I hadn't bought a TV in over 10 years, so when I decided to pick up a Sony Bravia earlier this month I wanted to see what this puppy can do. I also picked up a PS3, some Blu Ray movies and 2 games (Little Big Planet & Grand Theft Auto 4).
So far I'm pretty happy with my purchase, the Blu Ray movies look brilliant in 1080p. I've seriously never seen a picture this good. I watched Iron Man with my roommate, Vicky the other night and I truly enjoyed it. Vicky enjoyed counting all the smarmy product placements in crystal clear HD.
I've started to tear into Little Big Planet which is super fun already. The design elements of this game are super impressive.
I've downloaded tons of Demos from Sony's Playstation Store which is a really great feature. It's nice to be able to sample the games before you blow $60 on one that you'll regret.
I was really excited to see what Playstation Home is all about. Anyone that knows me, knows that I pretty much join up with any new social network that comes along. However, Home was a pretty big disappointment. Imagine Second Life with a more simplistic user interface, a dull "perfect" world designed by Sony, and here is the kicker... Unlike Second Life, where everyone looks bizarre, here everyone looks just like you! I don't know if this will change anytime soon, but the picture you see above is the closest I could get my avatar to look like me. Meh. What's worse is that half of the other dudes walking around in this world, look almost the same with minor differences. If you want to get shirts or pants that are different, you have to spend real money on them. Ugh. You are also given the option to buy (real money again) furniture for your empty apartment. If you want to chat with someone, you can buy a keyboard for your controller otherwise you must scroll through letters to type words out. Ugh.
My time in Sony's Home was spent like this...
1 minute in my boring empty apartment overlooking the sea
5 minutes walking around in the main area looking around
1 minute scoffing at all the crap I could buy in the mall
5 minutes trying to have a conversation with someone using my controller
2 minutes sitting in the plaza and watching people dance
1 minute trying to figure out how to leave cause some guy was trying to push his crotch in my face
All in all I'm happy with my new toys, but the Sony Home feature I was looking forward to is a pretty big letdown. It's in beta so let's see if anything changes. It would be nice to see them develop this as a community with events and reasons to return instead of figuring out how to get people to spend $1 on a lousy chair for their vacant apartment.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 08:04AM 
