Pokey, Man: Freaky Creatures

I believe the children are our future. Well, the MMO industry's future, anyway - colourful online words aimed at rugrats look set to be the next great white hope, now that people seem less keen on trying to snatch a piece of tasty WoW pie. I've just been wandering around the beta of Freaky Creatures, which is best described as City of Heroes' character creator (only with super-deformed cartoon monsters) meets Pokemon's arena-style fighting and The Sims', um, sleeping.

Despite being an open beta, apparently I'm not allowed to share my experiences outside of the official forums. This is really very annoying, as I didn't realise it until after I'd spent two hours exploring the game for what was originally intended to be quite a substantial post. Gah. So all I can do is point you at the 500Mb beta, which is currently free to all comers. Yah, it's for nippers, but I suspect you'll get a kick out of the knowingly silly monster-building element nonetheless.