Tabula Rasa...its a single player RPG

ok so before i start, my only experience with mmo's is world of warcraft which i played for 3 months straight in 2005 then gave up, and 3 days or so of the Lord of the Rings beta. also i am a lover of single player games, especially in rpgs, and nearly never play any multiplayer feature. world of warcraft was fun and addicting, but the quests were lame, amongst the normal fallacys of an online/multiplayer game. the only reason i played was to experience the actual world and its backstory from playing every prior blizzard game, plus i liked playing as a shaman and later druid which few rpgs have at all. i was able to solo most of the time, but the instances no way.

i picked up a number of games a few weeks from a ebay seller for around $5 a piece and free shipping. tabula rasa collectors edition was unopened and $8. i started it with some hesitation on my old rig a day before i recieved my new parts to build my current last week. i figured i could say i tried it out, look at the art book, the medallion a somewhat cheap reminder of the shiny avatar ones of my childhood memories.

however, after putting close to 30 hours in and hitting level 20 over the past week i have almost soley great things to say about it.

1)i have gone 'solo' the whole time and while the latest instance ive tried has given me grief, its still fun to have a whole 'dungeon' level to yourself to tackle at your own pace, though the one i am doing does have a timed quest which i missed completely by 5 seconds.

2)the world is beautiful. it ran on my old rig fine, but it is stunning and smooth on my new one. everything has a great non cartoony sci fi feel to it. the 'dungeons' so far have all seemed totally unique.

3)questing has some standard ones, but the writing is good and most importantly there are quests with morality based decisions. yes you read that correctly. many non online games lack these but this game has had a handful so far. on the first area which for me lvl1-15, there was a multi part quest that had you tracking down an alien ally 'conscientous objector' as they call him. you have the choice to bring him back to his 'leader' or let him go to the other area. that was rewardingly awesome for any game. also there was a quest i didn't in that area because it was obvious that a guy wanted you to run drugs for him. another was you had to aquire a vaccine for a plague and then administer it to different field doctors. the doctor stressed the importance but immediately after you recieve it you get a radio message that a lt. commander wants to meet you, and stop everything. i choose to ignore that message and rush the vaccinnes. i failed the mission and still wonder what effects it has. in the 2nd area which i'm about to finish i hestiated doing this many part quest(i later found out) because the quest giver wanted me to recon a downed ship under the radar. after starting the quest it led me into the hq's prison which i hadn't been into before. it involved a bane(the enemy to all in the game) prisoner. had to find him food so they could get further intel from him. the intel led to an ambush. and later it had you tracking down "traitors". these 'traitors' were all human and they all said really thought provoking stuff when you tracked them down. i finished the quest, but having to basically crush whatever resistance they kept referring to has left me intriguing and hoping it hasn't allienated me from a future 'cause' i could fight for.

the game has a great class branching system. also there is cloning available where you can create a copy of your character at whatever stage you are at, a good idea before you pick a good sub class so you don't have to start from scracth to start a new character. also that clone gets to re pick their attributes and skills. in addition you earn 'prestige' through certain acts in the game which can be used to purchase certain items such as one that can reset your skills or attributes.

haven't at all used the auction system (military surplus) and only once used the crafting system. you really find a decent amount of rare items through questing alone.

another thing that really makes this game come alive besides the art and very quality fiting music is the ai. the ai on the ally side can not only help you at times wheter on an escort mission or simply holding an area. the bane also launch attacks on their own and will capture bases if not defended. and vice versa you can help take them back as prestige items can only be 'bought' in these bases as well as some quests can only be gotten and turned in while they are under allied control.

the negatives are few. there are some bugs the most anoying was in one of the 'dungeons' i kept dying but not dying and i would have to log out thus failing the quests. happened 3 times and almost soured me on the game. the 'chatter' on the game is mostly infantile but as this game can be soloed who cares. so unless that matters to you and you are desering other such stuff, guilds etc, maybe this isn't the game for you.

if you like sci-fi, rpgs, richard garriots writing, i would highly recommend this game.

its also on sale at gogamer for $10 presently.
http://www.gogamer.com/Tabula-Rasa-...VproductId21520141VVcatId444758VVviewprod.htm

As it charges monthly fees to play, it will never hold any interest for me. Once I buy a game, I will NOT continue to pay. That's why I don't mind Guild Wars.

I tried it when it launched but the game seemed... rough around the edges. Does it run smoothly now?

I dont know about TR (i still have the CE unopened) but guild wars can truly be mostly a single player game if you want. Problem with other players is that (A) they dont roleplay (B) they dont care about quests. All they wanna do is run max speed towards the quest "target" while killing everything in sight.

