Grazza

It seems to me that you may not be qualified to talk about it. Well, he is right that if you give off a feminine vibe, you simply won't be able to have that heterosexual male-female chemistry. Not that I'm an advocate of acting macho or anything, but at times when you are less masculine (biologically - it fluctuates), you will not be able to hold a woman's attention. When you are more masculine, on the other hand, she will laugh at all your jokes even if they're not funny. Do you mean some sort of HIV treatment? I was talking about Hormone Replacement Therapy, ie. the understanding that women's hormones drop massively and it affects their wellbeing (and so we help them); compared to men's hormones dropping massively from age 30-40 and beyond, and us not helping them.

I'm not a fan of gender stereotypes at all, but I do think men and women are bound to feel different in certain ways. I wouldn't go as far as applying this to toys (because I think there is societal pressure in that regard), but I'm certainly not very emotional. I must have gone about 25 years without crying, for example. I hadn't been bottling it up - it's just that not much upsets me. When some bad stuff started happening a few years ago I cried buckets. Men are bound to want certain things from women, and women are bound to want certain things from men. We shouldn't blame either gender for that. However, over the past few years I have been getting the very strong feeling that society has no regard for men's needs, and offers no help for those who don't live up its demands. I've noticed, King V, that you are very astute about the importance of testosterone. It's a vital ingredient of men's health and drive. The general impression I get (and I'm sure this is backed up by studies) is that testosterone levels are falling worldwide - we see this in the fertility rates. So why is this not seen as a huge problem? Why is the Andropause not considered real? Why are men not offered HRT on the NHS (heck, at least make it easy to pay for)? Why is there not a Minster for Men, and why do MPs laugh when you suggest bringing up men's problems in Parliament? The other day I saw a story about a doctor who suggested the NHS offers women testosterone pills! If they want it, fine, but what a sick society that thinks of offering it to women when men are offered nothing. If you go to your doctor, you'll be told it's "Normal", and basically to bugger off. What I see is men becoming more biologically feminine, thus suffering poor health, low happiness and (ultimately) not being able to live up to what society needs them for. I'm not saying it's good to pump yourself full of hormones (if you do that, your body will never be able to function as well on its own), but you'd think they'd at least look at taking some of the oestrogen out of the environment. Whether this is accidental or intentional, I cannot say, but it bothers me that it's not tackled.

Sounds like the right price to me. Definitely not too cheap! Arguably, the price of Nintendo's own downloadable retail games is kept artificially high.

Reminds me of the first time I used an optical cable - I was surprised how hard you had to push it in. I've never had the issue with headphones though, so I didn't think of that.

Hero-of-Time is literally the Master of Time! Personally, there are only a couple of days a week where I'll set the evening aside to do what I'd call "concentrated entertainment", which could be playing a game or watching a film. On an average day I will spend a few hours listening to the radio, but that really is a "relax before bed" thing. Sometimes I'll pull out my 3DS and fiddle about with that (eShop games, mostly), but it's not what I'd call concentrated gaming. Each to his own though and all respect to those who manage to do more. I think I'm particularly bad with time, as one of my favourite expressions has always been "There's not enough hours in the day". I always feel I could do more in a day if the schedule wasn't quite so pressing.

Well, it could the "docking station" idea, I suppose. A pure handheld (which accounts for the 10-12 million figure), plus an optional docking station that boosts everything for the TV.

So unless I've misunderstood this, it's saying Nintendo intends to ship 20 million, yet the component makers for this (possibly a handheld) expect to make 10-12 million. This could indeed be a clue that it's a handheld plus a console (not a hybrid), as bryanee alludes to here: We could actually get three versions of Zelda: Handheld NX - lowest performance Wii U - medium quality Console NX - highest performance

They haven't released one yet? I'm surprised. Sooner or later these will be available in 4K, so I might get them then. That reminds me, did any of you watch the One Shot on this disc, "All Hail to the King"? Ah, I stand corrected.

