How to survive your first hour in Home (and dodge dancing sex pests)

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As you may have read, Sony's long-awaited 3D online community, Home, launches worldwide tomorrow night, December 11th. I've been on the beta trial for a number of weeks - along with 10,000 other randomly-selected PSN users - and here's a glimpse of what to expect, with some clear dos and don'ts gleaned from hard-learned experience.

Home is a virtual world in which people create avatars and wander around 'interacting' with each other. Sounds harmless, right? Well, it's not. In fact, it's one of the strangest places I've ever been - virtual or otherwise.

Your first hour in Home

Step 1: Creating your likeness

Before you set foot in Home you'll need to create an avatar. You can edit everything from the shape of your skull to the length of your nose, although it's possible to choose from a range of handsome, symmetrical presets if your face is too hideous to share with the world. Resisting the urge to create a bronzed, lantern-jawed Adonis, I decide to make a carbon copy of myself. I pull up a photo on my laptop and fiddle with every possible slider until an exact replica of my beautiful face is staring back at me. The realism is chilling. Of my face I mean, not the avatar.

Your apartment: A bit American Psycho

When I'm finished I appear in my harbourside flat, which is empty except for a sofa and a coffee table. The graphics really are impressive, although everything is scarily clean and minimalist. It's like wandering around inside a concept drawing for a stylish block of flats. I step out onto the balcony and gaze across the harbour, seagulls squawking peacefully in the distance. "Oooh," I wonder to myself, "Maybe that's where everyone is?" And head for the elevator to 'Home Square'.

Step three: The Home Square hub

But it's not. After a 60mb download I appear in a courtyard flanked by video screens and tall, angular buildings. I can't see anyone - just dozens of shimmering, see-through ghosts. But as I begin to wander around, the shapes are suddenly filled with textures and become people. Or, at least, vague approximations of people. What a hideous bunch they are. Everyone seems to have re-imagined themselves as eight-foot tall Mediterranean bodybuilders. I can't help but imagine that behind every muscle shirt and pumped-up bicep there's a quivering, pale-faced fourteen year-old boy prodding his DualShock and sucking from a carton of Ribena.

I wander over to random groups of people and play with the pre-set animations, accessed by press R1 and choosing from an easy-to-use list. I wave, I shake my fist, I sit on the floor and I dance. I dance a lot. In fact, there's rarely a moment goes by when someone's not jiving or throwing rave shapes. It's faintly ridiculous, but because the world is so sterile and robotic, it's the only way to convey any sense of personality or fun. Pressing L1 lets you type your own messages, although if you're going to be doing this a lot, we recommend getting a USB keyboard. Typing with the DualShock is a nightmare. Not really knowing what to do other than dance like a flid and wave at people, I decide to call it a night and retreat to reality.

Day 2: Unleash the salsa dancing sex pests

So, I'm back. I notice that a lot of the girls in Home have names like 'SkullCrusher18' and 'Dave2019', indicating that they aren't girls at all. After calling a few of them out I discover that a large portion of Home's population consist of guys whose idea of fun is wandering around disguised as girls and leading on, in their words, 'pervs'. And it works, because Home is heaving with hopeless sex pests. If a girl - real or not - wanders past, 20 guys will run towards her, forming a circle and body-popping. It's bewildering, but I've never laughed at a game so hard. It's even funnier if the girl is a bloke in disguise and they revert back to their original male avatar. If the game had a 'jaw drop' emote, these guys would be using it.

I even tried it myself, shamefully. I created a girl avatar, strolled around for a bit was literally chased by gangs of gawping, dancing idiots. "how old r u?" "where u from?" Some guy even started whispering stuff through his headset at me. I responded by switching to an avatar I'd made earlier of a pot-bellied, grey-haired old man with spectacles and doing Pete Townshend-style guitar windmills. He didn't like that.

But that's Home's biggest problem - because there's so little to do, you have to make your own fun. Whether that's re-appropriating the pre-set emote animations to look like you're punching someone or sticking your bum in their face, or pretending to be a girl. Most of the time you get people walking around saying "this is crap" or "home sux", but they never seem to leave regardless of their feelings towards it. That's because it's strangely addictive listening to people and watching suckers trying to meet girls, only to discover they've been wiggling their bum in a man's face. If you play a sort of digital David Attenborough and just observe people, it's a lot more fun than actually getting involved in discussions yourself.

Day 3: Why you're *nobody* in Home until you've done the WipEout HD billboard dance

Another thing people do is dance in front of video screens. In Home Square WipEout HD and MotorStorm 2 trailers cycle endlessly, and they're the only source of music in the area. As a result, most people tend to congregate around them and dance (obviously). In the beta you get one item in your inventory, a bubble machine. Around the screens you'll see about 20 bubble machines strewn around and people rave dancing around them and shouting "BUBBLE PARTY!" Another example of the things people will do to eke some fun out the experience. We even saw a group of guys who'd half-heaterdly attempted to dress themselves as Hitler (military coat, small moustache, side-parting) and were wandering around in groups using the 'point' emote, which sort of looks a bit like a Nazi salute. Luckily, madly offensive stuff like this can be reported by pressing select and sending the user's name to the Home moderators.

The other areas of Home aren't that exciting. The shopping mall has a few limited free items (only available in the beta - you'll have to buy them yourself with REAL MONEY when the game comes out) like drainpipe jeans and ornaments for your flat. The movie theatre lets you watch game trailers, as well as the new Watchmen trailer. Expect this to be better when the game goes public tomorrow. The bowling alley is full of arcade games, pool tables and bowling lanes, although these are usually full and you'll spend ages waiting for a go.

Day 4: Perv saturation, and a lack of shops

We've had enough. The limited areas in the beta, the tiny range of clothes and items available and the sheer amount of pervs is unbearable. We decide to leave Home alone until it expands and more people start using it. But we like what we've seen so far. When you find decent, intelligent people it's fun chatting and checking out each others' Trophies, and the world is vibrant and well-designed for the most part. When the ability to launch games is put in place Home could be useful for finding decent folk to play with, but now it's a novelty and a place to gawp saucer-eyed at the lengths people will go to impress a girl. Even if in reality she has more between the legs than 'her' avatar would have you believe.

You can try Home out for yourself as of tomorrow, December 11th.

Let us know what you think, and stay away from the ladies, fellas.

Thanks

Andy

*Note: Andy's uncanny ability to spot sex pests in-no-way reflects the abilities/views/general love of non-prison of the PSM3 team

Andrew Kelly