Home first Impressions

I have been chosen for the home beta. I don't know how that happened, but I got an email and I'm in.
I enter the code in the redeem code section and the download begins. It's 77mb, which seems small for a 3d based almost game like interface.
I download and install the application and when I find it under the network category launch it.
It wants to do an upgrade straight away to version 1.1, I let it and it downloads annother small 22mb patch.
Now it starts properly. Usual warning about the hdd and not switching off.
Home now wants to reserve 3gb of my hard drive space! Now we are getting more like it, I thought 100mb odds was too small.
This reservation process takes less than a minute.
A graph paper background with the home icon on a shiny tile appears.
it says press x to connect and it does so.
The terms and conditions appear, nda and the fact that I may be monitored during the trials to see how i use home and what I get up to inside it.
A message of the day appears reminding me that home is far from finished if it ever will be and that our feedback would be appreciated at the scee forums http://community.eu.playstation.com.
Harbour studio is loading it seems.
First real home view is of a generic male avatar.
I can choose presets character clothing and load/save.
A box in the bottom right corner says playstation home tutorial. It wants me to choose a preset to get us started.
a whole bunch of avatar faces pop up. Some male, some female, some black etc.
I pick one and now the tutorial wants me to choose clothes.
I am told to choose torso and get to pick from a small range of t-shirts.
I can dress in about three to six different choices for headgear, tops, trousers, footwear, jewellry etc.
I am urged by the tutorial to go to the character section to change my appearance.
I can change gender, structure, face, body shape, skin and hair. Each category has some sub levels and the options are as customizable as any other avatar system I have seen.
The tutorial wants us to leave the wardrobe and we find ourself in our harbour studio apartment.
We are told about moving and looking with the analogue sticks. We have to take our avatar outside to the pretty balcony and make them use some interactions. R1 brings up the interactions menu and there are things like greeting, conversation, celebration etc. We are told to try something then told to specifically start our avatar dancing. I choose rave and he looks like a pillock.
Then we have to go inside and sit down on an armchair by pressing x when we are near it. Then we are shown how to type text, pressing triangle brings up the text entry system and we are told to type something. I type hello and it appears in a speech bubble above my head.
We are then told to press start and bring up the main menu.
This has a lot of options.
Personal
Locations
Friends list
Clubs
Alerts
Game Launching
communication
Community
Help
Settings
Downloads
We are told to go to Locations and choose world map.
The graph paper and tiles are back, the tiles represent locations. Home theatre, Shopping centre, Home square and bowling alley are the options available.
The tutorial wants us to go to home square.
When I choose it a download box appears, I can download it in the background which I suppose means that I can still wander around areas I have already downloaded while downloading new ones.
The home square is populated with people, they start out as ghostly avatars and then must load in the appreances chosen for them by their users. I wander about the pleasant looking square with its chess sets and benches. The bowling alley and shopping centre doors are here and going into them asks you to download. Which I do in the background.
I enter the bowling alley. There are pool tables and arcade machines, trailers for Killzone 2 are playing on the big screens.
I try an arcade machine called ice breaker, walking up to it loads it up. It's a simple arkanoid clone.
There seems to be quite a few people wandering around. They all seem to be playing the various games littered around. someone walks up to me and gives me a rather rude gesture, by the time i find the rude gesture menu he has wandered off. Some people seem to be trying to text chat and i think I could hear someone using a microphone.

I investigate the theatre and play a trailer, it seems a bit silly to go into a theatre in home and then just have the trailer playing full screen or against a theatre like background, I would have thought we would all be sitting in chairs like in a real theatre.
The trailer take ages to download, and we have to just watch a bar crawl, why can't we wander with the other avatars in the lobby while it downloads.
The store mall is now open and it's like a normal mal with storefronts. When you enter the storefronts you can only get as far as the lobby where you then enter a normal 2D menu to buy things. There are all types of things available. from summerhouse to clothes. Ornaments and furniture. all of it is free so far.
I go to my summer house and it's a nicer space than the harbour studio.
I spend a little time placing some furniture, it's not the most intuitive of interfaces and the view still seems to be focused on your avatar as you place furniture, making getting a good look at things harder than it should be, not impossible, but you have to skip out of the menu and move your avatar around sometimes to get things right.
I do a bit of people watching in home, most people tend to be focussing on the games tables and arcade machines.
Apparently you can win ornaments and clothes by getting high scores in the arcade games.
Some people seem to be sitting down and talking. Some people are organising formation dancing, which is a novelty for all of about 30 seconds. For the most part people seem to be communicating via text. I think I have only heard one person with a microphone.
The female avatars tend to be getting a bit of attentions, at one point I saw a few guys dancing around in front of a girl. It looked fairly typical and sad.