Grazza

Thanks very much Ike. Yeah, that's a pain! I'm on Question 9, but so far the test has "encouraged" me to change my healer (a King Bubble Slime) into a Living Statue, which I don't think was a very good idea of mine. Now I need to make Malroth, which means fusing my Living Statue with a Demon-at-arms (which I'll have to make). Assuming I can manage to do that, do you think Malroth will make an OK healer? I've got the Uber Healer and Agility Boost III skills, it's just the MP I'm thinking about really. My attackers are a Buffalogre and a Golem, and at the moment I am not bad at scouting Gigantes, but that's because I've got three monsters with Psyche. I'm thinking of making an Atlas, but reluctant to make S Rank monsters in general if it means losing Psyche.

I've got myself into a muddle again with DQM: J. As I say, I've completed the main game, but the post-game is giving me problems. I keep re-Synthesising my monsters, but they don't seem to be getting stronger any more (they are Rank A). I've got a couple more questions on the Advanced Monster Scout Test to do, Rank S and X of the Battle Arena, and then the content after that. So, I just wanted to ask @Ike if it takes a lot more time to complete the rest? I don't want to give up now, but it's wearing thin.

I'm not sure I want to increase the tax at all. It's like spirits - someone enjoying a Remy Martin over a few months is very different to someone buying a cheap vodka to drink in one go, but as you suggest, you can't easily differentiate between the two. As @Twozzok says, there'll always be something cheap for binge drinkers to buy. Like most other things, I'd rather see more punishment for those who actually break the law.

I agree with @madeinbeats because the point, surely, is that this tax is supposedly to tackle binge drinking, and yet a good ale has absolutely nothing to do with binge drinking or anti-social behaviour. It's like the Government doesn't understand how the underclass behaves. They're not getting smashed on pints of Bishop's Finger or Adnam's Broadside, I promise you that. None of the binge drinkers I know even like ale. Many of them simply won't try it.

Sorry if this has been mentioned...

Agreed. Kid Icarus: 3D Classics and Mighty Switch Force have excellent stereoscopic 3D, which is a little bit surprising as not only are they sidescrolling, they both use sprites, not polygons. Clear evidence the next Metroid should do the same! Not that I'd mind if Donkey Kong didn't use stereoscopic 3D, but that goes for everything else as well.

An exciting rumour, as a Donkey Kong game is always welcome. I must admit, I didn't play the latest DK, as I don't enjoy playing on the Wii very much. Playing one on the 3DS, however, should be much nicer. Hope there's a lot more for 3DS announced at E3 though, because I really wanted to see a Metroid and Zelda this year!

Cor, I just saw it on the shelf for £34.99!

Anyone fancy another WayForward game yet? Their original games are so special - they always have perfect visuals and music. I haven't been able to stop humming tunes from Mighty Switch Force today, which is the best piece of software I've downloaded into the 3DS.

OK, thanks, I'll look into them. If they became available for 3DS Virtual Console, that'd be very welcome. Maybe I'm getting on, but PSN confuses the heck out of me. I've looked into it but I find it very hard to know what exactly I'd be able to download into my Vita if I got one. Apart from Final Fantasy, one game I've always wanted to play (that has been released on PSP) is Lunar: the Silver Star. I saw it in a Sega magazine once when it was being developed for the Mega CD, and the frames of animation enchanted me.

Glad to know I'm not the only one. I think they were a bit cheeky with the post-game content: a floor where you have to test every square of the grid and a final boss who can potentially OHKO your whole party... Grr. But, I can't help loving the game too. Graphics and music were spectacular - the atmosphere was through the roof. Just taking your items back to the shop and seeing what new weapons could be forged had more atmosphere to it than most games have in their entirety. Yes, I did. Pretty cool, although I ended up just walking backwards and forwards, over and over again! (It was your footsteps that actually made the time flow.)

No, didn't realise it was released in Europe, actually. More than that, though, I genuinely didn't know if I would ever learn how to play DQM. I'm tempted now... Surprised to hear that you've got DQM:J. Cool. The way it says "+1", "+3" or "+7" etc after your monster reminds me of DQIX's Revocation mechanic. Ominous. I'm aiming for two attackers with Attack Boost III, Defence Boost III and either Materialist, Berserker or Anti-Metal; and a healer with Uber Healer, Wisdom Boost III and Agility Boost III. At the moment, I've got a Buffalogre with Attack Boost II and Defence Boost II, and a Golem, which has Materialist, but he's otherwise not very strong yet. Captured two Gigantes but Synthesised them for the Golem and Buffalogre.

