Grazza

There's also a section in Castle Town South.

Things I love about Christmas: * Going for walks in the snow and seeing the lights people have decorated their houses with. * Garland decorations. It wouldn't be the same without those long ones draping the ceiling, would it? * Watching The Snowman. There's something very evocative about the isolated location in which the main character lives - wide open fields, with hare and deer running about. Plus I love the bit where the man on the ferry sees them. There's something very cosy about it. * Midnight Mass. It's nice to watch something totally non-commercial. * Giving presents. I don't get excited about receiving presents anymore, but it's nice to give someone something they'd really like.

That's true. I do think there's a reverence for the N64 Zeldas in general, and I can understand why. Even though I prefer Wind Waker, OOT and MM had a certain tone that the series never quite had again. There's also the sheer brilliance of the time travel and the 3-day cycle. So, easily my 3rd favourite game of the decade. It's got to beat Twilight Princess, surely?

Well said, Falcon. It's blatantly obvious that becoming a father is a big achievement. To say anything else is overanalysing for the sake of it, so well done, Mokong. I am not a father and don't want to be yet. I am happy, but I am not successful. There's no contradiction in that to me.

Bah. Best two games of the decade: Wind Waker and Dragon Quest VIII. Trust me on that.

I've come to the conclusion that some people are conservative, straight-laced and clean-cut. They respect the law and don't need to even try illegal drugs, because they just don't need it in their lives. This takes the guts to refuse any offers of drugs you might receive. Who cares what they think? Then you've got the other group, who are rebillious, generally left-wing and enjoy all sorts of counter-culture. They take drugs because it's just the done thing in some circles, and it wouldn't occur to them not to. I'm the former.

If the cartridges are 8GB, what would be the point in limiting them to 2GB (as rumoured)? I could understand limiting processing speed (as with the PSP) until models with a more efficient battery are out, but not storage.

I hope Shadow of the Colossus beats Metal Gear Solid 3, and Wind Waker should beat Majora's Mask. They're both awesome, but Wind Waker wins it quite easily.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 Great game, slightly better than the first, but I'd be fonder of it if I could get the 242nd Star. Dragon Quest IX I've been playing this since it was released and I doubt I'll put anything else in my DS for a year. It's a superb RPG, best I've played on the DS, but not a worthy sequel to VIII. Metroid: Other M Only just started playing this. It's good. At first, the controls seemed terrible, but I'm getting used to them.

I loved the Semi-Final, but thought the Final was boring without Cher. She was a great singer, a great performer and the one who had the "X-Factor" more than the others.

Ronnie, for his perception of the Zelda games.

Yeah, but you know how obsessive I am! I just wasn't ready to do it until I had the right stuff. Thanks for the feedback. PS - The Erdrick's stuff is awesome. It's funny how it's better than some of the "top range" equipment, and it's also funny you still can't get the Armour or Gauntlets! Looking forward to seeing them.

I took RedShell's advice and just kept doing "treasure runs" in Grottoes. In fact, I made notes and diagrams of how many chests each floor had. My latest one has seven Rank 9 chests and two Rank 10! I definitely recommend the quality of Grottoes named "World" or better (organising by Status doesn't tell you about quality, just which ones you've completed). A long time ago darksnowman did a gallery of his characters, and I always meant to do the same, but I didn't have any full outfits. So, very late, but here's my response!

One thing I did love about Twilight Princess was the music. I can still hear myself at Lake Hylia now, and I also loved the overworld music.

I thought it was a massively enjoyable series, thanks to the stunning scenery, very subtle humour throughout and immense likeability of the two leads. It's quite something that Steve Coogan has been on TV for 20 years and people still like him, when you think of the backlash there has been towards other comedians/comedy actors. Loved it.

I don't like being reactionary to criticism of games, because I like to think of myself as an individual rather than a member of a "clan" of sorts. So what if the media don't like some aspects of games? I don't either. Same goes for films. My position on games is that they are addictive, but only whilst you're playing them. That is to say, I don't always need to be playing a game, I just find them very addictive when I happen to be playing a good one. If you let them stop you getting on with your life, you'd do that with something whether games were available or not. As for any children who are allowed a computer, unlimited internet access and to play on an MMORPG all day and night, their parents are extremely negligent, simple as that.

Paying a statue? Fair enough.

I meant the dungeon compass that indicates which rooms have treasure, keys etc.

I watched a hilarious episode of The I.T. Crowd yesterday called "The Work Outing". So... recommended.