Even if the Wii U's internal storage was bigger, downloading an extra 10GB for one game is unusual, surely? Is there any reason they couldn't use a 50GB disc?

Christopher Eccleston is a great actor. It must be hard when they distort your voice/put you in an elaborate costume, but I still think he got it across well. Apparently there was more backstory intended for him (although it's not in the deleted scenes), but they abandoned it in favour of pacing. I'm glad they did, to be honest, as I like it when a film lasts for less than two hours. Funnily enough I watched the documentaries last night, and the sets are great when you see them in 16:9 HD. So much work went into them - sometimes I think they look better before the effects are added! Darn, I wish more of these films were in 1:78:1 (like Avengers Assemble) rather than 2.35:1. PS - The documentary shows Loki's blade going through Agent Coulson, even though it wasn't allowed in the original European version of Avengers. The Dark Elf leader (unless I typed his name wrong). Winter Soldier tonight! I've been looking forward to it for ages.

BUMP! So, I got round the watching Thor: The Dark World. I had heard it was not so good, but... I loved it! Whereas the original Thor was sort of "half Elf, half Lord of the Rings", I found this a very consistent film from start to finish. Malekith was a powerful villain who could go toe-to-toe with Thor, and Kurse was an awesome henchman. I genuinely didn't know how Thor could beat either of them. The plot just got more and more dramatic, with development after development. There was also comic relief, which managed to stay just silly enough, but not undermine the story. I don't think I've ever laughed harder in a comic book film than at Erik Selvig's first appearance in this. The whole cast are good, but special mention must go to Tom Hiddleston, who is truly excellent as Loki and makes him easily one of the most loveable characters in the Marvel Universe. It all finished with a suitable finale set in Greenwich, which amused me to see such familiar locations. With the Gherkin and the Shard also present, it pandered to the British audience, and was all the more enjoyable for it! Anyway, a great film, and I can't fathom why it's considered one of the lesser ones.

I hope so! It was surprising that there was footage (albeit brief) in the last Direct, so that was encouraging.

If I recall correctly, Wii games are not technically Virtual Console, as they are not emulated. They don't have the features of VC (ie. Restore Points) and they run directly off the Wii U hardware. It's exactly like downloading a Wii U game off the eShop.

That's actually standard for an RPG, but I agree with you about having to control them in an action game. RPGs used to be turn-based so, for example, you'd enter your command for the main character, then the 2nd member of the team, then the 3rd member... and so on. Your team would do what you'd instructed, then the enemy would have their turn. From about Final Fantasy XII onward, RPGs began to be action-based (in real-time), but you still have to give your team the basic idea of what to do. I can't remember much about Xenoblade, but I remember one strategy when fighting robots was to have a character perform "Break". This made it easier for another character to perform "Topple", which itself made attacks more efficient. I couldn't get on with it personally. What I'm saying is that you'll probably have to give your whole team commands throughout the game. (Or did I just massively misunderstand the previous entry?)

I actually think Nintendo makes too many games, as crazy as that may sound. They would be better off putting all their staff into a handful of huge teams. So many of their games are of little consequence, and are not effective in actually selling the machine. At the moment Nintendo has to support its consoles on its own, but that's because they don't play host to multi-format games. My ideal situation would be a console that matches the others in terms of power, controls and architecture. It would be the only console to have the few huge Nintendo titles, but also have genuinely big 3rd-party games to fill the gaps. The one thing I 100% agree with Nintendo about this generation is the way they've handled Zelda. It looks amazing - exactly what they should have done - but it's also been slow. Imagine if Nintendo had teams that could produce games of that calibre once per year - Zelda would have arrived sooner, but Metroid, Kid Icarus and others could also be given that treatment. At the moment we're in a situation where too many gamers (understandably) just think "so what?"

