Grazza

Yeah, I know what you mean. Happens to us all! I suppose it's when you get two shy people (no offence intended) it can be a bit confusing. There is a girl I see in three places - where I work, where she works and in the gym. When we're in the gym, I see her looking at my back every time I'm up against the mirror. If I try to smile at her she looks away, but then I go and do another exercise and I see her looking over again! When I see her at her workplace, she pretty much ignores me; whereas when she comes to my workplace she ignores me if she sees me trying to smile at her, but last time she came in she called out "hello" to me with a massive smile. I'm knowing I'm being a massive wuss, but I get on with flirty girls really easily. As I say, it's when you get two people who are more introverted. They say opposites attract, but you can be physically attracted to any type - it's just the opposites who actually get together!

Two years ago.

You'll hear that many, many times... In all seriousness, the Etrian Odyssey RPGs have some of the least grinding I've ever experienced when it comes to the main stories. The post-game, however, is a different matter... I've completed EO II, even the post-game boss. The unique thing about this entry is that each class has a very specific special move, many of which you can combine with others to completely nullify damage. The one thing I never did, though, was fight Muckdile. It's a random encounter, and apparently very difficult, but I never saw him at all. With this remake, however, my obsessive side would have to defeat him for the StreetPass bragging.

The worst thing that happened to television was the neutering of the regional TV stations - Anglia, Granada, Yorkshire etc - around the turn of the millennium. These places worked so hard to make shows actually worth watching after 10pm on ITV. My teenage years (the 1990s) were spent enjoying programmes like The Warehouse, The Magic & Mystery Show, The Mysterious West and several ghost stories, dating and arts shows that I can't even remember the names of, but they were great! These programmes were so obscure it's even hard to find out about them on the internet... but then, they were pre-internet. I'm old. It was a different age. Nowadays TV channels go for films, films, films - cheap to show and repeated endlessly, but it's crap for the viewer. Anyway, that's off-topic, so to say something on-topic: can't wait for Shantae 3 and Shovel Knight!

"Ah, it's good I'm coming to the end of Etrian Odyssey Untold. Only III to complete and then I can finally play something else..." (Sees this thread) :mad: !!!

And only me! Even if they were, I'm still not sure they're that useful in the original. Well, maybe the Hexer, but the status effects aren't likely to work on the Core, so you'd have to replace her eventually. The Ronin, on the other hand, needs the stance to be set up before he can attack, which is not really my style. It's a different story from the second game onwards though. True, but once you've got the best equipment (I got 100% drops before I Retired), it's a lot easier. I was surprised how early I've been able to take my Retired team down to B30F - around level 50/60. Yes, absolutely. In theory, you can give everyone Salve, Revive etc, although having a Medic with them maxed gives you a better (only?) chance of getting those Stones in the first place. My Medic is an absolute tank now though. He's got the Def Up quality (which Medics don't normally have) and the shield bonus from the Grimoire Stone, so he's also got the best shield!

Definitely. Handheld games don't need to be bite-sized, they just need to have convenient save features, suspend points etc - things that wouldn't hurt console games either. The best experiences I've had on handhelds have been fairly deep - Link's Awakening, Dragon Quest IX, Etrian Odyssey series... Long may they continue.

(Meant to reply to this earlier, sorry) Tablets have definitely taken the casual market, and there might not be any way back from that. But to me, that's not a bad thing. What if gaming in general is going back to being more of an aficionado's hobby? As I've said before, I'm not a snob, but gaming is what it is, and it's there for everyone who wants it. The important thing is that the business model is geared towards this. Handhelds still sell millions - there is surely enough money to keep them going. Personally, I find it a great shame that, as handhelds get better and better, they become less popular! The 3DS original model was the first time I thought a handheld had a decent PPI (the hi-res illusion shattered by the XL, admittedly). Finally, portables genuinely had a chance to match consoles. In fact, I've enjoyed the 3DS more than any home console since the PS2. I hear a lot of people saying that if they want to play a game, they want to do it on a big TV, and I can understand that, but just don't feel the same. If I'm playing, say, Wind Waker HD on the TV, then switch to the GamePad, the drop from 1080p to 480p is drastic - so much better on the TV. But the Wii U is still a home console. If we had a genuine handheld that could display games as hi-res (even if the screen was much smaller), I'd prefer it on the portable. Handhelds are so incredibly convenient - I can lounge about anywhere with one, and the screen is always with the device. The bottom line is that I want to continue playing handhelds, but I don't ask that they be different from home consoles. If Nintendo's next system was a system that you could purchase in different forms, and play the same games on both, I suspect I would buy the handheld version and not regret missing out on the big screen, console experience.

