I Mixed Drinks, Stomped on Scorpions in the PS3’s Bizarre New MMO ‘Sodium One’

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Today I went back Home. To PlayStation Home, that is.

The PlayStation 3’s online, avatar-based social networking community is filled with plenty of other player avatars, mini-games, shops, music, advertisements and video previews. I’ve only hung out in the virtual world a handful of times since the beta launched about one year ago (where my avatar received a marriage proposal and inadvertently started a Running Man dance party).

And now Sony’s just announced that they’ve added Sodium One, an “MMO” or massively multiplayer online game, to Home. But it’s not an MMO in the traditional World of Warcraft sense.

The press release I received from Sony described Sodium One, which went live on December 17, as a “futuristic, action-packed social gaming environment.”

“With the launch of Sodium, PlayStation Home’s first MMO,” the release continued, “PlayStation Home further evolves into a true social gaming platform, complete with both snack-size mini games and extended gaming experiences to share with both existing friends and new friends met within PlayStation Home.”

Entering a portal dubbed the “Sodium teleporter” in the main Central Plaza mall area will transport you to the “Sodium Hub” for the new “MMO” experience. The area was a dusty desert filled with random metal space junk, plus lots of florescent lights (you know, the future). Once there, you’ll “talk” to the unhelpful robot lady VICKIE, who gives you these options: Objectives (which have hints but are not fully explained), Resource Trading (I see gold, silver and silicon, but this is also not explained), Shop (for clothing and seems to only take Sodium Credits as currency, also unexplained), Gift Friends (which invites my friends to Sodium One and offers them a prize in the pre-written note) and Register.

Hitting “Register” gives me a four-character code which I can input at SodiumOne.com for a prize. But right now attempting to register on that website gives you this message: “Unfortunately registration to the website has been disabled. We are aiming to have this functionality back online sometime in the new year. Apologies for an inconvenience this may cause.” Um, okay…

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