Tabula Rasa review (PC)

At one time a niche genre in PC gaming, the MMORPG category has become very crowded of late. Undoubtedly, this boom is due in no small part to the snowballing success of Blizzard's World of Warcraft, with seemingly every publisher under the sun vying to get a piece of the subscription-based pie. One name which could hardly be accused of jumping on the bandwagon, however, is that of Richard Garriott.

Mr. Garriott, the founder of Origin and the creator of the high fantasy Ultima series, returns to massively multiplayer gaming by fronting a title that dispenses with the traditional fantasy setting for something that's equally as far fetched, but with a bit more firepower. Yes, we're talking science fiction here, a setting that, to date, hasn't quite captured the imagination (and wallets) of the massively multiplayer crowd. But is that about to change?

New beginnings

Tabula Rasa's name is derived from the Latin for 'a clean slate,' which ties into the story underpinning the game. As Earth comes under the merciless attack of an alien race known as the Bane, you - along with a few other lucky representatives of the human race - are spirited away to a distant world via some alien wormhole technology that had fallen into the hands of a global, top secret organization. It is on this alien planet that you will make your stand, fighting against the very creatures that laid waste to your home world.

Perhaps not the most original of concepts as it mixes elements of quite a few of the biggest sci-fi films of the past fifteen years (Independence Day, Starship Troopers and War of the Worlds to name but three), but it certainly provides a welcome respite from the usual goblins and elves fare.

We're also treading familiar territory with the character creation screen, where you get to decide things such as your avatar's overall size, skin colour, sex and (to a limited extent) facial features. Finally, you need to choose a first and last name for your character before you are propelled into the game for a quick tutorial that covers the basics of combat, navigation and questing before segueing into the game proper.

Evolve or die

Character advancement in Tabula Rasa is very similar to a tiered system that was at one point utilized in EverQuest 2, yet TR's version is slightly improved, the reason for which we'll cover in a minute. Everyone starts the game as a raw Recruit, but as you gain levels you can begin to specialize, choosing an advancement path that’s suited to the type of skills you wish to have in end-game.

A medic, for example, starts off as a Recruit, advances down through the Specialist archetype then through Bio-technician before becoming a Medic. One possible drawback to this style of advancement (as EverQuest 2 encountered) is that you have to play through the same low level archetypes if you wish to develop several characters. Thankfully Tabula Rasa has found a way round that by allowing you to clone your characters, which is particularly useful when you reach those career-change moments.

On a mission

The fastest way of advancing your character is through the completion of missions, and you can hold a maximum of 30 in your mission log. There's the usual array of 'kill x number of this creature' and 'take this object to that person', but one aspect that's different in some missions is the ability to make moral choices, which affects your standing with the NPCs concerned.

Furthermore, many of the missions are 'noob' friendly, showing you precisely where you need to go, however you can turn this function off if you'd rather complete them without too much hand-holding. Another welcome innovation is that the experience points you are awarded for killing mobs can greatly increase if you go on a killing spree, with a prolonged slaughter awarding you as much as 2.5 times your 'normal' experience points.

Currently, crafting is a fairly simple affair as you are limited to creating simple components or enhancing your armor and weapons with permanent buffs (similar to WoW’s enchantment mechanic). The process involved is also quite basic, requiring you to chuck a few components into a crafting station and collecting the finished product at the other end.

Different strokes

While the class names may not be familiar, the class types on offer pretty much follow the standard roles you've no doubt encountered in other massively multiplayer titles. As mentioned above, there's a medic class, while the roles of AoE specialist, tank, necromancer, nuker and support are all present too. I tried just about all the class types but found the Spy archetype to be the most enjoyable by far; presently it has unrivalled damage output and can even disguise itself to look like the enemy so that it can sneak amongst their ranks undetected.

If you've played any MMORPG at all over the past five years then the controls and onscreen interface wont present any surprises either, except, perhaps, for a nifty context sensitive radial menu that pops up when you ctrl-mouse over a player.

Given the sci-fi theme of the game, it's a little disappointing that there is no first person perspective, but you can get an over the shoulder viewpoint that’s almost as immersive. With respect to the chat interface, it’s an area that has improved greatly in the past few weeks, as virtually every topic was discussed in only one channel, in every European language imaginable server, but the introduction of separate language channels has sorted that particular annoyance.

Eye candy is dandy

Graphically, TR can lay claim to being among the finest MMORPGs as far as level of detail is concerned, although the artistic style seems to have polarized opinion with some people finding it to be a little too generic. For my own part however, I found the visuals to be pleasing on the eye, particularly the varied designs of the different armor suits for the various player class types, which could be further differentiated by applying dyes to create a unique look. One area where the graphics fall down slightly is in the aesthetics of the different zones, especially for levels 20 through 30, as there isn't a huge deal of variety to the way they look, a criticism which can also be levelled at the mobs as there’s not a huge variety of enemy character models.

Diamond in the rough

There's no doubt that TR is an MMORPG that's fresh out of the starting blocks, as there is much about the game that could do with a bit of spit and polish. In general chat, for example, there are still a few comments asking about quest bugs and other glitches, while the dialogue of NPCs seem to be undergoing some sort of censorship that isn't quite complete. Some NPCs, for instance, have words such as 'ass' replaced with expletives yet others freely throw around words such as 'pisshole' with merry abandon. As yet there’s no real end-game to speak of either, while some of the key abilities of the final tier player classes don’t work as they should.

None of the bugs I encountered were game breaking to the extent that I didn’t want to play anymore, but some did break the sense of immersion, so here's hoping they are addressed sooner rather than later. Despite all of the points I’ve raised, however, the only true measure of a MMORPG is whether you are still enjoying and paying to play at the end of your ‘free’ 30 days, and as of the time of this writing, I am doing precisely that.