Tabula Rasa Review
Played on:
Windows
2GB DDR-400 RAM
GeForce 8800GT
Windows XP
It's been a long time since Ultima Online was released - over a decade, in fact - and now the Lord British himself, Richard Garriott, has finished up his second MMORPG. Of course, it wasn't just him working on it, as his team at Destination Games and publisher NCSoft put massive efforts into this new sci-fi game, Tabula Rasa, in the years it's been in development. But in the age of World of Warcraft and its army of millions of dedicated subscribers, can this fledgling MMO carve its own niche in the market?
The answer is yes, but it won't be a huge niche. The sci-fi theme, with its guns and aliens, certainly seems like it would be a major change from the medieval fantasy stuff we've been seeing in the genre for so long. Instead of bows, there are shotguns and sniper rifles. Substituting for spells are special sci-fi powers given to humans by an extinct alien race. Medics replace priests, soldiers replace warriors, you get the idea. The point is that while Tabula Rasa tries to reinvent the MMO, it winds up playing just a little too similarly to every other game out there.
Mobs moving around on their own
Sure, there are a few innovations here, like the ability for monsters to actually move around, spawn in at various places, and even fight your friendly NPCs to take over some of the stations scattered throughout the alien planets where you will fight. The first time you experience this, probably somewhere around level 6 or so, it's really cool and you will start wondering if this game really did live up to all of its hype. You won't be pressing any auto-attack keys here, either, as Tabula Rasa has you fire your guns just like an action game. Unfortunately, this is not really an action game and instead plays like a hybrid between RPG and action, as you can hardly dodge incoming enemy shots and your own shots are usually fired in a large "cone" - you don't need precision aiming - and damage is calculated, RPG-style, with hit, miss, and damage ratings and percentages.
Leveling up is fairly easy in Tabula Rasa, at least at first, and the missions you go on will take you to instanced versions of outdoor zones with other players, and also to private instances which resemble dungeons in other games. Many are outdoors, which at least gives you a more open feel, but the dynamic battlefields seen in the regular zones are missing here. Much of the game revolves around finishing quests, though, and most of them are the standard fare of killing 10 of this, collecting 15 of these, or finding this Logos tablet (more on that later). Overall, the quests are generally pretty good and have only the odd bug here and there, but you will probably find that most of the innovation in Tabula Rasa lies elsewhere.
The arsenal
Your weapon choices range from pistols to shotguns to rifles and a few other things in between, and the damage types you can get will vary along with the amount of damage (with a higher level being required for higher damage weapons, of course). Your armor also adds protection from these same damage types, like Physical, Sonic, Laser, and the like, and much like in many MMOs, you'll be replacing and buying gear as you level up. While Tabula Rasa does give you a very large inventory, you do have to constantly buy things like medkits and ammo for your guns, many of which use different types of ammo. This means returning to town often, as ammo isn't cheap and early on you'll often have to sell all the junk you picked up just so you can feed ammo into your guns. Getting around is often easy enough with the ability to teleport between installations instantly, but you'll have to get there on foot the first time.
The guns themselves do have a lot of unique uses, and learning how to use them best is one of the more rewarding parts of Tabula Rasa. Unfortunately, most of that depth is kind of squandered since you're not using these tactics against the AI's own tactics because the enemies are just plain dumb. Instead, you're learning how to use guns best against different monster types or groupings of them, rather than swapping out to counter their own attack plans. And grouping up with other players doesn't really seem to fix this behavior, unfortunately. With the dynamic battlefields holding so much promise, it is frustrating to see the same old MMO monster behavior at the low level once you engage.
A little background
There is a good amount of lore in the Tabula Rasa universe, as the game starts out with the notion that you're one of the few humans that can use these long lost Logos tablets left by some alien race. Each tablet is a word in their language, and as you find more and more of them (the assignments to find them are often given to you as quests), you use these words together to build phrases which unleashes an ability. Sounds great, but actually, these abilities still have to be unlocked through the game's class and level system just like pretty much every other RPG. I think the original intent was to be able to toss out "spells" like the classic action-RPG Ultima Underworld where finding a single rune could unlock the use of multiple phrases and therefore multiple spells, but somewhere in there it seemed to not work out and the developers just fell back on MMORPG convention instead. The one upside to finding Logos Tablets is that they are often hidden well and provide a collection type of challenge to players.
But this MMO convention thing pervades the whole game as you travel around, meet more people, try to craft items, and shoot monsters. There are a lot of original ideas in Tabula Rasa, but many of them seem to have been whittled away earlier on in development and at least partially replaced with standard MMO ways of doing things. It's probably because those ideas were great on paper but tough to get working and balanced once they got into the game. As it is, the level and class system, RPG-style hit/miss calculations inside an otherwise action-oriented game, seemingly half-finished crafting and economy system, and somewhat unoriginal locales you travel through make much of Tabula Rasa feel like a fantasy MMO with just a slightly different twist.
Perks, PvP, and the technical side
There are still some nice things here, though, like the ability to "clone" your character at any time to create a new one, without the skill points spent, at the same level you were at before. This allows you to go back and only have to level up once in order to create a few characters, and while none of the gear is copied, it's not hard to transfer items. Trading is a good thing, too, but without an auction house, it can be difficult sometimes. PvP is in through a system where one clan/guild can go up against another, but that's all there is for now. It feels like the whole dynamic battlefield system was squandered, as a totally PvP-oriented server where there are fewer monsters and guilds could take over stations for benefits would have been awesome. Maybe we'll see this in the future if there's enough demand, but further support for PvP is not something that the developers seem too keen on.
Technically speaking, Tabula Rasa is quite stable but also somewhat unimpressive. While the game has few crash issues or major bugs, the graphics are a little disappointing. The alien worlds you'll see aren't really that different from many fantasy games, and the designs for your alien opponents seem just a little too similar to past games involving Master Chiefs and Covenant Elites. Still, the game is quite compatible with a wide range of computers, although I wouldn't dare come at this game with anything less than 1GB of RAM. Laptop performance was also iffy at best, with my Dell XPS M170 (with 2GB of RAM) seeing one-second pauses every few seconds that I couldn't ever troubleshoot to my satisfaction. Many other games, MMOs included, worked just fine, so it was a bit of a mystery.
A fine effort
Tabula Rasa does a lot of things right and only a few things really wrong, but I still find it tough to recommend this one except to those anti-fantasy RPG fans who feel they must be holding a gun rather than a sword in their games. No matter your tastes, Tabula Rasa does offer a new experience over World of Warcraft and the nice part is that the players are generally proven to be more mature than those who live in Blizzard's games. While the developers haven't really laid out long-term plans for the direction of TR beyond balance changes and fixes, there's a lot of potential here for them to add a ton of stuff and really make it shine. Until then, this game is not the MMO killer it was hyped to be, but it's still a fine game with a solid technical background and just enough action to make it feel a lot more explosive than the many online RPGs out there.