Last night I finally completed Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on the DS! It took me ages to get my head around the gameplay, but I think I now understand it: The idea is to max-out skill sets like Attack, so you get Attack II, then Attack III; max-out Defence, so you get Defence II, and so on... It's still quite complicated, as you have to be very focused on which three skill sets you want your monster to keep throughout the game. For instance, you might put a few points into Defender in order to get Kabuff. However, unless you keep Defender for the duration, you won't be able to carry on that skill (not from that specific skill set, anyway). All this can create a fair bit of confusion. However, it has been quite satisfying to learn. Just a quick point I'd like to make about this game: the music is brilliant, several leagues above Dragon Quest IX. Tunes are sweeping and melodic, creating a tone that is closer to VIII than any other Dragon Quest. Graphics are smooth, sharp and simple. Perhaps they are even some of the best polygon graphics on the DS, as everything is kept so clean, it's never hard on the eye. And apart from some ridiculous censorship (you can't call a monster "Spook"), the translation is so good that, grammatically, DQM:J might be the only Dragon Quest that's up there with VIII. Square-Enix had some truly excellent linguists working for them at the time of this and VIII. So, all in all, this is the perfect companion to DQVIII, even though the gameplay is very different. So, why am I posting all this in here? Well, I want to play Dragon Quest Monsters on the 3DS. More than that, I really wanted to learn the gameplay and get off on the right note with the 3DS game. Please, Nintendo of Europe, I for one am ready for this game!

And there's the famous assertion that the SNES couldn't have run Sonic the Hedgehog as well (which sounds about right to me). The Megadrive version of Street Fighter II was also meant to play better than the SNES version. Two brilliant machines though, I loved them both. My bad, I had seen someone say the PS2 was faster and I didn't check the facts. For the record (source: Wikipedia), the PS2's CPU was 299Mhz in later models and the GameCube's was 486Mhz. And of course, the GameCube's superior GPU was always evident. Gotta say though, I owned all four consoles last gen - GameCube was my favourite, PS2 was my 2nd-favourite. Played some absolute gems on it. Was worth owning just for Dragon Quest VIII and Shadow of the Colossus, both of which had very impressive overworlds (which is why I always accepted the idea that PS2 had a fast processor). I honestly can't decide how much I like stereoscopic 3D, even a year on, and I doubt I'll ever truly make up my mind. It sounded so exciting and I think Nintendo were right to give it a go. However, extra resolution, size and processing power always trump it. Whilst I like flicking the 3D on every so often, that's mainly for things like photos and videos. For a game, it's very hard to see optional 3D as more important than using all the resources for the game itself. I know if I ever end up playing a long RPG on the 3DS, I'd prefer it if it was 2D-only. By the way, I should say I think the 3DS is a fantastic piece of kit and since the price cut I no longer truly consider the stereoscopy/parallax barrier as part of the cost. Nintendo absorbed that. It's just a great machine that's had a good first year and will hopefully have all the excellent games we'd expect of a Nintendo handheld - Zelda, Metroid etc. To make a prediction though, I don't think stereoscopic 3D is here to stay. Whether with glasses or glasses-free, it still depends on sending a different image into each eye to create the illusion of depth, which is not too problematic with most people, but it always means something else could be better, like resolution. For the record, I think when higher resolutions are here, with higher framerates, this particular era of stereoscopy will be forgotten until they make consumer-level holograms.

Ah, that explains a lot. I always thought it was surprising that Nintendo would let me send a drawing of anything to strangers.

Just a note about Nintendo Video: If anyone gets today's two new ones, can you tell me what they are, please? I don't want to get rid of the Europa Park video unless it's for something really good. If it ever happens, I think it'll be when developers can't get their game to run as smoothly as they'd like. It seems to me Nintendo's "evolution" machines like the SNES, GameCube and 3DS always have much better graphics than processing power, eg. SNES had better graphics than Megadrive, but was not as fast. GameCube had better graphics than PS2, but supposedly a slower processor. Actually, that may be unfair on the 3DS because I haven't noticed any limitations yet from what I've played, but I've seen a few hints that it could be better. Eg. From the videos, Heroes of Ruin seems a little bit ambitious, processing-wise. When that happens, I hope developers do indeed make non-stereoscopic games, because I think it'll enable much better experiences, even if we don't notice it in the graphics.

