The MMO shooter market isn't nearly as saturated with games as the MMORPG market. NCSoft is hoping to tap into this niche with Tabula Rasa, a MMORPG with shooting elements.

I was lucky enough to get to partake in a guided tour of the game, and I felt very at ease with the controls at the game world. I ran around shooting bad guys and completing quests to my heart's content. If you are a MMORPG junky and you prefer fast paced gameplay (that's typical of any shooter), you should be on the lookout for Tabula Rasa.

The story of the game seems to revolve around a huge conflict, with the last vestiges of Humanity and a handful of alien races squaring off against a Borg-like enemy. Your quests will likely involve helping the war effort, delivering information, escorting VIPs, and blowing the enemy straight to hell, as they rightfully deserve. Like many other MMORPGs, the story should probably be almost completely ignored, and serves more as a vehicle to rationalize gameplay events rather than provide an engrossing plot for players to take part in. Of course, I only played a few minutes of the game, and didn't start from the beginning, but if my experience with other MMORPGs holds true, this is not anything new. After all, does any casual World of Warcraft player like myself actually have any idea what in the hell is going on in the game world?

The game plays a bit like a faster version of World of Warcraft, and certainly has a lot more going on at each individual moment. Even though I wasn't in a party, the combat involved a lot more people than just myself. As I ran through an empty canyon, a scripted event occurred in which an enemy drop ship arrived to deliver a few troops. This certainly kept me on my toes, and there wasn't really a dull moment throughout the game. In addition to enemy soldiers arriving by air, friendly NPCs would show up as well, to help with the fight. This helped contribute to a really chaotic, war-like atmosphere. Artillery shells would land, more troops would arrive and I would watch my own allies work with me to take down large targets.

The game itself isn't really a true shooter. Once you aim at the enemy, the game will lock on for you, allowing you to move around while mashing down the fire button, and each shot homing in on an enemy. I can't really make up my mind as to if this is a good thing or not, it certainly removes some of the skill that a first-person shooter requires, but at the same time, makes it a lot easier to fight, not having to worry about missing and wasting ammunition.

In addition to a very wide variety of firearms, players will also have the opportunity to utilize magical abilities to defeat their opponents. This provides a lot of diversity in combat, and the range of special abilities seemed to encompass a huge range of different powers. My favorite was the plasma turrets I kept placing, which helped supplement my own firepower.

Death wasn't much of a problem either. When I died, and I died a few times, I could either choose to go to the hospital (located at the entrance to the instance I was in) or I could simply wait until someone came around to heal me. I'm not sure if there are any sort of restrictions as to who can heal and who can't, but it seems that anyone that wanted to would be able to. I did not see any PvP in the game, therefore I assume that almost anyone will be able to help you, and you will be encouraged to help all of your allies in this grand war.

Tabula Rasa looks good, the loading times were minimal, and I only had to load when I went into an instance. The game world is huge and expansive, and in conjunction with the chaotic, war-like feeling of combat, it makes the player feel like they are taking part in something much larger than themselves. The enemies were pretty varied as well, while I only got to see a very small percentage of the game, I did get to see a handful of different enemies, from a few different kinds of simple alien infantry, to a gigantic, walking behemoth, the size of a goddamn mountain.

There is still a lot of work to be done on the game, but from my brief conversation with the guy showing me the game, a lot of progress has been made as well. While no release date has been set, I wouldn't be surprised if this one comes shortly.

-- Uros '2Lions' Jojic

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He looks really nasty!

	Sword Fight	[mail] Sep 03 2009, 12:00 am EDT
	Reply Aw, I was excited over this one for a while. But they messed up the shooter part like they did with Auto Assault. /cry