Tabula Rasa

"when brilliance is not noticed"

Too often in today's world do things go unnoticed. This is one of those things.

The game Tabula Rasa is an MMO/FPS hybrid. It is able to accomplish this by takeing the best of both worlds. Without any more delay, let's jump into the review.

Story - The time picks up at a point that seems to be modern. Earth is attacked by aliens and useing alien technology built in secert some humans are able to teleport away.

It picks up later after humans have met other aliens and joined up to defeat the main bad guys: the Thrax. Some people from each species are called 'respectives' and are able to gain knowledge from things alled 'logos' left behind by a nearly extinct alien race that possessed knowledge of how to make matter into energy with their mind. These logos are basiclly signs that allow people who know what they are to do things like shoot lighting or run faster, etc.

You are a human who is one of these respectives, and you have to help defeat the Thrax forces.

Gameplay - The greatest aspect of this game. No other MMO has done combat as well as this one has. Something to note is if you read the backstory, there was much care taken to make this game seem as realistic as possible (they attribute the Eloh (extinct aliens) ability to turn matter into energy is because they were able to solve numerous unsolved equations here on earth)

Movement in this game is quick. You do everything that you logically do in shooters (walk, run, strafe, jump), but the only thing bad here is that jumping at first feels a little wierd, like its too high and the physics dont work out right. You quickly ignore it, and it becomes a very well designed jump, its responsive and fast.

Fighting is simply fun, there is no other way to put it. You have a targeting sight like in any other FPS. You aim it at a target and whatever its over, the stats will appear around it (Health and Armor, distence from you to it). You pull the trigger and you start shooting. This is all it is on a basic level.

Beyond this there is a lot going on. Damage is determined by two things, your distence to them in respect to your weapons optimal distence, and the size of your targetting sight. Every weapon has a optimal range, and as long as you are underneath it (you are 20 meters away and the optima range is ten meters) you have the potential of doing full damage.

The cross hairs though determine damage more so. When you go to aim at something, your sight is a certian size depending on what your doing. When you are running around and jumping, the sight is huge, when you aim at something you will not be doing full damage unless you are very close. if you slow down and aim longer, the sights begin to shrink, which causes you to do more damage. The longer you aim the smaller the sights become, and thus more damage. A lot of guns wont ever shrink all the way down unless you are kneeling. When you are kneeling the sights shrink very fast and will close all the way to a point. It is a brilliant system that helps keep things more realistic.

There is also a very well done cover system that I feel is getting no attention. In this game if something is shooting at you, you have to take cover. This is true in many games, but in this game it is pivitol and makes things like sand bags and trees and cover actually matter more then for just eye candy. It works simply, the percentege of your body that is covered with cover is the percent of damage that is reduced. That is to say, if you are half way covered, you will be takeing 50% damage.

These two things make it so that it is beneficial to stop, get low, and take cover while you shoot at something, as opposed to other games where doing this is likely to get you killed.

Leveling in this game is simple, kill enemies, do missions, get exp, level up. With each level comes a few attribute points to spend on your three attributes (Body: increase health and power, Mind: increase power and regeneration, Will: increase regeneration and something else) It is pretty well designed and hard to screw up your stats.

Along with the attribute points comes skill points, which you use to put along your skills. You gain two per level of exp. When you use them, the cost ofa skill increases by one for each of its 5 levels. Say, you wanted the skill rage, so you get its level 1. it cost 1 skill points. now to level it up to level 2, it cost 2 skill points, and for level 3, 3 skill points, so on and so forth. This lets you decide if you want to spread out and get a bunch of low level skills or to get a few high ones.

These skills often need logos to activate them, so you would need to find the logos of power for Lighting arc, or the logos of command, logos of will, logos of whatever to activate the Traitor ability. It works well within the context of the game, as it makes sense story wise and gameplay wise.


The class selection is backwards of most MMO's, and is done beautifully. Everyone starts out as a recruit, but at level 5 (something able to be attained within a few hours) they have to decide if they want to be a soilder or a specialist, one being heavy armor and machineguns, the other being quicker and with more logos powered abilities. The diffrences are there, but not too drastic. At level 15 they have to decide once more into which class they way to break into, the soilder into a commando (heavier armor, more damaging weapons) or a ranger (stealth, cloak and dagger type stuff) and the specilist has to decide between a sapper (explosives) or biotechnician (healer). As you can see the jobs become for specilized, and you start to form your paticular class. Finnally at level 30 you chose yor class, rangeing from medic to spy to sniper to Guardian, each one haveing a paticular role on the battlefield.

The world is a truely living beathing world. Predetors are attacking prey, sometimes also attacking thrax. The most incredble thing is the way Thrax react to your presence. They are often having drop ships deploy troops near an outpost to try and overpower it. With the help of players ofcourse the thrax are repelled. Though, not always are players successful, and outpost are often lost to the Thrax, only to be reclaimed later by players. It is truley spectacular to watch these fights happend, as they can be between a hundred Thrax with equal amounts of humans. They are hectic and awesome, where you can just as easily be blasted as the next guy, akin to star wars battlefront. It is an amazing feeling doing things that have direct impacts on the battle, and make you feel like a real hero fighting for a cause.

Something I want to stress is the lack of grinds found in every other MMO. In other MMO's it is often played by killing the same thing over and over, but in this game it is much more dynamic and never feels old or stale as you run from cover to cover, gunning down enemies, throwing lightning or grenades, or just punching them right in the kisser. This game maneged to not have any of those things that are in MMOs to just make you play longer, and it entirely though out and fun.

Graphics/Sound -The graphics on this game are decent. They arent Crysis level, but they definitly arent as bad as some other games (Looking at you World of Warcraft.) The atomsphere is well done and you feel pretty good. The sound is not bad, the guns all sound like they should, and nothing is annoying. The music is the only downside, it isnt as well as some would think, but occasionally it fits perfectly (heavy metal).


Play Time/Replayability - If you really enjoy the feeling of this game, then you will be playing it for a long time. If not, you will know in he first few minutes.

Final Recommendation - I recommand this game to anybody who is tired of the same old slow, skill less, and thoughtless MMO's out there. It is fun, fast, and fresh. It is still so new its wet from its egg shell, so there are problems that exist in every new MMO (lack of end content, and bugs) but those are all ironed out in time, and in this case may be done faster then some of the other msot popular MMO's (Such as WoW or FFXI).

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/08

Game Release: Tabula Rasa (US, 10/30/07)