Xi Comes Home

A strange thing happened yesterday... I entered Home on the PS3 and spent maybe 20 minutes actually enjoying what I was doing. I know, hard to believe isn't it? I've never been Homes biggest fan yet I've poked my nose in when updates have become available just to see if it's improving. The Red Bull flying game wasn't bad but was short lived. Then I looked at the Far Cry 2 and more recently the Capcom Resident Evil spaces. Both were disappointing and left me feeling like I was wondering around a small part of the gaming world except with all the fun gaming bits removed. So what happened yesterday?

Xi that's what. Accessed from the main square by walking up to some graffiti on a wall you'll be teleported to a new area called the hub. Once there a voice directs you to do certain things like find three pieces of a torn photo. Once you've done this you're given further instructions to access and complete a puzzle on an online gateway upstairs, perform a certain action in a specific place or research some information on a website, all the while picking up clues to enter words into your holoPAD. Doing this adds either a portion of a picture or for some reason unknown to me, a butterfly to your collection. I'm assuming these activities will be released every few days or so as there are quite a few pieces to collect.

What also makes this new area more welcoming is that it actually has a bit of character sadly lacking elsewhere. A slightly deranged robot called Stapler who gives you additional tasks to perform and even the fact that some of the panels in the corner of the room aren't properly fixed and sit leaning against the wall. It may not be much but it gives the area some personality. For once not everything is perfect.

Whilst very simple it works and finally gives people a reason to come back. So Home is getting interesting... well I'll be damned.

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Take Me Home

Home for the Playstation 3 has suffered so many delays that it even makes Network Rail look good. Consequently Sony have decided to run a 'real life' beta version to see how its fans respond. The idea is a simple one and ties in with the new Trophy system update. From tomorrow any trophies you earn will result in an actual physical trophy being posted to you for you to display in your own home, but here's the clever bit. The new beta means that you can contact your friends via a device called a telephone and invite them round to see your collection. The system also means that if friends aren't in to receive the invite you can leave a message of your actual voice using some new fangled recording technology magic! Your friend can then respond to this at a convenient time. Once your friend arrives in your home they can browse and compare trophies and converse with you using their voice in real time. You can even arrange to go bowling with them or visit the local cinema to watch a film.

If you prefer to try and meet random people Sony suggest visiting a local shopping centre as an example. Gameov3r did try this but has to admit the feature needs tweaking. Any random people we approached didn't seem remotely interested in our trophies or meaningless banter, some even walked away from us in a manner we could best describe as 'running'.

As a temporary measure I think in general this could work really well and even better news is that to access most of these features you won't even need a PS3.

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