Just shipped into my email a few moments ago. Anybody else get one? I'll post impressions later once I download the thing and give it a spin.
Apparently Version 1.0 is launching this evening, according to the email.
Here are my impressions:
Its been really fun so far. They need to reimplement the unique game areas, but I see a lot of potential, and a lot of the potential has already been fully realized.
The amount of things you can do with your character is awesome. I can literally have a blast making my character stand their and dance for five minutes. You can string together so many different functions and they adapt to whether you are sitting, standing, and even to what particular type of dance you are dancing. The character functions get an A+.
The mall needs work, but all the stores are there and the layout is beautiful. They just don't have any items there yet. All the interface is already there, and is working beautifully, so this seems like something that can be easily fixed.
The Bowling Alley is just plain awesome. The arcade games are fun, there are a lot of different pool tables, and you can bowl! Unfortunately, it can be hard to get in on a game if a lot of people are there. This can be remedied by having more parallel Home communities. The Bowling Alley gets an A-.
I haven't been able to test out the launching into a game from Home, but the interface seems to already be in place. I will hold off on judging this, as I don't know how well you can sync up with other players.
The Theater is pretty well done too. My main complaint is that they only have one video streaming in there as of now. If you had several different options of what you could play at once, then I would like it better. As of now, it gets a B+.
The graphics are pretty good, and I haven't run into any kind of slowdown. It takes a little while to load in every single person in the area, but I haven't experienced anything that suggested that Home itself is buggy. Graphics and stability get an A-.
There is a lot of potential for customizing your living space. As of now, the objects in your set are kind of limited, but all of the physics and implementation functions are in place. As of now, I'll give it an A-.
There are a lot of chat options, you can text, type, chat with a headset, interact with the different character functions, and talk to a lot of different people. You can mute others pretty easily too. The chat implementation, while not perfect, couldn't be done in any different way that would make it better. I give it an A.
There are advertisements posted on the walls and such, but a lot of them are pretty good. A lot of streaming videos and the posters are all tastefully done and aren't obtrusive. I give the implementation of ads an A-.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
