Like many of you, I downloaded the Home theme in hopes of receiving a golden ticket from Sony. Luckily, I was selected to take part in the Home Beta and have since then explored the world of Home inside and out. However, is Sony building an architectural masterpiece? Or could Home simply be an overhyped waste of time? Well, I hope to answer these questions and give you some good honest feedback on my experience with Home in its current beta form. Firstly, not every option is available in the current state of Home. Certain aspects are still locked away and in development. This, ultimately, means I will only be able to share with you the experiences currently available.

Right off the bat you are prompted to create your avatar. To do this, Sony gives you a variety of options to choose from. You can choose from a vast number of facial features, and then adjust their widths and depths to either match your own personal look or wildest dreams. Sadly, not all the features are that deep. One of the most notably lacking customization features is the facial hair department. Face it; in the modern world of style, there are more facial hair designs than there are hairstyle designs. Sony doesn't offer much in terms of facial hair options, though. You have the options of a basic mustache, semi-goatee, and a porn-star mustache. Given those options, it is best to leave off any and all facial hair. Unless, of course, you are Ron Jeremy.

After you get your hair, face, eyes, and chin all squared away, you get to pick your body type and clothing style. Basically, you adjust your bodies' height and width to your desired size. Since I'm tall and thin, my avatar also carries the same characteristics. Overall, pretty basic choice. Now it's time to choose a trendy clothing style. You can select from a minor number of styles, initially. Naturally, Sony doesn't want to reveal everything too early on. The basic options include: jeans, muscle shirt, Home shirt, polo shirt, and several others. Aside from clothing your new sexy bod, you also have to dress your feat. I, personally, found the shoes to be atrocious and cruise through town barefoot.

Now for the real meaty section of the game -- the community and apartment lifestyle. Right away you'll realize that Home is all about interacting with other gamers. Think of an MMORPG without the RPG. As soon as you enter the main Plaza, you are thrown into the middle of a large community. Within this plaza you'll find a theater, shopping mall, music center, and bowling alley with arcade machines and pool tables. Despite offering several locations to visit and interact with other players, you'll do a lot of interacting with people on the main strip. Plastered on the exterior of the previously said locations, you'll find giant televisions broadcasting trailer of the newest and latest games. As of now, you'll find a trailer of Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 playing throughout the main plaza. Don't get your hopes too high, though. The trailers are what we saw from E3 and don't reveal any new information or content. Aside from those two main screens, there is also the Theater. At the theater, you'll find one big screen that also plays one recently released game trailer. Currently playing is The Last Guy gameplay trailer. Definitely a neat addition. You'll also find movie style posters on the theater walls advertising recently released titles like Siren, The Last Guy, and Coming Soon titles like WipeOut HD.

I didn't find many people conversing in the movie theater section of the plaza in the building itself. Most of the people seemed too preoccupied with the trailer of the game and then quickly left. I'm sure they were just satisfying their curiosity. After exiting the theater, I found myself wandering towards the music center. Now, the music center isn't a store, but, instead, it's a station that plays music the surrounding crowd can hear as well. You could select from three songs, each ranging genre, and then you would find an over-sized audience dancing away like it was a nightclub. Not a lot of communication occurred around this location, but a lot of gamer interaction was happening via dance.

The main locations of gamer-on-gamer interaction took place in the bowling alley and shopping mall. The bowling alley has the most varied activities to be found, currently, in Home. With arcade machines, pool tables, and bowling, you'll always find something to do. Every time I sat down to bowl I would quickly be approached by a few others who wanted to chat and bowl a frame or two. The conversations would range from Home itself, to various games, to the actual bowling match. Sadly, none of the players had headsets and we weren't able to converse directly with voice-chat. However, the text chat is more than acceptable. The way the text chatting works is that everyone in a close proximity will see what you wrote, or said via headset, and they'll be able to interact with you or the crowd. This gives it more of a massive community feel, rather than just one-on-one discussions. The group discussions during the bowling games were very comical and took your mind off the fact you were sitting in a virtual world bowling strangers. The same could be said with the pool games.

Unfortunately, the bowling aspect is a rather odd duck. Home is all about interactivity and creating a living environment for PlayStation 3 owners. This may not seem like a big deal to many, but I found it to be quite strange. You don't actually see your character bowl or the opposing members. You'll see your group sitting in their seats at the lane, but they will never get up. Instead, you see their ball launch itself down the lane and the corresponding pins fall. Now, this could be due to the fact that Home is still in beta form, or the way the game is played. The ball is placed on the lane where you direct the ball by stopping a moving arrow, then choose the amount of spin, and, finally, power. Again, this could be because it's still beta. Hopefully, in the completed version of Home, your character will get off his virtual ass and walk up to the lane -- even just to create the illusion of real bowling like Wii Sports did.