Tabula Rasa Beta Review
Thursday, September 6th, 2007 - 10:53pm
First off let me say i really wanted to like this game. Secondly it is horrible. My 1st impression when loading it up was well hello 2001. This game is ugly. Some of the worst art direction i've seen. Can you say neon green armor and fluorescent pink tights. The graphics engine is a pig as well with some serious performance issues.
Onto the gameplay. I reached level 14 before i deleted this mess off my hard drive. This game is lacking in every respect. Nearly every single aspect of the game is in a clearly unfinished and buggy state. The crafting is just barely implemented the skill trees are not well thought out with quite a few useless ones due to huge balance issues. Most of the quests are a mess and are reminiscent of early EQ. Once in a while you will stumble upon a moment where you get what the designers were going for. The music will kick in and you'll briefly glimpse some battle. Then you will notice your pink tights and the crate from quake 2 off in the corner.
There are quite a few massive annoyances as well. The constant need to buy ammo(1 shot=1 ammo and they're are different types),especially annoying with chainguns. The frequent kill stealing due to damage based kill credit. You'll get a mission to go to a cave and get say 8 genetic samples but when you get there it will be camped to hell leaving you with only the option to zone out to a hopefully less full instance of the zone. Trying to explore and getting one shot killed by things you never see, dying from an invisible enemy on the other side of a wall. Also of mention is the fact that you need a group for so many things. Having more solo friendly content could have helped alleviate some of the other issues.
Besides that the game is just missing a feeling of being there and of your actions meaning anything. The controls are floaty the combat is like fighting through sewer sludge. There is no real connection with your character. After playing games like WoW, Lotr online, recent EQ2 this game is just a big step backwards. I will be shocked if it doesn't go the way of Auto Assault and other failed mmorpgs. I was very surprised when i read it had gone gold. This game clearly needed another year of stirring in the pot but i guess they had to release it sometime. I don't see any reason to waste time with a game with this many issues when there are so many better alternatives out there.
[Adding my review here in case this becomes the place to do it]
I've been playing for a few months, and I soloed my whole way to L42 as a Soldier>Commando>Grenadier.
Pros:
- Some of the sounds (like the chaingun) are ridiculously satisfying and some of the art (like armor) looks really awesome
- Quest text is very whimsical and funny, and curse words are not uncommon which adds to the grittiness
- Acquiring and using new types of weaponry is fun as you progress, and laying waste to dozens of enemies is very satisfying
- Several of the more wartorn zones have a nice war-like feel with trenches and enemies everywhere, but these zones are also congested with players farming the larger machina for items
Cons:
- Too easy as a soldier since the only way to excel is combat and they dominate combat
- Thrax enemies are predictable and boring to fight
- Critter enemies are generally more challenging, which is dumb considering the back story
- Terrain occasionally works as cover, occasionally does not; hard to tell when it will and won't
- Logos powers were pretty pointless; I used Sprint (faster running) and Rage (damage buff) but I skipped everything else and put all of my skill points into +damage weapon skills and all of my attribute points into health; this strategy seemed to work almost too well
- Many skills are rendered obsolete once you gain the next tier of abilities, and many players felt that spending points early was a waste (particularly on the armor +bonus skills); this encouraged us to save points until later, but that precluded enjoying the abilities at lower levels (very power gamey)
- Exploration yielded no benefit other than the internal satisfaction of seeing new places (something that carried me a long way in SWG before I quit, so it's not totally a con)
- Combat is repetitive, bosses are more of the same (note that this is fun in the beginning, especially when you get new weaponry and abilities; carving a swathe of destruction is satisfying, but we all know long-term replayability that does not make)
- Excessive complication by way of different qualities of ammo (better weapons require higher quality ammo, which is mostly just a money sink), different types of weapon damage (there's 8 types, IIRC), and corresponding resists and immunities on yourself and on enemies; this result in having to carry 5-10 weapons into every battle and swap between them frequently
- Crafting is bolted on
- As a pretty seasoned FPSer I found the "FPS-style gameplay" to be mostly lip service. Aiming is pretty much automatic by way of a target locking system. Yes, the action is in real time, but there's really no benefit afforded to those who can aim vs. those who cannot (e.g. a headshot)
- No sense of participation in a story; no immersion in a real, organized war
This game was supposed to break the mold on the MMO game, but it doesn't. The logos system is wasted on canned abilities that most people can do without. Combat is linear.
