Review - Free Realms

Free Realms offers a great deal of minigames and social facilities, whether or not you choose to reach for your wallet.
 
Videogame publishers are understandably closeted about the success of their digitally distributed products, but given the number of free-to-play online worlds that are popping up on the internet each month, one wonders how, or if, any of these games are actually making substantial profit. Within just one month of its release Free Realms had amassed over 2 million users, and while we could ponder all day as to how large a percentage of those millions have (literally) bought into the game in a serious way, Sony’s family-friendly MMO not only has a distinctive enough style and approach to social gaming to set itself apart from most of its competitors, but an extremely wily business model that should see it continue to succeed for the foreseeable future.
Most impressively, those screenshots you’ve likely been intrigued by are powered by a browser-based application, which runs as slickly as any other retail MMO, and is graphically on par with the likes of World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online. Installing the game is relatively painless, though I did suffer a few persistent authorisation issues with Vista, and players can create an avatar (human or fairy) and be exploring the game within ten minutes. Free Realms continuously streams new or unexplored content while you play, so aside from a brief wait whenever you access a new location, loading times are kept to a minimum.
Stylistically, Free Realms is a cross between Kingdom Hearts and The Sims, with pleasant landscapes and imaginative creatures mixed with anime-inspired human characters. Be prepared to see robgoblins (a bit like hobgoblins but with polka-dotted bras and kitchen appliances on their heads) and giant wolves inhabiting the same environment as go-karts and designer trainers. The entire world is an unrestrained mish-mash of elements from every gaming style and genre, yet it’s refreshing and it works.
Rather than go through the various classes you can play in a mechanical fashion, I’ll initially concentrate on two activities new players can look forward to: owning a pet and driving a kart. Adopting a pet is one of the very first things your human or fairy avatar will do, and the furry critter you adopt acts as the sort of more sophisticated Tamagochi virtual animal that the Nintendo DS previously oversaturated. As well as grooming, feeding and dressing up your pet in ridiculous costumes you can get it to perform tricks by drawing an image with the mouse, also in the style of a DS game.
But after you’ve bonded with your new four-legged companion (cat or dog), things get a little emotional. You see, the pet you’ve just trained was only a trial animal, and unless you’re willing to buy one with real-world money (converted into Station Cash) the most you can do is adopt one animal for twenty minutes every few hours. While a pet only costs a few dollars, it does feel like a cruel ploy to lure small children into falling for a virtual best friend, only to discover that mummy, daddy and their plastic lifeline will need to get involved – though, debatably, such a strategy forms the backbone of free-to-play gaming.
Fortunately, the other elements of Free Realms are far more accommodating to the financially de