So seeing all the Home articles I decided to give Home another try.  It has been a while, I didn't try Sully's Bar and the Red Bull area last time so I decided to give it another try.

So was it worth the time? First, my notes while playing:

Bowling Alley

• First thing I notice is that for a small space, I'm having frame rate problems.  Why is such a small space so hard to do?
• Every pool table taken
• Every bowling lane taken
• Every arcade machine taken
• The hip music playing in the background doesn't hide the fact this place has no life what-so-ever.

Central Plaza

• I'm just going to say this-- downloading every area is a pain and just all around stupid.
• What a pretty dull, bland, and lifeless world but at least Fiddy is everywhere
• I keep seeing textures pop in (similar to Mass Effect)
• There's still one building that every time I try to enter I get a scene download error and then my character can't move.

Mall

• Bad framerate here too
• There's this weird clicking, chime, sort of sound.  What is it?
• Chess tables taken

My Space

• It's just so boring, and I'm not talking about my place.  There's nothing outside except a sterile, bland, boring, lifeless world.
  

Sully's Bar

• HOLY SHIT!  FREE ARCADE GAME!  I play me some Mercenary Madness...I see why nobody was there.
• This place has more personality and atmosphere than everywhere so far, but it's still pretty lifeless.  There's just no real interaction in the world.  Every thing is nailed down and just eh.  Am I missing something?
• I looked at my artifacts which was ok...I guess.
• Why must I download every damn room separately?
• Sit down to watch a video, my character looks like a goof sitting in the chair, wait for it to download, video plays, my characters fat head is in the way.

Red Bull Air Race

• it's dead fucking quiet.  For a few minutes I hear nothing and then suddenly sound of airplanes occasionally flying overhead kicks in.
• Um, is there anything to do here?  I walked everywhere and saw nothing to do.  I saw a leaderboard so I assume there's something but I didn't see it.  I looked at the little Red bull stand and by every helicopter and plane but didn't see anything I could interact with.  I walked around the area a good five times but couldn't find anything so I left.

Theater

• Even this theater has shitty frame rate
• Video loads for more than two minutes, in the mean time dead silence.  No sound at all.
• After all that waiting, I get a shitty quality Knowing trailer.

Gamer's Lounge

• So...Gamer's Lounge...I see a lot of seats, some empty glass rooms...no games.
• Not one sound

So yeah, another night with Home and another night feeling sorry for the people who put a lot of work into that thing.  I would seriously be embarrassed if I had anything to do with Home, I would probably tell people I'm a bank teller or something, anything, else.

It's sad they had potential to have something pretty cool but then they took years to give us...that.  Home is such a monumental epic failure and fails at just about everything it does.  Avatars have no personality.  Frame rate was shitty everywhere except Sully's Bar.  You wait in line to play games.  I can only guess I was having sound errors. 

What does Home do right?  I mean I guess you can log in, dance, and chat but was that really worth the time and money put into it?

I still can't believe it took them that long to create such a huge dead space.  There's hardly anything to Home.  Its a neat concept, but unless they give people a reason to go there, some function, it's just a novelty.  Maybe they should implement trophy support with unlockable items based on the games played.  Something.... anything. 

I didn't notice the frame rate issues, maybe just wasn't paying attention last time.  Given time I'm hoping it shapes up to be something good.

PS: Your sig is at total odds with your words =P.

They keep adding more game spaces but it's not changing anything. It doesn't change the fact that the whole concept of Home is flawed - the it's designed, it's no surprise that it attracts pervs, the bored, and all the bad other creatures hiding in the internet. A few days ago, I decided to check it out for the first time in ages - it didn't take long to spot someone in the RE5 space chasing some slutty-lookin avatar (probably a guy) while spamming "Hello". And of course, Home wouldn't feel the same if there wasn't a chic avatar dancing in the middle of 5 desperate kids.

Sony could've made a simple but in-depth 2d chat that'd probably get more use than Home, assuming it doesn't come with all the lame loads. What they should've done is NOT use realistic-looking avatars, but go with somethin more cartoony instead. I bet somethin as simple as that would cut down all the e-flirting abit and make the place look abit less sad. Still though, the whole idea of being able to roam around as an avatar in the first place is a bad one. Again, some kind of 2d chat thing with neat features like game launching/music sharing/news/ads/etcetc would've been much better.

The thing I hate most about Home is it feels like more like a free game, not a PSN feature. It starts up like a game except it has way more loading times.

The worst thing about Home is it's not even getting the attention of hardcore or casual gamers. I'm dissapointed that Sony hasn't scrapped the idea and just moved onto somethin else. Then again, they say it's been in the making for about 2 years - that's alot of time gone down the drain considering that Home's been gettin lots of hate.

XBL is simple but it works. It has all the features that the PSN needs so much. Home does have alot of good features, but the problem there is.......how is any of that useful to my friends and I when we actually feel like playing a game? There's a reason why I bought a PS3, and it doesn't involve spending time in a 3D chat room.

The chime in the mall is the sound of money going into Sony's pockets.

Personally, I find Home a quite interesting place. If I can get a couple of friends in Home at the same time I am in Home it can be a very good time. It is just a very nice place to go after a night of Killzone or something else online. Thanks to people acting like lunitics Home public spaces have become wuite dull without the voice chat feature, but that is what we get for having such cool people on PSN.

Still I think the most important thing we need to remember is that Home is still labled as a beta, and it has only been out for 3 months. The wheels have began to spin, and things are looking to get very interesting as we move towards E3. Soon we will be seeing the launch of the EA Sports space, along with many more game spaces. This should help spread the community out, giving people more things to do. I expect that a game of pool or bowling will become easier with time as people start playing games in other spaces.

Home still has the potential to be awsome, and there is already stuff in the pipe that we know about that could potentially make it very fun. With that said, I am very sure that there are a lot of very cool things we have no clue about yet. Game launching, event speciffic spaces (Ex. GDC, E3, TGS, etc..), publisher spaces, and many mini games are just a few things that will briung more and more life into Home. My thought is wait tell after E3, and if you still see no interest in Home, then Sony has a problem.

you know for whom home is good?for people that are not much into gaming(they buy lot's of clothes) just go up to them and press x to see their profile.They don't have nay trophies,yet they have StreetFighter/tuxedo costume .

but capcom is doing something very clever.In the home space in future if you have RE5 disk you get to play RE2 on an arcade(for now it's jut RE5 on arcade),,or you get to go to RE5 store and buy some cool stuff.

It's upto developers to create some sales from this (And believe me they will if done right)
biggest sony mistake?they should incorporate home avatars in the PSn cards and invovle the game companies in making cool ideas(like the EA complex)

Not that I am trying to defend Home or anything here because I have not tried it, but may I mention that it is FREE... (Accessories not included)

Right now I'm going to sit back and watch who is coming to its defense, and see where this goes. Personally it just isn't my thing whatsoever so I just stay away...

It has some fun little things inside of it. My main problem is it eats up time like a bitch and doesn't feel at all satisfying.

redbull area you drive planes, no waiting line, but i see you weren't looking to play anything.

just complain.

@ Jo: I know Twesterm usually comes across as a whiny little boy that picks on every little thing he possibly can (and who seems to get every possible problem in the world on his PS3 while no one else does >_>), but the Red Bull Area is a bit confusing. It took me a while too to test the red bull game, mainly because I couldn't find the game, until I saw people discussing it and figured it out.

yea red bul is confusing,,you have to look at the parked planes and then press x