The apparent demise of Huxley had me pinning my "FPS but with more depth and more robust RPG and multiplayer aspects" hopes on TR, but in its current state I wouldn't buy it, much less pay $15 a month to play it. Of course, they still have a month or two of testing and tweaking to do, so maybe things will change.
/disappointment
Exteel: Farhunt
Steam: Varigear
i made it to lvl 21 (made it there quite easily probably too easy) and honestly couldn't figure out where to go to level up after that. While i probably could've jumped onto the forums and find out i didn't think i should have to. I didn't wanna just grind my way up even with the grind mechanic. The grind mechanic (if you kill so many mobs in a certain amount of time you'd start getting xp bonuses) was kinda cool even though it needed to be tweaked a little bit.
The tier skill tree system is the just like Lineage2 and all other NCsoft and korean clones. I hate having to wait 10+ levels before i see improvement in my characters.
Crafting like mentioned before was just an after thought and didn't seem that worthwhile.
It's definitely not a game that will survive beyond the hype. Which is sad in a way because the story line and the quests are a lot of fun... the FPS style combat mechanic is a fun diversion from hack/slash.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
Honestly, sometimes I find myself saying, "If they ever make a game with the technology, it will be fun." Its pretty much a framework or skeleton of a great game. Hopefully 5-6 months down the road they will have enough content for their to be a game.
To be honest, Im seeing a lot of parallels with the combat gameplay of UO. Sure the crafting and notoriety systems in UO were fleshed out, but the combat had a very limited selection of spells and a couple dozen monster types.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
I picked up the beta when Gamespot let the keys flow. All in all, it was pretty disappointing. They have a huge opportunity here, and I'm very much afraid they're going to blow it. The mechanics are cool, but there's just no meat to the game. Not to mention that SWG in its initial incarnation looked vastly superior on my old vastly inferior PC. I'm generally not much of a graphics nut, but the game just looks horrible.
Coldstream wrote:
...and down goes the contender.
Well, Cooking Mama didn't help me become a better cook, and Trauma Center certainly didn't help me become a better surgeon. I have the proof of both sitting in my freezer. -- imbiginjapan
No offense intended, but what the hell is the point of reviewing an early beta? Geez, it's not even OPEN beta yet, it's just early closed beta!
Yeah, I'm underwhelmed by the game, but there's time yet for it to improve. It's not on my purchase plans this year regardless, due to budgeting.
The point is that it's releasing in a month and a half, Fars. Early beta or not, they're shoveling this out the door in its' current craptastic state.
Coldstream wrote:
Well, they announced that the game is gold and shipping Oct. 19th. So your question should be, what the hell is the point of charging people money to play what should be an early beta!
Some of the mechanics of this game really annoyed me. I'm a soldier. In the military. And I have to PAY for my ammo? WTF.
Getting a chaingun is a cool thing for a young solider, until start shooting it and realize you can't afford to use it based on how much ammo is used per encounter and how much money you are rewarded with. This kind of basic economic stupidity shouldn't get out of alpha.
I didn't get very far with the game because there was just no content. If you are going with a low content game, the combat better be REALLY fun, and it just isn't. I can't believe Garriott put his name on this thing.
WAR: Coda, Archmage, Vortex <Unguilded>
Yep. I'm trying to keep the inflammatory stuff down, but with the amount of stuff wrong with TR, I find it hard. The lack of content is disturbing, the basic gameplay mechanics are disturbing, the way the game looks is disturbing!
I really, really wanted to love this game. I want a Sci-Fi MMO so bad it hurts. I just keep getting let down
Coldstream wrote:
I was hoping for something a little like planetside, and swg meshed together.
On the plus side, it does seem to be well executed technically. I didn't run into many bugs, although the engine could stand some more optimization. I wouldn't expect this to be a launch where people are complaining about the technical playability of the game itself, like we've seen with some MMOG launches.
WAR: Coda, Archmage, Vortex <Unguilded>
Since when is a game that has gone gold in early closed beta? Sure they've got time in the next month or so to make a nice juicy patch or 2 but even if they perform a miracle with that patch this game still won't be anywhere near where it needs to be when it launches on Oct 19th.
I cannot tell you how many times I saw that typed into the global chat channel in-game. I think a lot of us had that vision.
And @Far: Yes, it's a closed beta (but it's been going for several months and is almost over). I note that at the end of my post. But as someone else mentioned, they're also releasing in less than two months and some things are pretty well locked in.
Like many MMOs it may become a significantly better game after release + a patch or two, as long as you're at peace with the underlying combat mechanics. And the open beta opportunity will give anyone with a desire to see for themselves a chance to play prior to dropping the dolla bills, ya'll.
