The Mercenaries: Operation Greener Grass

The bill comes do…always.


The reaction to the relative value being exchanged depends
on which end of the transaction one finds oneself

My opening statement can be applied to a great number of ways one “pays” of course, as the currency at hand is not always cold hard cash that one ends up paying with, so to speak. With that in mind, and following up on my thoughts from yesterday about contrasting value on the heels of my Resident Evil 3 remake, I finish up ending in a tonally appropriate way, as I look at a final, key element that the RE3 remake lacked, in showcasing a relative value of something lost, per my utilization of the A.R.T methodology, in deconstructing what did and didn’t work in Capcom’s approach to remaking Resident Evil 3. That of course, brings us to the topic at hand, and one that Conker (see above) has already posited for us.


The absolute mad lads they are

My final moments in celebrating Resident Evil 3 involve the original (not the remake), as we have one last great example of what could be used analogously as “absent rain” in my assessment of the remake. Within that regard, what an experience or moment lacks does help make up it’s very essence, as has been observed in the idea of something like a vase, in that the internal void that helps to create the “-ishness” of what is a vase, is indeed part of what isn’t there. In my original conjuration of my theory of what helps to frame value, it was relative to the lack thereof that helps us form our perspective on what remains, though in this instance, I think what isn’t there creates a painful reminder of what was lost in translation.


Fitting phrasing: imagine a remake of this film lacking Murray

Perhaps I’m being unnecessarily heady right now in complicating what is essentially “just” missing post-game content in the form of a minigame, but “The Mercenaries” felt like an extraordinarily vital part of what made the Resident Evil 3 formula work so well. Within the realm of the tradition of RE unlockables, There was a battle minigame involved as a reward for beating the original Resident Evil, but it was a mode that was exclusive to the Sega Saturn, so not many people even got to enjoy it. With that in mind, many were first treated to this style of post-game RE awesomeness in the form of “The 4th Survivor”, after one fulfilled some in-game reqs involving beating RE2, which had the player controlling an Umbrella operative named HUNK as he escaped the RPD on the eve of Raccoon City’s destruction.


Hard enough to unlock, some considered the mode
a degenerate spawned from hearsay and rumor back in the day

There was also the much harder to unlock other secret character named Tofu, who was, appropriately, a walking bean curd .


Rare you see a zombie game offer up a vegan
alternative

However, and as briefly just mentioned, both characters were quite difficult to unlock normally, so while more people were exposed to the idea of the post-game mode in the Resident Evil series with 2, it really wasn’t until 3 that people likely got their first taste of true greatness, as Mercenaries was unlocked for simply beating RE3, even just on easy, and obviously, being available on the PS1 version, there was a good chance if one at least had the constitution to simply beat the main game, you probably got down on what ended up being one of the best unlocks in a video game I’ve ever seen.


*We’ve ever seen, comrades

That’s what ended up being *just so* fascinating about Mercenaries as an entity: such a simple concept, with such basic execution providing excellency through simplicity alone. For those not in the know, you essentially just controlled one of the three main mercs involved with Umbrella’s paramilitary group from the main game of RE3, the UBCS, in the form of either Carlos, Nikolai, or Mikhail, as you fought your way through the streets of Raccoon City. No real story, no focus on dialogue or cutscenes, just the meat and potatoes of the Resident Evil experience wrapped up in a fast paced arcade experience, full tilt. What was fantastic about Mercenaries was that it had more of a compellingly relentless feel of engagement, with the player fighting against time itself to finish the scenario before the clock reached zero. The different characters all had differing loadouts of weaponry, creating some variety in how you wanted to approach the scenario, and one could score more time, depending on how many enemies one killed, or civilians saved. You could always just “zombie maze” your way right past any encounter, helping to flesh out the strategy involved. Best of all, your final score could accumulate into unlockables for the main game involving super powerful weapons, further adding to the replayability for both the minigame and the main one at the same time


Carlos, learning a grammar lesson the hard way; the
pluralization of Nemesis is Nemeses

Fairly ingenious, albeit so simple, Mercenaries added such a tremendous value to the entire package, and even Capcom knew this, as they would go on to reuse similarly structured modes for other Resident Evil games in the future, and eventually just straight up bringing back Mercenaries mode for RE4, 5, and beyond.


