xbox (and Games for WIndows) PR guys from the Gamerscore Blog, it was a great night and good to finally put some faces to names / gamertags / forum handles. The event started with some food and drinks whilst we were able to play a whole slew of games including Shadowrun, Project Sylpheed, Forza 2 and a bunch of Xbox Live arcade titles (one of which was Track & Field).
I was impressed with Shadowrun, other than what I’ve heard from blogs and podcasts this was the first real concrete information I’d seen and it definitely clarified a few points for me. The things I’d heard were that it’s complexity might prove to be a barrier for people who just want to jump in and start playing and in my experience this definitely wasn’t the case. Other than a brief run of the first tutorial and some on-the-fly coaching from Chris I was pretty much running and gunning right away, sure it’ll take a while to master the finer points of tech and magic but if you’re a fan of the FPS genre then you’ll feel at home immediately as it handles exactly how it ought to and I was very quickly “in the zone”, ignoring everything around me and trying to get some decent headshots.
Project Sylpheed is essentially a 3D space shooter / flight sim and handles pretty well, I didn’t get to see a great deal of the mission structure so I can’t comment on the overall arc of the game but it was certainly put together well and once I’d inverted my flight controls (up vs down) I was flying quite easily. As I said, I didn’t really get far enough into the game to know but I’d love to see a more in-depth and interactive mission structure as opposed to the “enter arena and kill ‘em all” style of mission that most console flight sims have had recently.
I was also reasonably impressed with Forza 2, I wasn’t really a fan of the original and hated it within about 15 seconds of playing the game so I was pleasantly surprised when after 15 minutes of playing the sequel I was still enjoying myself. I’d still need to spend a little more time with the demo in order to be sure of it’s purchase value but that has more to do with my fussiness about control methods and handling than it does with the game itself.
Anyway, that’s about all the info I can regurgitate before I fall asleep and I have a flight tomorrow so I’d better get some shut-eye. Catch y’all later (well I am in America after all).
written by admin
\\ tags: forza, gamerscore blog, gamerscore blog road tour 2007, shadowrun, xbox, xbox 360
What websites do you visit every day?
Submitted by Chez Michelle.
I’m an avid gamer, techie and current-affairs junkie so I check…
- The Gamercast Network – website for a series of podcasts and a brilliant good-natured forum as well.
- Eurogamer – great news site for games and a rare gem of European based news.
- BBC News – my absolute favourite news channel and website.
- Digg – a superb social news site, excellent for highlighting the quirkier stories as well as good solid tech news.
- Xbox.com – I have a 360 but don’t use it every day, I visit the site to see who’s online, read my messages and send messages to my friends.
That’s all folks.
written by admin
\\ tags: 360, bbc, digg, gamer, gamercast network, qotd, Video Games, xbox
This week Macworld saw the launch of the Apple TV (formerly iTV), on the surface it’s a pretty good device allowing wireless transfer of video, music,
podcasts and photos from up to five Macs or PCs to your swanky HDMI compliant TV set all for a relatively reasonable $299. Many people might immediately realise that this is not a new idea, in fact I had a device that performed a similar task about 3 years ago (albeit using SCART) and at the time both wired and wireless versions were available. Actually I don’t see this as a problem, there were MP3 players before the iPod and that didn’t stop Apple
becoming the market leader, Apple have a knack of doing things better than the competition and have got a great reputation when it comes to usability and reliability. Despite all this, I’m not really impressed with the Apple TV and as it stands I doubt it will have the impact that everyone expected. The single biggest drawback of the Apple TV is that it doesn’t play all of the popular video formats, it will play anything that iTunes plays but nothing more. This means that any video you already have in other formats, be it snaffled from bittorrent, downloaded from the web, ripped from DVD or captured from camcorders will not work without going through the laborious process of re-encoding. This is more than most people want to do and the kind of people who really need a device like this probably use multiple formats and probably have stacks of DivX and Xvid movies that they’d love to watch on their
TV and Apple aren’t going to be much help at all.The secondary factor is that due to Apple’s late arrival in this space there are already some pretty good devices out there, though the biggest threat probably comes from their classic rival in the shape of the Xbox 360. For $399 you get a device that can stream video, music and photos from your PC
(though you’re stuck with just WMV for video), allows you to directly purchase and download TV shows and HD Movie rentals without even touching a computer, comes with a free headset allowing free phone calls to other Xbox 360 users, also supports video calls with the webcam accessory, and on top of all that is to date the best selling High-Definition games console on the market with over a hundred titles available.
