While you might already be aware that PlayStation Home is currently hosting a virtual E3, you may not have realised that the Home Square and Shopping Mall spaces just got a huge revamp. Gone is the arcade-feel of the Shopping Mall, and we now see a light and airy space. The Home Square looks totally different, while retaining almost everything it had before.
The Home Square has changed dramatically, set in the same harbour area as your Harbour Studio Apartment. There’s a range of new games to inetreact with here, including ‘Shooting Hoops’, a basketball game, ‘Tug of War’, and ‘Polling Booth’.
The last asks you to select an answer from four, and the water fountains beside it change in height as the general consensus of people vote for their favourite. It’s a nice feature that encourages community involvement, and I can imagine the questions will change on a regular basis.
The last game stands in the middle of the space, ‘Supa-Fun Robo-Goalie Time!!’. This game requires you to buy footballs to kick into a goal with real money. 20 balls costs £0.79 and 50 balls costs £1.59.
This area seems a little under-crowded, whilst the Polling Booth seems to be where everyone hangs out. The Shopping Mall, Theatre and Bowling Alley are all still present and roughly in the same places before.
The Shopping Mall is now totally outside all on one, ground floor. To one side is the beautiful harbour that maintains the feel of the Harbour Studio Apartment, and now Home Square. Without the annoying elevator music as before, the sound of the water makes the scene much more calm.
The main video ad also provides quiet music for those browsing through surrounding stores. The “Stuff” shop now finally has something in it: Dice. For £0.79 you can have a wrongly-named object (should be ‘die’, ‘dice’ is plural.) to… well, the explanation doesn’t really explain anything. “A huge dice for all to see. Play your own game with this massive dice.”
Because of the new outside area, the whole space is much more orange rather than grey and this area now feels more peaceful to chill out in rather than the look-at-the-advertising-and-buy-everything feel of the previous Shopping Mall.
bajere
havent touched home in years…still hasnt given me a reason to. I get the whole community thing ect, but it just seems all pointless IMO
Mick939
Went in them last night very nice
Divine
To be fair it’s quite nice to spend time in home lately, it’s not as crap as some people suggest. They should build in some kind of auto translator though.
gurglesletch
I will go try it out later then but i wasn’t impressed the last time i went.
seedaripper1973
Havnt seen the new spaces yet, but went in a couple of weeks ago and was surprised that the pool game has been updated, you can now have spin thus giving you trick shots…for a free pool game you cant beat it!! give it a pop ;)
cheekyMcB
Didn’t realise has been updated….not played it for ages.
MegaBonez
I think the new square is a little cramped, it looks nice though!
tom1234321
a little? It’s really cramped, the look is nice yes but theres way to much in one little space, it needs to be bigger or less stuff in home square. Also the games don’t even work properly either and paying for a main mini-game stuck in middle of home square? -_- It takes a lot longer to load up too and laggy. ( no it’s not my connection ). I like the shopping centre best, only problem with it is it’s still small, needs to be bigger!!
BioEye
When you say the Shopping Mall needs to be bigger, do you mean it needs more shops or more space?
Apnomis
I fired Home up for the first time in ages to go to the E3 space, and I went last night to see the new Home Square. I think it’s a huge improvement over the closed in and crowded old space. The habour theme makes perfect sense given that the Habour Studio Apartments, which are in the Home Square have a similar view from the balcony…
I’m not even against the principle of charging for the mini-game, as long as it’s of sufficient quality it’s only like going in to a seaside arcade… It’s still all a bit pricey though, they should focus on low-cost high-value IMO, 30p for 20 balls and 50p for 50 balls or somthing. Same with the clothes, most things in home would be between 50p-£1. Also if you play the penalty game you are given, drum roll, a Picture Frame! Sadly you can’t change the picture, but still it’s the closest the EU have come so far!
There are numerous interesting spaces actually, there was some Japanese carnival that gave away loads of freebies, an 80’s Brooklyn style basket ball court, and an impressive World Cup space that has a suprisinly deep football prediction game based on a virtual version of the World Cup they are hosting in Home using the EA FIFA World Cup game, it also has a global area (seeing Japanese speech bubbles in Home is weird!) and a football targets minigame.
The thing I liked about the World Cup football minigame and the basket ball minigame is that you aren’t taken ‘somewhere else’ like most games but you actually play it in the space – it created a good atmosphere as people actually stand around and watch people play – unfortunately it means you need to queue for ages waiting for your go though!
What always gets me about Home though is that no which space you visit, even the older ones, there always seems to be people there! I’ve never yet gone into Home and found it empty, so clearly they are doing something right. Also I may not visit often, but when I do visit I’m there for hours!
There still seems to be something ‘missing’ from the experience though that I can’t quite put my finger on…
Apnomis
I meant low-cost high-volume obviously…
Cjdamon042
Totally agree. Went on it last night to check out all the new stuff and most of it is great and definitely a huge improvement over Home a year or so ago. And yeah, it’s never empty which is good.
I just wish that instead of adding new spaces all the time (which I’m glad they do, no doubt about that), they add some avatar interaction, perhaps some better avatar customisation options, music and movies in apartments, add a new interface (like the navigation screen though) and get rid of the annoying interface sounds. If they do all that, plus maybe improve the graphics a tad and add a day/night cycle, then it would be awesome.
I’ve always wanted to host a party at my apartment, with music and whatnot, but I can’t.
cheekyMcB
They’re daft having what is basically almost a pay per play mini game though in Home Square…..mini games should be free unless they’re longer and more complex like the Sodium shooter.
TSBonyman
I haven’t been on for a few months, deleted it when i couldn’t get on psn ‘cos of the otheros removal. Haven’t bothered to reinstall yet but this sounds worth checking out.
Charmed_Fanatic
HOME is really good now with the fast loading and all the spaces.
However, 79p for a mini-game … sucker!
Carl
I went on at about 3am and it was full. Quite worrying.
Also worrying how damn addictive the football game in home square is (Have £60 in my PSN wallet so i went for it). Damn i was playing for hours haha.
It’s a nice redesign though. I’ve always been a Home liker, but it really is improving a lot recently