No, it’s not a porn site; just a new creature that landed on my desk. It’s a Series 1 - starter pack with 2 Freaky Creatures, a card code to open up your account online, and a very nice USB Flash drive (that took 15min to take out with no knife. Damn theft deterrent packaging!) with the Freaky Creatures logo on it. As soon as you plug it in, it takes you right to their website (freakycreatures.com). If you want to join it doesn’t get too personal: email, birthday, and requirement of making an account name and password. The starter pack gives you a free 30-day trail. You even get to pick an avatar, from punk to samurai, all colors male or female. You start with the 2 creatures on the box and a few parts like blasters, tail attachments, horns, shields, wings, blades, and other such items to mix and match to make your creatures kick ass. They give you a quick history of each creature you get. I downloaded the game right onto the nifty flash drive. The file is only about 675mb. I haven't messed with it yet, but hope it’s portable and able to transfer from one pc to another. That would be awesome! It took about 20 min to download the whole game, so not too bad. It gives you mini games to play while you wait and patch notes which I thought was really cool. They loaded up pretty quick Bven while downloading. They had Freaky Air Hockey, Miris Lab, Crystal ball Game, Part-o-Matic 3000, and Penguin Hockey ,which was funny, but my favt. was Pengas’s Peril. That was addicting; the time flew by so fast I almost didn’t want to get off. So between downloading and installing it took about 50 min. (I have broadband).
Once online it was pretty cool you can customize your creatures from tone name, and like I said before, a variable amount of weapons and body parts at 5 different points on your creature’s body, which you all get from the starter pack. I did more research and you can get more parts and weapons. There, you can battle your creature with other people online. As you get more exp. points you can use it to raise HP Defense etc. The graphics are simple and they aren’t too bad. The lair you start up with can be accommodated with lair items. I had a choice of young verduran tree, scraggly tree, toxic pool, and water pool.
The Bang:
The 2 creatures you get are more for display/collection than for actual physical play. They are pretty well detailed as far as scales, claws, and faces. They each stand about 4 1/2 inches. They are collectibles. Abandon has done a nice job trying to tie 2 markets down and it is a new approach to collecting and online play since the age they're aiming at is generally into both. I also found out that they have seasons where they are planning to put out 10 super-rare creatures out for collecting and play. Oh, I forgot to mention that you can play this game on your cell phone. That comes in handy when you’re bored in line or waiting for someone and you can kill 10 to 12 mins. I really like that feature.
The Slack:
I wanted to play with the figures some more, but they weren't very pliable. Not too upset about that though. Also, it would be cool if you could use the figures for both 'cause some parents don’t let their kids play on the internet. I also wasn’t too sure about the monthly subscription fee for the age bracket they're aiming at. I’m not personally deterred, but it wasn’t a high point for me. I also enclosed the system requirements since I have a pc that can handle this and one that doesn’t. The video card is very important so keep that in mind if you don’t have one.
Minimum PC System Requirements:
- - Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista (SP1)
- - Intel Pentium 4 1.6 GHz or AMD Athlon equivalent with an available USB Port
- - 1024MB Ram or Greater
- - DirectX9 compatible video card with Shader Model 2.0 support such as: Nvidia GeForce 6150 Series or better, ATI x600 Series or better or
- - Intel 915G / 82945G / G965 Express / 82865G
- - DirectX compatible sound card
- - Broadband Internet Connection required
Minimum System Requirements for Mac:
- - OS: Mac OS X 10.5.6 Leopard
- - CPU: Intel Core Duo Processor
- - RAM: 1024 MB
- - Video: ATI X1600, NVidia 7300 GT
Finally, it's rated E10. I personally like it; Abandon put a lot of work into it with a lot of variety when it comes to weapons, parts, shades and naming your creature. I look forward to seeing what's next for Freaky Creatures. If you like figures, to collect and for online play, it's great. It's a good way for any kid to get started in that type of game play. If you’re a parent, don't be worried about it being too violent or too sexual in nature. I give it a TOV 3 out of 5 for kids.