Guess who’s back? Back again.

Capcom ended up seeing enough value in the concept to make it into it’s very own game, The Mercenaries 3D for the 3DS. While the game did meet with some controversy over what was seen as a shady business tactic by Capcom to curb the used game market by not being able to delete the save file on the cartridge, and many others decried the game for being overpriced for what was being offered, it was still a damn good time.


Raccoon City Reunion Right Here (and Krauser)

Aside from some small blemishes in Mercenaries history, it is largely celebrated as the piece de resistance in Resident Evil fame, and with good reason. Why Capcom thought it was at all a wise decision to not include it with the remake is beyond me, as Mercenaries seems like a vital part of the DNA that makes up not just the core fundamentals of what made RE3 so groovy, but it an integral part of the value of the RE series as a whole. I would posit the notion that after Capcom justified making Mercenaries into a full game experience, they would use that reasoning as a citation enough for the exclusion of the mode in the RE3 remake, but the RE4 remake eventually saw an update including Mercenaries as well, so that notion doesn’t hold water. Were it not for that fact, you could look at the absence of Mercenaries from the RE3 remake much like Nintendo omitting the old school NES games, like Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong, Excitebike, available for play in future Animal Crossing games after the Gamecube version, operating under the assumption the company isn’t going to just give games away for free as unlocks in one of their titles, when they could easily charge you for a digital copy or the full price of a title. But again, the RE4 remake, with Mercenaries included exists, so any logic there after is whatever broken handwaving they wish to utilize.


The RE3 remake did come with a multiplayer
component, but it’s about as meh as meh gets

So yeah, that represents my celebration of what wasn’t, however queer of a notion that may be . As mentioned when I started, and as previously stated in my summation of my finalized thoughts involving the RE3 remake, what we ended up getting was a “respectable salute to the end of Raccoon City”, but a Mercenaries sized hole is left apparent in the heart of the entire experience. It’s true what they say. The grass is always greener, and you don’t really know what you had, until it’s gone. Gone.


Gone.

~Pashford

Encyclopedia Muranica: The Absent Rain Theorem

Sometimes, you’ve got to look at the absence of what’s not there for the deepest, relative value you care about, and the lack observed thereafter will help put into perspective what matters most.


For example, not pictured: Fry

After a nearly week long romp of raging through Raccoon City, I’m more or less at ease with my adventures through the abhorrently infested zone of nightmarishly ghoulish proportions. As predicted, I took a second to size my unofficial review of the game up, and I think I more or less hit all of the notes of importance I wanted to. “Back in my day”…so to speak, when I was writing reviews in a more official capacity, they use to be far more long winded, maybe even taking a fine toothed comb of the entire process to a certain detrimental nature of sorts. I gladly leave that structural approach behind, as it feels a bit too outdated at this point, and perhaps leaned too heavily on magnifying the nitty gritty details almost obsessively, to the point of being OCD about the most frivolous of nonsense.


Much in the vein of: 0MFG! NEMESIS DOES TENTACLE THINGS TO
MONSTERS IN THE REMAKE! HE NEVER DID TENTACLE THINGS TO
MONSTERS IN THE ORIGINAL!!!11!

One important takeaway I feel of my overall thoughts involving the RE3 remake, was in regards to a notion I mentioned awhile back…which is ironic, cause I don’t even remember what it was initially in reference too, but the idea was sound I think I initially used a different name for the happening as well, but I’m reutilizing it again with the new dubbing “The Absent Rain Theorem”, as it deals with the concept of seeing value relative to what isn’t present. I initially posited it in terms of focusing on how much it isn’t raining when I ride my bike, as opposed to how much it is raining, to help frame my own perspective on the moment itself, and I ended up reusing the very same idea for my review on the RE3 remake, in all of the excessive absences that make up it’s quality.


