Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

If you take the core concept behind Pokémon and traditional MMO gameplay elements then throw them in a blender, chances are you might get something resembling the awesome Chokémon quests from the EverQuest 2: Rise of Kunark expansion. Add in a dash of The Sims and a heavy helping of turn-based fighting however, and the net result will be something altogether different than your average MMO burrito. Surely I’m not the only gamer out there who likes to name their burritos (I’m not… right?) so I’m going to call this one Freaky Creatures!

Players get to select a theme song for each of their creatures - how cool is that?

Freaky Creatures (FC) is a new game being developed by Abandon Interactive Entertainment. Some of you may be familiar with Abandon Interactive, as the company previously played a pivotal role in funding and co-publishing Mythic Entertainment’s Dark Age of Camelot prior to Mythic being swallowed up by the hungry, hungry publishing hippo otherwise known as Electronic Arts. While DAoC can be described as having roots in more traditional, fantasy-based MMO gameplay, Abandon decided to take an altogether different approach with Freaky Creatures while still retaining a core focus on competition.

Earlier this month FC opened up its beta to the general public. After seeing some of FC’s stylized visuals, which I could only describe as being a sci-fi cartoon ride through Wonderland, I was excited to download the client and take the game for a virtual spin. What I found on the other side of the FC looking glass is a highly addictive little game that should offer something for gamers of all ages, especially anyone who enjoys the action of fighting games but prefers a slower, turn-based approach.

Although the client is relatively small, a handy little button on the installer will take you to a page at the official FC website that offers a collection of flash based mini-games to play while you wait. I thought this was a nice touch as it gives you something fun to do rather than sit and watch a progress bar, fingers crossed that there won’t be a mega-patch of doom waiting for you on the other end. This isn’t an entirely new concept, but I’ve always wondered why developers opt for the standard screenshot slideshow rather than something more interactive during the sometimes lengthy set-up process. For example, imagine how cool it would be if you could run through character creation while a game client installs so that you’d be ready to step directly into the game world as soon as you hit the big, shiny “PLAY” button?

Speaking of character creation, the process in FC may not be the most robust that I’ve ever seen, but there’s a lot of interesting options to consider straight out of the gate. Rather than creating a human avatar, players (referred to as ‘trainers’) will go about selecting a basic creature type and then customizing it to their liking. While there’s no sliders to adjust the base build of the creature, you are able to choose a color scheme for them before adding in various parts such as wings, horns or tails that not only help you create a creature that looks pretty cool, but will also determine what type of attacks you can do with various body parts.

At this point I almost found myself wishing I could run through the short gameplay tutorial prior to creating my first creature, as assigning various body parts left me feeling a little bit in the dark as to what effect they might have on gameplay even though each one will influence what type or how much damage your creature can do. You can easily end up with a fairly gimped creature if you’re not careful to select a good combination of offensive and defensive parts, and mix up the types of attacks you can use, though thankfully throughout the course of gameplay you’ll be gaining new parts you can swap out between matches similar to how you’d equip a character in most MMOs, so a lot of your initial choices aren’t permanent.