Gaming Review: Rapid Fire

Don’t forget to slow down and smell the flowers.


Unless it’s this one. Run far away from this one.

Cannibalistic horticulture aside, my sentiment remains true, in encouraging individuals to slow down, take some time, and enjoy some self-reflection when one can. With that said, I’ve reached the end of another work week, and as always, I’m positively pooped. In pushing myself to rise to the occasion to meet the “quotas” set forth by creative challenges (I.E. write everyday consecutively for a month), I do tend to wear myself thin, but it is in response to feeling as if I’m simply not doing enough. The downside to this is that I rarely can find the time to do more long winded articles…or really anything aside from quick posits of wisdom or straight forward news poats, which is at least still affording me some practice in the realm of creative consistency. To wit; one of the ideas I’ve had kicking around in my head to break up some of the monotony of posting such straight forward affairs is to try my hand at a new feature called Rapid Fire, where I look back on the last week of articles, and insert a quick aside or addendum on my thoughts involving the games I’ve keyed about recently, and possibly add a little more context that I may have missed the first time around.


Context is key when discussing emotional reactions,
as sometimes you’ll be lucky enough to live in ignorance

With that said, let’s get to rapid fire:

-My write up Pokémon Disaster is a perfect distillation of what happens more often then not here on Active Time Event: working with what you got in the time you have. The initial idea was to finally sit down and watch the Pokémon Presents video Nintendo posted nearly a month ago, and dictate upon it. Mind you, the video is only twenty minutes long, and I still haven’t found the time to sit down and watch the fucking thing through to generate ideas from with which to coax an article out of…but I still wanted to write about Pokémon and didn’t have much time to do so, ergo, the Pokémon disaster occured.


Not that one

– My Words of Wisdom: Non-Simulated Thinking is another feature I came up with to have my cake and eat it too. I wanted to mostly relax on my first “weekend” day, but I still wanted to keep up with a writing schedule, so some quick posit was the way to go. I still try not to skimp on quality of course, so the idea always has to have a strong premise. I think I could have perhaps added more reference points involving how to go about engaging with tech via video games through the use of critical thinking, or wax philosophical about how mindfulness is the way to help cut through the bullshit of algorithmic tendencies, but all things in hindsight…life remains something that can only be understood backwards but lived forwards.

– The Casual Delirium of Video Games: Tuesday Edition ended up being a Frankenstein post, as I had a bunch of disparate ideas, but once again, not enough time to really dive into them all, so a monster was thusly born. Todd Howard’s thoughts on Doom and Mario’s impact on games is on point, and having even met the game in real life, he is a delightful individual with excellent insights into the industry, it’s just a shame he has helped to make himself into a meme with all of his wildly over promising ideas regarding Bethesda games.


Depending on who you talk to, of course

–Video Game Workers Unite! was a rare moment of positivity on ATE, which is a currency I don’t often trade in, but the gaming industry has been in a rough spot for a hot minute, so giving credit where credit is due for those who make the magic is definitely worth any amount of time. Writing about a more relatively important topic of note within the standards of the industry, especially involving the importance of unionizing and workers rights in general, also yields to the notion of more authentic journalistic integrity, a reality of which both gaming journalists and freelance writers don’t get a chance to experience in liu of just needing to act the role of hype man while drowning in a sea of enthusiast press that is not totally dissimilar to just straight up hawking products or being low key advertisers. A cold hard fact that I’m guessing many companies take advantage of with glee, in seeing the rise of influencers amidst the journalists and freelancers, the former of which regularly showcase they have absolutely no scruples whoring themselves out for a cheap, greasy paycheck while happily dropping any pretense they have standards or integrity whatsoever.

–Doom & Animal Crossing 4Evaz!!1<3, most definitely feels like the likeliest candidate for softball article if there was one this week, but I am madly endeared to both series, and it was a unique dual double-birthday, so worthy of the amorous celebration I showered both with. I also very likely could have easily made the article four times the length and not broken a sweat in the matter, but time was once again, not on my side. There’s actually been a shit ton of news about Doom: The Dark Ages I likely will follow up on, and I am guessing Nintendo’s Switch 2 first look on April 2nd has a great chance of showcasing more about the next Animal Crossing, so expect ample fixation on both series moving forward.