Another good example: this wall has now enhanced in quality,
because of the massive fucking hole Jill just blew through it. It’s the
absence of material that makes it so god damn metal. The theorem
works in many ways of detailing quality.

To wit; the A.R.T (Absent Rain Theorem) I ended up utilizing was extraordinarily helpful in focusing my perspective involving the RE3 remake by what wasn’t present, more so than what was, and then parsing through whether or not that was good or bad….or just, different, relatively speaking. That doesn’t necessarily mean it drove me down a mad path of delusion involving said quality, or kept me in denial about the inherent “-ishness” (that’s right, I used that idea a little while back, too) of the game, as it in fact lacked too much in most regards, failing it’s own “-ishness”, both in what was absent, and what was present, but I think my approach with A.R.T in mind was a useful philosophical approach that has now worked in a couple of different applications, and I think will get a lot of use out of me moving forward.


Pictured: Nemesis, trying to get (a) value (meal) out of a
Jill (Sandwich)

With all of that said, and the post mortem on the event more or less done and dusted, I figured I would mirror the game a bit in it’s machinations…or at least, the original release of Resident Evil 3, by having my last focus on the game be about what comes after the escape from Raccoon City, and ironically, fits in with my mention and usage of A.R.T, in distilling the nature of what the RE3 remake fundamentally lacks, and one of the core absences that degrade the entire process after the fact.

And that’s the Mercenaries.


Absence makes the heart grow fonder

To be concluded…

~Pashford

The Save Rooms

About to shoot the shit about safe areas in the Resident Evil series. Stay awhile and listen…


Oops, wrong game.

Same energy though, you know? I was sitting down to attempt to Frankenstein my thoughts together involving the Resident Evil 3 remake, and figured it would be appropriate to catch a breather, so to speak, in the spirit of the energy the save rooms of Resident Evil fame have to offer, and the magic imbued within. Obviously, other games have similar moments of respite, the encampment from Diablo 2’s first area springs to mind, and even something like Mario 64’s Castle act as moments of relief amidst the chaos that ensues when exploring the madness found within.


“Wow! What a mansion!”

The Save Rooms from the Resi series probably maintain such a warm place in my heart due to the contrast between what they represent, and the gameplay inherent within the titles themselves, especially pre-Resident Evil 4, as the series morphed into something else entirely from that point on. The Save Rooms (great band name, by the way) come equipped with calming themes of atmospheric backdrops that let you know everything was going to be alright for a few brief moments, reinforcing the notion you were completely safe from harm or needing to make any life or death decisions for a few precious minutes. Of course, the save rooms also came packing with the good old reliable safe box, which housed the breadth of your saved inventory, healing goodies, key items, badass weaponry galore, but also the typewriter (of legend), which allowed one to save their progress, so they could safely reload and live to fight another day once more.


*Slaps ink ribbon* You can fit so many gruesome
realities in this baby

While I am not usually on the generational vibe train that comes with waxing philosophical while looking back at the nostalgic feels of yesteryear, it behooves me to mention that The Save Rooms in all of their ambience inducing glory, are indeed strong with the force of 90’s energy. I find that, at least in the realm of video games, those strong kind of feels are really all one needs to win over the adult kids now a days, as drudging apathy and inane monotony of the everyday howls so relentlessly, any reminder of an enjoyable summers day gone by that may be evoked from something like the sound of a save room theme is all one needs to find chill in this hectic, chaotic mess we call existence, just to give ourselves a well needed moment of zen.


Both Redfields and Valentine agree: Save Rooms
are the way to be! (Leon unavailable for comment
as he was too busy being a real police dude at the time)

Plus, the save rooms also totally ruled when you were summoning the last of your energy, montage style, in getting all of your best equipment out of the safe box, gearing yourself up in a moment of excited rally to take down the final boss at like 5 in the morning while getting totally hyped.


