Orayn

Didn't you hear? Gameplay is out. Marketing buzz, graphics, studio tenure and street cred are in.

It doesn't have to be, D dogg. Think about the older games in the Rainbow Six series. If you didn't make a plan and think on your feet, you were screwed. I suppose that's more tactics than strategy, but it's a far cry from SHOOT EVERYTHING THAT MOVES.

I think you mean... Next thing you know, Metal Gear Solid will ditch the stealth, Gran Turismo will add guns, Mario will become a FPS, Halo will get ten more sequels and spinoffs, and Street Fighter will exist without punching, only guns and hadoukens.

Don't forget motion blur, HDR lighting, and grit. Oh, and a sickly green filter like Fallout 3 wouldn't hurt either. If it has a 3rd person camera, a cover system and screaming 13 year olds on Xbox Live it'll be PERFECT!

I would very much like such a watch.

I'm playing Cobmat Arms right now. I have to say, it's not bad for a free shooter. I'd call it a fairly good ripoff of CS:S, rather than a bad ripoff of CS1.6 like Soldier Front.

Somehow, the thought of a low-poly Shepard is fascinating. I love seeing high end games make the transition to N64-era graphics. Makes 'em show their true colors, because they can't really hide behind shiny graphics any more.

Star Wars Galaxies is one of the only MMOs to ever do resource gathering right. Artisans could survey and sample resources at a given site if they just needed a little, but for more permanent structure could be set up, directed to gather a certain resource, then left to run on its own. You still had to revisit it to gather resources when its hopper filled up, but it really was the way to go about it. Even crafting could be automated in this way, with factories. Similar provisions could be made in a fantasy setting in the form of mining camps and hiring artisans in workshops.

Those fetishes, by the way, are Tactical RPGs and content that is derived from my music. Forgot to include it in my post.

I would CHILL if I were you. They're releasing portable content because it makes good fiscal sense. The profit margin on portable content is far higher, and the games don't take nearly as long to produce. Nowadays, "next gen" technology and expectations have driven most console games to be very "heavy" in that they take a lot of time and money to produce, because everyone is always expecting a big show. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with portable games. You talk about them as though they're all cheap $5 cell phone games that are fun for five minutes. Have you ever played Final Fantasy A2? That game has some real content to it, content you're passing off as irrelevant. Besides, if you really want a console JRPG, go get something by NIS and call me when you're done; It'll take you a while.