Shopping on Home: The New Mall
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
I adore shopping almost anywhere, but I especially love shopping in a mall. It’s as exciting to me as a roller coaster ride in an amusement park is to most people. I can spend hours and hours picking out a purse or belt to exactly match the shade of my new red dress or to find the perfect blue-trimmed white blouse for my navy pants. And shoes! Well, there isn’t enough space here to write about that subject.
I love to go to the mall and be surrounded by stores. Oh, the possibilities! I enjoy walking along the store fronts and looking at the things in the windows. There isn’t one store that I don’t enjoy perusing and I’ve been lured into many shops by the items on view in the displays.
When I first started visiting Home I would go into the mall almost every day. It was so much fun there, with all the stores and people, talking, walking around and going in and out of the shops. Even after I had seen every item in every store at least twice or more, I went without fail every Thursday morning. I relished going in and out of the stores, looking for the new items. That mostly changed with the introduction of the shopping kiosks in Central Plaza and the theater and with the direct shopping from the navigator. I still went into the mall occasionally, but it began to seem a stale and dreary occurrence. It was so much easier to just shop through the navigator from within my Harbor apartment or at a sales kiosk. But it wasn’t the same and the joy was mostly missing from the experience.
Since this last Thursday, my excitement about shopping on Home has been restored. I love the new mall! It’s huge. It’s welcoming. It’s light and airy like modern malls. I love the circular layout on both floors that allows an immediate view of every store there. Also, there are a lot of small details – like the water falls, plants, ceiling fans and pale blue walls that add subtly to the feeling of realism. Each floor has ten shops and most of the old, familiar shops are on the first floor. This first floor offers the following shops: Diesel, Costumes, Furniture, Estates, Games, Side Kicks, Threads, Exclusives, Sodium and Shears. Yes, Shears is a shop for hairdos that looks just like a salon, with styling stations, beauty products and new hair styles shown. It definitely makes looking for a new hairstyle a much easier endeavor now that there is a store exclusively for them. Modeling it after an actual salon just ups the realism.
Two of the shops, Side Kicks and Games, are new with this update and are pretty self-explanatory. The second floor has these stores: Music, nDreams, Loot, Lockwood, MassMedia, Konami, VeeMee, LucasArts, Heavy Water and Billabong. Some of these are familiar and well-loved names and it’s nice to see them have their own stores now. Music is a new shop here, also and a really good idea. I hope to see it expand, rapidly and often.
The store fronts here are incredible and I trust they will keep them updated with new or sale items every week. Each one is unique, interesting and usually colorful, like the Mass Media circus-tent entrance or Sodium, with its trademark tunnel or Loot, with its familiar vault door. I especially like the entrances like Estates, nDreams and VeeMee that allow you to enter and look around before you shop.
Since a friend can enter these lobby areas with you, it enhances the seeming reality of the experience. VeeMee has a few “life-sized” items on display in their lobby, as well as lots of pictures from their collection to view. At nDreams there are also pictures and some of their many interesting items on display. A few of them remind you of their unique locations, like Aurora.
The personal estate models and picture displays at the Estates store are very special and fun to view. It’s such a great idea! I saw people in this store, behind the counter, pretending that they worked there. They were offering real advice about which estates to buy to the customers and everyone seemed to be having a good time.
There is a large open area on both floors here that keeps the mall from feeling crowded and these are a good places to meet with friends and discuss your purchases or make plans to show off your new clothes or companions. There are four round seats here for your use, if you’re waiting for friends to arrive or return from a store. Just like a real world mall, there are posters advertising items for sale here and there on both floors. There is also a large screen on each floor for previews, similar to the screens at the old mall.
I do wish there was an escalator or stairs that lead to and from both floors only, as either or both would add to the sense of realism. The teleporter on each floor offers the choice of many places other than the mall. It would be simpler just to walk up or down some stairs, located at either end of the mall, perhaps. Also, I think a clearance store or center here (maybe in a basement) would be suitable and a fun, easy to find place to shop for the items on final sale.
I’m very happy to say that shopping on Home feels like a real world shopping experience again and I love it! I hope you enjoy it too and I’ll see you at the mall.
- Modern, light and airy
- Stylish layout
- More realistic
- More stores
- No stairs or escalator
November 19th, 2011 by Kassadee Marie | 9 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
I do like the new design of the Mall, with stores you can actually go into and see some of the stuff, but they really could have taken it a step further. They could have had more of a showcase like Lockwood, where you could preview some of the active items. I am really jonesing to get that beat machine but I would like to try it out before i buy it. Same with the new boombox, but it is better than just flashing you into the store app.
I really dig the new Mall format. Sure, we can access everything via Navigator, but I’ve always personally felt that every time we have to use the Navigator to go somewhere or do something, it pulls us out of the immersive experience, rather than deepening it.
What the new mall could really benefit from — heck, what Home in general could benefit from — is *sound* design. Too much of Home feels like running through a silent movie; one of the great subliminals in the Hub is the background walla that really does make you feel like you’re in some sort of futuristic version of Euston Station. I’m hoping more of Home will start to offer a more comprehensive aural experience to compliment the excellent visuals.
I don’t pretend to understand the female fascination with shoes, but then we all have our shopaholic hot buttons. Put me in a gourmet cheese shop, for instance, and I’m like a fat kid in a Fiddle Faddle factory.
There is something about being able to actually walk into some of those stores, isn’t there? I know it’s a minor detail, but it somehow adds to the sense of realism. I’d love to see publishing showcases from more developers — nDreams, LOOT and especially Lockwood have really nailed it — but this new mall is definitely an improvement over the old one.
Im glad to see you active Kassadee! Well done on the review. I tend to disagree with the assessment but I can see the appeal of the new design.
I too agree that the new mall is a great improvement of the older version. I will rarely use the mall though as I will still probably use the navigator for my buying. I like the convenience of shopping in my Harbor with no distractions. Good review Kassadee.
Thank you!
I miss the stairs but I guess elevators are the in things nowadays.
IMO,I preferred the old mall, much better designed and welcoming!
Separate the two mall is really not a good idea, it makes even less desire to go there.
It would have been much smarter to keep the mall in his initial form and just re-design the shops, change the background music and some menus detailed aesthetic!
Moreover, the impression of claustrophobia that emerges is unbearable.
I feel the xmb being much more convenient …
a “fail” from my point of view.
SCEA using content from SCEE now. That’s a first.
EU has had those store fronts in their Shopping Centres for a very long time.
I still don’t understand why SCEA didn’t bother to change the floor of the NDreams store to make it match NA’s mall.
I went to the mall recently to specifically check for changes and updates,looking at every store window and going into those that had lobbies. Some of the stores are keeping up with new items they have to offer and some are not. I think those store which do not update their content are missing an opportunity to advertise, interest new customers and ensure the return of the long time customers.