Groovy

So yeah, there’s a little bit of a revelry of warmth from yours truly. I get carried away sometimes with an intense focus on being perhaps, too methodical in my approach to deconstructing games or overly analytical in breaking down their finer components in relation to design or the overall ethos at large that dictates form or fashion, but for once, I figured I would think with my heart and feel with my brain, and reminisce about the cozy feelings found within The Save Rooms.

~Pashford

Raccoon City Limits Pt.2

When life imitates art…


We all see bad box art Mega Man in the mirror

During my recent attempts at writing about replaying the Resident Evil 3 remake, in regards to my annual observation of the significance involving September 28th, I’ve been detailing elements of the game I feel just don’t quite hold a candle up to the original. Not because I dislike the game on any real level, mind you, but the fondness I have for classic Resident Evil throbs in my veins to this day, and that sort of energy is harder to beat into submission than a Nemesis that just won’t take the hint.


It sucks when someone misses out on hints of subtleties

While I have enjoyed the bite sized addresses to the elements I speak of, and they have fittingly run alongside the track of the days involving the demise of Raccoon City itself, it also comes at a time when my schedule has turned completely upside down, with me waking up mere hours before midnight to complete a list of activities I prefer to have done by midnight, so my time conjuring thoughts on Jill Valentine and her heroics involving tenure as a S.T.A.R.S member have been not unlike the nightmare of keeping a schedule in order while fighting against the hordes of the undead.


The textbook definition of no chill

I plan on doing some compartmentalizing of my thoughts into one super-cut article here in the next day(?) to tidy everything up a bit, given that I’m nearly out of time to write anything of long winded merit here, but I will leave you with yet another point of disinterest related to why the remake of Resident Evil 3 was kind of a step down from the original in another regard, as the game reduces a players autonomy by dispensing of the branching story options of emergency the original provided. While some were of small note in their implementation, others provided large deviation to the overall pacing of the narrative at hand, and in terms of how you went about navigating the back alleys of Raccoon City.


I hate when they don’t include the relevant number
of self-defenestrations needed when navigating a map

Just another element I’ll have to roll up into the eventual equivalent of a Resident Evil 3 Remake burrito for your enjoyment. To be continued…

~Pashford

Raccoon City Limits

Last time, on Resident Evil Z!


The crossover you never knew you needed

As I was saying yesterday, due to the exuberant vibe emanating from within me to celebrate September 28th by starting a replay of RE3 (remake), I was still of the mind to take the game to task on some of it’s failings, so that we may collectively find benefit in the experiences blemishes. The pacing issues are of a wild sort from moment one, and the game never fully recovers from that point of ingress. I know that modern day Resident Evil, even the remakes of the classic titles that possess a more survival horror oriented bent, tend to trend repping the RE4 formula, more boom than bump in the night, but the totally absent build up to the eventuality of Nemesis’ appearance is such a fall from grace for what should be the main contingency of the entire foundational merits of the game in itself, one can’t feel the developers were off the mark from moment one.


Not all Kamehamehas are created equal

And perhaps I’ve erroneously pegged Resident Evil over the years as being narratively driven, as the game marched forward in the spiritual wake of Night of the Living Dead in the virtual interactive space as the flag bearer for what was, but the complete lack of re-canonization involving the nittier, grittier details in the wake of the Arklay Mansion facilities demise, and the soon to be obliterated Raccoon City seems as if such an embarrassingly wasted opportunity in setting the record straight for the series moving forward. If nothing else, the time when one looks back on the value of life and the quality imbued with the merits of the very soul of an individual, should be within the last moments of remembrance involving the eulogy and the day of mourning, and October 1st leaves nothing but a Raccoon City crater sized hole in the heart of Resident Evil history.


