ltima creator Richard Garriot and the team at Destination Games have delivered a product that easily stands on its own legs as a breath of fresh air in the massively multiplayer space. Pacing combat more like Unreal than EverQuest while retaining the constant rewards and depth of an MMO is no small task, but Tabula Rasa manages it well. This title won’t rock anyone’s face off in a post-World of Warcraft world, but it’s more than worth a look for players uninterested in or tired of the genre’s staid traditions.

The fast-paced gunplay that makes up the core of the Tabula Rasa experience is the game’s greatest strength. It’s flat-out fun to figure out the best way to attack a situation with the various firearms and abilities at your disposal. Things get vastly deeper at higher levels, but even the early game presents players with fun options. Shotguns allow great mobility and are fantastic for groups of enemies, while pistols pack a surprising punch against single foes and rifles allow a much greater engagement distance. Mix in different damage types (you won’t get far using physical damage against the heavily armored Kael, for instance) and the vast diversity of abilities from the various classes and you’ve got combat as good as any.

Tabula Rasa’s other great achievement is in making the gameworld feel alive. With few exceptions, enemies never stand around waiting to be killed – hostile troops land in squads from dropships to assault human positions, and creatures attack players who come too close to their nest. Control points will fall to the malefic Bane if players don’t help to defend them against the assault, leaving that area’s quests and NPCs unavailable until the point is retaken. It’s rare to feel like you’re “grinding” or otherwise fighting enemies just for loot and XP. The vast majority of my playtime was spent exploring, defending, assaulting, or rescuing – battles were just an enjoyable diversion along the way.

A few things keep Tabula Rasa from achieving MMO top billing. Enemy AI sometimes breaks, with monsters failing to fight back for no discernable reason. Targeting seems to bug out for no good reason occasionally, making you re-acquire a locked target mid-battle. Crafting is mostly lame; our experience didn’t reveal anything worth spending the skill points on. Breaking up zones into shards (finding your group can be a right pain until you realize they’re all in “Wilderness 2” while you’re in “Wilderness 5”) destroys the continuity of the persistent world. The lack of meaningful PvP is a total head-scratcher, since the control point mechanic and hectic firefights seem so well-suited to fighting other players. Finally, large-scale fights are too chaotic to be engaging; you’re often better off just spamming some variety of area-effect attack than trying to make sense of the carnage. Peripheral elements like inventory management, re-specialization, and social tools are all handled reasonably well, though.

Tabula Rasa largely achieves what it sets out to do, and will no doubt be worth the monthly fee for a non-trivial number of gamers. Should you cancel your WoW sub and pick it up? Perhaps not, but blowing away aliens with a laser chaingun sure beats the pants off of farming old content that got stale months ago.