What We Played #303 – Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Little Nightmares & Puyo Puyo Tetris

Playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has had me thinking about food in games. The cooking element is integral – it’ll genuinely mean the difference between life and death – and the way in which it’s presented is not entirely disconnected from the real-world action of making a meal. Sure, raw ingredients like eggs or raw fish are perfectly edible, but something magical happens when combining ingredients together and applying some heat, turning them into something far more exciting than they are as separate entities. Breath of the Wild captures that perfectly, and you can funnel rather more time than is perhaps helpful into making meal after meal. As with real life cooking, it can be a glorious diversion or a complete pain in the neck, but then that’s part of what makes Breath of the Wild so special.

I’ve been playing a great range of games this week, besides Zelda. Cities: Skylines on the Xbox One had me awake at stupid o’clock trying to fix bus routes and pollution, which is much more fun in practice than it sounds. Besides that I’m working on a review of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, played the opening of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows Of Valentia, turned on the PS3 for a spot of Wipeout HD and I’ve been stuck once more with a couple hours of Lego Jurassic World.

Alongside asking the team what they played, I added yet more complication this week by also asking their favourite food. At least we managed not to end up with top fives this time, though many of us couldn’t quite narrow it down to just one. Snap decision, and pure gut reaction, I’m going to say pitta bread and houmous. At various points in the last twenty five-ish years I’ve virtually lived off this simple combination, and still today it’s probably accounts for over half of my lunchtimes. It’s probably not magical, but I love it!

Tuffcub didn’t hesitate with his choice, opting for his own homemade cottage pie. This was then the subject of much further conversation, proving that cottage pie could actually have been the top choice for most of the team. In terms of games, it’s been Little Nightmares (something new!), Statik (something VR!) and Titanfall 2 (quelle surprise!)

The Yooka-Laylee platinum popped for Steve, who also began the lovely looking World to the West, and put some time into Severed on the Vita, while his favourite food is the delicious-sounding Butternut Squash Risotto. Dave has mostly been playing Puyo Puyo Tetris on the Switch, though the purchase of a new Vita cable saw it spring back into life and back into his hands, with plenty of time spent with Castlevania Dracula X. His favourite food is Cochinita Pibil served in Soft Mexican Tacos with rice and chipotle salsa, and a refreshing Mexican beer. Apparently it’s gorgeous, even if you can’t find a banana leaf to roast the pork inside.

Miguel loves a good ol’ cheeseburger – a fine choice – but it’s been a tough week to fit in gaming. He’s managed a little bit of Akiba’s Beat and Overwatch though, so not a dead loss! Jim’s favourite food is enchiladas – soooo good! – and he’s managed to fit in plenty of time for gaming;

This week I’ve been split between two games: Stardew Valley and Syberia 3. Having been a massive Harvest Moon fan during the PlayStation One era, Stardew has taken me back to my roots and I absolutely love it. I’ve racked a dozen hours already with no real signs of slowing down. Meanwhile, Syberia 3 has been filling in the game between my heavy sessions with Stardew. Being a sequel to 2004’s Syberia II, it’s been one hell of a long wait for fans of the series. While incredibly niche, so far it’s proving to be a great modernisation.

Aran couldn’t choose his favourite food, loving everything from fajitas through to roast dinners, and we found out he’d even give pigeon pie a go, but today he fancied some chunky veg soup with some ciabatta. Gaming-wise he’s played Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, which is great at sniping but not so great at storytelling, as well as more FFXV.

Jake has been playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and some Zelda. He’s looking forward to racing people when Mario Kart launches officially tomorrow. On the BotW side of things, he’s now on 85 shrines and slowly getting back into video games after a pretty rough time in his personal life. He’s really taken a liking to Switch though and the portability of the system is strangely making games seem more fun.

Finally, Tef – whose food of choice is Hungarian goulash -has played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, some more Mario Kart 8 and mixed it up with a little bit of Mario Kart 8… He’s mastered all of the 200cc cups in the game, just in time for regular players to get their hands on it and battle it out online with them. That said, he did find time for Scanner Sombre, has dabbled with Immortal Redneck and plans to catch up on a few other games for review this weekend.


Now then, how about you? What you all been playing?

Written by
TSA's Reviews Editor - a hoarder of headsets who regularly argues that the Sega Saturn was the best console ever released.

21 Comments

  1. Lots of Switch action folks, I’m starting to wish I’d kept my preorder! I’ve been plundering the pervy, violent delights of Saints Row 3, it’s been weird playing on a PS3 again and it’s definitely made me appreciate the ergonomics and power of the PS4, great game though and another fun platinum. I’ve also started Titanfall 2, lots of fun and I’m surprised the speed hasn’t put me off, if anything it adds to the excitement.

  2. Nothing but Zelda for me too this week. Well, a dashing of Fast RMX too. The track design is sublime, makes me realise just how much Wipeout lost its way after Fusion and Pure. Both games have been fun at and away from the TV.

    Will be playing MK8 deluxe when I get home. Cannot wait.