The cost of corporate hubris

To be continued…

~Pashford

Speedrunning The Apocalypse

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.


Law is a matter of perspective

I was looking forward to doing a more comprehensive write up on my replay of the Resident Evil 3 remake, but time has not been on my side the last two days. I’m so crunched for it at the current moment, it feel like I have negative minutes at hand in order to do share my thoughts, which is beautifully ideal, obviously. Though the notion of even starting another game when I just started Echoes of Wisdom, and The Plucky Squire, and Cult of the Lamb, and the expansion of Elden Ring…etc.. seems like a self-defeating idea, I never claimed I was a smart man.


But I do know what love is

Plus, yesterday was September 28th, the day Jill Valentine staged her iconic escape from the destruction of Raccoon City, so starting a replay of RE3 felt appropriate. I won’t say I’ve made it an official tradition of doing so, but it has come up so often around this time a year, it has become something of a previously unrecognized habit of sorts. Playing the remake reminds me of a few brief points of what frustrated me about it vs…at least the Resident Evil 2 remake.


Which isn’t what you might think, though there is a heavy irony
in the RE2 remake pulling off stalker gameplay better than RE3…

Firstly, RE3 has no sense of decency in terms of how to pace events like the original, to the point where it feels like the game is attempting to speedrun itself. It feels like before the game even starts, it’s like: remember Brad Vickers? Well here he is and he’s already dead. Didn’t forget Nemesis, did you? Well he already punched you through a wall. You recall Carlos Oliveira, right? Too bad, because you both already have 12 children together and have been married 39 years. The RE3 remake has absolutely no sense of pacing, and it totally butchers the suspension of the survival horror involved, and the general vibe.


Not unlike a rigged game of Russian Roulette

Honestly, there was more I thought I was going to have time to discuss here, but the negative minutes I had to share here are already up. To be continued…

~Pashford

The PlayStation: Defying the Odds

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.


The logic Peter Molyneux keeps using to convince people to
give him money for his bullshit video game ideas

So much news and so few minutes in which to mention most of it. The Tokyo Game Show is in full swing, but I’ve been too busy working and getting my Zelda on to be able to do much in the way of commenting on any of it. As I’ve joked before, topicality is not always Active Time Event’s forte, and when it’s a one man show with no budget, it’s really the thought that counts. At least, that’s what I tell myself when crying myself to sleep at night for failing to deliver.


Pictured: My coping skills on display

Moving briskly on to our focus of the day, I spend some of the few precious free minutes I have right now in sharing this interesting tidbit from one of Sony’s former superstars, Ken Kutaragi, who use to be the SIE president during the height of Sony’s reign before stepping down in 2007, and is credited as one of the major architects (even referred to as “the father”) of the original PlayStation, who would go on to work on the PS2 and PS3 as well. The interesting tidbit in question is from a part of a presentation Kutaragi gave at TGS this week, involving how many within the industry that Sony consulted with thought the system was doomed to fail before launch:

“We wanted to share our passion…and we wanted to hear what their expectations were and what they did not expect, so we wanted to hear from them. So we visited dozens of companies, if not hundreds, we visited a lot of game makers, it was a great memory … they were not interested at all. They just said, ‘Don’t do it. There were multiple companies and none of them were successful. You are going to fail.’ That’s what they told us.

Kutaragi shared much in his keynote address, but this seemed to stand out as one of the more enlightening shares, he went on to even comment on internal opinions on the possible PlayStation brands potential:

“Even within Sony, nobody believed that we would be successful.”

Just goes to show you that even ideas that seem in hindsight to be wild successes will have their detractors from the get go. To think, all of this started because of a failed attempt by Nintendo and Sony to create a shared piece of hardware together for the home video game market that ended up falling through. Just look where we are now.

~Pashford

Putting the Matter to Bed

A return to the scene of the crime.


How many times we got to teach you this lesson, old man?!

