Grazza

See, I genuinely think Off-TV Play is the best thing about the Wii U. If only they'd have made sure it applied to all games, they could have sold it as "The console that doesn't need a TV". Anyway, it's a very good offer. Sort of glad I won't have enough time to go and pick one up over the next few days, as I think I would!

(Runs through currency converter) If they convert it exactly, €29 = £25. A little bit high, in my opinion. Personally, I favour this over Harmoknight, but not sure about Luigi's Mansion 2.

Ah, it does look really good now. So, it seems to have: * Standard blocks (phase-in/out) * Breakable blocks (this time with fireball monsters, rather than bombs) * Mud blocks that can be washed away * Fire blocks (I assume you switch these on/off rather than put them out) Really looking forward to this!

Every Wii owner has got two GameCubes! ...I'll get my coat.

Mind you, I thought Luigi's Mansion 2 was out a week earlier than it actually is, so there's still time!

Yes, I don't mind admitting I used Restore Points to cheat extensively in Kid Icarus II. It's much easier in general, but the final boss made me glad I had as many upgrades as possible. The 3D Classics game, on the other hand, is a breeze when you've got past the first dungeon, and I enjoyed it quite a lot more than the Game Boy sequel. You should be able to finish Kid Icarus. Don't know about the other one though! Personally, I'm really hoping to finish Etrian Odyssey II before Luigi's Mansion 2, but that's looking like a tall order at the moment.

I genuinely think I would buy any 3D Classic that Sega made. That's where my nostalgia is.

Yep! But gets much easier after the first dungeon and boss, thankfully. They key is to collect as many hearts as possible, so you can activate all the stat-boosts. And don't let the thieves steal your items later on!

Ah, right, so "change of job" = firefighter. Seems like the gameplay might be similar, but it'll be rescuing rather than capturing.

Scare stories, patent battles... I bet Nintendo regret ever having anything to do with 3D!

I'm sure he was just joking though. The writers must have had a reasonable explanation in their head - he can't have lost organs and ribs. I still think it probably just scuffed his shoulder, but that was still enough to knock him back. By the way, your signature by @Eddage is fantastic! Think I've seen it before, but it really is great. Yes, I loved the bit where she shook the cocktail and he just said "Perfect..." Nice and subtle. Q was great too, and Moneypenny had a good rapport with Bond/Craig. In all honesty, there were no actual bits I disliked! I just felt I had spent too much time watching it overall.

I had a dream last night that Doctor Doom was on the loose and needed to be stopped. I chased him all over an entertainment complex, before I saw him just about to do something dastardly. So, I jumped on him and made a citizen's arrest! Not sure it was the real one, to be honest, as he didn't put up much of a fight.

I just think it's natural, and so tends to appear in stories. About two weeks ago - I kid you not - a girl I know came and found me specially because she wanted me to protect her from an aggressive man. In a way, it was a "damsel in distress" moment, even though I didn't hit him with a sword. No, I lanced the bugger. Turns out he was a misogynist who always has a go at women. See, I think it's sexist to treat women badly, not to protect them. I don't blame Anita at all for not enabling comments on YouTube, because the reality is that scumbags would just flame her. The trouble is I don't think "women = feminists". I would even consider myself a feminist if I thought it was about equality, but I don't think that's the case. You could argue the politically-correct atmosphere has led to them making Lara Croft more boring. What's good about that? She used to be designed in a way that was aesthetically very pleasing - to either gender, I'm sure. Now she's a bit less appealing. I just don't see the point. It's like some feminists want to ban Page 3, and yet every woman I know is perfectly fine with it. I read the Sun every canteen break and don't feel at all uncomfortable looking at it amongst girls. Sometimes they'll have a look at the hair and make-up etc. It's just a ridiculous idea that "glamorous depiction of women = sexist". Same with Dead or Alive. It is not sexist at all. The boobs bounce because they're boobs. The men's chests don't bounce because they're pecs.

Never mind, they're bound to do something during GDC, even if they're not there (I'm still hoping for Zelda 3DS!)

That's exactly what I was thinking. I put the hype down to the whole Olympics thing and, yes, Adele. In fact, I'd definitely say the film was overhyped rather than overrated, as I can't even remember seeing any reviews that said it was amazing. As for repeat viewings, that baffles me more than anything else. Going by my workmates, I think people just got it into their heads that everyone had to go and see it. One of my friends went to see it, then his whole family went to see it, but as to whether any of them watched it twice, I don't know. It's interesting that he never actually told me he thought it was good; it's almost as though everyone was just caught up in the hype. I wasn't keen either, but just wondered if I was being overly sensitive (seems not). And I don't want to sound a pervert, but there really should have been more silouettes of naked women! Same with the woman in the shower - there should have neen more nudity! We get to see Daniel Craig topless every film nowadays, but not the girls! There were loads of things like that. To be honest, I find it far more plausible that he survived the blast of that (maybe it scuffed his shoulder or something) rather than the fall to the water! Or jumping in the iced-over lake!

