Whacked on Goofballs

So, I signed up for the beta, went through the process of getting approved to download the client, and downloaded some huge file to my local machine. I am a huge advocate of online software distribution, but for my puny 1.5M down DSL connection, it took forever to get this thing running on my rig. After the download finally finished, it had to extract 2.7G to my HDD before the install could even start. Then, the install ran, and used up even more disk space. The PlayNC client is a prereq for the game, so that’s gotta get setup too. Once that’s installed, (I immediately removed it from Windows Autorun) IT has to update itself, requiring more downloading. Once that was finally current, Tabula Rasa launches, and immediately needs to download another 375M update. Just getting this running is a project in and of itself, I sure hope it’s worth it. At least I get to try it free.

Once I finally got this sci fi-role playing-shooter running on my machine, the character creation gets me a dude to play. The process of building this dude (yeah, you can be a chick too) is nothing new or innovative, but does the job. I opt to go through the tutorial, which does not include anything on tool-use, or crafting, that I came across. It’s your basic movement, use, fight, and camera controls. After a few levels, you need to choose your character’s path, brawn or brains. I choose brains, and go down the right side of the tree for skills and the character dude’s future is forever decided.

Quests are delivered in the usual MMO-style, find quests by talking to X NPCs, scattered around the world. Read their story, or just click through and accumulate. Some quests have time limits, some quests have NPCs that follow you and must be accomplished as soon as you accept them, so if you just click without reading, you will fail some of them, but you can get them again, and retry.

The place this game sticks out is in the fight action/combat, even when your in parts of the ally areas, bad guys are dropping in from teleporters and ships. When you kill all the bad guys, theres more bad guys coming again soon. The game has a faster-feel than most MMOs. It gives you the feeling that there’s a war going on, with the combat system feeling more like 3rd person shooter than an RPG. There are lots of damage types; resists, DoTs, so the RPG elements also shrine through. The arcade-like feel is what makes this game stand out from other RPGs. You also have to manage (read: “pay for”) your ammo. There’s also plenty of information available on the customizable UI.

Maps and movement are well-done. Players can jump,climb, swim, and move around freely. So far, I haven’t been any portable teleport device I can carry, meaning if I want to skip across the map, I have to hoof it to a teleporter, or in other words, no map-travel just from hitting the M key. The environments are lush and complex. I find myself having to carefully study the surroundings for places to jump up to, climb into, or otherwise take me off the beaten path, in attempt to find my way. The maps have lots of icons and filters, but this doesn’t take-away from the challenge of finding new places. The devs have done a nice job in this area of the game as well. After all that downloading to get running, load-times are most impressive. In areas Id expect the game to load, my dude walks right-in without a pause, areas that do require load-waits load fast, and don’t seem to download too much, this on a medium-horsepower PC. Some of the cinematics had sound-skipping issues so bad, however, I couldn’t stand to watch them.

Character Building, Items, and Inventory are also pretty typical MMO-fare. Your dude gains XP, Skill Points, Attribute Points, which you are free to distribute as you choose. It seems that you cannot undo your skill and attribute choices, forcing you to plan your characters out.  Items and skills have prereqs, and you can carry and store X amount of your junk. Lots of Stuff to find, buy, sell, and craft. Lots of skills, lots of guns, as you would expect from a new game of this genre.

After 9 levels on my Character, Ive enjoyed playing the beta a little while, but not enough to make me want to pay a monthly fee. More games need to learn the lesson of the web, charging people for access in will only get you so far; build traffic and a user base, then leverage it.  I saw an item in-game with the Dell label. They are, or should be, charging Dell for this in-game product placement. Providers should look for more subtle but effective ways to finance the games, instead of charging gamers for the games, expansion packs, AND the monthly fee to play online. If you like the idea of the genre with more of the action of the shooter, you will probably like this, but if you are already an MMO’er, deep into another game, I doubt this will be enough to pull you away.