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or Dragon Quest V as it was. I've only played about an hour, so in rpg terms I'm probably still well into the intro. In fact I'm a little kid at the minute and the box art shows you as a teenager, so I'm guessing there's a split at some point where you grow up. Gameplay is just Dragon Quest, except maybe even more (how to say this without it sounding like a dig at it)... quirky. As you walk along you get into random fights, in these fights you get a first person view with the enemies all lined up, then you select attack/defend/magic/items/flee/etc. Thing is, if you're faced with say, 2 slimes and a rat, you can select to attack the rat or both the slimes i.e. it groups enemies of a similar type so you cant choose to attack a specific enemy. It's not a massive problem, but it does mean that your damage is more spread out over multiple turns. I think it's probably because you're a kid early on, but you dont die when you're defeated, instead you keep everything you've earned and end up back at the town where you're told to go and rest. It's pretty good for easing you in, I doubt I'd have got through the first cave otherwise, but I still circled around near the town to get into fights (before going home and resting) to level up my second character. The scripts really good too, I've come accross a character who talks like the count from Seseme street, and a guy I think is supposed to be spanish, but his accent is italian I'm really enjoying it so far, I guess if you've played loads of DQ it's just more of the same, but I've only ever played 2 of them and never got all that far in either.

If you didnt like the one before then you wont like this. If you liked the one before then you'll love this, miss the cell shaded graphics but appreciate how much they've tightened the controls. Truly the Prince has never moved so freely. Wall runs are executed at almost any angle as long as your vaguely pushing in the right direction and pole hoping is simply pushing in the direction of the next obstacle and pressing jump - he does the rest himself. The hook of the game is an impressive one - the use of water. Holding the L button freezes time and makes water solid, meaning you can swing from jets of water from the walls and climb springs that burst from the ground. Some of the way Ubi have implemented the water as platforming puzzles is nothing short of genius and in turn makes you feel like one when you flawlessly cross a tricky looking cavern. The R button is your run/climb button so at times your playing with both Triggers held down and it takes a few goes to get used too. I wish it had the graphical style of the previous effort, this one with its 'real' people comes over a little wooden, but to be fair with the platforming so good its not really an issue. Ive just done a really impressive section in The Observatory but i had to stop and come to work, but all i wanna do is play this. Brilliant stuff so far.

I don't think there's a thread for this. It's a interactive novel kind of thing, you get huge lumps of text, a choice of where to go next, and puzzles. The puzzles so far have mostly been maths based, like here's how to do a digital route, use that to solve the puzzle to get in to the lock to get the key to unlock the key card to unlock the door and escape. That type of thing. They haven't been impossibly hard so far, but you could really do with it letting you make a note somewhere for example The plot has been fairly good so far. You wake up locked in a room on a ship, the room starts to flood and you need to escape. Once you do you meet 8 other people who have all had to do the same. To get out of the first area there's a choice of doors, you pick one and take the right number of people with you (according to the digital route sum), meaning the rest of the people go through the other door. which leads to a problem later on. It's a bit of a spoiler, but kind of not because you know it could happen at some point (and I'll keep it vague) not a complaint as such, just something I don't want to do. Aside from that though I'm really enjoying it

If you played the PS2 Shin Megami games, or even the Persona games, then you're going to know what this is about. For the record the difference between the Persona games and the Shin Megami Tensei games is that Persona tends to be a bit more upbeat and has you working with other humans, where as SMT is all end of the world and sees you pretty much exclusively having demons as your partners. There's no friendship building in SMT, it's more or less a straight up rpg. You fight alone initially, with a choice between a sword attack and a gun attack (which are distinct types such as fire, ice, electric, wind etc are) then quickly have a demon offer to help. You get into fights, both level up, but you need to recruit more help. This means starting conversation with demons before you fight, answering in a way they want to hear, then bargaining with them for items or recruitment. Simple enough, a bit like Pokemon or Dragon Quest 5. But the SMT games, like Persona require you to fuse demons together to make new, more powerful demons. Persona has always done a better job or giving you a chance to get the mix of skills you want in my opinion, here when you fuse there seems less randomisation, you get what the game decides to give you. In Persona there was also a random chance of bonuses, things going wrong, or even a whole new demon being created, here it seems much more 'A+B=C and you get these skills' I think the trial by fire in the previous games has stood me in good stead, because even though I'm bloody fucking loving it, I'm inching my way through. It's not too hard initially, but it's a game that requires you to build your team up, which makes grinding a by-product. I'm 6 hours in and already if I hadn't been cautious I'd be fucked.

Come on then, we've had people's thoughts on the DS "remix" version, how about the original? This was the first thing I saw on the old 64 and it blew me away. I knew I'd get the machine once I'd played on this. Goldeneye then sealed the deal! I don't know how many times I've played this through but it's still a corker. Even though everyone complained that Mario Sunshine wasn't a step-up from this, they forget how much better Sunshine looks. Go back and play this now and it doesn't look quite as impressive. Still it's a ground-breaker in every way. The only thing stopping me from buying this is the fact that I've played it loads and it is 1000 points which makes it the most expensive game on the VC.

