In case you're curious as to the progress of the PS3's upcoming PlayStation Home, the 3D Second Lifeish world in which you can interact with others, watch movie trailers, play games or just decorate a virtual apartment, one of our own readers was invited to participate in Sony's closed beta program and then kindly drafted up his experience for the world to read. His account confirms our skepticism while painting a pretty clear picture of exactly how Home works. And if you've got a second and a PS3, read on for his account.


Character Creation:

The first thing that I noticed when you go in is that the sliders for character customization move slow as shit. They move so slow that you can't really see the difference in the changes that you are making.


General Play

After you create your character, you jump right into your apartment. The controls are pretty intuitive and the integration of an in game psp is pretty cool (basically in game xmb with extra home options)...[you] really need a keyboard to communicate, but it is still functional with multiple emoticons and preprogrammed messages.

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Zones

Each different zone you enter you need to download a new file they range from 18 to 33 MB (They should integrate this into the main download). From the main area you can visit the following places: 1. Movie Theater - A movie theater that you can walk around, sit enjoy...more lapdances, all while the trailer of the last guy is playing. Its kinda funny seeing the text bubbles pop up above peoples heads as they see the trailer. "Game Sucks Ass"...."cool music"..."soundz like bad porn tunez". 2. Shopping center - Visit store for more clothes, furniture, and "stuff". I bought everything I could within 2 mintues. Very limited suppy of "free" items, currently nothing for "sale" with actual dollars. 3. Music zone (no download required, part of the main area) - Listen to 1 of 3 tunes and dance appropriately for the style of music. Get made fun of by other dancers. 4. Game zone - Play crappy arcade, pool and bowling games (absolutely no motion integration, very crappy controls, meh all around)


Closing Thoughts

20 minutes and you get the full experience of Home. The only entertaining thing that keeps me logging back on is stalking other people and doing the twist dance maneuver while saying "grind me hard". I basically chase people around and shake my booty at them and they try to jog slowly away from me, its pretty amusing. Home just needs content. It is currently a 3d chat room.

It should be noted that the PlayStation Home beta does not include areas with PlayStation 3 title game integration as we'll see with games like Warhawk and Resistance 2.


Thanks Randy!