New Home Info

February 27th, 2008 by Sohrab Osati

When it comes to first party games, Sony seems to have nailed it with this generation. From launch titles like Resistance: Fall of Man to more recent action adventure Uncharted: Drakes Fortune to one of the craziest multi-player games ever, Warhawk. Coming out with a hit game is one thing, having it not lost with all other competing games and with Time itself is another thing.

This seems to be where PlayStation Home, or “Home” as everybody calls it, is filling in the game. Not only is Home turning out to be a great social environment (as ive met many people that are all now on my Friends list, but being a Beta Tester, I cannot go into further detail) but Home also seems to be offering another thing, a 2nd life to games. No pun for Home being like 2nd life though. Honestly.

One of the first games expected to shine in one of Home‘s series of game portals is Insomniac’s Resistance: Fall of Man. Resistance is said to provide Home visitors with an interesting room to explore, one that will let PlayStation 3 owners visit unseen areas of the game and tap into bonus content in the form of “intercepted” radio communications between European and U.S. forces.

These hidden transmissions will help to flesh out the Resistance story, giving players a better understanding of the game’s conflict. We hear that Home avatars will have free roam of unpopulated levels, not unlike a virtual Resistance museum.

While Resistance: Fall of Man‘s integration with Home should have bonus content fans excited, old school run-and-gun shooter fans should be pretty pumped about what they may be getting with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune‘s contribution. We hear that the Home portal for Naughty Dog’s PlayStation 3 adventure will follow in Resistance‘s footsteps, allowing Home avatars to explore the game’s levels without the threat of being shot at, a nice feature. But it’s the Uncharted mini-game that has us far more pumped.

According to our sources, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune comes to Home armed with a side-scrolling 2D arcade game, described to us as reminiscent of both Contra and Out Of This World. Sounds kind of like Capcom’s 2D remake of Bionic Commando in its execution, full of enemies and exploding barrels to shoot.

Sony is apparently pitching features like these to developers to extend the lives of their titles, using strong first and second party development showcases to prove that Home can effectively market outside of traditional means. We hope they take them up on their offer, because we’re definitely excited about the prospects.

Uncharted and Resistance may have wicked cool feature sets for PlayStation Home, it’s actually Warhawk‘s planned game portal that has us most excited. According to our sources, the Home lobby for the Incognito dogfighter will serve as a “war room” where up to eight players can meet to discuss their strategy for an upcoming match. Sure, you could do that with text or voice chat, but it sounds like the developers have gone the extra mile to make planning your battles even cooler.

Using a three-dimensional “sand table” replication of the level, Warhawk players are said to be able to lay out their strategies in a properly scaled space. They’ll even be able to place little army men avatars around the map to envision their formations, something we hope they can also do with teeny tiny Warhawk planes, tanks and Jeeps.

The Warhawk war room is said to also serve as a launchpad for games, thankfully, so jumping into a match shouldn’t require leaving the Home interface.

It seems that after much silence from the Home front, that there is indeed alot more on the way from them and not just on the social aspect, but the ability to prolong a games life by offering unique ways to enjoy the game by yourself, or with friends.

[Via Kotaku]