Perhaps I’m being too dramatic with that assertion; though I was pondering since yesterday about whether or not my approach in discussing the idea of a preview for the new Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom was too harsh or perhaps…just too far out there in general. Before I went back and read the article in confirming my fears, the essence of the article swirled in my mind as if a betrayal of sorts, Zelda being so high on my list of preferred entities within the gaming realm, kind of a “look how I massacred my boy” (girl) moment in retrospection.


Like dunking on Link for BO related issues after he just saved
both your ass and Hyrules from utter destruction. The utter gall

In my moments initially thinking about it, the article was maybe too bitter, almost bitingly cynical, as if I needed a put a fucking muzzle on my very notions of the god damn thing being a danger to itself and others surrounding it. Not so however, as I kind of enjoyed my final approach in what I was throwing down. I think more my point was that everyone and their mother was going to preview Echoes of Wisdom, so my contribution of consequence added to that pile was put forth by my own volition within the context of radically doubting the worth of both my addition and to the worth of the pile itself. I will always put a seal of approval on the ideas of radical doubt and severe skepticism, as it brings into focus what is and is not. I’ve jokingly referred to it as the Weathered Silver Lining axiom when I’m riding my bike in the rain; I’m not attempting to focus on how much it is raining, I’m attempting to focus on how much it isn’t raining.


Very much in line with the Still World aesthetic Echoes of Wisdom
has to offer: not being able to see the void through the trees

Say what you will about the flaws involving Cartesian Dualism, at least it ignites a much better conversation on the matters of thought and reality at large, which I feel as if is a vital proponent of any question worth asking, no matter how inherently flawed from the get go it may be. I have considered all of this could very well be overthinking the matter, but I’ve also found upon further inspection what many refer to as overthinking is just regular amounts of thinking, the everyday individual rife with complacency.


Complacency is an unbroken pot

My “non-preview” of sorts with Echoes of Wisdom did…echo a write up I did on Portrait of Ruin, which was similarly structured, in that it was almost a windup proper instead of an actual piece laying out the bare essentials of what the title had to offer. With almost 20 years to consider matters involving the title, and at least half that time wishing for a re-release of the title, you’d think I would have jumped at the opportunity to wax philosophical about an underrated gem and cut my teeth on the gorgeous crystalline subject matter Portrait of Ruin so effortlessly shines with.


I like my games to rock, so to speak

I’ll rein myself in here for a second and offer an actual posit of thought in regards to Echoes of Wisdom, just to throw the dog a bone, as it were, and to curtail the obsessively excessive existentiality I have imbued with my thoughts on the matter. The Echo system feels like a fun approach, and most certainly feels like an attempt at emulating what Breath of the Wild was throwing down in terms of creativity being applied to the everyday situation in Hyrule. I’m wondering if the 2D space will have enough depth to maintain that higher level of improvisational satisfaction in the matter, as I feel as if one of the biggest contingencies of the playground like feelings of BoTW was the physics engine itself that holds the whole reality os possibility together. Don’t get me wrong, being able to solve most problems with beds in EoW is a laugh, and I’m very much enjoying sicking my flying shrub (Peehat) on the fools in Hyrule, I’m just worried about the lack of versatility that will carry the same weight with a 2D sensibility.


This is definitely as close as I ever *want* Nintendo to get in
allowing gamers to bed Zelda *shudders*

This critique is certainly not an attempt at an admonishment of Echoes, as the core essence of what is on offer does successfully breed playful interaction and creative solutions, far more so than just pushing a box or swinging a sword, as it were. At least one has to think fourth dimensionally in a sense, or at least if one is so amped up in tackling their issues with a pomp and circumstance worthy of a blue ribbon baby in the field of conceptual conquering, which is always a welcome offer at hand, regardless of game.