Exteel: Farhunt
Steam: Varigear
Whoa, guys, chill.
I never caught the announcement that the game was retailing in October. Believe me, that fact has completely reversed my opinion.
I honestly thought the game wasn't hitting retail until year end or early next year (in large part due to how much work it seems to still need based on my beta experience).
I guess this'll be the new Anarchy Online or Star Wars Galaxies launch, eh?
I don't think we'll ever see a launch as bad as AO again. Tabula Rasa is way way beyond that state, technically.
WAR: Coda, Archmage, Vortex <Unguilded>
Exteel: Farhunt
Steam: Varigear
Yep. The only real issue facing Tabula Rasa is the lack of content, and IMO, the fact that it looks horrible. The game mechanics are good, and whlie vbl has pointed out some of shortcomings of the leveling system, it's nothing horrible.
Coldstream wrote:
I certainly don't think TR is ugly. Maybe its a little plain, but not ugly. You should have seen how sterile and repetitive it looked a few weeks before they opened up the fileplanet beta keys. So they've made positive strides. They just need to keep going with the content push for another 3 months and tack on another month to polish and it will be a much better game.
I hope they have a content patch planned for no longer than a month or two post release. If not the future of TR is bleak. And don't forget they will only have a 2 weeks head start on Hellgate London, which isn't an MMO but will dominate the net multiplayer space.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
I agree with most of what you guys are saying. I feel very disappointed too since I was waiting for a Sci Fi MMO for so long (I was a big AO fan)!
I think the game has a lot of potential. Technically it seems very well done. I played for couple months and never ran into any nasty bugs. And to tell you the truth, I like the graphics! The armors are well detailed and I really loved painting them in different colors.
Combat is fast and feels very cool at the beginning specially if you are a Soldier, but I grew bored of the clicking and holding my mouse button until my target was dead. I think the mechanics are there, but it feels very shallow at the moment. I really miss being able to use several skills or special attacks that every MMO out there has. Of course, there are Logo skills, but they look so underpowered compared to going to a weapon only route that I just ended up using only Sprint and Rage.
I really don't like the skill system. Most of what's there feels so useless to me and I noticed very fast that it was a waste of Skill Points to use them early on, so I also just saved them to a higher career path.
Again, I feel VERY disappointed so far. I expected so much more. I see the potential, I really like the feel of the game, the constant war going on and NPC's and Mobs fighting all the time against each other. The world feels somewhat more alive than other MMO's to me. But the game mechanics are so shallow! I wouldn't want to pay a subscription fee for the game at this state. My only hope is that they come out with a miracle in a month, to put more depth into this, if not, I'll pass.
XBL/PSN Gamertag: KillTrash
Tabula Rasa
So the preorder for $5 gives you access to the beta right now.
I was really looking forward to TR and jumped on it.
I put a solid 30+ hours into the game, getting my character to level 15. I completed all of the
newbie island quests (ok, it's not newbie island-- It's newbie wilderness) and a few in the next area of the map.
...and my reaction is: Disappointment.
Pros:
It's a science fiction setting.
You get bfg's to play with. You can hit targets really FAR away (and they can hit you!)
It's pretty. I had a borderline box to play it on (dual core 2.25 opteron, 7800GT)
and TR maintained decent framerates throughout (29fps to 38fps). There were a few laggy moments
but over all, it's as good as GW for smoothness.
It will have voice chat--I dont know if they turned that on yet but since I'm not set-up w/ a
headset, it's a moot point for me.
The big assault-the-base/defend-the-base battles are fun.
Cons:
Chat is clumsy. They're going for the multiple tab/windows like Anarchy Online uses but it's counter-intuitive in its execution.
The GUI is not customizable--the chat window is locked to upper left corner where it hides the Bane sharpshooter trying to nail you.
The "logos" (sort of esper talents that buff your character's skills) are interesting but useless.
Cover works sometimes and often not. "I cannot see my target" is what your character will say early and often--and you still can nail the target.
Content is still lacking and the sameness of the missions did get old. (<--the deal breaker)
There was a 1/2 hour wait to get on a server during a heavy use period the first weekend of the open beta.
You will lose your beta character(s) at launch. (complete server wipe)
I kept hearing/seeing that "crafting is broken/useless" so I never tried it.
I like TR a lot but it is not worth a $15/month subscription or $10. It may be worth $5 for a while.
