I'd heard about it a little during its beta, and the Free Realms-esque nature of it appealed to me. Free To Play (F2P), casual friendly, mini-games and so forth. It's something you can load up on a Sunday evening and lose a few hours to, basically.
Free Realms, for those who don't know, is another F2P game that's developed and maintained by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), the same people who maintain Vanguard, Star Wars: Galaxies and, of course, EverQuest and EverQuest 2. It's a game clearly aimed at pre-teens (or the early teens), but it's by no means unsuitable for adults as a lot of the games it contains are great for adults too. There's a large world to explore and you earn coins to buy clothing, items and other things, or you can use Station Cash (SOE's microtransaction currency) to purchase items that you cannot earn in-game, most of which cunningly require your membership to use.
Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures (CWA) is effectively a cut down version of this with a Star Wars theme. Coming from a game like Free Realms, I find this a highly disappointing release as there's much less to do without a membership. Membership is $4 a month, and the payment reaches a maximum of $45 for a lifetime membership. Those using proper money can be expected to stump up about £2.60 a month, going to about £29 for a lifetime pass. That isn't including Station Cash top ups, however. I have no figures to hand, but 500 points (which isn't a lot) costs around $5, i.e. around £3.20. Membership unlocks a fair portion of the game, and I'll go into that as I comment on the game.
The interface for the game is clear, colourful and stays within the Star Wars theme. There's a lot of white and a lot of blue, and plenty of images. Below is a roughly labelled image of what you'll see in-game. The "Game" button only appears if you're in the vicinity of that activity. In this picture, my character is stood next to a pile of broken droids which trigger that activity. Your character's balance of both currencies is clearly displayed next to the options, and the button to open the store (Which also carries non-SC items) isn't too intrusive, although I would feel it better as a button in the bottom corner of the screen.
I started by running around the area your character begins in, which is the "Store" district. This is where most of the merchants hang out and you can by bikes, furniture, costumes, robots and other items here. It was quite busy with players, and those who have a membership are denoted with a gold name and an icon next to it. You can usually tell them apart from normal members due to the different costumes they often wear. For example, I saw one member in the guise of one of those rolling-up-in-a-ball droids from Episode 1.
One of the things I loved about FR was the variety of activites for your character. You could walk out of the social zones and explore. You could run all the way to the beach, or you could run into a haunted forest. You could race a car and then go and cook some food that you earned in a minigame last week. Even despite the variation, the activities felt linked together. In CWA, they feel so much more distant. I controlled R2D2 in a "platformer" (It sort of was but wasn't), I catapulted Jar Jar Binks into a dung heap and I flew Anakin's ship. Only one activity I did (I didn't do them all, by the way) used my character, and that was bike racing. Bike racing was pretty good fun, although I found it quite easy. All you have to do is race around a track, collect the boost (green) power ups and avoid the deceleration (purple) ones. I came first in every race I did (Except one where I lost by 2 seconds because I crashed into a wall) with no challenge from the other players.
Ah, yes, I was going to talk more about membership. If you're wanting to get more than a couple of hours out of it, or if you want to have your "own" character, then a membership is necessary. All the games have levels past a certain point blocked off to non-members, many of the purchasable items require a membership and really it's half a game without them. And that's where my main gripe is, especially with Free Realms around. That game allows you to customise your character to some degree, there's a wide selection of free and/or in-game items to be gotten without membership and, if I'm truly honest, I felt that a membership wasn't necessary to get a lot out of that game. CWA has swung to the other end of the scale and I honestly feel it takes away from what could be a great experience.
I'll write part 2 later ;)
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