A much more refreshing approach than Link’s strong armed
approach of making every day a new rendition of
Sword Problem Solver Simulator 9001

And though this is purely anecdotal, one of the inherent problems with creating more conceptually challenging games is that, and keeping in mind the bar is low, if you make the puzzles or intellectual approaches to insurmountable, you risk immediately alienating a huge portion of a would be fanbase, a serious risk for any video game seeking audience, let alone a sweetheart from the Nintendo camp. There’s a reason games like Silent Hill helped create the standard of having customizable difficulty levels for the puzzles themselves without dumbing down any other portion of the title, and it’s because it’s a lot easier to just make a hole in a wall to get out of an escape room than to solve the mystery of actually just escaping one.


Echoes of Wisdom’s flex: can’t figure out a solution?
Just sleep on it, it will come to you.

My only other final thought on related matters, more so in regards to yesterday’s write up, was in reference to the semantics of what elements make up or help to subsist what a game preview is in it’s “-ishness” of existence, and I think the ultimate answer therein, while maybe not revelatory mind you, but certainly bears a mention, is the conveyance of fun to a yet decided audience.

Hopefully I did my job, though I have often found when you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.

~Pashford

The Abstract Limitations of Wisdom

Pushing through to the realm of the radical is often thwarted by the constrictive boundaries of realistic limitations.


Sometimes it’s just a freaking tornado

A lot of what happens on ATE acts within a grander consideration to gaming as a whole, my relation to it, etc. I’m always thinking about what that means, how to convey a message, entertain and or inform. A lot of me is always ponderous on just what constitutes value in that regard. In relation to my opening sentiment, it does bring into question how to cover everyday events in gaming, whether it be represented by a news story, a critique of the industry, or something like a preview of sorts. Maybe the delivery mechanism only matters to a certain point, and maybe the voice delivering it only matters in the same vein, dependent on time and place? Perhaps it’s a standard, this weirdly inherent quality that makes a video game a video game, and a write up of a video game just as much so if it possesses those kind of unspoken values that are part and parcel what make up the entity in question.


Insert obvious Ship of Theseus reference

This is all relative to the task at hand on a couple of levels, speaking to an approach of writing, to the kind of game Echoes of Wisdom is, to the idea of previews in relation to a recent look back at my article involving The Plucky Squire. It’s possible this all could be just me grappling with the very depths of morbid curiosity, or the wild throws of existential dread involving taking for granted the reality of knowledge acquired vs the mode of transfer and the transitive properties there after, or feeling just in general restless at the idea of writing a preview, inspite of liking the new Zelda game.


It is Zelda afterall…well within possession of that very “-ishness”
it should to claim such an inference

To wit; I did write a preview for The Plucky Squire, and it seemed to come out as one would expect for a video game preview. The article explains the mechanics, showcases visuals to get the vibe of the game in focus, provides some humor and insight to relay what could be considered obscured points of interest on some level. Though, it does beg the question: was there value inherent there? Did it serve a greater purpose than selfishness in it’s creation? Can a single preview move the needle that much based on it’s merits alone? The old adage “every drop fills the bucket” springs to mind, which bears relevancy, but in the horrifying regard of realizing that no single drop matters, but the volume of the container wouldn’t be the same without all of them, so there is some sense of deconstructionism involved with the value and purpose intertwined with individuality vs the majority.


How many Zeldas (or Links for that matter) are required to
make the composite idea of what that character represents?

There’s of course Echoes of Wisdom itself. It’s a traditional 2D Zelda game in most regards. Yes, you play as Zelda, and yes you utilize magic to duplicate objects and manipulate the terrain around you, which is out of the ordinary for traditional Zelda games which are mostly predicated on simplistic battling with the occasional puzzle thrown in, but could Echoes of Wisdom really buck the trend of the Zelda formula too much before it became unrecognizable? Very much like the “-ishness” I refer to when understanding the inherent qualities of what makes up a game preview, could Echoes of Wisdom truly be so derivative before being accused of not being Zelda at all? Where would be the line? How non-Zelda like could it be before it started to really lose fans, and how many Zelda fans would read a preview of the game without mostly having their minds made up on the issue of whether or not they were going to play it?


