So last night I decided to give Playstation Home a chance and sit down give it a thoroughly good look over at what it has to offer. Now, I understand that Home is still in its beta stage but...I simply do not like it. It is hard to place my finger on what I don't exactly like but I would have to say that its because Home looks beyond its means. Home, in my opinion, is a networking social device created to bring the PSN together. What I discovered in Home is a lot of people (men, to be precise) chatting up members of the opposite sex with bad chat up lines without the knowledge that half the female avatars they are talking too are probably men anyway. I had a game of chess, a game of pool, bowling and tried a few of the arcade machines which were good for a about 5 minutes when you realise games like this are much more fun to play in an actual social setting rather then one created from millions of pixels with the exception of the arcade games which to be honest, aren't very good.
My one good thought of Home was to FINALLY meet some good gamers online and be able to set up some good online matches, like on Resistance 2 or find some good players for the Nazi Zombie mode on Call of Duty World at War but found that the only game you can actually launch from Home at the moment is Warhawk.
As I've said, I understand Home is still in the beta stage BUT the amount of delays Home has had is just unforgiving in my opinion. Sony promised us PS owners that all the money we dished out on the PS3 will be worth it, that Home will be brilliant. Now, I'm not saying I feel cheated because I feel the games on the PS3 are good, fun and enjoyable which is what I like, as much as I like innovation in my computer games, sometimes I just like to wind down for an hour or two and just play some computer games. What I will say is that Sony should have been more prepared with Home. It was supposed to be released October 2007 and that was after it was delayed. They then delayed it again and we've now had Home on open beta for...four days and it simply doesn't deliver. For any other open beta, I would understand but with the unforgiving delays of Home, but Sony have had an extra year to get everything up and running with Home and when they finally release it the vast majority of PSN members can't even access Home and when you finally are able to get in you end up wondering why you wanted to get in there in the first place.
Finally, Yes I understand that Home is a free service but still, PS owners have got the short end of the stick with a weak and under-developed XMB. With Home they give us bowling alleys, pool halls, a theatre but all I want to do is be able to invite friends into my game via the XMB which I can't even do in Home at the moment. There is simply no Home delivery this year.
If you read my little rant on Home (which I'm sure a lot of the GS community will disagree with) you would of read the mention of Nazi Zombies. Now, I LOVE this game. World at War is a good game anyway with a great campaign mode and a fantastic multiplayer that we saw in Modern Warfare but once you complete the Campaign you unlock, that's right, Nazi Zombies. Treyarch truly delivered for such a small, simple, unlockable mini game because it is so addictive. The basic premise, to those that haven't played it, is you are in a what can only be describe as a dilapidated building in the middle of nowhere. Zombies start lumbering towards the building and prying off the blanks of wood that barricade the windows shut. You kill them and repair the windows. The more zombies you kill, the higher the level rises, the harder it becomes. Simple. That said, it is incredibly simple but so very, very fun. I have played hours worth time for this game, maybe because I am a huge zombie fan but also its just so FUN!
Just grab the pump action shotgun from upstairs, try and get the magnum from the box and when those zombies sprint at you, just lay into them with shells and bullets and watch arms and legs explode in gory delight.
Part of me hopes that this could be a little hint of a future Treyarch project, perhaps a World War Z game (if anyone has read the book my Max Brooks) where the campaign would follow like a CoD game but rather when a war with countries, you're battling Zombies. I for one could imagine one of the first few missions being the battle of Yonkers, with Zombies just pouring out of Manhattan while tanks fire into them and do no damage and you play as one of infantry soldiers holding back wave after wave before re-treating. Ah, one can only dream. 
Log in to comment