I’ve been rotating through these three games lately (aside from the occasional Wii game). For those of you who have been living in a box, the acronyms stand for Dungeon Runners, Tabula Rasa, and Hellgate London. (Hellgate is the only one that doesn’t naturally want to become a two-letter acronym. “HL” just sounds wrong. But I wouldn’t stop playing it just because of that.) None of them seems strong enough to take a full-time hold on me, but none is weak enough to get bumped out. And now, I ask myself “why?”
Oh sure, they all feed the same addiction. They’re very similar in a lot of ways, but then most modern MMOs are. And if they’re so similar, why don’t I just pick a game and play it?
They’re all third-person, even though the aiming mechanisms are different. But, I’ve played so many games at this point that I hardly notice the difference between FPS, tab-to-aim, click-to-move–it’s all the same to me. They all feature some sort of grind, quests, stories, and weapon drops. The biggest difference, I think, is in the feel and appearance of the game world. TR has big, believable worlds, while both Hellgate and DR feature repetitive, autogenerated, instanced levels.
TR’s shared world is impressive and cool, which would be great if I liked people. But a lot of days I want to solo some instanced zones, quietly, by myself. Away from annoying people. People! Aaargh! Sorry. To its credit, TR does a good job of loot distribution, but after a day of work and even a few minutes in traffic, to log in and have your first kill of the day casually whacked out from under you just isn’t fun. (Insert discussion of how instanced worlds combine the social nature of an MMO with the relaxation of a single-player game here…)
Speaking of loot… These games are third-person, so you spend a lot of time staring at your own butt. This gives you a lot of time to contemplate your armor, and makes the importance of cool drops important. When am I going to get rid of these ugly pants! And so on. In Hellgate, I’m up to level 20, and I still think my clothes are pretty dull. But, then, it’s the apocalypse. TR doesn’t really focus on cool clothes, but the abundance of dye accommodates total fashion madness. DR, however, is the clear fashion winner–even though everybody looks the same, the armor options are “just wrong”, and the weapons are ludicrous.
Visuals aside, they play pretty much the same. Choose appropriate weapon (power, etc), hit enemies till they die, maybe run away if you start to get hurt. Collect drops. Manage inventory. Turn in quests. Taunt noobs on global chat. All that good stuff. All three allow melee combat with hand-held weapons, ranged weapons, and powers. DR is short on “hard” MMO features like pets and crafting, but that doesn’t change the core gameplay. Where they differ is in their strengths, not so much in the area of play style or game design, but in developer talent and inspiration:
Hellgate is a well-balanced game, with moderately interesting weapon upgrade possiblities, almost (but not quite) enough cool drops, exciting-but-not-stressful combat, and tongue-in-cheek storylines. It’s good all around. Primary weakness: has some very annoying bugs. [update: and I later discovered the minor issue that it was never finished]
Tabula Rasa is so amazingly polished and nice looking, that it’s unimpressive–but when you start running around the world and fighting things, it becomes interesting. The quests are dead serious, with any humor slipped in deadpan. The intense combat makes it great for an action fix and running instances with teams, but it’s short on the social-fun side. Therefore, you can play a female without getting constantly harassed, but the down side is that your clothes are not fun.
And then there’s Dungeon Runners. I’d play the entire game just to read the quest descriptions. Too funny! It’s… simple, shallow, and fun. The recent update made the entire game more difficult, and it’s definitely less fun when you have to work for it. I really play it for the storyline. If the game forces me to group in order to level, I will drop my subscription, and then the whole issue will be settled. It’s not that good.
So, in the final analysis, I love TR, but it’s so serious that I need another game when I want to chill and have fun. DR may lose that spot, as the recent patches threaten to downgrade it from a romp to a grind.
Or maybe I just need warhammer.