Thanks to @darksnowman I've got back into this now and am really enjoying it again. I Retired my Classic team (Landsknecht, Protector, Medic, Alchemist and Survivalist), so hopefully the stat boosts will prove useful. Retiring replaces them with level-30 characters, and I zoomed from levels 30-50 very smoothly. Onto 99 we go... Retiring also gives you more skill points. That said, skill points are not scarce in this game, due to the level cap now being 99 and not 70. There is also another reason skill points no longer matter so much, and it is a mechanism I've not appreciated much until now... Grimoire Stones. As a brief explanation, whilst in battle you have a chance of a Grimoire Stone being created, which you can then equip. These stones give you a skill (with a quality of 1-10), either from a beast or one of your own... and it's the latter that are more useful than I realised. Let's say you have a Protector with the Front Guard skill maxed. If you're lucky, you can get an exact replica of that skill via a Grimoire Stone, meaning you can Rest and spend the points elsewhere. Even better, the Protector has skills like Aegis (chance of surviving a blow with 1HP) and En Guarde (chance to block an attack). In the past these didn't seem that useful - OK, your Protector is left standing, but what about everyone else? Well now, in theory, you can give everyone Aegis and En Guard! Very useful for a Medic, to say the least! Really getting back into this game now.

I LOVE that dream. Used to have it all the time. My method of 'flying' was to cycle my legs, and I always thought "This is amazing! Humans can fly but we don't realise it! Wait 'til I tell everyone!" Then it was so disappointing when I woke up. The most relaxing dream of that type I had was when I was doing my legs-cycling-flying over a huge garden. After a circuit, I came back down to earth and sat on a bench, at which point a gardener with a wheelbarrow and his face made out of vegetables asked if I'd had a nice flight. Urgh, that sounds awful, and was almost certainly sleep paralysis. I must admit, I've always been interested in sleep paralysis - whether it really is as bad as people say, and whether it is indeed (as is often suggested) the best explanation for people seeing ghosts. I had it once in the '90s when I woke up for a few seconds and saw Reala (from the Sega game, Nights) fly up and whack into my chest/abdomen, at which point I let out an "oof" and fell back asleep. The weird thing is, even at the time, I realised it was a hallucination. More frequently I am face-down and feel an insect or spider drop onto me - whether I'm hallucinating in these cases or not, I don't know, but I am certainly paralysed. So yeah, I think I've had a few experiences of sleep paralysis, but thankfully nothing terrifying. This thread has made me remember I used to have really good dreams, but I just don't seem to anymore.

3rd-party games have always been important, but I'd lean towards agreeing that Gen 6 was the golden age, purely because that was the last time they kept up with the technology and were also true to their roots. At the beginning of the PS2 generation, there were worries about development costs getting out of control. Whilst this may have had an effect, to me, the games that generation got away with it. Fast-forward to Gen 7 and you see the 3rd-parties begin to falter, especially the Japanese ones. Square-Enix failed to match their PS2 output. Games became westernised, less charming and more violent. You can also see evidence of, if not lower budgets, then at least the budgets not being able to cope with the game. RPGs became more streamlined and less thoroughly made - compare Level-5's biggest PS3 RPG, Ni No Kuni, to their best PS2 role-player, Dragon Quest VIII (admittedly you are seeing the difference between Namco-Bandai and Square-Enix). Another example is Team ICO. Although not a 3rd-party, they managed to create two critically-acclaimed games for the PS2 era - ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, which both seemed really important to that console. Now, though, they have spent an entire generation (and counting) trying to make the 3rd game. I'm sure they haven't suddenly lost their talent, it's just that Gen 6 seemed to be better at enabling greatness. In answer to your 2nd question, @King V, I'm not quite a Nintendo-only gamer, but am close to that. 3rd-party games have much less appeal to me than they used to (for the reasons above). However, I am a big Dragon Quest fan - the next one is coming to home consoles, and if that's the PS4, I will buy one as soon as the game is released.

I can't believe you bothered with the KFC and chocolate. Last night I dreamt that I regretted deleting Animal Crossing from my 3DS, as there was something I wanted to do in the game. Then I woke up and remembered I really had deleted the game in real life but, unlike in the dream, did not regret it. Mine was rubbish compared to yours.

