Title: Tabula Rasa
Platform: PC
Publisher: NCSoft
Developer: Destination Games
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Love it or hate it, the phenomenon of World of Warcraft has changed the face of massively multiplayer role-playing games forever. It's the model of MMO success and many games have borrowed elements from it liberally. If you're a fan of the classic RPG fantasy setting, you have the pick of the litter when it comes to MMOs but science fiction fans usually find themselves forced to toil through sub-par titles like Anarchy Online or licensed games like The Matrix Online and Star Wars Galaxies. Seeing such well-known intellectual properties crash and burn on the MMO stage has discouraged developers from considering science fiction as a setting.
Destination Games founded by Richard Garriott - creator of the Ultima series and Ultima Online - and publisher NCsoft have bravely stepped over the charred, broken corpses of previous sci-fi MMOs and thrown down Tabula Rasa. Nothing is going to challenge World of Warcraft for the throne - that is until Blizzard releases World of Diablo or World of Starcraft - but Tabula Rasa is worth a look nonetheless.
Tabula Rasa is set in the future after an armada of hostile alien races known as The Bane attacked and perhaps destroyed the Earth (the planet's current status is unknown). Before the Earth's apparent destruction, small groups of humans were able to escape through a series of wormholes that only the highest members of the world's governments knew existed.
Now the humans are part of the Allied Free Sentients (AFS) and battle the Bane alongside alien races the Foreans and the Brann on the planets Foreas and Arieki. These worlds and their inhabitants are brought to life with graphics that fall somewhere between "average" to "good" for a game released in 2007. The engine uses more polygons than World of Warcraft but doesn't have the fine texture detail of Lord of the Rings Online at its highest settings.
Thrax shock troops make up the bulk of the Bane infantry.
Many gamers are familiar with how MMOs work and have experienced one or two in their time, so first we'll look at what Tabula Rasa does differently. The most notable difference is the combat, which is a bit faster with a little shooter flavor added. It isn't twitch-FPS fighting and there are still behind-the-scenes dice rolls going on but the combat feels different from that of standard MMOs.
Things like crouching and cover will affect how much damage you dish out and how much damage you take. There isn't a cover mechanic like Gears of War but you can crouch behind rocks and sandbags to reduce the damage you take from ranged attacks. This makes the combat different yet familiar enough to be easy to understand. Fighting in Tabula Rasa is all about having the right gun for the right situation and enemy.
You've got five weapon quickslots that you can use however you want, but it's to your advantage to keep a variety of weapons at all times. Not only are there several weapon classifications - pistols, rifles, shotguns, machine guns, leech guns, rocket launchers, grenade/RPG launchers, net guns, polarity guns, injection guns, propellant guns, torqueshell guns, staffs and blades - but also a variety of damage types - physical, EMP, laser, sonic, electric, fire, ice and virulent. Some enemies may be immune to certain damage while especially vulnerable to another type. Combining the right kind of weapon with the right damage type in the right situation on the right enemy is what gives the combat its spice. You can swap weapons out very quickly - even while in combat - which becomes a necessity when the battlefield is this dynamic.
Since this isn't a twitch shooter and you won't use the same muscles, the combat can get a little dry at times. Jumping, strafing and movement of any kind - with the exception being when you use shotguns - will severely hamper your efficiency, so it's best to stay crouched and still. If you fight a single-enemy and use one weapon, all you do then is hold down your left-mouse button. It's not exactly "engaging gameplay." Fortunately, the battlefield is usually busy so those kinds of fights are rare and short. The combat is at its best when you're in the pitch of battle surrounded by multiple enemy types and switching weapons for different situations.
View the Tabula Rasa slide show (23 images)
Tabula Rasa encourages constant combat through experience point rewards for stringing kills together. By engaging and killing enemies one after another in quick succession - or simultaneously - you can increase an experience point modifier that can climb as high as 200% and stay there as long as you're on a rampage. [Note: After the review was posted, we received some feedback from the TR community stating that the modifier can climb as high as 250%, but I never got it that high.] You can also get bonus experience for executing a finishing move when you get an "overkill" icon on an enemy. Finishing moves requires you to close the distance to your defeated foe so that you can polish them off with a spin kick.
Even in science fiction it seems we can't get away from the use of magic or "Logos" as it is called in Tabula Rasa. Logos is described in the game lore as "a science unifying all known theories of physics through which users can gain the ability to manipulate matter and energy in unique and powerful ways." Yeah, it's magic. You gain Logos abilities when you level up and change specializations but you also have to seek out the ancient alien runes in order to use these abilities. Logos glyphs are spread out all over the world - sometimes hidden away in instanced areas - and collecting as many as you can is a necessity. Even run-and-gun classes will benefit from the use of the Logos abilities, which include lightning attacks, area-of-effect attacks and damage buffs while other classes practically depend on the use of group buffs and healing.
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