As we continue to trudge with aimless abandon through the inane purgatory that is void week, we persist right alongside all of the air conditioned nightmares and blue collar existentialism along with it.

Such a sense of isolation and monotony is enough to send one screaming hysterically into the night

I continue to spend time with my newly acquired Switch 2, though much like my early moments with both the Series X and the PS5, I can safely say this has been one of the weakest fundamental transitional upgrades I have ever encountered within the console realm. I mean, on some level it makes sense, both the potential trajectory of what’s possible with the development of tech, combined with the economic realities that restrict both manufacturers and consumers, is eventually going to lead to a stall in overall progress, and even dead ends of sorts, as everyone tries to cope with the notion that only so much can be done with the expansion in the realm of technology. Especially at this point, where it seems like capital is driving the interactions with tech more than innovation, and it’s becomes more about the incentivization process of how to get the consumer to financially interact with a subscription model contingent on a software that needs to be a world onto itself, infinitely catering to endless engagement at the drop of a hat, 24 hour new channels now seeming almost modest in their aims and standards.

So yes, I’m not surprised on some level, and on another, there is a sense of get out of jail free carding going on, cause who needs novelty when what already exists is so “not broken” to begin with, what is there to fix? Well, quite a number of things can still be improved across the board of course, but as I always say, companies will disappoint you just like people will, when you expect them to do that which they were never destined for in the first place. Ultimately, certain people are going to “people” in certain ways, just like companies are going to “company” in certain ways. When you think of Nintendo doing something outlandish, thinking to oneself in a shorthanded internal monologue along the lines of “Nintendo is going to Nintendo”, ends up saving one a lot of time and heartbreak in the long run, when one is use to their proclivities, and is quickly able to deduce the abstract math involved with why that outcome is mathematically sound.

All of that just now (about consoles) was more of a detoured sidequest of thought, as I don’t mind speaking about current events or the ebb and flow of economy and zeitgeist of the gaming world at large, I’ve just shifted my focuses in the past 6 months to more extensive fixations on specific design machinations of games themselves, as it feels a little less amorphous than just prattling on about the state of the industry, when I can get my hands dirty with some visceral feedback to design principles and philosophy at large. To that point, I am still in the throes of Mario Kart World (MKW) at the moment, in all of it’s “defanged domesticated” tendencies, and I figure I’m likely to finish out this year with just a couple more articles commenting on Nintend’s storied kart racer franchise par excellence before moving on.

I was waiting for an appropriate moment to jump into the online mosh pit of MKW’s insanity, as is the case with most games, I generally like to practice the fundamentals first before hopping online, even if it is a series I’ve been playing since all the way back in the 20th century. There is something to be said about the difference in game engines, in that not all of them are created equal, some acting as painful reminders of the subjective possibilities involving growing pains and how technological evolutionary standards stutter, much like the real thing, evolution doesn’t always move in a lateral, logically driven manner. I also happen to be in an extraordinarily uncommon spot, where I am having trouble moving on from Mario Kart: Tour (MKT), even after having acquired MKW, which I think is one of the only times in all of my gaming career I’ve been so hesitant to drop the former title in favor of the latter release. I’ve even gone on at lengths before criticizing others for living in the past, not being able to embrace change, and even accepting the games for what they are as opposed to what they aren’t, and yet….

I think there is a genuine reason for making real a distinction betwixt Tour and World, in some part in reference to my “dilapidation of domestication” theory I’ve recently posited, but as I continue to expound upon the notion involved in the distinctions, I really feel as if we may have a Forza like differentiation going on, Nintendo cribbing from another well known racing series, one that ended up splitting itself into two distinct series; one being a more open world arcade like experience (see Forza: Horizon and MKW), vs the more realistic, brass tacks, no nonsense standard of close circuit racing (Forza: Mororsport and MKT). This is obviously not an ideal 1:1 scenario, as there is no reality where a turtle turns into a bullet to clear the path of competitively focused dinosaurs and cognitively capable anthropomorphic fungi on a rainbow, but there remains a notion that one has a more casual nature to it, and the other remains as a more grounded standards, and with it, a stronger portfolio with which to rely on, where diversity is concerned.

It goes a long way in explaining my inherent dislike for what World offers, as borrowing from my “domestication” theory, where extreme breeding (of ideas in this metaphor) ends up creating undesirable traits, Nintendo has crossbred some gnarly ideas into MKW, and one of them is a heightened sense of casual party play into the mix, which has further truncated the notion of a more distinguished metagame. All of this thusly bottleknecks the entire competitive standard into a severely sanded down affair. So where as MKW, in taking on a more casual nature, like where Horizon is concerned, you do have MKT acting more as a stand in with a focus on tighter racing and a terse embracement of the restrictive nuance found in some of the more competitively foundational standards of Mario Kart of old (paralleling the standards of where Motorsport is concerned), and with the branch off, Nintendo ends up catering to different mindsets and different demographics at the same time.

I think there is more to discuss on this matter, and I will gather my thoughts in the mean time, and see you again tomorrow to talk shop about what my preponderances have produced.

-Pashford