I was reading that last night as well. Am I the only who is disheartened that so much of modern life revolves around acting and falseness? Don't people just like each other anymore? I know the article is contradicting 'The Rules', but even the fact there's a book called The Rules disappoints me, and that loads of young girls would take it seriously in the first place. Not having a go at you, Charlie - I thought it was a very interesting article too. It's just that I remember in the 1990s, and I don't know if this is just because we were teenagers or whatever, but people seemed to get together based on attraction + friendship (or how much they got along etc). Now there seems so much extra judgement going on.

26th September for Fantasy Life. http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/07/the_fantasy_life_adventure_begins_in_europe_on_26th_september

@Fused King - write 26th September in your diary! http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/07/the_fantasy_life_adventure_begins_in_europe_on_26th_september

I wouldn't consider myself a loyal fan and haven't been since 2005/2006 when they delayed Twilight Princess and altered (ruined) the GameCube version. From that moment on, I knew they were just as heartless and calculating as any other company. It sounds sad, but it taught me not to invest any emotion in them, as you're setting yourself up for disappointment (then again, I was a lot younger, and it wouldn't exactly be fitting for my age anyway!) After that incident I treated them with a "If the deal's good enough, I'll buy" attitude. Heck, for me personally, they could hardly have released a worse console than the Wii, and I only bought it when it was cheap enough. That said, I'm still open to Day 1 purchases if the offer seems good enough. Unlike many, I have no regrets about buying the 3DS at launch, but I didn't do it out of faith or loyalty. I did it because I was genuinely excited by a) the hardware and b) what was on offer at launch and within a few months of launch. For me, the Wii U is something in between the 3DS and Wii in terms of how much I like it (more like the Wii, when I think about it), but again, I bought it when the price was right and there were enough games actually released that I (thought I) wanted to play. In all honesty I think I'm getting a bit jaded with gaming anyway as I've had one for a couple of months and not even bought Mario 3D World/Pikmin 3 yet. In short: I have no loyalty to Nintendo, but will continue to buy their machines when the price and games are right. I'm more likely to keep buying their handhelds on Day 1, but wait a bit longer for the home consoles.

But isn't it a bit sexist to expect Samus to behave more like a woman, with traditionally feminine traits? Obviously, no video game character is real, but Samus is drawn like a woman and is voiced by a female voice actress, so what more is there? Sure, she's strong and resourceful, just like many women are in real life. Samus fights enormous monsters, which is somewhat unrealistic for any human, but if we suspend our disbelief and accept everything in the games is possible, it's no more far-fetched for a woman to do it than for a man. Now don't get me wrong - I wouldn't mind a tougher, sweatier, dirtier Samus (ditch the heels and make-up, that sort of thing) - but I just don't see the need to project any gender prejudice onto her.

Yeah, they should definitely use the GameCube pad as a template. Add on '+', '-'. 'Home' and whatever else they need, but keep it very, very like the GC controller and make it like the PS3 pad where you can use it wired or wireless - whichever you prefer.

I love the 'Intimidate' feature, as it always feels wrong to attack weak enemies!

Hmm, difficult one. Personally, I think Zero Suit Samus is a very nice design. On the other hand, does that design have anything to do with why I like Metroid? No, not at all. To me, the thrill of Metroid, apart from the combat and exploration, is about layering better weapons and armour on top of one another. I'm probably in the minority here in that, although Zero Mission might be my favourite Metroid, the Zero Suit section is my least favourite part as it makes the game completely about stealth. Doesn't mean I dislike seeing Samus in her Zero Suit, but I think the outfit was designed more for cameos and special ending pictures. In fact, it could argued that the Zero Suit was born of modesty. Samus used to be depicted as wearing a bikini underneath her armour, which perhaps seems a bit politically incorrect nowadays in the context of seeing it as a reward. It's highly likely, in my opinion, that the Zero Suit was created as a more acceptable way to still show the contours of a female protagonist - something that, one way or another, is always going to be desired by many. I do agree that Samus could be depicted as more muscular and less "Barbie doll", but it's really not a big deal to me. It would be worse, in my opinion, to deliberately avoid sex appeal - to cave in to ideas of modesty and prudishness - like has happened with Lara Croft (and made her far, far less appealing). To me, that would be worse than any benefit of improving her design for more valid reasons could be good. Keep Samus tough, but don't be ashamed of showing a woman's body. My biggest problem at the moment, though, is that (aside from fighting games and cameos) Samus Aran doesn't currently have a direction at all! I can cope with her depiction being different from game to game. It's more important that they actually keep making Metroid games at all.