Welcome back to “The Games I Played in ____” where I write about the games that I’ve played in the past month. This is the fifth installment in this series, so if you’d like to see what I played last month, you can find that here. I really liked how last month’s format came out, so I’m gonna stick with that for this month as I think this is a much more sustainable way to write this article each month.
Also, I’m alive! Between a nasty bout of the flu and Thanksgiving, I didn’t get much writing time this month, but rest assured I was only taking a break to rest up and get through the holiday. This blog is still very much alive and well. I’m in the early phases of starting a larger project that I’m very excited about, so I have big plans for the upcoming months. You’ll see soon enough.
This year has already been an incredible year for new releases. Between things like Street Fighter 6, Resident Evil 4, Lies of P, Armored Core 6, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and games I haven’t yet played like Final Fantasy XVI, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield, this is shaping up to be one of the most stacked years I can remember going back to when I was a kid. And somehow, the absolute bangers just keep coming out as this month brings two of the best games I’ve played all year, with even more yet to follow shortly behind them.
So what takes the top in this incredibly stacked month? Let’s find out!
The Best of the Month
Super Mario RPG (2023) (Nintendo Switch)
The original Super Mario RPG is one of my all-time favorite games. Releasing when I was 10 years old, the original Super Mario RPG was the first role-playing game that I ever played, and as such, served as my gateway game to the world of Japanese role-playing games. In addition to the countless hours I spent in friend’s basements trying out new item combinations, finding secrets, and vibing out to the incredible music, Super Mario RPG is also responsible for me falling in love with Japanese RPGs. If it were not for Super Mario RPG, I don’t know if I would have ever played some of my other favorite games of all-time like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VII. And I probably wouldn’t have named my cat after Morgana from Persona 5 (more on that next month, by the way). As such, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Super Mario RPG is probably one of the most impactful games I’ve ever played.
When I saw the announcement that Super Mario RPG was being remade, I was thrilled. Because the original game was a collaboration with SquareSoft (now known as SquareEnix), it hasn’t been the easiest of games to play in the modern era. While it’s occasionally been available on Nintendo’s various Virtual Console services from time-to-time, as the rights to the game were held by Square, it’s generally not something Nintendo has ever really done much with or has made more available than those brief digital releases. Original characters from this game like Geno and Mallow have never shown up anywhere outside of Amiibo costumes for Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and even Nintendo’s subsequent RPGs set in the Mario world like Paper Mario or the Mario and Luigi series have never built off of anything in this game. This is really the first “new” thing done with this game and it’s world in over 25 years. And now that I’ve binged through this game (one of the few positives of my bout with the flu) I’m happy to say that the new Super Mario RPG is a fantastic love letter to the original game.
The new Super Mario RPG is an incredibly faithful remake of the original (almost to a fault at times, which I’ll address in a bit). Everything that was present in the original is here in the remake, barring a few changes to some character names here and there (I am sad to report that Exor’s mouth is no longer inexplicably named “Neosquid” for example). And I do mean everything is here. For those familiar, that means a certain secret boss from another series is indeed here and I was absolutely ecstatic with how it was handled. The original Super Mario RPG pushed the then nearly obsolete Super Nintendo to its limits, and the new Super Mario RPG does the same with the aging Switch. Despite some slowdown in towns or in areas with lots of water effects, the new Super Mario RPG is one of the best-looking games on the entire system. From top to bottom, you can feel the love that the developers ArtePiazza had when adapting the original for this remake.
That said, calling this a “remake” feels a touch overly generous to me. While it technically is a remake built upon an entirely new foundation, this Super Mario RPG feels much more like something like this year’s Metroid Prime Remastered rather than something like Resident Evil 4’s remake. Outside of a few quality-of-life adjustments made to the battle system and a few added post-game boss fights, this largely feels like the original Super Mario RPG with a graphical facelift. Things that were broken in the original game remain broken in this game (for example, you can still one-shot Exor if you know the trick). Things that felt bad (like the controls of basically every single minigame), still feel bad here. It’s not enough to really mar this experience in any meaningful way, but it is somewhat disappointing to get to certain sections that felt awful in the original only to find that they still feel awful here. While it’s weirdly nostalgic for me to get to the race with Boshi and still not be able to get Yoshi to move an inch, I can imagine new players just being frustrated and wondering if something is bugged or broken. It almost strikes me as if the new development team was so in love with the original that they were afraid to make any meaningful changes to it, even if those changes would likely be appreciated by fans of the original.
