Tabula Rasa Review
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The game's major departure from expectation is in presenting itself as a kind of MMO/shooter hybrid. It looks an awful lot like one, but that isn't entirely the case. You're running around with guns, sure -- but success has little to do with aiming or reflexes and everything to do with equipment and die rolls. That doesn't disappoint, either: We get a fantastic simulation of an action-oriented ray gun firefight. If you squint a bit, the presentation might almost convince you that the combat shares more in common with Gears of War than with EverQuest.
Call it a healthy sense of battlefield chaos: You're not left with a bunch of mobs standing around at their spawn points looking bored until they dumbly rush anyone that walks into aggro range. Instead, you get blasted terrain, into which alien dropships teleport squads of grunts -- who immediately start picking fights with players and NPCs while mortar bombardments occasionally send groups of combatants flying. I can't overstate how viscerally satisfying it is to run, dive, crouch behind cover, and pump shotgun rounds into throngs of aliens. The combat -- and its success in fostering the illusion of run-and-gun action within the framework of an RPG -- is easily TR's strongest point, and it's the kind of thing that's never been executed this well or this completely in an MMO. In its guts, TR's still far more of an RPG than an action game...but it can pass for the latter if you want it to.
