This week's update has brought us The Revamp, a complete redesign on Home's main structure and areas, with Home's main focus very much now seemingly being on the services mini-games as well as to promote retail and PSN games outside of Home.
The main part of the Revamp is the inclusion of four main District areas, with a fifth to soon be included. Each District is based around a particular genre of game, with the genre's being Action, Sports, Indie games and Adventure. The four new Districts are named Action, Sportswalk, Indie Park and Adventure respectively.
Each of them is designed to fit the genre by including info and news about the latest releases, mini-games and an aesthetic style which is set to match.
Each District also contains a shop which is a commerce point for all of the personal spaces, clothing and other items relating to the games as well as a teleporter to even more spaces based around the games and genre.
Action District
The first of the four Districts, action is based around games such as Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, Dead Island, Killzone and Resistance, just to name a few.
As well as this the District also includes links to the following mini-games:
Killzone Home Defender
Sodium: Salt Shooter
Resistance 3: Scavenger
Dead Island Zombie Survivor
Bootlegger '29
Sportswalk
Much as the name suggests, the Sportwalk is District designed to Home's sports hub. Set in a seaside sports bar, the Sportwalk has many similar things to offer to the Action District; all of the latest information and news, except related to sports. Also, instead of various mini-games, the Sportwalk actually offers a few leisurely activities in the forms of American Pool, Darts and Poker. The final individual offering from the Sportswalk is a link to an Game Space named PlayStation Home Hold'em. Indie Park
The Indie Park is Home's area for all of the latest stand-alone mini-games as well as a rather individual and mixed visual look that combines aspects of many games and areas including a grass area that has binary digits shining from the floor. Even the Store design for the Indie Park stands out, with it Store being a giant stray can. The space also includes a link to the Bowling Alley.The list of mini-games in Indie Park is as follows:
Los Penguini Brothers
Gnome Curling
Give or Take
Espionage 9
echochrome (Arcade Cabinet)
Savage Cosmos (Arcade Cabinet)
Ice Breaker (Arcade Cabinet)
Adventure District
The final new District covers games such as Uncharted and is in fact currently the Uncharted 3: Fortune Hunter Space. At the moment, I do not know if the space will soon change to a new permanent design, whether Fortune Hunter is the permanent design, or if it will be changed regularly to a more current and new space.
Home Square
As well as the inclusion of the four new Districts, Home Square has been redesigned to have links to all of the Districts, the Mall spaces (which are now named Shopping Mall East and Shopping Mall West) and five of the most popular other spaces, which are:
Novus Prime
The PSN Sphere
Lockwood Publishing Showcase
Audi Home Terminal
and the Cinema
The centre of the Square also contains a mini-game in a similar manner to the previous incarnation of Home Square. The current mini-game is for an Indie game titled 'Cogs', which is a puzzle game that was up until recently only featured on PC. The game in the Square is merely a demo consisting of three levels. Upon completing the levels the user is asked if they wish to travel to the Cogs space. The game also offers rewards for achieving various high scores.The Cinema
The Cinema is the final area that has been redesigned, with the main cinema lobby now being rather different. Its appearance is more modern in comparison to the previous design, which followed the style of a more traditional and older fashioned cinema. The lobby now also includes an interactive map, which can link users to any of the eight auditoriums as well as to the Cinema Shop, where spaces, furniture and clothes relating to various films that have marketing within Home.
This week I have also been recording a number files in which I have created a series of audio walkthroughs of the Districts as well as giving a few of my thoughts on them. I have also include a few other audio blogs in which I talk about a few minor points relating to the Revamp.They can all be found via the links below and all of the files are hosted on SoundCloud:
Home Square
Action District
Sportswalk
Indie Park
Advenure District
The Cinema
New Navigator Layout
Maintenance - Friday 4th November
Things Still to Come...
Closing Thoughts
As well as them, here are a couple of other relevant links:
PSHomeEU - Twitter
Take a Fresh Look at PlayStation Home - Darren Cairns - EU PlayStation Blog
So, that's all for this week. Home Weekly will once again be back next Saturday. So, until then I'd just like to say a huge thank you for reading and listening. I've been randomthings and I'll see you again soon.
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