It's a color explosion

​Free Realms launched on the PlayStation 3 this week and, while teens are probably the target audience's roof, this 20-something hunk of manly awesomeness decided to take the family-friendly, fantasy-based MMO for a test drive, all in the name of science.

 

After spending three days with the title, I have returned from my journey into the colorful unknown, ready to let you know if this free-to-play offering is worth a download.

 

What you get for nothing

First off, I'd like to reiterate that Free Realms actually lives up to its name. The vast majority of the game is available, ready to download, free of charge. If you enjoy your time in Free Realms, there are a few membership options available to open up even more content like free pets, mounts, additional quests and items, trophies and more. You can pick up a one month subscription for $4.99, or pay a bit more for three, six or 12 months. If you really like what you see, a lifetime membership will run you $34.99.

 

For those who just want to mess around, though, there's a huge world to explore and loads of puzzles, minigames and something like 800 missions to tackle. Similar to Lord of the Rings Online (which went free-to-play just last year), I can see this game filling dozens upon dozens of hours without the player ever having to spend a dime.

 

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What's with all these colors?

The first thing you'll notice about Free Realms is that we aren't in Azeroth anymore. This is fine, since the core MMO crowd isn't exactly who FR is aiming to please. You'll design a character as either a boy or girl, human or fairy. There are a few options to make your character look a bit different from the rest, but nothing too deep here. Next thing you know, you're dropped into a big, open plaza crawling with fellow adventurers.

 

My first thought was that it looked like a herd of unicorns had run through the place vomiting rainbows on everything that stood in their path. Free Realms is bright, cartoony and extremely colorful. Honestly, it was a nice change of pace from all the dark browns, grays and blacks so common in this current generation of gaming. It was also the perfect atmosphere for what would turn out to be a much more laid back, casual approach to the MMO genre.

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So what can you do?

While you can't mess around with housing unless you're a paid member, it seemed like most of the activities in Free Realms (And there are a lot of them) were ready for the free-to-play crowd to enjoy. Your first mission quickly introduces you to the Destruction Derby and Racing minigames, branching into other job classes from there.

 

Speaking of job classes, rather than picking one and sticking to it, your character can change freely between about a dozen; taking on the role of a wizard one minute, a cook the next, then maybe a ninja or a miner. Each class has a couple unique abilities to use and a specific minigame designed for leveling up. You can go up to level four in each, with the roof for paying members raised to 40. Even at your max level, though, you can keep playing all of the games.

 

Other than exploring the world and taking on the standard quests (go here, fetch this, play that) scattered here and there, the world of Free Realms almost serves as an extremely intricate hub from which you can access the many games and activities. I dove into racing, destruction derby, battling, fishing, cooking and more, and my experiences ranged from extremely easy (press a button to set the hook in fishing) to a decent amount of fun (either of the kart games).

 

And the point is.....?

What really sets Free Realms apart, though, is its laid back approach to playing. There's no grand, overarching tale to plow through. The kingdom isn't battling a dark and ancient evil nemesis. There's plenty of loot to be had, but most of what I saw was purely cosmetic, made for collecting rather than turning yourself into the world's ultimate hero. The focus is on fun rather than progression, but there's certainly loads of progress bars to fill, jobs to level and more for those who would rather dig deeper into the experience, no matter how lighthearted that experience may be.

 

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Fun for the whole family

The final topic I'll touch on is the fact Free Realms is made to be family friendly. The characters are cute, even when they're supposed to be bad guys. Any questionable words are blocked in chat and even players' names are screened. Thankfully, Skittlepoop was PG enough, so I got my first choice.

 

As an example of how "light" this version of the MMO is, you can actually teleport to pretty much any location on the map rather than have to travel there on foot or raise funds for a quicker transport. You can jump straight into any of the games from the menu if you'd prefer and; if you are taking on a mission; arrows, glowing objectives and a dotted line on the ground help lead the way. If that's not clear enough, you can even push a button to fast travel to your objective. This stuff can be turned off, too, meaning any gamer who can understand how a controller works should be able to get some fun out of Free Realms while those who are a bit older and require less hand holding can easily adjust the game to suit their play style.

 

Many of the activities are reminiscent of what you might find on Facebook games, as well, which leads me to believe Free Realms might actually land in the ballpark of gamer moms and those other folks who, until recently, never played a game.

 

Getting more than you pay for

Honestly, you probably already know if Free Realms is right for you. If you're a 15-and-up male who spends most of their time with Madden or CoD, there's no point in downloading the game and then complaining about how "it's for kids," "too cutesy" or "simple."

 

I'm pretty much open to everything so, much like PlayStation Home, I'll probably journey back in every now and again to kill time with the games or talk to random strangers. There's a lot of content here for exactly zero dollars and even more, at a reasonable price, for those who really enjoy themselves.

 

If you're on, keep your eyes out for Skittlepoop. I'll be the one embarrassing the competition in destruction derby or trying to decide if riding around on a T-Rex with robotic armor is worth the cost of a one-month subscription.