Of all the current videogame industry trends, the free-to-play business model is perhaps evolving the fastest. Runes of Magic and Free Realms have both made great strides in presenting online worlds which are not only free to access but are visually and technically almost on par with their retail rivals.

Today we’re taking a look at the games on offer at www.gpotato.com, an Irish MMO portal for publisher Gala-net, which currently offers six free-to-play titles, including Flyff, Rappelz and Luna Online. Two new titles; Allods Online (colourful, bizarre fantasy landscapes from the creators of Flyff and Rappelz) and Aika Online (large scale PvP battles with a European aesthetic) are to be released very soon, and gpotato.com are currently offering the opportunity to sign up for the imminent Beta.

For those unfamiliar with the free-to-play model, all use a micropayment system of sorts, but can be played without spending a penny – the notion being that you’ll get involved enough to want to purchase new outfits, weapons, spells, mounts or whatever. Signing up is straightforward and it’s a cinch to install the client program and updates. Whether you do or not is entirely up to you, but there’s really nothing to lose in trying out some of gpotato.com’s offerings… except possibly countless hours of your precious time.

I like to consider myself an open-minded gamer, but it’s always easy to slip into certain preconceptions. While four of the games available are of the MMORPG mould, I was most impressed with Tales Runner, which not only challenged my prejudices but offered a unique yet polished experience. The majority of the games here are of South Korean origin, which brings up the usual pros (gorgeous concept art) and cons (poor translation work), but with an alleged 2,000,000 people signed up to the site all of the games I tested were dense with other English-speaking players.

Below I’ll take a look at each of the games on offer – think of these not as reviews, but my impressions from a few hours with each.