I'm reading, them Hero-of-Time. Gotta say, I fancy playing Final Fantasy I-III (or I-VI, even). If I ever get a Vita and they're available for it as PSP downloads, I'll give them a go.

They might be able to make the 3DS smaller, but they shouldn't. Bigger is the way to go! As much as I like the 3DS (and I really do), I'm still using my DSi XL for DS games. Was playing Dragon Quest Monsters last night and the DSi XL still has quite a few advantages over the 3DS. For one thing, it feels more solid with a great d-pad, but the larger screen also makes the games so much more immersive.

Even though the game has been perfectly-well coloured, am I the only one who really likes the line art too before they add the colour? I used to be like that too, but I've become increasingly anxious about limited print runs, especially with handheld games. There are some Japanese 3DS games I want so much I will buy them at launch if they are released in Europe, and those are: Etrian Odyssey IV Dragon Quest Monsters Code of Princess Bravely Default: Flying Fairy [EDIT] Oh, and Rocket Slime 3.

6'3" and 14 stone, but still quite long and thin. Would like much more bulk. And yeah, from the comments in here, I'm going to forget about Creatine. I too drink plenty of water.

GDC is pretty good for handhelds, Jamba.

Hmm, that's interesting. I actually prefer that method because it's much faster. Let's say you've just done Lat Pull-down... you can go straight on to Chest Press because you haven't fatigued the muscle group you're about to use. Whereas if you split your workout (which I do), I find it harder to go from one similar exercise to another. For instance, I do Wide Pull-ups, then Mid Row, then Lat Pull-down... three very similar exercises, so I have to rest quite a bit more between them than if I was going from back to chest to shoulders. To each his own, obviously. I was using bars that had Protein + Creatine in them. The price wasn't bad and I wanted to give myself the best kickstart possible. However, I've stopped buying them now because the price went up and I'm very sceptical of them. For one thing, my arms aren't any bigger than when I started. This could (and surely is) explained by the fact I regularly used dumbells before I joined the gym and haven't made any improvements yet. However, if supplements were that good, surely they'd have given me more of a boost? That and the fact I achieved better results years ago without any kind of supplement. Gonna stick with milk and good food.

This is going to make me sound like a hypocrite because I do split my workout, but I wouldn't if I were you. Not yet anyway. I recommend a well-balanced workout three times a week (ie. that's the same one every time), Monday, Wednesday and Friday. To put it simply, you need to exercise: chest, back, shoulders, legs, biceps and triceps. Again, to generalise, when you are pushing you are using your chest, triceps and shoulders. When you are pulling, you are using your back and biceps. For a really full workout, you'd want to do exercises that have a pushing motion upwards (Shoulder Press), in front (Chest Press) and downwards (Dips). Likewise, with your back you'd want to pull vertically from above (Lat Pull-down), in front of you (Mid Row) and from below (Upward Row). You do need to isolate your biceps and triceps as well. But anyway, if you joined a gym I'm sure your instructor would set you a well-balanced workout in your induction. I predict it would be something like this: 1) Chest Press 2) Lat Pull-down 3) Shoulder Press 4) Leg Press 5) Mid Row 6) Bicep Curls 7) Tricep Extensions or Cable Push Down That would be well-balanced. It doesn't cover every direction, but there are two "pushing" exercises, two "pulling", one for legs, one for biceps and one for triceps. Another thing to consider is that your biceps have two parts to them, triceps have three and quadriceps have four, etc, so after a while you'd really want to do specialist exercises for every one. That's when you'd split it into A and B workouts. For now, just give it a go and see how you get on!

I would prioritise muscle building and then see if you still need to burn any fat after you've been doing that for a while. It might be that you "activate" your muscles so much that they take any energy you throw at them. I've heard it said that muscles turn your body into a sort of engine, sending your metabolism through the roof. Put it this way, when I joined the gym I told them I wanted to build muscle and burn fat, but it turned out the fat dropped off without me actually concentrating on cardiovascular. By all means keep active though - personally, I walk to the gym (35 minutes), do 5 minutes on the treadmill (strictly a warm-up), do my weights and then walk home again. I'm just saying you might not need to flog yourself in a cardiovascular fashion as much as you might think (I don't like it, but that's just me!)

Well, that's odd. I have an advert for "Game Servers" in my signature. Is this part of the update or have I got some kind of virus?