  3. Started on the giant Ghost Recon Wildlands. Enjoying it so far, but taking it slow.

    Also, was emailed a 30% off voucher for Mass Effect Andromeda on PS Store… N92TH3FR8G

    Dunno if it’s of use of anyone?

    • Oh, and a bit of Yooka Laylee, but my first impressions were not good. What were they thinking with those annoying ‘voices’?! The first half hour has been enough to put me off for the foreseeable.

      • And a Jalfrezi, lol

      • I turned the annoying voices right down after the first cutscene had finished. Awful. Ok game though.

  4. I hit the 1000 hour mark in Dota 2 and half of me wanted to hear that trophy ping sound again!

    • You’re joking? That’s genuinely incredible!

  5. I’ve played 4 or 5 hours of Deus EX Mankind divided, not hugely enjoying it. After the warm fuzzy bubble of Andromeda it’s a cold and uncharismatic experience.
    So i’ve been able to return to spend more quality time with No Man’s Sky, found the type of crashed ship i had been looking for and then discovered after accepting it that the resources i need to fix it are not easily available on this planet. I may be here for some time..

    And i’ve picked up Little Nightmares so i’ll probably start that over the weekend.
    I posted this in the review page but might as well add it here too, it’s an interactive demo for Little Nightmares and you can grab a free mask dlc too..

    http://escapekitchen.little-nightmares.com/

  6. Any chance we get a full review of Puyo Puyo Tetris? I’m inclined to buy it on the PS4, but still not sure about the Tetris mix side of this game, which could potentially throw off the balance on Puyo Puyo :).

  7. Lego City Undercover – By my calculations, if I play the game for 5 hours a day, every day until next year, I’ll have found half the gold bricks and character tokens in the game. That’s not because I’m really shit at games (or blind) but it feels like there are more collectibles in this game than there are single Lego bricks in the whole world! Still, it’s the best Lego game yet so we don’t mind.

    And from the best Lego game to the absolute worst: Lego Batman 3. I can only assume they were trying really hard to make the most boring Lego game in history because I can’t believe anyone could make a game this bad by accident. And I have no choice but to play it because my Nephew loves Batman and wants to unlock every character token. I’d rather spend a week playing chicken on the M6. Awful game!

    Then a much neede break from all things Lego with The Park (Aka Silent tHrILL). I actually enjoyed this. Quite scary in the final section of the game. Reminded me of a knock off PT but still pretty messed up. Made me jump a few times. Dialogue is awful but also quite disturbing. It’s never going to be on anyone’s game of the year list but still worth checking out IMO.

    • Oh yeah, Lego Batman 3 is beyond terrible! I played it directly after Lego Star Wars TFA as well, which was brilliant!

  8. I’ve mainly played Severed on the Vita which I’ve got fairly addicted too and a little bit of Destroy All Humans! 2. I’m not going to have time to play on PlayStation much soon as I’ve got a new addition to the family arriving in the next few days, I’m just going to call it a Switch. I couldn’t resist any further when I saw Amazon had a discount code saving £20. I tried my hardest but my resolve has broke. Zelda and MK8 here I come.

    • Wish you all the best for your ‘new addition to the family’..! :o)

      • Thanks buddy ;-)

        I’ve got to say in very impressed with the Switch so far…

  9. Dipped into some Plus backlog games, played Apotheon for about an hour until it got repetitive. Next was Transistor, which is good, but tries a bit hard to be special and arty. It was enjoyable for a couple of hours, then was deleted too.

    On the 26th was Alien Day, so I went back to my personal favorite game of all time, Alien:Isolation. Find it still amazing and even after all that time and having platinumed it two years ago, it is still really scary, just brilliant. It’s very sad the rumours of a sequel were thrashed this week.

    Next on the list was Fallout 4, a very mixed experience so far. First it took the game about an hour to install and finally start up, which is already unacceptable. But worse, my first session was abruptly ended last night by unrecoverable crashes. Every time I loaded any of my different saves, it immediately crashed again. So, I’m not sure how much more effort I will put into this junk.

    Meanwhile, I managed to stay away from all the new releases this week (I’ll definitely pick up Outlast 2 soon) and the sales.

    Oh, and I almost got myself a PS4 Pro, which Gamestop currently throws at you for CHF 100 (just under £80) around here, if you give them your old PS4 and two used games. A friend of mine got one on Wednesday, but in the end I decided all the hassle wasn’t worth it.

  10. Lots of Switch stuff going on for me this week.

    Picked up a second set of Joy Cons as I had to send one of my originals to Nintendo for repair. Was disappointed to find that both of the Joy Cons in this set were faulty and de-syncing every few seconds. Very annoying so I returned them and picked up a Pro Controller instead, which is a phenomenal controller.
    Have since got my original Joy Con back and its working fine. Annoying that the Switch has had this early hardware issue, but it sounds like new stock works fine.

    As for games, I’ve just been playing more Zelda, basically killing time until today (woo Mario Kart).
    Have put a few hours into MK8 tonight and have been very impressed with how stable the online is. No lag. No drop-outs. Nice :)

Comments are now closed for this post.