Thanks for that. I agree, the normal Quests aren't as good as the story Quests, although I'm finding the post-game Quests better than the main-game Quests, as presumably they'll expect you to have all the traits maxed. Defeating a Restless Armour with Pincushion was my least favourite! Literally had to create three new characters. Oh well, I'm totally up to date with them now. Keep at it, because high quality Grottoes have lots of chests with Dangerous Bustiers in them, so it eventually gets to the point where you get lots in a row, like the Toughie Trousers etc. Personally, I need the boss drops from Greygnarl and Fowleye, plus a few of the Rank 10 weapons (including the Stardust Sword, but I'd also like more Bad Axes), then I'm onto the Legacy bosses properly. Yes, the Agates are one of the last obstacles. I find the hardest part to gather is the Sainted Soma, which are made with Lucida Shards and Astral Plumes, which can effectively be stolen or farmed, but it all takes time. It's worth checking the online shopping for them too, as well as chests. Yeah, bought one in case I needed it for a Quest (like the birthday cake).

But to be fair, Wind Waker was extremely advanced. Just because it was easy doesn't mean it was dumbed down. Wind Waker was the last Zelda to have the full functionality that had been built into the series up to that date. Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks (brilliant as it is) didn't have things like the compass, which I think is what Ronnie means. I agree with you that they've learned a lot, though, because Spirit Tracks has the most fun dungeons out of any Zelda, in my opinion. It's a superb game throughout. One thing I forgot to say in my last post was that Kakariko Village was actually a good village. Sparse and deserted it may have been, but it was fully modelled. It had the height, for example. If you took a chicken up to the highest point, you could glide down and land anywhere, accurate to your trajectory. That's the sort of thing I like to see in Zelda, even if we had to have less detailed graphics. Another thing... people are talking about town design and whether there should be a Hyrule Castle Town or not. I say, why not have that as the main hub, but make sure it's excellent? There's something comforting about a well-designed town that you can return to again and again, as long as it's good like Clock Town or Windfall Island. It doesn't have to remain stagnant - you could take back your spoils and new items could become available to buy, precisely because of what you took back. New buildings, too, could spring up as the game develops.

I hate to be the grumpy one but, although the bosses were exceptional, I actually wasn't very fond of the dungeons in Twilight Princess. Like many things, they seemed a step-back from Wind Waker. Take many people's favourite dungeon, for example, Snowpeak Mansion. Whilst I liked the theme, that's exactly the problem - it felt like a mansion-themed dungeon rather than an actual mansion. You could only enter via the front door, which felt like a facade, an illusion. You couldn't walk all round the mansion. You couldn't get knocked out of a window and land in the corresponding spot outside. Few of them fitted into the overworld very well, like the way you used a cannon to get to the City in the Sky. Whereas in Wind Waker, you could sail around the entire outside of the mountains that held the dungeons, and when you were on the outdoor sections of the Fire or Fortress dungeons, you could see the corresponding bit of sea. As others have said, TP's overworld wasn't truly explorable - it felt like pieces stitched together. My least favourite part, which is the part I think demonstrates most of the game's shortcomings, is Castle Town. Here, you are forced into an overhead view, which has the result that you never really feel there on street level. This town feels entirely stitched-together, with significant loading times between sections. When you go onto the balcony with the Gorons, you don't get a real-time view of what's going on, you get an illusion. Unlike Windfall Island, it just isn't a "real" town that you can run round, or run round the individual buildings. Twilight Princess just wasn't as advanced as I expected after Wind Waker. To me, it felt like N64-tech, but with more detailed graphics. And after the excellent character design of the enemies in Wind Waker, who would have thought the next game would be so comparitively uninspired? (After all, Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 are spot-on, like WW.) Now, as for control, my viewpoint is that control is something that is gradually improved over time, the current pinnacle being the GameCube and Xbox/360 controllers. I'm not saying MotionPlus doesn't work well, because it does, but let's look at the true context of this. The Wii has been out since 2006 and Nintendo has not released a top class 3rd-person game of this type that truly needs motion control. The simple wrist-shake and tilting of Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 worked fine, but that is not what they're going for here. So, is Zelda really an acceptable game to experiment on? If, in the long-term, advanced motion control is considered unappealing for this type of game, Skyward Sword will always be an oddity, something you need to break out the Wii Remote Plus for.

That's a bit harsh of you. Your right-wing tendencies are being revealed.

I just shake my head at them. No one, and I do mean no one, needs a bus fare. Few towns are bigger than 10 miles wide, which is a distance anyone should be able to walk easily. If not, they shouldn't have got themselves that far away from home! Obviously, it's all lies anyway for drugs.