After finishing the last Lego game I played (whatever it was) I swore i'd never play another Lego game again. Then I bought this one in the sales (ages ago). I'm glad i'm an idiot that just buys anything for cheap because this is bloody good. Definately for fans of LOTR though, not exclusively but you'll get a lot more enjoyment from the game if you love the world it's set in. The puzzles are genuinely enjoyable, not once have I felt like i'm just playing to get through the levels like I have in previous games. It's full of usual Travellers Tales humour, both in the gameplay and the cut scenes. Oh, the cut scenes. Ones I actually dont mind watching (which is lucky as in Story Mode they are unskippable), a lot of though has gone in to them , they use sound bites from the films that brings them to life. The entire musical score is from the films too which adds to the atmosphere immensly - love that music. So yeah, super impressed especially as my expectations were so low. I think i have two more missions before Story Mode is complete. You can then go through in Free Play and mop up all the collectables, that's possibly where the fun may run out for me but I can't complain at what I've got out of a game that I paid less than £4 for.

Any impressions so far? Ive been enjoying what ive played. It feels more like a new one than any of the previous versions have, although to date nothing has made me go wowsa! The narrative makes it feel more like the anime show, which is a good thing, I've felt nicely involved all the way so far, I'm two badges in and I still feel like I'm part of the intro. So far, so good.

I think we have just been using the news thread for impressions so I have done this little monsieur to have a proper go. Okay as a player of the old generation I find that the new graphical view is quite good actually. I keep thinking im playing worms 3d sometimes but it needed an update. There is more of a storyline to this one it seems, as I think Nintendo had the idea of bringing new players to the game and the story works quite well at leading you into the game. I only have three pokemon so far and went with the fire starter after trying out all three and restarting as I usually do with the games. I really like the switch to nightime mode on this, I know it was on Gold and Silver and also ruby/sapphire etc but it works great on this one, the towns look awesome at night and the pokemon you can catch change and suit the nightime. Ive not played much of it but my first impression is that this has so far lived up to my expectations and I will be playing it at every opportunity.

I had a theory during the first couple of hours of this that it was where Dragon Quest started to get less interesting. Dragon Quest 4 and particularly 5 did some really clever things with their narrative. Dragon Quest 8 and 9 not so much, they're just straight forward go and save the world stories. It's picked up though, Dragon Quest 6 plays about with time, showing you things in one time that set up stories in another. It's not the most clever thing in the world but it's more interesting than it looked like it was going to be. The gameplay is still the same, you start out alone but I've now got a party of 3, so there's some tactics creeping in with the tougher fights edit: It's actually not different times it's a dream world and a real world, one affects the other

Ed sent me this to play the other day and so far I'm really enjoying it. Unlike a proper Dragon Quest game your character doesn't get directly involved in the fighting, using monsters instead. In fact unless you specifically tell your monsters what to do they'll just attack how they want. There is that option though, you can be specific and tell a monster to heal or cast a fire spell (for example), or be more vague and tell it not to use magic or fight defensively. So far things have been fairly easy, I've played enough Dragon Quest though to know that at some point I'm going to have to tell my monsters to cast kabuff, go defensive, or not to use magic because the enemy have cast bounce. At the minute I've been telling them not to use magic because they use it constantly, pissing away their magic points on enemies it takes 1 hit to kill. You catch monsters by 'scouting' them during a fight. Basically you're impressing them with your strength, so your monsters hit them (this doesn't do any damage) filling up a meter, get it to 100% and they'll definitely join you, but I've had monsters join me on 45%. The problem is they join at a low level, and because you need to be stronger than them to impress them, you're getting them after they'd be useful. New recruits do level fairly quickly, and monsters you've had a while will start to level up at a snails pace. However I've got a slime, the first monster I caught myself, that should by rights still be part of my team, but because I know the newer monsters have more potential I have to drop my level 15 slime for a level 8 cureslime who does next to no damage. Monsters in your reserves do get some experience when you fight but I'm fairly sure it's reduced, so if you want them to level up quickly then you have to put them in. You also then need to grind because they join at such a low level. Most annoying thing so far though, there's giant monsters in each area, the first is a giant worm (there's also a troll who's too strong for me at the minute), the second looks like Zodd from Berserk, a big winged dog type thing. This randomly appears on the map when you're above ground, spins around looking for you, then rushes you, killing one of your party. Which means heading back to your base to rest, to trek back to where you've just been. Apart from that I'm really enjoying it, I think it might get a bit tedious, but I can't complain too much about what I've played

The best series on any Nintendo console is back Things have changed a bit this time too. Rather than having weapons you acquire Glyphs (by killing enemies I think, possibly more ways) which can be equiped to buttons for your attacks. In a way it's kind of like the skills aspect of Dawn of Sorrow, except there are now no weapons at all. Every attack you unleash uses magic which quickly refills (same magic bar system as all recent Castlevania's) but this time rather than just refilling your magic meter a bit, hearts work like in the old style vanias, the more you collect the more you can potentially use. A few things have struck me so far. Firstly it looks immense, the backgrounds in particular are very nice. There's new enemies even on the first stage, and a couple of fancy new moves too. Second someones not done their job properly as loads of names are in []'s e.g. [Dracula]. Either there's a reason for it I've missed or someones translated them and forgot to delete the insertion boxes. Thirdly, Castlevania always has a bad ending, a point where you can complete the game without completing the game, and it was obvious before the training missions what that's likely to be with this game