Pirates of the Loading Screen

Pirates of the Burning Sea is now in beta and they are temporarily giving beta access to people who sign up for a stress test. Now, this is a STRESS test, which is when they put on more people than they can possibly handle in order to see when their servers topple over. That means you will most likely end up staring at loading screens, lag, and slideshow gameplay. But if you have been eagerly awaiting this game, this is YOUR chance to experience a very laggy facsimile of it.

The beta is available on Fileplanet, and its available to everyone, even non-subscribers. So save your $7 a month and download now.

Tabula Rasa Open Beta

The Tabula Rasa open beta is now available on FilePlanet for those who are interested. I had been in the beta prior to this so I will be skipping this beta (and release out).

My mini-review of Tabula Rasa: it is World of Warcraft with guns. Its got some interesting twists on game play; combat is more real-time instead of auto-attack, and incorporates some strategic elements such as taking cover and crouching into the dice rolls. Spawning is more interesting as the monsters come out of dropships instead of simply appearing out of thin air. But once you got past that, it isn't that much of a step forward at all.

The core part of the game play is the same old. Run here, fetch this, click on, shoot these things along the way. Having invested as much time as I have into one loot-centric grind-fest (EverQuest II), the innovations in Tabula Rasa are simply not compelling enough to make me switch.