Home For the Holidays
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
Ah, the holidays. That wonderful time of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to be about, and I must say that I think Sony has lived up to the feeling.
As all of you likely noticed, going into Home during the holidays this year found you deposited directly into the first floor of the Mall. I was delighted by not only the music they added to the space but also by the festive decorations. It was nice of Sony to capture the spirit of the holiday in this way, although it was a less than subtle hint at us to go shopping. Then again, it is also the season for giving, isn’t it?
When it comes to that, Sony has been very generous this year, especially these past few months. They have had free clothing nuggets available in the stores for weeks now, and the rewards have been pouring in. There are free rewards everywhere, new quests to perform to obtain some and others are just given for entering a space, like the new unicorn Vincent, now available at the nDreams Aurora public venue, and if cuteness was a commodity he would be worth his weight in gold.
Cuteness personified
Lockwood added to their Christmas gleanings with the opening of the Drey Runway and its associated rewards. They also gave us the Midnight Glade apartment with an incredible amount of fireworks attached that are not only reusable forever, but also in any other space you own! And the Dream Yacht with its multiple levels and day and night controls certainly ups the ante in luxury personal spaces. Their Silicon Lounge was my first choice for these new additions and I must say they look like they belong there.
The whole month of December I’d been patiently waiting to see what Sony’s addition to the Christmas fun was going to be. They certainly had something in store for us, and they weren’t going to bring back the Winter Wonderland from last year. Why would they, when they’ve completely redesigned the rest of our core spaces?
I thought that maybe they would just dress up the Pier Park area and throw in a few rewards, similar to what they did with Thanksgiving this year. But for Christmas, if you want to do it right, you have to make it a real experience. Pier Park was practically unrecognizable, dressed up beautifully with snow falling and piling up in drifts, Christmas lights strung everywhere and new music for the dance floor adding to the spirit of the season. A huge Christmas tree stands next to the Ferris wheel with presents under it, and northern lights dance in the sky behind it all. Icicles hang from buildings adorned with bows and and a huge neon Santa greets you on the way to the Sportswalk and the pier. At the end of the pier stands that yacht that we have all been wondering about. The wondering is over, because it transports you to the new Winter Hullabaloo, where the fun truly begins.
You arrive there at the end of the pier as though you just stepped off the boat – a great way to maintain continuity. They even placed a representation of Pier Park in the distance across the water to add to that feeling. There is a dance floor off to the right, a wood building to your left with an indoor hot tub, and snow everywhere as far as the eye can see. This space is at least five times the size of the Winter Wonderland from last year, and filled with things to do. The wooden building holds the Activity Board like the one in the Hub. If you want to do the quest, this is where to start your journey.
There are also five cameras placed in different areas for picture taking that earn you a nice little prize of five unique snow-globes and a mounting platform to place them on. This is one of the easiest rewards to obtain; the rest are a bit more complicated. This other quest will take up quite a bit of your time to complete, starting with getting a candy cane near the dance floor and then doing a series of tasks to get through the first part of it.
The last part of this quest takes you to the Bootleggers and will take you a while to complete, unless you have friends who can help you or are good at the game. Once these are done you return to the Hullabaloo and talk to the bear and snowman once more. The rewards you receive are actually quite nice: a penguin companion, a barrel seat, and for the first time ever in Home a customizable Christmas tree. That’s right, you can decorate the tree yourself with four different options to choose from. With this new ability, it makes speculation fun as to what other kinds of commodities might be able to do this in the future.
Hullabaloo Rewards
As for the Winter Hullabaloo itself: there are numerous activities like fishing, dancing and hot tubs, as well as wonderful places to sit by roaring fires and small heating elements that are scattered about like oasis’s of warmth in a sea of cold ice. The space is dark and snowy with piles of it everywhere and there are Christmas decorations like candy cane poles with directions on them to help you find your way. A strange ice sculpture called “Sly Cooper, Thieves in Time” stands to one side, making me wonder what this might be. Turns out it is a remastered game from the PS2 that Sony is selling in the store for $9.99, free to PlayStation Plus members. Speaking of sculptures, there are snowmen and bears everywhere to add to the winter feel.
They didn’t add the shivering motion to your avatar from last year’s event, but other than that, it is an incredible space. With their focus on gaming this past year, this space adds to that while still adding to the social aspects of Home by providing several areas to do just that – socialize.
