Postmen, Cardgames and Kart Racing
I picked up Phantasy Start Portable for the PSP. It's not too bad, typical PSO havery, although it's one of the many games that offers a ridiculous amount of character customization that's rendered ultimately pointless due to your character never ever being actually displayed in that level of detail or close up during actual gameplay.
Mainly though, I've been having a go at the Free Realms Beta that's going around. It's not particularly hard to get in, just sign up and wait two days and you'll be in. Granted, it may not be your kind of MMO, and I'll tell you why through the medium of LJ Cut
I've played a good number of MMOs. Guild Wars, WoW, WAR, Tabula Rasa, Tales of Pirates online, Maple Story, Lineage 2, Pirates of the burning piss, etc. etc. Many of them are more or less identical - Pick a class or a Job Route or what have you, go to a guy with a "!", go to and area, kill some things, collect some things, come back, get xp. Repeat.
Of course that's just the bare bones of a standard MMO these days. The good ones are the ones that make that process a lot more interesting and keep the rewards coming steadily enough so the grind is subdued.
Free Realms is kinda like this, but at the same time completely different from any MMO you've played. Firstly, visually looks like something out of Shrek. Fairytale Realms of lush, mystical forests and mysterious castles to forboding swamps are abound, contrasted with the anachronistic, contemporary stuff like Rock Bands, Kart Racing, Postal Workers, Ninjas and what not. It looks gorgeous, despite having what I reckon must be a PS2-Era polycount. This means it also runs flawlessly.
You start Free Realms on a website, and it's through the magic of flash you create your character while the tiny-wickle game download chutes away in the background. You've a choice of Human or Pixie, the choice being entirely on asthetic choice with no factor in gameplay, and once you've given yourself a name from the odd little family-friendly Name Generator (First name and a Compound Second Name like "Zephyrgale" or "Crazypants" or "Biscuitrock" or "Shadowcake" or something like that) and then it's off to play the game.
You're thrown head first into a small forest settlement with around 10 thousand other newbies and the game doesn't even stutter. The Beta's running on two servers now but even on 1 it didn't even bat an eyelid when I wandered into the main city to be met with 100s of other players. Your first three classes you unlock, each level their own way and have their own uses, are Brawler (Your basic "Fighting" class), Chef (Plays Bejeweled and Cooking Mama type minigames to create useful buffing items) and Pet Trainer (Some kind of Tamagotchi like affair). There are quests associated with each, and it's not long before you'll unlock Card Duelist (Playing a kind of simplified MtG/YuGiOh-esque Card Game), Kart Racer (Mario Kart style minigames against AI or players), Demolition Derby driver (Less racing more bumping), Postman (Timed runs around the main cities), Ninja (Secondary Combat class, ranged attacks), Miner (Bejeweled and Cooking mama style minigames again)
Each "Class" has its own equipment, skills, quests and levelling. At any time you can swap between any of the ones you've unlocked and when you're about to start a Minigame or an Instance the game swamps you to the suitable one.
Brawlers and Ninjas level by doing the instanced combat sections which either take the form of wandering enemies (You're teleported to an area where you must defeat say 15 Crabs and have 3 lives. It's standard MMO combat after that) and dungeons (Instance-style quests with multiple objectives including bonus ones). Some of the instanced dungeons are quite interesting, from mysterious crab caves, to bandit hideouts to Yeti Nightclubs.
Chefs and Miner's level fairly quickly by doing associated quests and minigames. The minigames themselves are Flash based but equally quite fun. They play like a variation of Bejeweled and often feature sneaky bonus objectives (Make a chain of 12 tiles, for example) to net you bonus cash or resources at the end of it. The Cooking Mama ones for smelting or cooking reward speed and accuracy.
There's masses of non-class based stuff lying around too. There's a fully playable Tower Defense clone in there, along with some obscure Rhythm game. Exploration quests, Collections, and even though only a single zone is available in the beta, there's around 5 cities each with tonnes of quests.
Then there's the friend system. Pairing up with Pete, it's possible to teleport to wherever he is at any point, which is hilariously useful when quests start taking you around all 5 cities or when you're both about to start an Instance. There is a hilariously picky swear-filter (It's like PSO's but worse) that ju##### keeps bl########ut your words f#####o reason, making i#####uite ##rd to actually tel########nything. Unusually it misses out "Arse", "Sod" and other british exclamities.
Content is streamed in as you go. Minigames download as you're about to play them, new areas are streamed in as you run around, making the initial download hilariously small. Some of the bigger downloads (The Tower Defense game or Kart Riding) can take a while but nothing over a minute or so on a good line. It's a beta, so there are bugs, quests that go nowhere, and legions of locked classes and quests due to the "Free" content and the "Paid" content clashing.
Yep, Free Realms is free to play, but to get access to the good stuff requires $5 a month. This opens up several new classes, new dungeons, new quests, new gear and gives you the chance to create 2 new characters. Annoyingly, all this is disabled during Beta so hitting dead ends is currently quite frequent.
So yes, it's Cutesy. It's aimed at 11-14 year olds so there's no blood, swearing, rape, pillage torture, but unsurprinsgly there's a lot of adults and parents getting in on it because it's surprisingly well made, fun and different. I could easily waste hours on the mining minigame until I'm sitting on top of mountain of Copper bars and rare gems, and the combat, while lacking in class abilities (I have... 2) stands up to most MMORPG combat engines, and can still be just as challenging without clever pulling strategy. There's an excessive amount of fun stuff to do, and absolutely no obligation to do any of it.
In short it's a Shrek-like, Family Friendly MMORPG with something for everyone that's free to play. There may be some pretence to floating around as a girly Pixie, but then, it's a Ninja-Postal-Driving-Brawling-Cooking-Smashing-Digging girly Pixie who went into a Yeti Nightclub and kicked the living shit out of everyone inside on the grounds they were playing their music too loud.
