It’s Hegel Time

The effort of creation is a difficult, messy process, and has a tendency to produce crazy results when things get out of hand…but hey, as long as you have an audience for it, anything truly bizarre, no matter how insane, can work, right?


Has probably already topped the NYT best sellers list, no doubt

With that said, and Gex firmly in the bag, I strive to maintain my forward momentum to whatever new adventure awaits me. Truth be told, looking back on this past week and the series of articles I wrote around Gex, I’ve got to take a moment to revel in some small victories with how well they turned out. This is all within the consideration that I haven’t even been reading any Hegel recently, so applying any of his theory to any concept, an already difficult task in and of itself, but to do so with any modicum of zest and gusto most certainly deserves a tip of the hat.


If interpreting philosophical theory were like trying to sensibly shuffle a deck of cards, this picture would represent the process of what it would be like to do so with “Hegel’s deck“

Shifting focuses, I thought for sure my next move would be a jumping off point, back onto my attempts of struggling to struggle with the likes of Elden Ring: Nightreign and Rift of the Necrodancer, two titles of which I had kind of waiting in the lurches for a decent chunk of time before I finally started them…I even had some fun concepts cooked up, based on similar experiences I had with their predecessor’s, Crypt and Elden Ring. At least with Nightreign, as I’ve previously pointed out, I realized that even though I may enjoy the title, I truly do not feel I have much place in the greater conversation of the title, with almost no interesting dictation to share in terms of it’s competitively focused PvE (battle royal) like multiplayer. The game really does feel like quite a different beast than the first game, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever really feel comfortable playing with others, but I hold out hope I will return to Nightreign in an attempt to enjoy the content with Solo runs at some point, as is the lonely oppression I yearn for. My late night hours of cozy and calm relaxation just aren’t the same as they use to be.


Such warmly inviting memories

The irony of leaving Gex behind is that I kept referencing the game as only one of the trio I would cover: it was included in a remastered trilogy, mind you, and I am actually quite the fan of two and three. Low and behold the shock to my own self when I think to myself best leave the sequels for another time, as I had some dubiousness on whether or not I would be able to match the intensive fervor that I did with the first game in regards to delivering the philosophical goods in the same grand fashion. Truth be told, I seem to regularly gravitate towards games I don’t necessarily think I’ll enjoy… or conversely, am familiar with enough to know that I simply don’t like them much at all. My recent discussions about Death Stranding help to reinforce that notion, though I did not end up pulling the trigger on acquiring the sequel, as that is maybe a step too far even for me, not being able to stomach the notion of a follow up to a game with such flaccid design.


Though the previews for DS2 have led me to believe Kojima made some more “solid” choices of inclusion this time around

As tends to be the case with a lot of what I do on Active Time Event, everything is never quite on time, not always a huge event as it were, and I’m honestly not as active as I’d like to be. C’es la vie…I always work within the limitations I have, and keep on pushing forward as a result. Related to that point, and in an effort to find my next writing project, I saw that they had just released a remastered version of System Shock 2, and I though to myself: Perfect timing! I’ll download the first one, and start playing through that game. Which, you know, is ideal, cause the first one was remastered a year ago, so no time like the present to fix a mistake of the past. I figured I should go with the first one, as most of the info on the series has been through cultural osmosis, as it were, gaining quite a bit of insight into the titles that would help to formulate the template for the teams much lauded future endeavor, Bioshock, in all of it’s 4th wall breaking glory.


Crazy enough, Deadpool’s appearance in Marvel Ultimate Alliance didn’t involve the most impressive 4th wall breaking dialogue for a video game released in 2007

To emphatically reiterate: I have never played through either System Shock game, I think mostly due to getting to the first puzzle in the original game, feeling underwhelmed, and simply clapping my hands and shouting “I’m out” when I realized the game had been “wrongly sold to me”. This recollection does baffle me on some level, for at least one relevant reason. I have always enjoyed puzzles in games, Zelda is one of my favs to this day, alongside very dissimilar but most certainly puzzle oriented experiences, at least in part, if one considers the likes of what Resident Evil and Silent Hill have to offer. Hell, I very much remember and still to this day enjoy scratching my head by putting it to the test with any of the old LucasArts games, and similar point and clicks of PC past.


Even if by today’s standards, some of my favorites difficulty levels in regards to their solutions would be the absolute death of me to contend with again

In my reexamination on just why I may have rejected System Shock, if not for it’s more obtuse nature or inherent puzzle like elements hard-coded into it’s DNA, I suppose I refocus on my mention of “wrongly sold to me”, as I believe the friend who introduced me to System Shock, did so within the notion of “it’s a FPS on the PC”, which my brain translated to “It’s like Doom”, which, my adolescent mind could not have been more deeply mistaken about. Granted, there are technical elements that the two games share on a core level, but going into System Shock with the same levels of expectations one would have of Doom, reminds me of a sentiment I shared in my Gex and Hegel write up which will continue to ring true, and it was simply: “If you expect Call of Duty of Halo, you’re doing them both an injustice”

With all of that in mind, I look forward to my return in stopping a rampant AI gone drunk with power, as I revisit System Shock 1 remastered this week.

Stay tuned.

~Pashford