1st December, 2023
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: fencing, cameras, and Mario.
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.
Super Mario RPG, Switch
As a Mario and Squaresoft fan in Europe, this has been a long time coming. Yes, I know Super Mario RPG was released on the Wii here, but I’ve been desperate to play this game for at least two decades. And it was worth the wait.
What I love most about the game is how authentically Mario it is: Mario from the 90s. The squidgy faces, the vibrancy of the Mushroom Kingdom, the chiming sound effects and boooiiiing of Mario’s jump. This is the Mario I remember from my childhood – from playing Mario Land 2 on my Game Boy, from watching the cartoons – but now stretched into three dimensions, into a fully explorable world that feels so rich and pure.
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Yes, there are plenty of negatives if I’m being picky. It’s too short. It’s too easy. Combat is too simplistic – I often found myself skipping past battles. And the pacing is a little off, racing through early stages and then padding out the adventure later on.
But who really cares with a game this colourful, this charming, this cheerful. It’s a joyous, breezy little quest I would’ve absolutely adored as a kid. Now I’ve enjoyed it as an adult instead.
Lubitel 166
This week I’ve been playing the game of learning how to use a TLR camera. Those are the deeply hipsterish devices with twin lenses – the kind of film camera you look down into in order to compose your shot.