So the Apple TV has a big hill to climb but if anyone can push it up that hill then surely Apple can. One light at the end of the tunnel which might generate some additional sales is the already mooted prospect of installing Linux on the Apple TV and using a Linux media player distro to do the rest -
now that might just make me buy one.
written by admin
\\ tags: Apple, bittorrent, hd, linux, macworld, xbox, xbox 360
So, I actually bothered watching the live stream of Bill Gates’ keynote at CES – I love insomnia sometimes. All in all it was relatively interesting, I paid special attention to the Xbox 360 section which announced their IPTV service (no details and cynicism/experience tells me it’ll be US only). Some cross-platform features of Xbox Live and Vista were mentioned, I like the idea but it’ll be a while before it really catches on with PC users. I posted my live notes about the Xbox 360 portion on the forums of the GamerCast Network, if you don’t know about them please download and listen to their excellent podcasts, I listen to the Video Game Show, but they also host the extremely popular GamerTag Radio and Uncle Gamer Radio.
There was also a bit of blathering about how great everyone thinks Gears of War is, I personally wasn’t that fussed – if they made an FPS that was equally good looking I might be interested but as far as I’m concerned it looks great but plays distinctly average. I heard someone describe it as a pretty version of whack-a-mole and honestly that’s exactly what it is.
They demoed some cool features in Vista which should be good once they’ve been service-packed to hell, my favourite was the integration with the Xbox 360 controller – I’ve got to find some use for the handful of spares I have lying around. Other than that it was relatively uninspiring, they had the balls to mention both Urge and Zune even though they’re both different incompatible products trying to achieve the same aim.
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: bill gates, ces, iptv, keynote, Microsoft, podcast, vista, xbox, xbox 360
I know it’s cheesy but I thought I’d do a little roundup of 2006 and then later on a series of predictions for 2007. The lists are all Top Fives and are based on techie stuff unless otherwise stated.
1. Podcasting
I had a look in 2005 and there really wasn’t any great content out there, I came back in 2006 and it was like the whole ‘industry’ had exploded with some well established shows as well as some new favourites, this was really the year the podcasting became established.
2. Video Gaming
With the Xbox 360 released in December 2005 (but generally available March 2006) and the December launch of the Wii and the PS3 (US only) this really has been the year for gaming. More than that Nintendo have performed an amazing feat by pulling games out of Geekdom and into popular culture, not only with the Wii but with this year’s release of the DS Lite and the wonderful Brain Training.
3. Beta Releases
I’m not sure what’s happened but in 2006 nobody wants to release a product without having a public Beta, this has been true for games (Phantasy Star Universe + Final Fantasy XI on the Xbox 360), PC software (Office 2007, Windows Vista) and everything regarded as Web 2.0.
4. Video & Broadcasting
This year has seen a fundamental change in the way people watch and interact with video, of course nobody missed the popularity of YouTube and its acquisition by Google for $1.65bn but the I find the complementary changes in the broadcast industry to be even more interesting. Many major players have been trying to get into the User Generated Content (UGC) market ranging from pointless attempts by people who just don’t get it (MTV Flux) to well-done but still distinctly old-media (BBC’s Your News).
5. High Definition
In 2006 we saw the launch of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, heralding a new era of home cinema – let’s just hope that one of the two competing formats wins sooner rather than later so consumers can buy with confidence. 2006 also saw the introduction of Sky’s High Definition Satellite service, sadly it was over-priced, delivered late and has limited quantities of genuine HD content. This year also seems to be the year that people started to buy HD TVs in great quantities, at the end of 2005 I didn’t know anybody with an HD TV, now over half of my friends either own or are seriously considering an HD TV and the prices still keep on tumbling.
Well, I’m convinced I’ve missed something but that’ll have to do, I think I’ll go to bed now and hopefully dream of 2007, if I do then you’ll have my predictions tomorrow!
written by thirtyfootscrew
\\ tags: beta, ds lite, nintendo, Podcasting, ps3, Video Games, wii, xbox
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