by Jin Lovelace, HSM team writer

The holiday season is all about gifts, the ones we give and the ones we receive. And this year, for Home users, some of the very best gifts come from Juggernaut. These include a device that will turn any personal space into a winter wonderland, and a small recording device that will totally transform your Home machinima skills.

Fans of Juggernaut’s stellar active personal space, the Palace of the Seven Winds, will be familiar with their latest revolutionary active “Essence” items, such as the Essence of Tides and Essence of the Seven Winds, which change the way any personal space looks and reacts. The Essence of Tides fills your apartment with water, and lets you swim. The Essence of the Seven Winds lists you fly. These are now being joined by a new Essence, the Essence of Winter, which fills your personal space with gently-falling snow.

How much will this cost? you may well wonder. Not a thing — this is a true gift from Juggernaut. Just hit “Like” on the Juggernaut Games Facebook page, and “Follow” on their Twitter account. When the totals reach 700, Juggernaut will release a free code that will let you claim this item as your own.

Our next present is the Juggernaut Observer. This is a sweet treat for any Home machinimist, such as myself. Now I fully respect Loot and their Active Camera item, which I have used for nearly all of my fashion videos. But to be honest, I was always frustrated by the limited viewpoints it imposed. I remember when I approached one of my all-time inspirations, Alinea3, she commented that my videos were a bit too flat. I agreed, but still managed to work with what I have.

I don’t feel that Loot’s active item is a bad commodity. Not at all. It was the first item to be released to feature in-game recording and provide the option to upload video straight to YouTube. But I feel that it’s time for an update, and Juggernaut is providing us one.

This new item, the Observer, provides a bold new way to revolutionize how you record your Home videos, along with giving us some very sweet options to play with. For the very reasonable price for $1.99, and the modest footprint of five active item slots, you can do the following:

• Take screenshots: This is something you can already do with other items on Home, including several from Juggernaut. Whether or not they will be high quality screenshots remains to be seen.
• Apply filters: Adding a filter option for your pictures adds a nice touch to your video or still picture presentations.
• Record video: Having screenshot and filter options wrapped nicely into this one small Observer is impressive, but the Observer provides another tool to bring new depth to your videos and pictures — free flying cam mode. As with the Loot camera built into the Stage 2 Modular Set, you can move the camera anywhere in any personal space.
• Zoom: I wasn’t too thrilled about Loot’s change in the zooming options, since I felt the directional pad options were a bit too sensitive to use during filming. So I hope that this option in the Observer is smoother, and not as sensitive.

Overall, Juggernaut has done it again: they have provided great new imaginative content that expands the potential for our imaginations, brings some of our “impossible dreams” to life. The new Essence of Winter will bring a nice wintery touch for the holiday season. And, it’s totally free. But you already know the item my eye and money are on. It may still be early December, but it feels like Christmas morning!

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