I watched the BluRay of this last night, and my main thoughts were that it just goes on too long and lets the pace drop too many times. Spoilers ahead It started off well, and at first I thought it might live up to the hype. The train fight was great, and Bond's return as a washed-out and out-of-shape figure was interesting (it can't all be action sequences, after all). The casino scene was classic Bond (probably the best in the series, even - loved the Roger Moore/Live and Let Die reference). If only the whole film could have had that light-hearted flair. By the time Raoul Silva was introduced, I didn't have too many grumbles, I just thought the film had taken too long to get to that point. Nonetheless, when he was captured, this again felt like a natural time for the pace to drop. When Silva escaped (by the way, did this film remind anyone else of Batman: the Dark Knight?), it should have been non-stop action from that point on, but after the tube chase, the pace dropped again as they made their preparations at Skyfall. What I did like about this was how intimidating they made the villain seem. How he could track Bond and M to a remote part of Scotland, all on British territory! When the helicopter appeared I just thought "Bravo! How the heck's Bond going to get out of this one?" Considering he did actually find a plausible solution impressed me even more. But how do you top that? Well, they couldn't, and yet the film slowed down once again. I really wanted to see a fight between Bond and Silva, stripped of all his weapons and technology (to illustrate 007's full return to fitness, and show what he's best at), but instead there was a rather plodding trip to the chapel, where Bond defeated him in a way anyone could have done, quite honestly. Overall, there were some really good scenes, but I felt it should have been at least 40 minutes shorter. It also left me confused about how it became such a mainstream hit, as I don't think there was anything about it that made it massively different to Quantum of Solace (although yes, it was a bit better). Personally, I'd still say Casino Royale is easily Daniel Craig's best Bond film, and my personal favourite since the reboot is The World is Not Enough. Skyfall's cinematography was indeed something to behold, but I can't help but think they have made Bond too serious and "artistic", and not entertaining enough. There were certainly a few laughs, but I'd have happily swapped most of the film to hear Roger Moore say something about "Keeping the British end up".

I've started going there for the poll too! I voted firmly against mandatory online today! They've got to do something, or the Wii U is in danger of becoming something that retailers aren't prepared to stock. I mean, seriously, once it starts disappearing it'll be a case of "next stop: Dreamcast". I still think they've got a few options available though. Maybe they could make a 3rd bundle, to replace both existing ones. 8GB of memory like the Basic Pack, but with a game included like the Premium. Basically, as little of the expensive stuff as possible. Hopefully there's a way Nintendo can make it cheap enough so that they can sell it to retailers, but not actually take a loss.

I hope he's right too, as I'd be able to watch it this week, but I think it's more likely we'll get one during GDC, which is the last week of the month.

Very much agree. Glad you've come round to my way of thinking.

Honestly, almost every single story in the legends of King Arthur is about a knight rescuing a damsel in distress (and usually marrying her). Men have more testosterone so are bigger, stronger and more likely to go fighting villains. If this has been the case for hundreds of years, maybe it just makes "sense" and is not actually a problem? Let men enjoy sexy women and let women enjoy muscular men. Otherwise everything will become bland and boring. Everyone's realistically-shaped and wearing clothes that cover up their body? Great! Not that I dislike this girl. She's clearly a genius for getting people to pay her money to make these videos.

Definitely Lunar: the Silver Star, Mega CD version. It's not just that it looked like a good game, it's more that it represented something from a different culture. When I saw it in Sega Pro all those years ago, I was amazed at the extra frames of animation the Mega CD allowed. I don't know if I'll ever be able to play that exact version, but if I ever have a machine where I can download it (or a remake), I will do so. Runner-up: Grandia. It just appeared at a time in my life when I didn't have time for gaming, especially an RPG, but I quite regret it now. The "unreleased" game has got to be Twilight Princess, as it was once meant to be, before the influence of the Wii version. The coin-op I'd most like to own is Double Dragon, just for nostalgia reasons. Nothing since has seemed so cool or to-the-point. I'll never forget the first time I found it in a leisure centre (and got beaten by the bloke who punches through the wall), or how I used to seek it out at every seaside arcade I visited, or how I played it on holiday in the reception area with the sound of cabaret in my ears and the smell of onions in my nostrils.

I'm glad they didn't stick with the actual Wii Remote. I can't stand that thing! Always having to take it out of its rubber sleeve, remove Motion Plus, change the batteries, reattach Motion Plus etc... That said, I wouldn't have minded if they'd built upon it. I was saying this in the Skyward Sword thread - I didn't particularly want them to stick with motion control, but if they did, I thought it should be an enhanced version. The biggest problem with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck is that, even between them, they just didn't have enough buttons. I still believe that something like Wind Waker would be completely impossible to play on it. My ideal "enhanced" version would be like this: Left hand Gyroscope Analogue stick D-pad L trigger (analogue) Right hand Gyroscope Analogue stick (C-stick) A, B, X and Y buttons R trigger (analogue) Z button (if it didn't have L2 and R2) ...And rechargeable, of course. If they had done that, every Nintendo game would have worked on it. I don't even think it needs to join together - your hands being apart isn't a huge problem, in my opinion (although I can see the point being made). Every console owner would have the same controller, and it'd be able to play every game (maybe put an extra L and R on, instead of a Z button). What's more, I think that could have been done much cheaper than the GamePad. At the end of the day, I am glad they went back to traditional controls, but I think it could have been done more efficiently.

Digitiser was absolutely superb. I used to read Digitiser/GameCentral every day - the comedy characters, the News page, the reviews and the letters - there was something cool about having something to fiddle about with on the TV screen (I even took photographs when I had my letters published!) I often quite disagreed with their reviews, but I respected them as honest. That said, I wonder if there was a backlash at some point because they invented a character to review bad games! Nigel Humdrum, I think. As a very rough example, if a game had bad controls he'd say something like "The unresponsive controls are great, as they make it more of a challenge!"

The PS3 has got price in its favour (particularly the fact there's room for a price cut), and of course its line-up of exclusives. I'd like it if it did become the best-selling console of its generation, as I think it deserves it. I still haven't connected my PS3 to the internet, but I've been testing it with a few BluRays. My word, the PS3 is a great BluRay player. Tested it with Avatar at 1920x1080 and 24p - absolutely flawless image.

This really makes me wonder what the wholesale price is. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but if supermarkets are starting to not want it at the wholesale price, that really is a problem.