Haha, agree. It can't have been that bad as I'm still laughing my head off at it, but I'm still going to pretend it's not part of the series. Absolutely nailed it. And LMAO at the bit about the roof. Yeah, I know. I was mainly interested in Hulk and Avengers first of all, but they got me hooked.

Hope I'm allowed to bump this thread. I'm making my way through the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now. I've seen all of Phase One and generally loved it, and am now working my way through Phase Two. If I have a criticism of Phase One it's that sometimes it felt like the budget ran out (apart from Avengers, of course). Thor was an entertaining film, for instance, but I was surprised it didn't have a big battle at the end. Thought he was going to return to Asgard and kick some ass! Anyway, I watched Iron Man 3 tonight and, although it was very entertaining in parts, my general feeling is a big "WTF?"! I liked the tone they set out and started out thinking it was better than Age of Ultron. Parts were very funny and I belly laughed at times. Things got dramatic very early on - possibly too early - as I agree with what others have said about Tony Stark not spending enough time in his armour. As I say, I do love comedy in films, but I wonder if they broke the illusion at times. I mean, Ben Kingsley coming out of the bathroom and warning the prostitutes not to go in there for 20 minutes! LMAO!! On a related note, although I am not familiar with the comics, I'm pretty sure Mandarin is not meant to be like that, right? Artistic licence is one thing, but it felt like this was a lesson in media manipulation for teenagers. Then we have the finale, which was like something out of Transformers. The initial premise for the "villains" was fairly plausible, but in the end they were superhumans capable of smashing Tony's suits to bits! I know you have to suspend your disbelief for these things, I really do, but when Tony Stark can call upon suit after suit that attach themselves to him in a second or less, I wonder if they've gone too far. It all ended with Gwyneth Paltrow in her sports bra, hitting Mike from neighbours with a pole! If Age of Ultron was good, but not necessarily entertaining, Iron Man 3 was the exact opposite. Iron Man is a good Avenger, but I'm not too sorry his own series has ended (as entertaining as it was at times). Next stop - Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Looking forward to going back through this thread and reading it fully.

There is probably still a proper villain behind it though, don't you think? My guess is the Red Skull (any rumours of Hugo Weaving in it?) Although much of the film will be about heroes fighting heroes, I'm sure they'll team up at the end when they learn who's behind the scheme (whatever it is).

We need the coin-op Double Dragon games! I'm a huge fan, but can't bring myself to buy NES ports (or any other home version).

It might be, but I haven't played that one. I certainly found NSMB U to have a steeper learning curve than the DS original or NSMB 2. But like @bryanee, I was probably rusty too.

NSMB U is one of the more challenging entries, and takes a bit of getting into. It's one of the best Wii U games, though, in my opinion. : peace:

Andrew Neil made a powerful speech last night on This Week. It's a must-watch: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3326732/Libert-galit-fraternit-cr-Brulee-versus-death-cult-barbarity-shame-middle-ages-Andrew-Neil-tells-Islamist-Scumbags-doesn-t-fancy-chances.html

Wow, great analysis video, I can't wait to play the game now. There really is a lot more detail to this HD version - I was actually most impressed with the shrubbery!

I still think NX might be less powerful than Wii U - after all, 3DS needs replacing more than Nintendo's home console - and so we might see a lesser version of Zelda U rather than a superior one. It does actually concern me a bit that things like the landscapes might be simplified in order to work across two versions.

One slight issue I have with Nintendo's price model is that their games can go from "full price" to "out of print and expensive" without any stage in between. It's usually best to buy at launch. However, in the case of games like Pikmin 3, it's easy to see how many people weren't ready to buy it at launch (because they didn't have a Wii U), and so I can't help but think gradual price reductions like most games would be a good idea. Yeah, I'll get it at that price. I really want it. On the other hand, if it's going to be full price, it's even harder to see why it isn't as extensive a remake as OOT, MM and WW. Personally, I'd much rather pay £40 for a great remake than £20 for a minimal up-rez.