Purkake

What makes you disagree, exactly? I'm saying that Painkiller(just an example) is not a "better" experience than Doom, it's a different one. I don't eat an apple when I want an orange, or even a tangerine, to make a better comparison.

It really feels like they had the slightest outline for the trilogy ready and got stumped when they actually had to stretch the overarching plot out over three games. In other, unrelated, news...

The bullets dropped like rocks in the first game, it was pretty disheartening to have to snipe dudes with a damn arc at less than a hundred meters. I think they fixed it by Clear Sky.

I strongly disagree, but I guess it's an opinion, so we can agree to disagree.

Hmm, I guess Call of Pripyat changed a lot of things then. I remember running out of ammo fighting some of the power-armored dudes back in SoC. I hear it's really short, though.

So playing Painkiller is exactly the same as playing Doom? I don't play Doom because I want to play an FPS, I play it because I want to play Doom, a unique(well along with Heretic and Doom 2) experience. Games do not automatically replace each other when a newer one comes out in the same genre(or sub-genre). Well, except for all the sports games with a year in the name.

Doom is a completely different game from any modern shooter. It's a completely different experience. Just like playing Company of Heroes isn't anything like playing Red Alert 1. Why can't they coexist like Torment and Mask of the Betrayer? You don't play MotB because it has replaced Torment.

Well, it's true and really annoyed me in Clear Sky, maybe they changed it back in CoP. The whole shooting thing feels really weird in Stalker, actually. People or creatures don't really react to being shot(as in flinching) and everything take a ton of bullets to die.

They made them invincible when invisible.

Kane's plots never finish. He's "died" like four times now? The engineer rush is too true and the AI keeps doing it constantly in some missions.

They screwed up the Bloodsuckers in Clear Sky, and presumably still in Call of Pripyat.

For me, it's as sucky as it was when I first played it, which isn't all that sucky. I guess I've always been a jaded cynic...

That doesn't make the old games any worse or replace them. That's like not being able to play Doom anymore because Modern Warfare 2 exists.

Why would playing it be any different from playing Fallout or Baldur's Gate? I still play Red Alert 1 every now and then.

They actually discussed the genetic thing during Mordin's loyalty quest. Apparently humans have "a much larger genetic range/variability" than the other races, which is awesome for some reason. @Boo: Thanks, I'm vindicated and you got one over Volo. Win-win.

Yeah that was pretty good. Newest in the fight against terrorism

So do you think RPG as a label has lost it's meaning? Should we be using some other term to describe them because of the mixing and matching of elements from different genres?

@Boo: I'm sure most of you have seen and/or played a JRPG and something Diablo-like at least once. It would be great to have a wide variety of views, but I have to work with what I've got. As I said in the disclaimer, I'm not trying to establish an universal truth, I'm just getting people's opinions and having a general discussion about RPGs. You're welcome to add your opinion.

I mean the "don't become a god" option in addition to becoming a good god or a bad god.

Rebirth? QTEs haven't gone anywhere. And for what it's worth, Heavy Rain has a metacritic score of 90 with 41 reviews.

Neither are most other genre's traits. I'm just trying to see if there is a single trait or a combination of traits that is present in every RPG, we might very well conclude that "RPG" is an outdated term and has no meaning in today's market. Finding that out is the point of this thread.

Can anyone think of an RPG without a main character or with multiple main characters(in the same playthrough)? I guess an RPG without a story would be a roguelike.

Ok, so far we have C&C, customization(stats), a story and a main character.

I can't wait for a game to actually have a decent "neutral" path instead of being goody two-shoes or senior super-douche. The only one I can think of was Throne of Bhaal.