I approve of this whole weekly thing.

Man! I turned off iTunes just before you posted this last night.

Guess I'll have to wait until the post-lunch doldrums.

I'm glad you did it before I did. I wouldn't have been as tactful

Re: ColumbineRPG

I, too, am pretty done reliving high school angst.

But I'd say it looks more SNES than NES.

Why is it that you feel compelled to divide shooters along perspective lines? Does a different camera angle actually change the genre?

I don't want to get all 'genre theory' on you guys, but I think there's more to genres than point of view.

And really, how many RPGs does your character actually change? I mean, granted that your stats change, but is the character's personality -- its homunculus, if you will -- ever really that different?

There's a question of if the player is that homunculus or if there's some sort of safety stage in between, but how many games really are that dynamic?

Thinking of the KotORs and Fable, there never seemed to be a spot where the character was faced with looking back at who s/he was before and seeing a different person. Any nostalgia or regret seems to be entirely in the player, and gaming culture certainly does encourage the "load saved game to achieve preferable outcome" strategy.

I think my least favorite thing about Fable was the eyes. I appreciated that the character aged (too fast, IMO), but it drove me nuts that his eyes always looked so young and naive. They were always these bright, shiny things, even after making decisions like "do I kill my sister?" Didn't phase him, even if it phased me. What I really wanted was to, at some point, turn the camera to see his face and see a man who'd seen the world -- a man whose soul was tired.

But then if the character's soul is the player, then that's what Bawls is for.

Anybody else have a copy of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism? Wanna go through it with me and apply all the fields to game criticism?

Lit nerd allies: S&T?

How could you not? They become part of you, part of your homunculi, part of your personal zeitgeist, your (flipping through pages... flipping) things you go and get when you need a point!

I think we need a better discussion on the merging of genres though. You guys got to it in a way, but didn't wrestle it to the mat of meaning. Perhaps there is a grid of sorts, x and y for FPSed'ness or RPGed'ness and a game falls in a certain point in that gamespace. New thread? I'm too lazy tonight.

Smythe, I had the same friggin problem.

I would just label some games with more parts of x than y. Oblivion is equal parts RPG and First Person Fighter than FPS.

Battlefield is more standard FPS with touches of free roaming, 3rd person arcade (planes/tanks), first person arcade (planes/tanks). Granted the only way to kill enemies with vehicles is in first person since third person has no cross hairs.

It's just easier to say Game X has touches of genres x, y, z than to just peg it to a certain genre.

I still think I'd rather go with genres like "strategy," "action" (includes shooters as subgenre), "parody," etc. I'll wait on more people to elucidate their reasons for dividing based on camera.

I just wanted to mention that Alan Wake is at least one DX10 Vista exclusive that came to my mind during the segment about Vista.

In all honestly, Alan Wake alone might just make me spend the money to upgrade my video card, mainboard etc and OS.

Oh and great job with the 'cast guys, I enjoyed it a lot.

Certis, where does Dark Messiah of Might & Magic fall in the RPS vs RPG divide? I know you just finished this game and you mention it, but....

Also, very weird: WinAmp says the show is 40:26 but plays it well beyond that.

In Gears if you hold the left trigger down it is still third person. I'm digging the Conference Call doohickey on the left.

Planetside/Neocron has already been done right, almost five years back not ahead. Endless Ages.