I dunno, that's quite badass...
Mainly though, I've been having a go at the Free Realms Beta that's going around. It's not particularly hard to get in, just sign up and wait two days and you'll be in. Granted, it may not be your kind of MMO, and I'll tell you why through the medium of LJ Cut
I've played a good number of MMOs. Guild Wars, WoW, WAR, Tabula Rasa, Tales of Pirates online, Maple Story, Lineage 2, Pirates of the burning piss, etc. etc. Many of them are more or less identical - Pick a class or a Job Route or what have you, go to a guy with a "!", go to and area, kill some things, collect some things, come back, get xp. Repeat.
Of course that's just the bare bones of a standard MMO these days. The good ones are the ones that make that process a lot more interesting and keep the rewards coming steadily enough so the grind is subdued.
Free Realms is kinda like this, but at the same time completely different from any MMO you've played. Firstly, visually looks like something out of Shrek. Fairytale Realms of lush, mystical forests and mysterious castles to forboding swamps are abound, contrasted with the anachronistic, contemporary stuff like Rock Bands, Kart Racing, Postal Workers, Ninjas and what not. It looks gorgeous, despite having what I reckon must be a PS2-Era polycount. This means it also runs flawlessly.
You start Free Realms on a website, and it's through the magic of flash you create your character while the tiny-wickle game download chutes away in the background. You've a choice of Human or Pixie, the choice being entirely on asthetic choice with no factor in gameplay, and once you've given yourself a name from the odd little family-friendly Name Generator (First name and a Compound Second Name like "Zephyrgale" or "Crazypants" or "Biscuitrock" or "Shadowcake" or something like that) and then it's off to play the game.
You're thrown head first into a small forest settlement with around 10 thousand other newbies and the game doesn't even stutter. The Beta's running on two servers now but even on 1 it didn't even bat an eyelid when I wandered into the main city to be met with 100s of other players. Your first three classes you unlock, each level their own way and have their own uses, are Brawler (Your basic "Fighting" class), Chef (Plays Bejeweled and Cooking Mama type minigames to create useful buffing items) and Pet Trainer (Some kind of Tamagotchi like affair). There are quests associated with each, and it's not long before you'll unlock Card Duelist (Playing a kind of simplified MtG/YuGiOh-esque Card Game), Kart Racer (Mario Kart style minigames against AI or players), Demolition Derby driver (Less racing more bumping), Postman (Timed runs around the main cities), Ninja (Secondary Combat class, ranged attacks), Miner (Bejeweled and Cooking mama style minigames again)
Each "Class" has its own equipment, skills, quests and levelling. At any time you can swap between any of the ones you've unlocked and when you're about to start a Minigame or an Instance the game swamps you to the suitable one.
Brawlers and Ninjas level by doing the instanced combat sections which either take the form of wandering enemies (You're teleported to an area where you must defeat say 15 Crabs and have 3 lives. It's standard MMO combat after that) and dungeons (Instance-style quests with multiple objectives including bonus ones). Some of the instanced dungeons are quite interesting, from mysterious crab caves, to bandit hideouts to Yeti Nightclubs.
Chefs and Miner's level fairly quickly by doing associated quests and minigames. The minigames themselves are Flash based but equally quite fun. They play like a variation of Bejeweled and often feature sneaky bonus objectives (Make a chain of 12 tiles, for example) to net you bonus cash or resources at the end of it. The Cooking Mama ones for smelting or cooking reward speed and accuracy.
There's masses of non-class based stuff lying around too. There's a fully playable Tower Defense clone in there, along with some obscure Rhythm game. Exploration quests, Collections, and even though only a single zone is available in the beta, there's around 5 cities each with tonnes of quests.
Then there's the friend system. Pairing up with Pete, it's possible to teleport to wherever he is at any point, which is hilariously useful when quests start taking you around all 5 cities or when you're both about to start an Instance. There is a hilariously picky swear-filter (It's like PSO's but worse) that ju##### keeps bl########ut your words f#####o reason, making i#####uite ##rd to actually tel########nything. Unusually it misses out "Arse", "Sod" and other british exclamities.
Content is streamed in as you go. Minigames download as you're about to play them, new areas are streamed in as you run around, making the initial download hilariously small. Some of the bigger downloads (The Tower Defense game or Kart Riding) can take a while but nothing over a minute or so on a good line. It's a beta, so there are bugs, quests that go nowhere, and legions of locked classes and quests due to the "Free" content and the "Paid" content clashing.
Yep, Free Realms is free to play, but to get access to the good stuff requires $5 a month. This opens up several new classes, new dungeons, new quests, new gear and gives you the chance to create 2 new characters. Annoyingly, all this is disabled during Beta so hitting dead ends is currently quite frequent.
So yes, it's Cutesy. It's aimed at 11-14 year olds so there's no blood, swearing, rape, pillage torture, but unsurprinsgly there's a lot of adults and parents getting in on it because it's surprisingly well made, fun and different. I could easily waste hours on the mining minigame until I'm sitting on top of mountain of Copper bars and rare gems, and the combat, while lacking in class abilities (I have... 2) stands up to most MMORPG combat engines, and can still be just as challenging without clever pulling strategy. There's an excessive amount of fun stuff to do, and absolutely no obligation to do any of it.
In short it's a Shrek-like, Family Friendly MMORPG with something for everyone that's free to play. There may be some pretence to floating around as a girly Pixie, but then, it's a Ninja-Postal-Driving-Brawling-Cooking-Smashing-Digging girly Pixie who went into a Yeti Nightclub and kicked the living shit out of everyone inside on the grounds they were playing their music too loud.
I dunno, that's quite badass...