That minor criticism aside, playing through this remake was everything I was hoping for. It’s hard for games to really rekindle my childhood nostalgia these days (more on that when I discuss Super Mario Bros Wonder later in this article), but as I was playing through Super Mario RPG, the memories came flooding back. Being packed around my buddy’s TV in his basement on a cold winter morning trying to beat the boss fight with Johnny. Staying up late at a sleepover at another friend’s house because we finally figured out how to get to the secret boss fight which blew our minds. Pouring over the strategy guide I got for Christmas and spending hours hunting down every last secret. Super Mario RPG was one of the last great games for my childhood Super Nintendo, and it feels very fitting and appropriate that Super Mario RPG is also likely one of the last great games for my Switch.
Recommended (especially if you have the same fondness for the original that I do)
The Rest of the Month
Spider-Man 2 (PlayStation 5)
Like I said last month, the world and characters established in the original Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4 and expanded upon in Miles Morales is quickly becoming my definitive version of Spider-Man. Because of that, and how much I loved the original game, I had extremely high hopes going into Spider-Man 2. To be honest, Spider-Man 2 did stumble a bit in a few areas which left me feeling like the original is the better game on whole. My issues with Spider-Man 2 are all ultimately fairly minor on their own, but in total, they do ultimately leave me feeling like this could have been a much better experience given just a touch more time in the oven. The story has some major pacing problems, with the first half of the story revolving around Kraven the Hunter feeling interminably slow. And while I think this is an excellent depiction of Kraven, he just doesn’t really do anything for many hours of the story, making the first half of this game feel like an incredibly slow prologue. The open world in this game is the most monotonous and repetitive of the three games in this series to date, despite the map being the largest it’s ever been. Miles and Peter feel significantly more similar in playstyle than they did in their stand-alone games, and Miles’ half of the story feels extremely rushed and almost tacked on at the last minute. And, worst of all, this game is really buggy. While I’m sure these will be patched eventually, I had my PlayStation hard crash multiple times, character models not load during cut scenes, dialogue hung up, and missions and side objectives would disappear from my map. My first eight or so hours with this game had me feeling kind of down on it.
But then the symbiote suit showed up. Being a 90’s kid, I very much have a soft spot in my heart for the 90’s “X-TREME” era of comics despite me intellectually knowing that they are mostly garbage. That said, I just have this deep love of the character of Venom. And I don’t think that Venom has ever been handled well in any origin story outside of the original comics run. Until now. Spider-Man 2 may possibly be my favorite depiction of Venom and symbiote suit story ever. Instead of evil Peter feeling like a joke like in the Sam Raimi movie, there are times here that feel like a horror game. Venom feels like an unstoppable, horrific monster, which is exactly how Venom should feel (at least when Venom is a villain). The thing that really surprised me though is just how much of the more obscure and wild symbiote lore that this game gets into. If you’re familiar with the deep cut Spider-Man/Venom story of Separation Anxiety or know who Knull is, you’re gonna love some of the wild shit that happens in the second half of this game. Despite the rough start, Spider-Man 2 ultimately delivered a fantastic Venom origin story and, bugs and boring open world aside, more of the gameplay that I’ve loved from the first two games. It’s rough around the edges, and the story takes far too long to really get going, but once it does, this game does ultimately deliver something spectacular.
Recommended (especially if you’re a fan of Venom and some of the nuttier, wild symbiote stories and lore from the comic books)
Super Mario Bros Wonder (Nintendo Switch)
“Wonder” is the perfect word to describe Super Mario Bros Wonder. And I mean that as a bit of a double-edged compliment. While Super Mario Bros Wonder did fill me with a sense of wonder and excitement that I haven’t felt playing a 2D Mario since the Super Nintendo era, it never really got much beyond a feeling of wonder and to that sense of magic and awe that those original games gave me. Holding this game up in comparison with games like Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World initially felt unfair, but then I remember that the 3D Mario series has been able to recapture that magic for me multiple times with Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Odyssey. There’s even been 2D platformers like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze that have that sense of magic for me, so it’s entirely possible for a 2D platformer to still hit me in that same way. And while Super Mario Bros Wonder is a great game and is easily the best 2D Mario game since the SNES era, I was ultimately left wanting just a little bit more from it than it delivered.