I heard wow even has som automated UI programs that make the "running at max speed towards the quest arrow" even easier. Wow with its utterly pointless and lame quests has teached a whole generation of mmo-players that quests should be ignored and used only as a pure source to get xp/item/gold..ultimate min/maxing.

I know even a faster way to level & make gold/loot. Get a real job, work for a day and then use that money to buy top-level character, uber equipment and gold from chinese gold farmers and and you have just accomplished somthing in a single day that usually takes many months (if not years) to reach through grinding work in the game.

Wow players are one of the worst bunch of nerds Ive ever known. They even have their own vocabulary that comes printed with the game. Also they can spend years just talking about stuff like gear and dps. If you search wow thread with the word "no life" you get list full of hits. They know they have no life and proudly claim that too - its like grinding levels / gear is somkind of religious experience like one of those weird japanese machine ballgames.

corwin don't be so quick to dismiss an opportunity. its a large game and if you set a limit on yourself, like me which i plan on playing for 3 months or so with the first month included in the game that comes to a whopping $40. and last time i checked that's still cheaper than most games. a massive world game like this though wouldn't really fit into the 30-60 min game time window some folks are limited to.
and can you really expect to continue to play a game for not paying anything extra when content is continually added down the road, and that cost could not be planed into its box price and if it was you would price out many people who only want to play it for a little while and move on.

korplem the game runs smoothly for me, and from what bits i've read and heard they've tackled alot of issues with the game.

zahkal while i agree with most of what you're saying you must see the irony in saying that wow players should get a 'real' job so they can pay other people whose 'real' job is to play the same game and sell them gold

and how can rag on pachinko!? i remember having some fond memories of playing with a broken one (the lights didn't work) my dad picked up somewhere. not as fun as table pinball, but at least i saved some quarters the handful of times i played it

actually the thing that bugs me most about the online clientel isn't their 'goals' but rather their infantile language, humor(they don't deserve a 'u' as in humour) of your mom and gay jokes, or other biggoted nonsense.

curiously undead said:

zahkal while i agree with most of what you're saying you must see the irony in saying that wow players should get a 'real' job so they can pay other people whose 'real' job is to play the same game and sell them gold

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Well the point is that working in a real job for a day earns you enough money to hire a chinese to work for a month in wow. Its like one hour of rl work is equal to 100 hours of wow work. Great way to save your time for somthing more productive. At first I laughed at people who bought pre-levelled accounts for games like wow but now Im more like awed at how brilliant the idea is.

But I think theres more to it than that. Grinding a character through levels is an addiction. Just like smoking or drinking coffee. The social aspect of MMO just makes the addiction even worse. You get hooked into it and before you know you wasted months doing repetative and pointless tasks. I usually force myself to quit games that I play only for the addiction and not for the fun.

zakhal said:

I usually force myself to quit games that I play only for the addiction and not for the fun.

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And this is the part where I get off and stand by the roadside scratching my bald head thinking to myself: "Huh?".

I'm aware of the addictiveness of games and of MMO's in particular but even though I've given up on having a "normal" life with a wife and children in favor of life of "self entertainment" (No, not like that. Get your dirty thoughts out of the gutter ) and consequently spend a lot more time on games than most my age, I've still not been able to put more than, at most, a couple of hundred hours into any one game before I lose interest/overdose and want to try something else. I may quite possibly get back to it later, but the very concept of playing the same game day in and day out for months or even years is utterly alien to me. If I'm ever going to try an MMO I seriously doubt that I will still be playing it after the initial 30 days free period is over.

Corwin said:

As it charges monthly fees to play, it will never hold any interest for me. Once I buy a game, I will NOT continue to pay. That's why I don't mind Guild Wars.

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Just curious, but would you pay monthly for a game that had no upfront cost?

Not to speak for Corwin, but that's an interesting question. My answer is no, although there's not really a rational reason for it. For that model to work, the user couldn't be given access to the code--it would have to be an online server kinda thing. That would feel too much like renting a game to me, and I like holding my disc a little too much (and what man doesn't ).

I don't mind monthly payments, as long as I play a minimum of one hour per dollar of fee. That's right: My entertainment has a monetary value, and it's one dollar an hour. This is why I rarely see a movie (3.50 to 5 dollars an hour) and grudgingly take my fiance out to dinner (30 to 45 dollars an hour).

On topic, Tabula was alright... but felt like it should have been an offline title. I played for a month and that was that. Now that I have Mass Effect I can get an unlimited amount of lag free alien shooting that I don't feel obligated to load up just to get my money's worth (ME has already paid for itself by the one dollar per hour rule so if I never touched it again, it was worth it).

Hey Xen, how've you been; long time no see. Don't be a stranger!!

Interesting insights ... I really found it decent but bland, Unfortunately it is hard to allow these things to improve over time - especially when paying $15 a month waiting for it to 'unsuck' itself