In order to change your weapon or ability mid-combat, the TR developers
have relied upon the hot key bar with half of the buttons oriented on
weapons and the other half on abilities. Although some players have
complained that having the mouse-wheel change the abilities and weapons
would have been an interesting option, I tend to disagree because that
would have lent itself to inevitable problems with the camera zoom
(which is currently allocated to the mouse wheel).
Centering the game around the fight between the Allied Free Sentients
(AFS) and a horde of alien races known as the Bane,
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa is
first and foremost a game about combat. As your own personalized
character, you’ll enter the game as a freshly minted recruit,
ready to stand between the AFS and the Bane. From the very outset of
your character’s life, you’ll find yourself faced
off against a host of the formidable Bane and you’ll have to
use all of the skills at your disposal to carve your way through the
enemy.
Unlike most MMORPGs that center on combat, the developers at NCsoft
have included a bit of strategy in their alien encounters. When
you’re firing your weapon, the accuracy of your shots is
determined by your movement or position on the ground. For instance, if
you’re running with your gun in-hand, you’ll shoot
much less accurately than you will standing still. Once you stop
moving, however, the aliens have a much better chance of hitting you.
To mitigate the damage, you could take cover, which gives you some
protection from flying laser beams and you’ll be able to aim
with more accuracy. It’s never a win-win situation, but you
can help out your cause by seeking out cover.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/10309"
title="An AFS Camp">
src="/image/view/10309/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">The AFS camps are
integral to your success as a soldier.
And there’s certainly an incentive to keep from dying, which
is found in the shape of a XP modifier. When you’re out
shooting your enemies, the longer you can survive without dying the
higher the XP modifier goes up. It’s a great way of actually
rewarding players for not dying rather than punishing them.
For those of you that are more RPG oriented out there, you
shouldn’t worry about the FPS elements in Tabula Rasa. While
there is a bit of aiming involved, you don’t necessarily have
to be 100% accurate to be able to kill your enemy. If you’ve
played as a ranged combatant in World of Warcraft or any of the other
MMOGs, you’ll do just fine in
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa.
All of the standard RPG fare is within the game as well: attribute
points, collectible gear, class advancement, experience points, killing
monsters and more. Crafting, guilds, and trading have all been included
in the game as well. The NCsoft developers really haven’t
held back when it comes to RPG elements to put in the game. If you can
name it, Tabula Rasa
probably has it somewhere.
Perhaps the most intriguing system within
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa is the
ability to clone your character. Rather than force players to replay
the game over and over again to reach the higher levels – or
access mid-level content – the developers decided to give the
players the ability to “clone” their characters.
What this does is pretty much give the player a level X character that
is a complete blank slate. Thus, if your party needs a healer, a player
can go in, make a clone, and pop back into the game with their new
level X healer in tow.
The only qualms I encountered in the game were centered on the fact
that you do an awful lot of running around for being involved in such a
high tech sort of society. As John “Boomjack”
Hoskin stated when I asked him what he thought about the game,
“I found it strange that a military outfit would require me
to run place to place to get orders... why not radio me? And it was
curious that I ran around by myself when henchmen or the like would
have made perfect sense.” Indeed, it seems strange that our
guerrilla warfare would take place as we ran across the surfaces of
these planets. Where was my back-up? Or the radio frequency of the
local AFS mission givers?
But these were only small complaints in the grand scheme of things. For
the most part I ran around the game world simply shooting my enemies,
not even looking at my experience bar. As many in the NCsoft department
have stated in the past, this is a game about fun.
Stability
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/10308"
title="A scenic view.">
src="/image/view/10308/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">Servers in Tabula
Rasa were stable enough to allow me to get several levels in just a
short amount of time.
For the most part, the servers seemed stable and they’re
currently handling the pre-order load very well. Only a few people are
complaining about server disconnects or extreme lag, and
they’ve been few and far between. Personally I
didn’t have any of the errors other folks were describing,
but that may be because I typically play during off hours and when the
traffic load isn’t the highest. It seems that the developers
of MMOGs have finally learned the lessons from the older generations
(or the recently released failures) and are no longer releasing a piece
of software that sucks your computers RAM faster than Rosie hitting a
7-11 slurpy.
Sound and Music
Through the din of gunfire and the gurgling of dying Bane, I could
almost hear myself think. If you’re looking for a solid sound
experience in your MMOG, you really can’t surpass what
I’ve heard in Tabula
Rasa. Unlike the typical fantasy MMOGs on the market,
Tabula Rasa’s sound is all about the big bang – air
strikes hitting the ground, laser canons firing, ships lifting off,
mini-guns rattling, the crushing of an enemies skull, or some other
alien trying to converse with you. All of these are present with Tabula
Rasa and make the experience come alive for the player.
The music, while enticing and easy to listen to, isn’t
extraordinary. I’ve yet to find an MMOG that matches the same
sort of musical experience I’ve heard in games like
style="font-style: italic;">Final Fantasy or
style="font-style: italic;">Gears of Wars. But
that might be because of the repetitiveness of MMOG music. Whatever the
case, the music doesn’t add or detract from my gaming
experience.
Graphics
The graphics in Tabula
Rasa are well done, but not awe-inspiring like what you
might find in the Unreal Engine 3 powered
style="font-style: italic;">Fury or the Dx10
flavored Age of Conan.
However, the graphics fit in very well with the story that the game is
trying to tell. Your environments are what you’d expect them
to be, from the harsh jungles of an alien world to the fluorescent
signs of a human bar, they all stand out in your mind’s eye
as places that could exist in this world.
Character models haven’t been scrimped on either;
you’ll find a vast selection of options available for your
character on the creation screen. All of the character’s that
you can create in the game look terrific (although the women are quite
busty with no option on bust size – sorry gals), but
unfortunately much of your starting clothes will be replaced with the
standard RPG “it works better” equipment system.
Other than that, you’ll still look pretty bad-ass as your
character.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/13368"
title="Wilderness Daghda's Urn Missions">
src="/image/view/13368/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">The graphics may
not be as good as some UE3 powered games, but they're pretty smoking
hot otherwise.
Final Verdict
For MMO gamers, there’s really no reason why you
shouldn’t pick up Tabula Rasa. The game runs extremely well,
has a brand new combat system and takes place in a world that
isn’t strung together with fairies and fur. Instead you get a
place full of unfortunate situations and unending combat. On top of
that, it’s one of the only new MMOGs that’s
scheduled to come out until early 2008. Trying the game for a month
will only cost you $49.99.
Concerning the upcoming full review of the game, I anticipate either me
or my compatriots will rate the game favorably unless some glaring
problem occurs between now and the first update. Without that
happening, I expect good things for the future of
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa.
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