The divining line that marks the “-ishness” of Zelda
enough

Then of course there is the approach to writing. just how *much* information does the regular reader derive from a single article anymore, and how many read beyond the first three seconds of any given piece before making up their minds in general? Have the lot mostly moved on to content consumption equivalent to binging junk ala memes, shorter video based content, or just social media in general? If my preview of Echoes of Wisdom was a Tik Tok video of me making loud noises to some warped version of the Zelda theme while showing jarring footage of the game, would that somehow be more or less culturally relevant in my coverage then this article? Or if I made this whole thing a single line and said “Play Zelda” and gave it 10 sexy elves out of 10, would that generate more hype than any number of countless words that follow? Do we conflate informative shares with entertainment to the point of the idea that what’s boring isn’t relevant? In the court of public opinion, it’s usually a race to the bottom of the hole of irrationality, and the last one there is an unpopular rotten egg.


…or more like a “dubious food”, just to keep the metaphors
inline with the whole idea of maintaining Zelda “-ishness”

Much like I pointed out The Plucky Squire would be a rarity in being a preview for a video game on launch day on ATE, I suppose this is kind of the counter-point to the very idea of previews for Echoes of Wisdom, as I am left curious as to how radically different a Zelda game could be within those limitations. If a new Zelda game is out, how much do you really need to know about it to make up your mind? How much of a preview is genuine information for a title that is such a known known, and how much of a boundary breaker can a preview be in it’s own approach before it’s too befuddled with abstraction that it ceases being relevant?

I’m not quite sure.

~Pashford

The Triangles That Have Two Obtuse Angles In The Night

The realities of the everyday tend to be far more impossibly horrifying than anything that goes bump in the night.


Unless you’re a resident of SIlent Hill, in which case,
they’re actually the exact same thing

That segway is only just slightly jumping the gun a bit in preparing for the absurdity that now seems like the month long celebration of Halloween, but the spoopines of the season tends to lend itself to a fetching atmosphere, and is far and away the least annoying of the holiday fanfare, so I will allow it. In the spirit of that notion, I revel in the idea that a “new” Silent Hill game is right around the corner, and I have barely discussed anything related to the matter.


Not like there is a curious absence of crazy bullshit
to discuss when considering Silent Hill, mind you

In some respects, the name drop to news involving the new remake for Silent Hill 2 reminds us just how much is riding on the new project by Team Blooper, the developers who have teamed up with Konami to try to revitalize the gaming public’s faith in the once iconic survival horror series. The news comes to us via IGN, who shares a report that the team over at Blooper had to push “very hard” to get Silent Hill 2 to see the light of day as a PC port, which is kind of a big deal when you think about reaching a massive audience:

“Definitely Silent Hill 2 is a game that has been associated with the PlayStation brand from the very beginning,” the CEO said (as translated by DeepL). “At the very beginning, we had to push Konami very hard to lean on the PC topic. For them the main market is PlayStation, while looking at the interest on Steam, it seems that it should also be a successful launch.”

There has been an understandable amount of bluster involving the remake to Silent Hill 2, as the game represents such a high point in our gaming history, the success of the upcoming remake is vital for the possible revival of both Silent Hill, and perhaps a resurgence of a new wave of survival horror in general. Fans were initially skeptical early on when they saw gameplay footage from a couple of years ago when the game was first announced, but the doubts were understandable. With a combination of an early build, the unfortunately tarnished legacy of the games remaster that fell below standards that was released in the HD collection, and the dormancy of the series for so long, I think SH fans are just being very careful not to get their hopes up for what could be another broken heart just waiting to happen.



The games release is fast approaching, with an October 8th launch date set for anyone lucky enough to have a decent PC rig to play it on, or a PS5. This upcoming release is one in what has now become a growing number of titles forcing the realization I am in desperate need of a PS5 at this point. Soon enough.

~Pashford