Hell Kitty

If anything is killing gaming, it's popularity. Not that I believe gaming is being killed, people have been whinging about that for ages. Same as people whinging about tv and movies and whatever else. Anyway, the best developers make great games despite the limitations imposed upon them. The whiners make ****.

I occasionally replay old C64 and Amiga games, and I don't understand when people talk about games today being "dumbed down". Games today feel just as simple or complex as games from 15 years ago (when I discovered the joys of gaming), and I feel the problem is not that games are getting "dumber", it's that while sound and graphics and such are much improved from many years ago, gameplay hasn't changed so much.

Silent Storm (+ Sentinels) is fabulicious. Sadly there was never that much in the way of mods.

I think MS are planning to release Halo 3 on the same day as the release of the PS3.

HL2 does have cutscenes, it's just that in those cutscenes YOU get to play the cameraman. WOW! I didn't have a problem with the story, but I didn't like that Gordon Freeman was just everyone's bitch. He's the Doom marine with a different name.

The screenshots I have from April all feature the Metronome logo from the website, but one shot has a "Rent a Metrognome" sign, so I kinda wondered if one was a typo that stuck.

No, it's Metronome. http://www.tarsier.se/metronome/

That would kill the internet. Or at least turn it into a porn archive.

Games I'll buy any day now: F.E.A.R. Fahrenheit Oblivion Games I'll probably buy no matter what, even without knowing much about them, 'cause I just can't help myself: Call of Cthulhu Condemned Bioshock Resident Evil 5 Metal Gear Solid 4 SoulCalibur 3 S.T.A.L.K.E.R (although at this point it probably belongs in the next list...) Games I want to know more about first: NWN 2 Spartan Kuon Metronome The Witcher Titan Quest and many more!

Midwinter 2 Flames of Freedom http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=722 One of my all time favourites.

The dragon doesn't do much for me (though it is nice), but I'm impressed with the other screenshots due to the lack of colourful cartoonishness of the original.

The in-game cutscenes in MGS3: Snake Eater are better than most (if not all) FMV cutscenes I've ever scene. Did you ever play Haunting Ground? The in-game cutscenes are much better than the FMV. The FMV wasn't bad, just... odd. This served only to distract.

I remember the time I was playing a game of UT2003, and I jumped of a large tower, and the horrible sinking feeling I felt in my stomach as the ground came closer. Urgh. Or playing Bloodlines, thinking I cleaned the sewers of all those tzimisce beasties, then one jumped over my shoulder and scared the baby jesus out of me. Or the first time I turned a corner in Thief and came face to face with a Hammer Haunt, nearly falling of out my chair... This is what I think immersion is, when the mind and body forget, if only for a moment, that we are just playing a game. When the player reacts in the real world in the same way they might in the virtual world. First-person is better for such things as when playing it is both the character and the player experiencing the event. The character is falling and the player feels as though they are falling, etc. In an isometric (or bird's eye or top-down or whatever) view, the player isn't experiencing it themselves, they are whating someone else (the character) experience it. Of course what one may find immersive another may not. A first person perspective may be all it takes for one player to be immersed, while another might find the lack of peripheral vision or the hud or the lack of a body or whatever craziness they could come up with to be immersion killers. In the end there is no one "true" perspective for RPGs. I love turn-based combat like that in Jagged Alliance 2 or Silent Storm, and for such combat only iso wil do, whereas exploration of the environment is much more interesting in a first-person perspective.

Hell Eldar Eldar Kitty I remember when you went by Cantousent. I cried myself to sleep everynight that you used that name.

This is what I want from a roleplaying game. This is what I expect when I buy a game that is labelled as Genre: RPG.

I really like Rise of Nations ( the only RTS other the Age of series I enjoy), but if you don't like the Age of series you won't like RoN.

Not really. My point is that, why can't people accept the industry definition? It works and clearly seperates the genre from other genres. Instead, when people say "This is an RPG", then tend to mean "This is what I prefer in an RPG".

I'm using the criteria the industry uses - statistics. It the game revolves around building up your character/s skills and statistics and using them to solve problems in the gameworld, then it's marketed as an RPG. If combat is the only way to solve problems then it's an action-RPG hybrid (unless it's tactical combat, tactical-RPGs tend to be referred to . If character stats and skills play only a small role then it's RPG elements. Any game where the characters skills and statistics remain static thorughout is not an RPG. It's all well and good to say "a game that allows me to affect the gameworld in meaningful ways" or some such, but that's about as useful as "any game in which you play a role". Personally I think we should leave genre labels up to marketing, afterall, I game doesn't become more or less enjoyable because a different word is written on the box (unless you're Hades, perhaps). Unfortunately, people will still complain that "They marketed this game as an RPG but it's not because it doesn't allow me to make a 7 character party of gnome ninjas therefore they lied I want me money back plz."

If you didn't like the originals it's unlikely you'll like this new one. Sure, they could abandon what came before and model the new game on others in the genre, game that you like, but that would be stupid.

No one can agree on a definition of a "true" RPG. I'm sure people could come up with a simple definition, but they insist on complecating matters with their own personal preferences (or sometimes, just plain nonsense Of course not. The fact that people narrow the defintion to suit their own tastes doesn't mean the definition should be broadened to include everything. Actually, just was does the "more of a true RPG" in the thread title mean, anyway? I would have thought a "true" RPG is a game that can only be classified as an RPG, as opposed to a hybrid title or as having RPG elements. In that case neither game applies. Diablo is an action-RPG and GTA:SA is an action adventure with RPG elements.

The genre label "RPG" is a different beast to "role-playing". People spend far too much time fussing about genre. In the industry RPGs tend to come down to statistics. If the gameplay centers around earning experience in some form and using it to build up stats and skills, then it's considered an RPG. If the stats play a much smaller role, then they are marketed as "RPG elements". Gamers value different things in RPGs, for example I've heard many people say that if it doesn't allow you to make your own character then it's not an RPG. Stuff like that always seems like silly elitist nonsense to me. While I personally prefer being able to create my own character, I'm not so arrogant to claim my preferences are the right ones, and that's exactly what people do - they get their knickers in a knot because a particular game is marketed as an RPG when OMG it doesn't contain x therefore it's not an RPG!!!!!11 If an RPG doesn't contain x, y and z, it might mean I would enjoy it less, but it doesn't mean it's not an RPG.

Resident Evil 4 The Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth F.E.A.R. S.t.a.l.k.e.r. Fahrenheit The Witcher Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Knights of the Old Republic 2 SWAT 4 Bio-shock Also Cold Fear and Haunting Ground coz I luvs me my survival horror, even though I don't know much about them.

I remember in the original GTA, one of the first missions pointed out that you could solve missions in different ways, and congratulates you when you kill the guy you just made a deal with to get your money back. That was the only mission is the entire series that offered and alternate solution. Whenever I tried anything else it usually ends in failure. Anyway, I'm happy calling Diablo an action/RPG and GTA:SA an action/adventure. GTA:SA has much, much more of what I would look for in a perfect RPG than Diablo, but it's also lacking a lot and it's parts are rather simplified.

They just liike like ordinary vanilla Star Destroyers with bits stuck on the side. Where are those ships from? A PC game?

Really? It sure get's my juices flowin'. Oh baby!