Good stealth games in general are hard to come by, and good espionage games still more so.

It's a genre thing, plain and simple. You're not meant to get attached to a horse in a post-modern action flick, whereas if you're not attached to your horse, you're not in a Western.

People laugh at South Park because, while it can be vile, it knows what needs to underpin the gags to make them work.

Nope. First use of it I recall was in Fallout: Tactics. Continuous Turn-Based. Good descriptor of what's going on in a game like BG.

Honestly, I was thinking about it recently, and I have to wonder if the A of the ARPG is what sank Alpha Protocol, like they spread themselves too thin over the three "classes" and marred something good.

I think it's less a comment on JE and more a comment on Bioware's success, as if some day they'll send an intern to take one of the sacks of Mass Effect money to the bank and find the plans to JE2 stuck to the bottom.

It's a CTBRPG, not an ARPG.

2. I think that I'm with the consensus here. I'll give 1's combat system a B for effort, but, at the end of the day, the RPG-OTSS hybrid works better if you treat it as an RPG with OTSS segments. It's just more fun. I think 3 will have a new system, but more accurately a refined version of 2's system.

I liked it. A lot, actually. Picked it up in a Steam sale, just got around to finishing it a bit ago. Think Mass Effect, but with better dialog and worse combat. It scores points with be for being set in the modern world, and lacking the sort of turgid backstory that fantasy RPGs are especially prone to. Some of the…

Well, if you'd been there when I was it'd be "D&D? I'm sorry, I'm not 13 anymore. Now, when are you starting that Mage game?" These things, they come and go. D&D right now has a one-two-three punch of 4E, the OSR, and Pathfinder.

GTA 3 is like discovering your favorite band had an album you didn't know about before they were picked up by the major label, even if you'd heard the demo tapes (1-2).

basing their design on old British fighter jets in an attempt at the kind of "future retro" look Fallout 3 got so right. Only, Wing Commander got it wrong.

Minecraft is to Terraria as Shakespeare's Hamlet is to Hamlet with ninjas.

Exact opposite problem. Keep trying to find a stand-alone person to hire, keep getting crap applications.

I hear that iPads have trouble with it as well.

@GrimeyRyder: My theory is that people, more or less, forgot that sci-fi RPGs existed...and to a lesser extent that there were western RPGs...leading to it making a much bigger splash than it might have otherwise.

@MetalZombie: From the about section on the site:

@Yankton: City of Heroes - during a TaskForce (Citadel, I think) I was with a somewhat less than stellar pickup group who was rather unoptimized for the particular TF. I was called by my SO (who lived in the apartment next door) under the pretense of helping her 'reach something she was having trouble reaching.' I…

Actually, I think that the Dumbldore thing may have to do more with a lack of Rowling's skill rather than an attempt to tack something on.

"The shame, however, could be said about Western shooters, but that's another conversation for another time."