With the whole overhaul of Home this year, Sony has stepped it up a notch in their attempts to entertain us and improve their client base. If I were a new person I would be very impressed by all of this; even as a Home veteran I am impressed. Kudos to Sony for adding to our Home experiences and making them memorable.
- Wonderful ambiance in all of the winter spaces
- Great feeling of continuity
- Cool rewards
- New quests to fulfill
- Nice rewards
- No shivering motions like last year
- A few glitches in the questing system
January 2nd, 2012 by Burbie52 | 7 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
Great coverage of this year’s event Burbie!
While I do agree that it was great that they gave us a totally different space and the experience as a whole was pretty interesting… I have to disagree with the overall outlook of this season’s event.
I really didn’t care for the questing. I heard from some people that it was bugging pretty bad on them and if you quit the current quest you were on you have to start over. I was on the bootleggers portion when I had to star over because I accidentally quit the quest when futzing with the board. While I’m on that. What does Bootleggers have to do with the winter season. Seems like a pretty cheap way to “make” users play bootleggers. They could at least have made ONE of the bootleggers arenas winter themed where you have to get the “holiday gift” from the center to return it to your sleigh.. maybe have snowballs and snow blowers instead of guns and rifles… It just seemed disjointed and thrown together.
The Winter Hullabaloo itself seemed like an equal mess. The polygonal count of the whole thing seemed quite low, looking like a landscape from a PS2 game, not something that came out in the beginning of the 6th year of the PS3. This isn’t mentioning that the whole space seemed just thrown together. Personally, I didn’t feel like it delivered a cohesive experience.
That being said. I did enjoy it. The social building aspect of the questing was unique. Thanks for taking these pics Burbie, it’s good to see everything we could have won all together. I had no idea about the customizable Christmas tree! Very cool.
Was it fun? Yes… Was it on par with what was delivered in the past? I really don’t think it was.
Also… I hate that unicorn thing. What’s wrong with its legs!?!? LOL!
And I like the unicorn, legs and all, he is meant to be whimsical like all unicorns are and he hops around like he is happy. Even had a unicorn stampede with the Grey Gamers the Friday after he came out and that was funny to watch, they even looked like they were dancing with us at the Hub.
I do agree that another choice besides the Bootleggers would have been good for the first quests completion, I don’t really care for the game myself, though I am really glad it wasn’t Cogs that they chose or I would still be there trying to win, lol. I had a good friend help me get past the Bootleggers part, the hardest part being that there are those who have been playing that game since the beginning, unlike me and therefore I never stood a chance against them. That and not finding many open games with fewer players to give me a shot at it. Took a few days but I finally succeeded.
The rewards for this year were actually quite nice, I did finish all three quests eventually and ended up with 3 new companions for my troubles as well as quite a few new clothing items, some I like and some I don’t. The point is that they stepped it up a notch from previous Christmas offerings in my estimation, and at least we didn’t get t-shirts and a turkey hat wasn’t the last reward like last year!LOL
VERY true. The less t-shirts the better. That is one area that Sony has really stepped up in: the types of rewards we get.
After the re-design I’m amazed Sony had much left in the tanks to throw resources at a temporary Holiday experience. They could of just dropped a Christmas Tree in the middle of the hub and called it a day. I don’t think it was as good as last year, but considering the big picture I’m happy that Sony still cared enough to drop this in our stocking!
I being new to the Whole Home experience was amazed at the whole winter theme :)…Call me a newbie..what have you …I loved it all…Except when it came to bootleggers… I abhor that game with a passion….Fishing I did not mind! especially with 3 plaques awarded for my troubles… I ended up quitting the quest after getting killed umpteen times with only two barrels to show for my troubles! T shirts I do not mind…free anything is good right?…and then there is cute lil Vincent or as I call him Bubbles because he is such a happy lil guy who loves to dance with me on the dance floor
Who could not like him?….Now give me a shopping quest like bargain hunter or Window shopper AND I’M THERE JACK ! hahaha
As a silly person who loves holiday tradition, I was very sad to see that Winter Wonderland didn’t come back this year. I like the new space, love the prizes and thought the quests were good overall, though I do have to question including a PvP shooter as one of the requirements. That’s a bit much for some users.
Overall, though, it was an excellent holiday event. Just bring my Wonderland back, if only so I can say hi to the elves and mix some cider for them.