Tabula Rasa Preview

Ever heard of Richard Garriott? No? Shame on you. Back in the day Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, unleashed upon the gaming world the Ultima games, which eventually spawned the massively multiplayer online world Ultima Online. UO had a massive effect on the game industry. In the same way that we wouldn’t have had Oasis or Blur if we hadn’t had The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, we wouldn’t have had EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot and even World of Warcraft had we not had Ultima Online. Now, Richard is back in the game with his new sci-fi shooter/RPG MMO Tabula Rasa. VideoGamer.com logged on to bring you regularly updated impressions as we teleport into the deepest, darkest corners of the universe. It’s a clean slate…

Tabula Rasa diary review – level six to 10.

I’m a level 10 Specialist and Tabula Rasa is growing on me. Not in a fungus, disease type way either. It’s growing on me like a song that’s initially a bit meh, but gradually over time wears your defences down until you can’t help but slap your iPod on repeat. It’s quite nice actually.

I’m finally getting used to the way the combat works and, I have to say, it’s not all that bad. I was finding it difficult to adjust to the mouse moving only the targeting reticule and not a mouse icon but now I’m intuitively switching between combat mode and menu mode with the ctrl button quicker than Data on board the star ship Enterprise.

Speaking of the combat, I’m disappointed in how slowly you acquire new and exciting abilities to play with. With World of Warcraft for example, you’ll get access to new spells and abilities every two levels. In Tabula Rasa, however, new abilities are unlocked at level five, then level 15, and then level 30. Bah.

Which means I’m getting a little bored of the skills I currently have available, including a piss-poor Lightning attack, a boring Sprint boost and a laughable damage over time disease called Decay. I’m probably being a bit harsh, but I’ve just had enough of this stuff. The time spent between moving through the character tiers and accessing new powers is way too long. I’m positively itching for some new skills with which I can hand the Bane’s asses to them on a platter.

I’ve also started using Tabula Rasa’s crafting system for the first time, which, so far, I have found to be a wholly pointless affair. Here you need to acquire the appropriate materials and combine them with a schematic at a Crafting Station to make your item. At early levels all you’ll be doing is combining schematics with pigments bought from vendors to create paint with which you can change the colour of your character. It’s fun for a while, but quickly grows tiresome. I’ve had a look through some of the schematics I’ve picked up along my journey throughout Foreas and there are some interesting items to craft, med packs, augmentations that sort of thing. The only problem is I can’t seem to find the materials I need to make them. Oh well. Here’s hoping I’ll come across what I need soon.

One of the biggest issues I had with the game was how hard it was to work out where you were supposed to go for each mission. I would spend so long farting about the place searching for some hermit NPC that I often thought about abandoning the game. Thank God then that I discovered I could track missions, which would then place massively helpful yellow arrows on the mini-map directing me where to go. Suddenly Tabula Rasa became a much better game. I was completing quests, gaining experience points and killing Bane quicker than a Gold Farmer. A noob mistake perhaps, but at no point did the game tell me I could do that. Having these helpful arrows on the mini-map is something Tabula Rasa has over WoW – take note Blizzard.

My opinion of the Bane, Tabula Rasa’s great evil alien bad guy race, is also improving. At first I thought they looked pretty generic, but there are some graphical and animation touches which helps add to their character. Sometimes when you kill a Bane white light will emerge from its body and it will explode in a gurgle of alien blood and guts. Nice.

I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t so far needed to group up to complete any quests, although that may be about to change from level 10 on. I did have a quest, Mortar By Numbers, which required some help – the Bane mortar armour was just too tough to break through solo. But I didn’t need to form a group for that, just shoot it at the same time as another player. Expect a full report on grouping in the next diary entry.

It’s not all disappointments. I eventually worked my way to the Landing Zone area of Foreas, which was under constant siege by The Bane. Here you can earn tokens for helping to defend an AFS stronghold against endless streams of Bane, some of which are quite spectacular creatures. It’s good fun, a bit chaotic but ultimately is evidence of Tabula Rasa starting to show, for me, some of the early promise. I haven’t seen anything of this evolving battlefield, where settlements will change hands as power swings back and forth between the AFS and the Bane, yet, but it looks increasingly closer.

Tabula Rasa is certainly improving for me as I’m levelling up. It’s still lacking a certain something however. For an MMO it has impressive graphics, but perhaps lacks that level of polish I’ve come to take for granted from the likes of WoW. It’s small things, like simple menu navigation, clear levelling up processes and fully fleshed out quest text, which, while not essential, stand out because of their absence, and combine to hold the game back. I’ve had to turn to the internet too much in order to get the most out of my character, its abilities and the game’s core mechanics.

Listening to the server-wide chat you’d think Tabula Rasa was actually hurting the people who play it. Physically. Here’s a few snippets from my time with the game – A sarcastic Baggums said: “I think we’ve got plenty of bugs for our money. I couldn’t have asked for more.” Reviving memories of Brit comedy classic Withnail & I, a desperate Caesium declared: “I demand a better way to find bosses!”

So all is not well in Tabula Rasa. But I would say give it a chance. There’s hope and potential for a first-class sci-fi MMO hidden deep within the virtual Memory Tree (that’s an actual thing in the game by the way). But that potential is only going to be realised if enough people play the game and as a result justify continued investment by NCsoft into making patches and adding new content – something Tabula Rasa desperately needs. And soon. It would be a tragic waste if life support was pulled before TR had even had a chance to live.

Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa is out now.