If they had gone for Guildwars style pricing they would have a huge hit.
Anarchy Online, in spite of its dated graphics, offers much more fun for free.
ps. They've extended the beta to the end of October.
This is pretty much standard practices for all "beta". While some preorder offers let you in earlier and keep your characters they're not called beta.
As for the rest... Yep no surprise. Saw all that during beta.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
LOTRO is the only exception to this that I know of, and it was done well enough that it would be nifty to see others copycat the idea.
Looks like I picked a good day to be too busy to read Twitter. So much bitching, you'd think people forgot how to use the back button -- Certis
The latest Zero Punctuation takes a stab or twelve at Tabula Rasa.
I didn't try the beta. I guess I'm not missing too much. However this is the first Zero Punctuation where Yahtzee really seems to be going after the game. Normally it's a light-hearted bitter review, this one had an edge that was more like "genuinely bitter".
I've still never paid for a subscription-fee MMO, and I can't see this one breaking me from the current reviews.
MrDeVil909: I feel it necessary to point out that there are drug resistant strains of most STDs. Especially in developing nations.
Funkenpants: Great. Yet another area in which we're losing our lead to foreigners.
I might agree, but I sort of feel the same way he does about MMOs. I still like the Ultima classics though.
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
Having played TR, yea, I can agree with that. I like MMOs. TR isn't horrible. It's a nice break from the standard fantasy stuff, but if you hate MMOs, you're going to hate TR, plain and simple. It might not be too bad if it sported a Hellgate London pay if you want to plan, but it doesn't, and at $15 a month, is retarded overpriced. It's honestly like being forced to pay for Hellgate: London meets Guild Wars, in a way.
Coldstream wrote:
With the same sized landscape as GW with 1/10th the content. (quests, monsters, items) And I'm being kind with the 1/10th.
TR is totally dead in the water with HG:L just around the corner. HG:L = more, better and better implemented. In fact, I wouldn't mind if HG:L expanded the Persistent State areas to include adventuring/combat areas. (not at the expense of instances, however)
They could totally do it with the hell portals. Make a large, persistent part of Hell for large scale battles. (like the frontiers of daoc sans pvp)
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
It is so hard to know about these things until you play the games yourself - for example here I've heard exactly the opposite, the impression of Hellgate I've heard have been mostly unfavorable. Who knows?
I'm definitely not sick of MMO's and have been looking for a replacement for WoW since I quit about a month ago. Tried the EQII Play the Fae trial ... giant yawn. Tried LOTRO again since I last played in beta on my old machine .. sure it looks prettier on my new rig but I find the gameplay just so coma-inducing. I'm also in a certain beta for an anticipated MMORPG that is still under NDA and frankly it sucks too. None of these games had that hook that made we want to keep playing a half hour after I started. WoW was the last game that made me feel hooked right away (and City of Heroes before that).
For me, TR definitely has that hook. I like the combat system - while I would prefer a pure FPS MMORPG I long ago knew TR would not be like that. The system in place is a lot of fun for what it is though, compared to other MMORPG combat. It feels more interactive, and even the newbie weapons feel and sound powerful. And frankly it's a great change of pace to be using weapons instead of swords and spells. I like the graphics, I'm running them pretty much maxed out and they are detailed and colorful - while environments don't totally blow me away, the character models look sharp, detailed, and varied.
Now I will admit right away that I didn't get to the level that some folks here did who are dismissing the game as crap - I only reached level 5 as of tonight. But I'm not one to play a game that is boring to begin with and promises fun later - if a game can offer me a fun, engaging experience right out of the gate, that is my main requirement, and TR shines here where most MMORPGs fail.
XBox Live GamerTag: Boot Stackhead
I think you may have been playing a different game than me but i'll just chalk it up to personal taste. I couldn't disagree more on each thing you've said about TR. I found it be just plain horrible. I know some people have found at least a few redeeming qualities in the game but i just didn't see them. In the past with some even buggier games like AO i had quite a bit more fun because the concept and design was there.
I've given the game about 4 hours so far in beta and I've really not enjoyed anything I've seen up to this point. I'm using this term when reviewing games more and more lately, but it just seems so cynical in its design.
I'm hoping the latest update will remedy some of the personal gripes I had with the game as it was, but, picking through the release notes, nothing jumps out at me as being the revolution this game currently needs.
Remember, kids: ‘videogame’ is one word.
My biggest complaint that made me decided not to pick it up was content. They just dont have it. There's no point in spending the money or the time just to hit a brick wall in a couple of months.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr