The Last Laugh

Life is a highway…


Use your fucking turn signal and make sure to stay
in your own god damn lane

A bit of a strained metaphor on that attempt at positing some wisdom, but I think there’s still a salvageable message somewhere in there. Shifting gears here, as someone who spends most of his day centered around gaming, whether it be thinking, reading, writing, playing…I still have trouble keeping up with most of the industry. I’m not sure if I’m within my rational means to accuse this hobby of being either a younger man’s game, or a medium that demands one has a lot of capital in order to enjoy what is on offer, but I definitely question who, outside of people employed within the industry, don’t feel utterly lost in the shuffle in attempting to keep up with the reality of the everyday of video gaming. To wit: I keep forgetting we are deep in the midst of award season, and no matter where I look, the majority of the titles nominated for any given award shindig are ones I haven’t even played yet, and I’m getting down on games everyday.


Mostly figuratively now a days, but engagement is engagement

This particular award ceremony was the 2025 Game Developers Choice Awards, so a bunch of the industry’s devs got together and gave their two cents on which titles were the cream of the crop. As previously mentioned, even though I am somewhat familiar with the games discussed, the fact of the matter is I haven’t even played most of them, which leaves me scratching my head as to what I was doing all of 2024, but I digress. I did (and am still) playing Balatro, which dominated the award ceremony, by taking home not only Best Debut, Best Design, and Innovation Award, but also claimed the top prize by winning Game of the Year.


The Joker steals the show again, but what else is new?

What I find maddening about this is what I must be missing about Balatro, cause it’s very obviously some key element that makes the entire experience so heavily praised, so what I’m not “getting” about the little card game that could baffles me. As I recently addressed in an article, the game doesn’t seem to be overly compelling to me as I sift through it’s simplicity and try to understand what it has to offer outside of some slightly spruced remixing of what appears to be a basic card game prominently featuring The Joker cards as strategic fulcrums that help win the day.This really could be a moment of different strokes for different folks, with my penchant for being totally repelled by anything even remotely resembling a table top game front in center. Whatever “it” factor that Balatro possesses that seems to elude me aside, game of the year is mighty impressive, so congrats to the Balatro devs for what they accomplished and for being recognized for their work. I’ll continue to contend with the title to see if I can make heads or tails of the experience, but uh…I might just not be of popular opinion on this one, even if obvious quality is staring me right in the face.


What I feel like when attempting to analyze what
makes Balatro so Balatro-y

~Pashford

Doom & Animal Crossing 4Evaz!!1<3

Happy 5th Anniversary you two. Cheers to many more celebrations including both your series.


A rare moment where Isabelle gets a breather from
her hellish schedule to hang with Doomguy. He loves
shooting the shit

Ass-slappingly un-fucking-real that it’s already been five years since these two games launched in what’s felt like a blink of an eye. Even more wild when you consider these games not only launched on this very day five years ago, but it was right about that time in the U.S that the lockdown was announced due to Covid-19. In the before times…the long long ago.


Everyone had to be socially distanced more than
six pixels apart back then

Definitely in large part due to the pandemic, but not solely so, these games thrived. Mind you, many (including myself) have been humble fans of both since there relative inceptions (decades for either at this point), but when one has little else to do but fear the plague, sitting down to find some peace and quiet with a little bit of cozy comfort gaming is always an easy call.


Pictured: A piece of quiet(ening)

Even though I moved on from Doom: Eternal sooner than New Horizons, I still play both series as a duology back to back daily, having just finished doing so in the last ten minutes. There is technically still stuff for me to do in AC, even after five years (see the egregiously paced Nook Miles goals as to why), and there are nearly endless number of Doom WADs in the original games to enjoy at this point (custom level packs made by fans), so that I technically *still* have something new to look forward to, which is super groovy. One wouldn’t necessarily think that these two series would have forged such an unlikely bond between fandoms, but I think it is a rare moment that highlights how multi-layered gamers can be. There are many out there who love to get down on both the cozy and the chaotic, and once they’re done mowing down hordes of the demonic, enjoy hosing down and tending to some relaxing horticulture in their well kept gardens.


What most peoples Animal Crossing islands look
like when they finally log back in after time away

Both are games that share an under representation here on ATE, though they find themselves within a grouping of titles I so regularly and often play, alongside Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Elden Ring, that I’m not sure if I avoid talking about them due to the notion they feel so familiar and therefore so inane in consideration, or that everyone and their mother discusses them due to their popularity, and I feel as if I just truly have nothing to add to that conversation. I guess at least in terms of Animal Crossing, there has been no new news on the game or a follow up in some time. Nintendo is set to go into greater detail about the Switch 2 come April 2nd, and I’ll be amazed if they don’t showcase something from the next AC, and especially given the turn around time they’ve had on the last title, I’ll be even more amazed if they don’t announce an end of year release date.


Come on Nintendo, let’s both enjoy the sweet sound
of “bells” ringing come the holiday season…

There’s always news on the Doom front of course, as the original game continues to be ported to nearly every conceivable platform and device known to man, though I’m sure most are deadlocked on the release date for Doom: The Dark Ages, which is the direct sequel to Doom: Eternal, and set to launch on May 15th. Thinking about it, I’m a bit dumbfounded at myself for not having discussed the fairly constant stream of news regarding the title on ATE as of late, but the schedule has jammed up on my end by an almost complete lack of free time. C’est la vie. I’m going to pretend for a second that my schedule is somehow magically going to open up at some point in the next 24 hours, where then I will be struck by both a creative fervor, and somehow (insanely so) stumble onto a bunch of free time into which I may do a more in-depth follow up post of some kind detailing what I love about both series, and or even bring more focus unto the news and or culture involving both magnificent stable of games…but the devils in the details, and if we’re going by the mess left by Doomguy on a regular basis, those details have been blasted all over the god damned walls of the underworld.



What the devil must look like every time he gets
the news Doomguy has breached the walls of Hell

~Pashford

Video Game Workers Unite!

When in doubt, talk it out.


Seen here: Doomguy showing Kirby the weapon he’s
nicknamed “The Conversation”

Had a lot more planned for today, but I’m currently running on negative minutes to spare, so this post is about as quick a scattershot as I can muster. Figured I’d shared with you an interesting article that discusses a brand new union that was formed between both America and Canada in the name of rights for video game workers called the UVW-CWA, which will hopefully strengthen the industry by protecting workers and looking out for the most vulnerable within the field itself. This is on the tail of a number of disastrous years for video games, where dozens of studios have shuttered and a good ten thousand workers have lost their job, in spite of developing great games, so this is right on time. I was just reading another article in Edge magazine, where they interviewed a number of big names in the industry about what kind of positive changes they’d love to see, and what video games need the most, and the collective desire was more cushion and safety for workers the industry over. Hopefully, this union is an excellent step in the right direction to accomplish that.

That’s it for now. Stay groovy.

~Pashford

The Casual Delirium Of Video Games: Tuesday Edition

In the game that is life, I feel as if I’m perpetually stuck on the character creation screen


Shouting Waaaaaaaaaaah at the top of my lungs
furiously pressing *lengthen nose button* repeatedly
fueled by a pure sense of frustrated hysteria

I keep foolishly thinking I’m going to have an exorbitant amount of free time to play video games during my weekends, which alas, has been a totally fucking wrong deduction on my part. I’m also unfortunately feeling the need to view gaming through the lens of productivity in some respects, to get through as much as possible just in general, but also so I have a constant stream of content to write about. I tend to only commit to small blurbs every day on some months, I’m failing to recall how I kept this up when I was running a commercial gaming website, or even how streamers do this shit for more than half the day all the time.


Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s
crushing societal standards to succeed
under insane pressure all the time

To both my last point and my cold open, I was attempting to squeeze in the idea of starting a new title, in spite of a pack daily schedule when I was reminded Avowed just launched, this after reading some interesting feedback about the title in the recent Edge magazine, only to have stupidly misunderstood the assignment of what a “quick” play would entail. In the regard of not having much time at the moment, and by forgetting the game was not entirely dissimilar to an Elder Scrolls game, and to that point, having a massive god damn character creator to get through. With only a good hour to spare on the clock, I just shook my head thinking”definitely playing this…another time it looks like.” Good character creators are usually so intense, they represent a meta-game in and of themselves, and I’m nearly surprised someone hasn’t made some quirky parody spin off mobile game where that and only that is the entirety of the game.


In the reality where Anime Armpit games exist,
anything is terrifyingly possible

I guess to tie this post to some kind of recent gaming news, I recently read that Todd Howard, in being interviewed as hype for the upcoming 21st BAFTA Game Awards, mentioned he thought Tetris and Pac-Man were two of the most important games of our time, but that Mario and Doom were two of the most influential titles, more so suggesting the former two as important for their cultural impact on the zeitgeist, and the latter two in terms of design. Hard to argue his perspective, as I’ve even come to bat with the grandeur that is Tetris more than a decade ago during the genesis of my long running series Encyclopedia Muranica. I haven’t discussed much in the way of Pac-Man, but Ms.Pac-Man stands as one of my fav arcade cabinets of all time, and it’s nature of being one of the first massive commercial hits while simultaneously being a romhack helped move the needle for game development moving forward. Not much that can be said about Mario that wouldn’t represent the metaphorical equivalent of a beaten horse corpse at this point, and I gush about the awesomeness that is Doom on a regular basis, so I’d tend to agree.


Poetry in motion, and unrivaled performance art, truly

I had more of an overall point I was planning on expounding upon, but I’ve become distracted in my musings, and I suppose a meaningful takeaway isn’t always needed when you’ve spent just a couple of minutes having fun.

~Pashford

Words of Wisdom: Non-Simulated Thinking

Dependency on technology can be a death sentence.


Sometimes, quite literally so

On my brief reflection involving the words of wisdom I share today, I just wanted to advocate for everyone not to be too reliant on technology, lest ye be ruled by it. I was just reading an article about how general intelligence is down across the board, and it got me thinking that a big contributing factor may be a reliance on technology, which can help create a false sense of security and a pretense to feed into laziness, which is sure to help cultivate bad habits. I’m no luddite, and think tech is fundamental in enhancing our lives, but don’t forget your best resource will always be your brain, and always keep the “use it or lose it” mentality close to your heart, or you may fall prey to the failures so many others already have, which is losing the very thing that makes you…you. So consider my wisdom, and always think for yourself, don’t let algorithms control your life, and never stop questioning how you can continue to refine your ability to critically think more in your everyday.

Take care of yourself, and each other.

~Pashford

Pokémon Disaster

Gotta catch em all…after beating them mercilessly into submission of course!


If only this kid lived in the world where Big Boss
exists, he could have a whole different set of issues
with this kind of enthusiasm

Writing dark deconstructions involving the Pokémon series never gets old, and quite frankly is a seemingly endless treasure trove from which to mine from. Which is a good thing, too, as I’m not always immersed balls deep into any one game in the series, in spite of multiple titles usually coming out during any given year, though my amorous tendencies for the series remains unabated. As I’ve briefly mentioned before on ATE, I have had a tenuous relationship at best with Scarlet and Violet, as the games just represent what I deem as an excessive low point for the series, which makes it a serious difficulty in swallowing the dreck that represents Pokémania in any tolerable fashion. Even the thought of booting Scarlet up at the current moment makes me shudder, as the title is such a trial in patience on every conceivable level.


What Pokémon Scarlet and Violet should have been called

Though the titles have shaped up a bit through patches and post launch content, it’s a day late and a dollar short, quite honestly. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: just because a game has an awesome approach to game design, doesn’t mean everyone needs to ape it. I know it’s inevitable, and especially in a day and age where the triple A gaming industry is always looking for a sure fire hit, you’ll bet your ass that anyone who’s anyone is going to crib notes from something as prolific as Breath of the Wild without batting an eye, but carbon copying the experience while losing the series DNA in the process does active damage to the brand, and nothing positive for anyone in the long run.


How I imagine most conversations go during
Pokémon developer brainstorming sessions

I guess since the publisher is at least shared in this case, one developer publishing under the Nintendo banner borrowing from another developer could *at least* be somewhat justified as colleagues of sorts sharing notes, but Pokémon never needed to go full open world in the first place, at least not the mainline titles. It was an experiment better saved for a side project, and to be left at that, as it makes Scarlet feel far too aimless in it’s scope when you really pair down the entire experience. The industry goes through ebbs and flows with this kind of thing all the time, as you’ll see something like Street Fighter II, Mario 64, GTA III, Halo, WoW, Minecraft, or Fortnite touch down like a mother fucking meteor on the face of the gaming planet, and everyone wants to make the same colossal impact, sometimes spawning entire sub-genres of *insert game killer here*, and thus the new trend will be born.


Sometimes the comparisons of quality work as
intended if not quite literally, though not all are so lucky***

And while I iterate now for the sake of transparent acknowledgement, Scarlet and Violet were obviously never billed as a Zelda Killer, but the lengths of effort in which the devs themselves went to compromise the very foundation of the Pokémon design ethic ended up coming off as a net-negative, and upon reflection, just completely sabotaged the whole notion of quality therein.

Being inspired is one thing, but make sure not to lose your own identity in the process.

~Pashford

(***EDIT: Dark Cloud rules, by the way.)

…But The Future Refused To Change

Time flies when you’re having fun


Though one can be a bit more literal about the process

I love finding my self awe struck in moments of humility upon the realization that a game is celebrating *insert arbitrary anniversary number here*, as the instance always puts life into perspective. Imagine my surprise when I realized Chrono Trigger just celebrated it’s 30th anniversary on the 11th. Seems like just yesterday I was helping someone with their cat at the Millennium Fair, but given the games timey wimey proclivities and my very own fuzzy memories, my sense of immediacy has been warped in a nostalgic delirium, and that event was apparently over three decades ago.


The face of a guilty man

For the uninitiated out there, Chrono Trigger was an action RPG from the 20th century, released on the SNES by Squaresoft, and developed by something of a Dream Team collab, seeing heavyweights of multiple industries coalesce to bring us something truly classic, with the likes of manga legend Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball), Final Fantasy alumni Hironobu Sakaguchi, and Dragon Quest visionary Yuji Horii come together to bring the nerdy masses something they would be talking about for generations to come. In appropriate fashion, Square Enix announced that they would be celebrating the 30th of the classic with festivities of some kind, though mum is the word on what the festivities may yet entail.


(Rough translation: celebratory fun times GET!)

With the SNES title already having multiple capable ports available for many platforms, it’s hard to say what Square could traditionally do to help prop up the title, though a lot of fans have bee clambering for updated ports for the recent batch of consoles (PS5, Series X, Switch). The company could of course go the extra mile by releasing a retrospective behind the scenes type video, a live orchestrated concert celebrating the title, and maybe even a new unnamed project in the form of an original media adaptation using the source material of some kind, any of which I’m sure Chrono Trigger fans would be absolutely ecstatic to hear about, especially if the latter was some kind of heavy duty remaster of the experience ala the FF7 remake to sink their teeth into. Either way, Chrono Trigger is always worth a revisit, and between the game being available on Android, iOS, Steam, the SNES mini etc, there’s plenty of ways to enjoy the iconic game and relive one of the best RPG’s of all time. Stay tuned for more announcements from Square for the 30th anniversary celebration of Chrono Trigger.

~Pashford

.

Way Past Cool

To speedrun well, one must first speedrun poorly.


Accelerated learning: possible through rapid mistake
making

As mentioned briefly in my last article, I’ve been speeding my way through more games than I really should given my time restraints, but I’ve always been as eclectic as I have been insatiable in the realm of gaming. Combine that with how broke I am more often than not, and the monthly games for PS+ and Gamepass are definitely worthy of my praise. Though, as I’ve stated before, my problem is usually time, not content, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to get as much gaming in as physically possible. One of the titles up for grabs this month on PS+ was Sonic Colors Ultimate, for all of you who are desperately looking to get your blue blur fix in.


***Not that desperately

I was itching for a Sonic title to sink my teeth into, so Colors Ultimate came at a good time. Having said that, I would have infinitely preferred to nab a more fully focused 2D title I have yet to play, like Sonic Superstars, but beggars can’t be choosers. However, in the case of Sonic Colors Ultimate, one should perhaps be a little more judicious depending on their mileage lest they are a huge fan of the speedy hog, as this game is a bit of mixed bag. Colors Ultimate adds some new content that the original didn’t have, which is good for returning players, but it’s mostly window dressing. With that said, what’s worse and more so important involving he unfortunate reality of the title is that Colors Ultimate is actually way glitchier than the original release, which in the land of the speedster, is a particularly troublesome thing to hear.


What I imagine most Sonic fans look like upon the
seeing the glitches of any new title at launch

So yeah, not the greatest re-release, but if you’re looking for a quick hit of the 3D Sonic good stuff, you could definitely do worse. The range of quality on 3D Sonic qualities is, in this games saving grace, so vastly fucked varied of a god damn spectrum, if the game doesn’t have a subplot involving bestiality or it doesn’t feels like you’re playing some kind of demented proto-alpha build of a game, you’re doing quite well for what Sonic has to offer. So if you just want a goofy, fast-paced, mostly competent action platformer with a fun OST, buttrock in tow, Sonic Colors Ultimate is worth an afternoon of your time if you’ve got one to burn.

~Pashford

Backlog Bullshit

The world of gaming moves pretty fast


Some parts faster than others

My gaming schedule is seemingly beset upon me with no clear resolution in regards of clear priority or proper resolution. I’m constantly in need to play new games, especially in relation to writing about them, but can never find time to finish them. A serious issue in terms of productivity to be sure, but I think one more so unique in regards to my attempts of writing about them, in all of their peculiar machinations. A few core examples to help illustrate my point from recent days are titles like Indiana Jones, Warhammer, and Balatro, that I’m consistently at odds with myself on just how much is enough to get the general gist of a game before being able to both write about it and move on. At least with Indiana Jones, there is a conclusive ending, same is true for Warhammer’s single player at the very least, in all of it’s charmingly try hard Bologna Boy Battalion Space Adventures kind of way.


A screenshot from the epic conclusion of Warhammer
40k: Space Marine 2’s finale

Warhammer’s multiplayer though? That’s a tougher nut to crack, though I suppose reducing the answer down to the simplicity of “when enough is enough” without overly complicating the issue is the answer I’m not attempting to write some kind of grand opus deconstructionism of the title after all, nor am I trying to position myself as the go to expert of the Warhammer multiplayer sphere moving forward. With that in consideration, having finished the story mode at the end of January, and having only found the enthusiasm to play a handful of matches in the last month and a half, doesn’t that send a clear enough message to me that the excitement levels just aren’t there and that I should just pull the plug on the entire thing and just move on with my heretical life?


Maybe if I just paint more minis the game
will seem like it’s more fun

More to my point: there’s always going to be another shooter, and plenty of the more competent ones (See: Warhammer) will eventually have to be left behind for greener pastures. I’ve even been thinking about how I want to get back to Halo, truth be told, not even having finished the campaign when I played it on the Xbox One, and having really enjoyed the multiplayer to boot. I’ve also, much like my ridiculously long journey with Rare Replay that I’ve been detailing recently, have been slowly moving towards “100%in” The Master Chief Collection for the better part of a decade now, and still have a long way to go in getting all the cheevos attached to the compilation of titles. Unlike Rare Replay however, deep down I’m fairly certain it will all be for naught, as just the multiplayer aspect alone of the Chief Collection will likely stop me from acquiring every last achievement, but the interest in the attempt remains.


At least I can be rest assured I will never run out of
teabags, no matter how long the attempt takes

I say all of this while sitting on the world select screen of Sonic Colors Ultimate, a game I meant to write about today, which is another title I just started, in spite of constant reminders to myself to *not* start another game on the PS4 until I get the Platinum on Elden Ring, which has been an ongoing project for the last year of time, while my poor Switch (and Zelda to that point) continues to collect dust. This is all the while, as previously mentioned, I attempt to justify another ante in Balatro to see, much like Warhammer, I really *get* the game before moving on, even while plenty of other titles I love sit there screaming “play me” amidst the chaotic schedule that has me constantly on the hunt for a free minute to enjoy a new game.


Ah shit, I knew I forgot to download something

The backlog remains an eternal struggle in a never ending game of tug-o-war…at least I have plenty to entertain me for the rest of eternity.

~Pashford

Sparkling Brilliance Pierces The Darkness

Always live your best life.


To exist is the greatest rebellion

Unless your best life involves being an absolute dick hole to others, in which case, obviously don’t. Kirby doesn’t qualify for that of course, even if he did one time rage through the entirety of Dreamland to mistakenly beat the shit out of an innocent King Dedede for whom he mistakenly assumed had stolen his food at the beginning of Squeak Squad. To be fair, Dedede has *literally* stolen all the food in Dreamland before, so can you really blame Kirby for wrongly assuming? Besides…


This bastard is fucking crazy

Out of all the games I’ve been playing that I’ve mentioned recently, I think one that continually eludes a name drop from me is Ender Magnolia (Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, PC), in all of it’s Metroidvania glory. Which may be the reason I in fact, haven’t gone on more about it, as the title sits in a genre of video game that is a comfortably filled niche at this point, with a title in the same vein coming out basically every other month at this point. Though, the absence of the title on ATE seems a disservice to the game itself, as even though it is well tread territory, Ender Magnolia knows how to hit all the right notes when revisitng a familiar feeling experience


Ender Magnolia has big Return to Oz vibes…somehow.

Aside from the experience sharing aesthetic similarities to Nier Automata, and having the polished mechanical design reminiscent of Hollow Knight, the game is vibe-central to a capital T, and feels like the virtual embodiment of a lofi playlist. Don’t get me wrong, the game has an earned sense of difficulty about it without being unfair, so it’s no walk in the park mind you, but I do feel a quaint sense of belonging every time I jump back in to enjoy the dismay and misery that come with the dark and brooding setting that permeates it’s world. An atmospheric feat most games rarely pull off, so massive props to Ender Magnolia for making the whole affair seem so effortlessly macabre in it’s playful execution.


Total Return to Oz vibes

…and when the well of human kindness has been desecrated by the corrupt sovereign, the void that remains will have to be refilled by the tears of empathy spared by those still brave enough to feel.

~Pashford