It was announced today that the Home beta would be available to the masses tommorrow(12/11). I have only been participating in the beta for a couple of weeks. Honestly, I have been skeptical of Home’s potential appeal for quite some time. My brief involvement in the beta has been  less than convincing, however this is where the rubber meets the road. When everyone has a chance to take Home out for a test drive it will interesting to see what sticks. For a console struggling to find an identity in terms of must-have exclusive games while pushing bluray movies, I don’t see how people spending time in Home helps to put either of the goals within striking distance(similar to MS selling movies while teaming with Netflix). I know one thing Sony needs to find a way to allow multiple people to play the arcade games in the bowling alley. That is one of the strangest design decisions I’ve seen. Home is in a weird place to me.

I have RE4 for every platform. So needless to say I am very excited about RE5. While some who are fans(or not) of RE4 may be quick to comment that the new iteration is merely a prettier version of the previous. My response to that is “Isn’t that all we needed?” But seriously though there are some new gameplay elements like a partner that is with you for the the entire game(as far as I know) and online/local co-op play. The tank controls are still there but slightly improved and the inventory can be managed in real-time. 2009 can’t get here soon enough.

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Part 2

Part 3

An Obama-themed platform game based on Super Mario World for the SNES. It can be played within a web browser at superobamaworld.com