Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Free Realms "First 5 Minutes" Impressions

I had to minimize the game here and type this up, because it pretty much has WoW's cooking tradeskill beaten, bruised and crying for mom. Within the first 5 minutes of launching this (hence the above title), I had a cooking "quest" that actually had me slicing veggies and tenderizing meat. Even the harvesting of said veggies was a Bejeweled type minigame. Not really Bejeweled, but like... you have a grid of different vegetables, and you can draw a line to connect adjacent squares, and you get a larger bonus for longer strings. Then the cooking portion was basically Cooking Mama for the DS. A lot of the cooking stuff felt very 'DS', with clicking to chop, and mouse gestures to pour liquid, but that isn't a horrible thing. It was certainly 8000% more interactive and engaging than 'grab 4 chilled meat from bank, click once to create campfire, click again to create Northrend Stew'.

This isn't going to dethrone WoW for its mainy endgame raidbosses or mindblowing arena showdowns, but it has a few 'things that make you go hmm' thrown around, and this is 5 minutes in. Combat itself is really simple, but WoW isn't exactly rocket science. I've pressed 1 over and over to kill some goblins, and pressed 2 to perform a cleave type legsweep. The overall package looks really solid, which is what everyone else is saying, and actually inspired me to give it a go. I admit I was invited to the beta, but seeing some flying squirrel with a blue mohawk on the welcome page didn't really entice me to try it out. I think I actually tried one night, the server timed out or something, and I didn't go back.

It's fully launched now, and there's no reason to not
give it at least ten minutes, unless you think it will turn you gay, but if you're that close to the cusp that you're afraid this game will affect you, you need to just go kiss a guy and get it over with. I've heard slow jerks are nice for breaking the ice, too. Wait, where was this post going again..?

Ah. Yeah, there are different classes blah blah blah... microtransactions yadda yadda yadda... Mordiceius is upset that it launches from your browser instead of being a full install, but I had no performance issues (on firefox, and the windows 7 beta to boot). Every other blog is probably running down the bullet lists, so I won't bother. But I will say this: Check it out. It's worth doing, and will only take a second. Then you can get back to doing manly non gay stuff like watching a male tauren's ass run around all day.

12 comments:

Bonedead said...

Haha, funneh funneh.

I showed some of the trailers to my fiance and she seemed kind of interested in playing it. I had her playing WoW a couple times, she didn't get passed level 6 I think, but this one is like made for her. She plays Pogo all the time, so all these mini games just may be the thing she's needed from an MMO. If she plays it, I'm gonna play it, which makes me feel gay but, I can't be, right?

Anonymous said...

Feel like dropping us a name/server Ixo?

Anonymous said...

And now I feel stupid, feeling pretty lucky I forgot to add a name when posting.

For future reference, screenshots are occasionally relevant to questions.

Rich said...

:)

Ixo Belle, predominantly Server 1, but I guess you can change it on the fly in game.

Brawler level 2 and chef level 3 or something? The Kart racing is actually pretty basic, but the demolition derby had me trying it even after the quests for it were done. It's refreshing to do something in game because it's fun to do, and not because you NEED to.

The TCG also looked pretty simple at first glance since it only has three slots to play monsters, but is actually pretty cool.

I played the hell out of yugioh, and got pretty deep into it... I probably have about 20 different decks, both english and japanese. this won't have that kind of depth, but it's aimed at the 'my first TCG' crowd, and with that in mind, it's pretty cool.

Kyir said...

I've been playing, the only really big complaint I have is that ALL of the fighting is instanced. Going through the loading screens just kills the anticipation process for me.

I enjoyed the demolition derby as well, haven't had the chance to try the racing yet.

Also, my trap card appears to have been activated.

Khatib said...

Who creates a campfire? You just run from the bank to the braziers by the AH to cook your shit.

Bonedead said...

Damn this game is like playing in an arcade. I'm gonna pay. I'll beat ya at Hack n Slash too!

Tragedyx said...

Fuck this game. My name didn't get approved (Tragedy Exe), so my name is Maximus Padimus or some bullshit.

ALSO, they want me to pay real money for a fucking puppy in game? I get a 20 minute trial puppy that isn't even cute, but to keep it they want cash.

Back to Left 4 Dead (Giving it a second shot - enjoying it)

Pierre said...

Sony got smart and saw where WoW is headed, they beat Blizzard there by just cutting out that whole 'mudding' style gameplay.

Rich said...

lol

yeah I subscribed for a month just because I got tired of coming across quests that were members only and trying to keep mental note of like "well, if I subscribe later, i'll come back to talk to this guy"

...which is of course their entire plan, so it worked on me. I was actually surprised it was only 4.99, so I bought 10 bucks worth of station cash, and bought a cat and some TCG boosters. I was up till 2 last night just playing the TCG, but can't seem to see the "search for friend" function tobold mentioned to add people that aren't standing within clicking range.

@Khatib: dalaran has no AH noob.

Rich said...

ah, one other thing worth mentioning: my wife LOVES games like clayside or jewel quest. I think I could either get her into this game, or at least have her farm mining and vegetable nodes for me on my toon ;)

Rich said...

ALSO, they want me to pay real money for a fucking puppy in game? I get a 20 minute trial puppy that isn't even cute, but to keep it they want cash.kinda like WoW wanting real money for a fake sword in game : / you can have a ten day trial for free, but you gotta pay to 'keep' it.

(triple comment whammy!)