The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So I was reading about FusionFall being out of closed beta and it made me really really want to try it. Why? Mostly because I”m lame, but also because there is something about “childish taken in an adult manner” that really rocks my socks. The idea of running around with bad-ass anime versions of these cartoon characters I’ve seen so much of just, honestly, sounds great. I mean, I’m the guy wishing for more plot in my stupid Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, you know?
In any case, it’s free to try for the first 5 levels or something, so I jumped in.

First off, this game does a lot of things right. The cheap subscription fee as well as the “parent account pays 10 dollars and four kids can play with their own accounts” is just plenty inspired. I appreciated the fact that you could submit your own character name, which would then be reviewed before it would actually show up in the game, or you could use another one of those kid-friendly “slap three words together” name generators, which, honestly, I have a lot of fun with. Wizard 101 gave me Rachel Sparkewhisper. FusionFall gave me Maple Angeltazer. I dunno, I could just hit “generate” on those things for hours. But having both options to name generation certainly gives you the best of both worlds, as well as the game defaulting to a “OMG PROTECT TEH KIDS” can’t actually type system, but it being easily changeable to a full, standard chat via parental settings or whatever.

However, I only played past the tutorial. Why? Because the game was lagging my computer up something fierce. I can’t even begin to understand how something completely browser-based could make my computer chug so hard. I mean, with this game aimed at kids, I would have assumed just about any working computer could play it, you know? I wonder if there was something set up wrong to make that happen? I have no idea. But I could only stand the lag enough to try it that long. It really seems like a simplified PSO with some platforming, which, honestly hits a great sweet spot for their target audience, I think. In fact, this is pretty well the best MMO I’ve seen for this age group, and I support it a lot.

Playing it, though, made me think a lot about how great it would be “if I had kids,” you know? I get such horrible mothering pangs sometimes… it really kind of depressed me for awhile. I really do have to face facts that I will probably never have a kid, you know? Bleh. I’m sure scoping out what the game scene for that age group is like really isn’t helping though, huh?