Anyone home? December 19, 2008
Posted by David in Gaming, Software.add a comment
If you’re lucky enough that Santa brings you a Sony Playstation 3 this year, you’ll probably want to try out the new Playstation Home service that just launched on the console.
The idea behind Home is simple and yet allows for some very sophisticated things from your PS3.
The two other big current consoles, Microsoft’s XBox 360 and the Nintendo Wii both have personal avatars – characters that you design and model either in your own likeness or some fantasy persona. These avatars can then interact with other avatars and communicate or meet up for online games. It’s a way of quite literally putting a face to the services offered by the console.
Ever since the PS3 launched in early 2007, Sony has been promising and releasing sneak previews of its Home network planned for the device and it has finally been made available to the public, albeit in beta form.
Home gives you the obligatory avatar but with considerably more detail than the other two consoles. You also start off in your own personal virtual apartment next to a beautiful harbour. The apartment is yours to decorate and fill with your own personal belongings that you gather along the way including, of course, lots of nice hi-tech Sony kit.
Upon leaving your apartment you join a plaza which is bustling with other avatars, each controlled by real people sitting at their PS3s.
The plaza contains a bowling alley, cinema complex, shopping mall and other areas to meet.
When you approach a fellow avatar you can chat with them by voice or text and challenge them to games within your library. You can also play bowls, pool and various arcade machines.
It doesn’t take long before you start to realise the genius behind Sony’s Home network.
Fed up with the default t-shirt your avatar is wearing? Pop into the shopping mall, find a clothes shop and but some new threads. I bought a hooded top for my character to wear for 59p of real cash. It’s fun money for me but once everyone starts to do it, it will make Sony a fortune.
There are posters up all over the mall advertising real things and you can enter the cinema and watch an actual movie for a small fee.
Home is definitely a fun and immersive experience.
If you fancy a meet-up, look out for me – TintinX.
Must… stop… playing October 2, 2007
Posted by David in Gaming.add a comment
I’m a little bleary-eyed this morning after a late-ish night playing Halo 3.
It’s funny – a couple of months ago my Xbox360 would have been feeling somewhat neglected. It’s not through a lack of good games, that’s for sure. It’s just that the thing is so damn noisy. The only way I can play it without any sense of frustration is with headphones on – not really a problem in itself but is there really any need for it to sound like a Lancaster bomber revving up in an aircraft hanger? I think not.
And before you make the suggestion, yes, the thing is extremely well ventilated. It’s on the top of my main desk with nothing either side of it. It’s even in front of a window that I’ve had open whilst playing and it still sounds like Armageddon approaching.
By contrast the Playstation 3 is sleek and all but silent in operation – even after a considerable spell of gaming. Add to that it’s Blu-ray player, DVD upscaling and increasingly impressive media playing capabilities and, in machine terms alone, it’s definitely my favourite. It’s just that it could do with a few more killer games. Hopefully they’re on the horizon.
Anyway, back to Halo 3 and my reddened eyes. The game is my third 360 purchase over recent weeks and, I have to say, the one that has earned my greatest attention. Guitar Hero 2 was great for a couple of weeks of fun with a couple of mates and even my daughter took to rocking out. I’ll no doubt go back to it before long but at the moment my plastic axe is sitting feeling unloved.
I also bought into the hype of Bioshock and decided not to buy the PC version after various reports of problem installations and other shenanigans. So the 360 version was played feverishly for some time and I will no doubt go back to it very shortly because it’s a great game – full of atmosphere and style and genuinely scary in a creepy way rather than a ‘things jumping out at you in the dark’ way (although it has that, too).
It’s not easy to put my finger on what is making Halo 3 so playable. I’m a big science fiction fan (yeah, I know… goes with the territory. Whatever.) and the Halo 3 storyline that has evolved over the series is actually quite decent if a little cliched. I think it’s the feeling of being so actively involved in a space epic storyline that gets me so much.
The action is tremendous, with vast battles raging across far-reaching landscapes. Being dropped onto an alien desert with sands storms blowing in the distance and the threat of some great ship swooping out of the skies to drop another army of foe in your way is quite an experience.
The graphics, in terms of quality, actually leave something to be desired in my opinion. On my 36″ HDTV there are really noticeable ‘jaggies’ around the edges of objects and the non-player characters look decidedly of the second generation console variety.
It was also revealed earlier this week that the game isn’t actually running in true high definition but rather a lower rate that has been upscaled (I won’t get bogged down into techno-babble hear, partly because I struggle to understand it completely myself, but this revelation has come as a surprise and disappointment to some and I’m sure it’s related to the over all quality of the graphics I am experiencing).
But the truth is that this lower resolution allows the game developers to do so much more on the screen and epic battles are aplenty. Also, despite the low resolution, the actual scenery and lighting is literally breathtaking in parts.
All this and so far I’ve yet to have any real experience of the strongest part of the game – multiplayer. I’m saving that for the weekend when I’m hoping to find some time to get online and engage in some epic battles.
Right now, I need to work.
Life’s so unfair.