I do not enjoy the New Super Mario Bros series much at all. Over the process of those four games, Nintendo distilled the 2D Mario series down to a very rote, repetitive and unimaginative formula. While Super Mario Bros Wonder does a lot to shake that formula up, there’s still just enough of that DNA left that I found myself being underwhelmed at key moments. The first time an airship showed up, I was chomping at the bit to see how this game changed around the boring, formulaic auto-scroller level that airship levels became in the New Super Mario Bros series. It didn’t, they’re still boring. The boss fights with Bowser Jr are still boring iterations of the same “jump on the boss, avoid the spinning shell, repeat three times” formula we’ve been playing since Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES. And to me, the biggest disappointment was getting to the end of the game, wondering how weird or different this game’s final showdown with Bowser would be, only to have yet another fight with a disembodied head and hands that Nintendo shoehorns into every other game they make (and that’s just the Mario ones, don’t get me started on how many times you have to fight a head and some hands in The Legend of Zelda).
Super Mario Bros Wonder is a game with incredible highs. It does a lot right. The Wonder Seeds really mix up the gameplay and add a lot of fun variety to levels. The mix of traditional, puzzle and challenge levels with minigames made each world feel fresh and new. Even the little details like the added animation flourishes are charming and show more effort than Nintendo has given to 2D Mario in decades. If you’re a Mario fan, you absolutely owe it to yourself to play it. But it’s also a game with just enough boring, copy-and-paste ideas that ran out of steam decades ago to still feel overly familiar and tired at times. It’s a good start and absolutely a step in the right direction, but I know Nintendo can do better. And I really hope that next time they really push the envelope and leave some of their tired tropes behind for good.
Recommended (it’s the best 2D Mario in decades, even if it still falls short of games like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze)
Returning Favorites
Street Fighter 6 (PlayStation 5)
Thanks to my bout with the flu, this month is probably the least amount of time I’ve put into Street Fighter 6, but I’m still having an absolute blast with the game. I’m still putting in time to learn the newest DLC character AKI, and despite her glaring weaknesses as a character, I’m still finding her fluid and unique gameplay to be some of the most fun I’ve had with a fighting game in years. As I write this, the next big update is set to drop later this week with the new DLC costumes for the original 18 fighters finally coming out. These new designs all look incredible, and they’re something that I definitely want to pick up, but I am concerned as we still don’t know the pricing. Given this game’s awful and exploitative monetization for cosmetics items for your in-game avatar, I am worried that these will be priced at a ridiculously high price. We’ll see. Either way, you’ll see my thoughts on how this shakes out next month.
Sneak Peeks
Lunacid (PC)
Lunacid is the follow-up game from independent developer Akira Kuma who made one of my absolute favorite indie horror titles of all time, Lost in Vivo. This time around, instead of a heavily Silent-Hill inspired horror game, Lunacid is a first-person dungeon crawling RPG heavily inspired by games like the King’s Field series. Much like Lost in Vivo, Lunacid is dripping with atmosphere, with a retro-PS1 style aesthetic that helps everything feel a touch otherworldly and ephemeral. Much like with Lost in Vivo, the soundtrack is incredible and feels like something I will be revisiting for years to come. The only problem I have is that my bout with the flu largely kept me away from my PC most of the month, so I’ve only spent a few hours here. But I’m very much looking forward to diving back in and seeing what else Lunacid has in store.
Super Rare Mixtape: Horror Edition (PC)
The Super Rare Mixtape: Horror Edition is a hard collection to talk about. For one, it’s a collection of 30+ different indie horror games and demos, making it extremely difficult to talk about as a cohesive whole. It’s also a limited-edition physical release, which while cool for reasons I’ll get to, means that once it sells out, you’ll never be able to find this without paying secondary market prices which is quite uncool. Thankfully, it still looks to be quite a ways away from selling out, but I don’t really love how this is basically designed to trigger feelings of FOMO regardless of how cool it is to play some indie games off a USB stick shaped like a cassette tape. Nothing I’ve played here has felt essential, but for the few hours I’ve poked around at the games in this collection I’ve enjoyed my time. Maybe I’ll write a bit more in-depth about this in the future, but I can’t really say for sure until I’ve seen everything this has to offer which will likely take me a little while. Until then, I’ll say it’s a cool collectible with an iffy distribution method and is likely something you’ll know if you’re interested in or not just from this quick little blurb here.
The Cult Classic 
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