Always a feel good blast with these two

–The Last Laugh is more well deserved credit, by citing Balatro’s success at the 2025 GDCA, which continues to be representative of the notion I still give time to games that I’m not even a massive fan of. Even though I’m still playing Balatro, to attempt to understand the title as much as I can before moving on, one has to realize that even with ultra-eclectic tastes, one is just not going to like every experience under the sun. Balatro continues to remind me that I do ironically spend more time with games I don’t enjoy that much or perhaps don’t fully understand, just to get a better grasp on just why that is before just shrugging my shoulders and giving up, so there’s something admirable left to speak to, at least.

–Individualistic Collectivism was yesterdays post about the Katamari creators (Keita Takahashi) new game, To a T. There was a lot more to the interview that Game*Spark hosted and Automaton translated that I didn’t get to, one point of which involved the game’s narrative having roots in the realities of bullying, which was Takahashi’s way of attempting to humanize the story, and find connective issue of storytelling with a gaming public at large, and a topic that is taken as so mundane and everyday, most games would happily brush over it in favor for some epic cosmic battle. Nice to see in a space that continues to need to push itself to be relatable, and or at least one that still needs to strive to find a more humanistic approach, To A T is dojng so, and is not just lazily crutching on low-brow horndog schlock being shit out by a machine that regularly reguritqtes B-movie grade wank material for 16 year old minded boys.

–Gaming Review: Rapid Fire is a current work in progress. Fingers crossed it turns out well.

As always, time is against me, but it’s been fun keeping it real. That’s all…go forth and rock.

~Pashford

Avoiding the Fallout of an Arrow to the Knee

My last post had made mention of this past week feeling mighty (possibly in relation to Gamescom news), which must have been a more astute observation than I had originally considered, as when my work week had finally concluded at the end of “yesterday”, my body just gave out entirely.


What Elder Scrolls players look like in my mind
waiting for news on the sixth major installment

Which realistically-sleeping: big fan. Love getting in a little death here and there to get some gas back in the tank. However, the downside to that was missing out on most of today as the Odin Sleep was long indeed, which means I’m nearly out of time for my self-imposed Midnight deadline to get some new writing out into the world. That aim in getting out some new writing represents more or less a mini-challenge of sorts and not a regular happening mind you, as the details involving the long-term stability of such a schedule is highly tenuous at best with even a cursory investigation as to the practicality of such insanely based machinations on a regular basis highly suspect.


We’re talking like Wonka’s HR department kinds of suspect

With all of that said, and keeping my time constraints in mind, you’re basically getting a super short quickie and you’re going to like it. I’m not sure why this piece of gaming news popped up on my feed again, or why I didn’t mention it the first time around, but it was recently reported that a special 1,000g achievement that was made exclusively for Bethesda head honcho Todd Howard was making some noise, as it had only been hearsay since its creation way back in 2016. The achievement was called “Lifetime”, and the description read: “Reflects on the amazing craft of Todd Howard and his team in making worlds as real as any on Earth.” Which is a lovely sentiment, and definitely an accolade Howard is deserving in.


One arrow to the knee I’m glad didn’t stop the might in their tracks

Not sure if a failed gaming launch counts as a mulligan a few decades into a career, but I feel as if I’m beating a dead horse at this point. In a fairness, that was now awhile ago, and after a slew of highly praised successes, so you do have to take the good with the bad. The launch of 76′ in mind, it does fall adjacent to me recently taking the piss out of Peter Molyneux for the absolute load of bollocks he has perpetuated over the years when hyping up his own games. In both regards, it’s easy (and valid) to take creators and their teams to task when they miss the mark and commit to a mistake, as the role is public, and to be the captain while steering such a massive ship, you’ve got to take responsibility for the rough sailing when it occurs.

The converse of that is celebrating their accomplishments, and giving them praise for helping to affect our lives positively for the better. The number of hours I’ve lost in reference to the Elder Scrolls series alone is just mind-boggling, and if you then consider that number applied to tens of millions of people collectively? The enormity of the impact Todd Howard and his teams have had over the years on gamers and the gaming landscape can’t be understated, and puts into perspective how a little effort can go a long way. So three cheers to Todd Howard and his team for all of their hard work in making our world a better place. Gaming would not be the same without you.

~Pashford