My Favorite Music Easter Eggs in the Media

So I discovered today that the Emperor's theme in Star Wars is the exact same theme as the super happy ending celebration theme in Episode I which is all kinds of awesome. The big celebration at the end of Episode I is rightly deserved for the heroes, but it is also the initial first step allowing the Emperor to stage a full on coup later and taking over the entire universe basically. This is his moment. This is his theme. Behold the Genius of John Williams.

This got me thinking of a few other of my favorite music easter eggs.

Game Review: Ico

*People are actual size

So back in 2001 a game simply called Ico was released. It had kinda crappy box art and didn't garner tons of attention at first. I was a devout Nintendo fanboy and it was released on the PS2. As such... I never heard of it. Later this same game company made a game called Shadow of the Colossus. This was a hit and established that games could be art. It has even been picked up to be made into a movie now. Only then did the name Ico become a household name in the gaming community. 

Flashforward 11 years and now I own a PS3 and the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD collection. I had never played through either game and I was excited to see what all the fuss has been about for so long.

Well, on paper, this game sounds kinda boring. One big long escort mission. Small boy (Ico) is imprisoned in a castle cause he has horns and that's what they do to boys with horns. A tremor shakes the boy's cell and he escapes and is alone in a castle. Find the princess, get out of the castle. Occasionally be attacked by easily defeatable shadow monsters that try and re-kidnap said princess. Rinse, repeat. 

These guys are easier than they look. I beat them down with a wooden stick.

That is literally all there is to this game. Its a lonely game. Rarely is there any talking. You only meet one other person in your journey besides Yorda and the black shadows. Rarely is anything explained. The princess that tags along (Yorda) doesn't speak your language so when she talks, you get some random language characters. Its basically one big long dungeon puzzle. Push a block, climb a rope, swing on a rope, climb a ledge, etc. etc. 

Now I hate escort missions in games (and this game is just a huge escort mission), but somehow here it is thoroughly entertaining. And here is why:

You will climb on every last inch of this castle. 

See that? That is the whole game right there. Well, almost, since the whole thing isn't in the picture. Every last square inch. Every open space you see, every wall and doorway... See those tiny round things under the bridge to the right of the waterfall? You will go there too dragging Yorda every step of the way. This game is beautiful. The scale is incredible. One thing that has bothered me in modern games is the loss of scale. People seem too large and capable. When they do put things in that are large and give you a sense of scale, then it is usually a non-interactive rendering like backgrounds or buildings that you can't enter. In Assassin's Creed I can run across the rooftops of the entire city of Rome or Constantinople in 15 minutes or so. Ezio would scaled this entire castle in and out in a matter of minutes. In this game it can take 2 minutes to climb a single ladder. Inside is scaled to outside. It all exists and you are tiny. And... it.... is .... breathtaking.

Reference this picture and the size of the wall Ico is standing on with the one above and you get an idea for the size of the castle.

There are only two ways to lose. Fall from too high, or the princess gets captured and the world turns to stone. Either way, you will be going back to your last physical save point. There was no autosave feature, so if you don't save, you will repeat stuff you've done. The only way to save are on these stone couches. You sit down, Yorda sits next to you and you take a rest and save. I liked it. I forget what it is like in our modern gaming culture to have consequences for dying since dying just puts you back a few minutes or to the beginning of the recent firefight.

Take a break guys.

There is a bit of a downer to this game. The controls are really wonky. Trying to get Yorda to follow me or to turn and face the correct angle never seemed to do exactly what I intended. I had to fight Ico to climb. I'd touch a pole for him to climb and he'd treat it as a wall half the time. I'd jump to catch a bar, and Ico wouldn't catch it for no good reason. Wonky.

The place this game truly shines though is the weird bond between Yorda and Ico. They never really talk other than Ico calling out to Yorda to follow him. But they trust each other. Maybe its the hand holding, the the constant life saving, or just the fact that they are trying to escape together. You feel the bond somehow and the game capitalizes on it as its main story function.

This pretty much sums up the whole game to me.

Anyway. I'd recommend everyone everywhere to play through this game to get a sense for what building in games should look like and feel like. Even after 11 years this game (or at least the HD version) is still amazing and breathtaking in its scale.

8/10 for turdy control

Game Review: Mass Effect 3

Tell me more about the Shepard.

Mass Effect is an anomaly of a video game experience. It is a game that was planned as trilogy right from the start. It is a game that lets you make universe altering decisions which the repercussions may not show up till two games later. It is a game that you can morph to be your own... from the Gender and look of your version of Commander Shepard, to his back story, to the relationships you develop, even who he/she falls in love with. It is an epic space opera that you get to control.

This trilogy is the greatest video game experience of our modern times.

Game Review: Assassin's Creed II: Revelations

... or Assassin's Creed II:3... if that makes any sense.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations is a game that is really only appealing to people who are already invested in the series. While fun to play, at heart the game really is just a bunch of more of the same sort of stuff we've been doing. The new parts that have been added aren't that interesting and frankly aren't even that fun. If you haven't played AC, ACII or ACII:Brotherhood, the general overarching plot won't make a whole lot of sense so it is not a good entry point. There isn't much in this game that hasn't been done before, often times in a more interesting way.

Game Review: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Game Review

Zelda has been in my life for a REALLY long time. I've played most every Zelda game out there growing up(excepting the abominable Phillips CD-i renditions). I remember playing through Ocarina of Time for the first time. It was wonderful. It flowed. It was funny and had heart. It felt like how Zelda should be in a 3D world. It was a masterpiece. It was a world with characters that I cared about and could explore. Majora's Mask continued that but was haunting, dark, and moody. I loved it. I've never played a game quite like it.

The originals on the NES were brutal hard and epic. I remember calling the Nintendo Power 1-900 tip line cause I couldn't figure out how to get to the final town in Zelda II (ProTip: You can chop down the forests on the overworld map).

I remember playing A Link to the Past so many times I knew that game backward and forward. I remember envying that kid who won the Nintendo Power contest and was put into the game as a secret easter egg.

Wind Waker didn't do it for me that much except that I liked the art style and finding Hyrule under the ocean was the coolest thing ever. Maybe I just got bored sailing...

Twilight Princess felt like a rehash of Ocarina of Time to me. The wolf thing wasn't that interesting, there wasn't anything very new. I kinda got bored with it. That being said, it was still vastly superior to many other games out there, but with the Zelda pedigree, I want more. The art style felt cool, but ultimately won't hold up in years to come.

So now I embark on a new adventure... and I hadn't been nearly excited for it as I had been for Wind Waker and Twilight. Maybe because I didn't enjoy Twilight as much as I had hoped.  But as I picked up my Wii remote, wary of the glowing reviews, I set out on a nearly perfect Zelda experience.

First Person Shooter Level Design Evolution

Halo Reach Comics

Kinect == Wii - Controller;

Falcon Punch!!!!

A Gamer's Nightmare

Games as a means of storytelling

Video games have gone through a strange evolution. From the early days of two simple paddles bouncing a ball back and forth in Pong, to the modern day of . . . well, hitting an invisible ball back and forth with two Wii remotes in Wii PingPong. However, a video game has pretty much always been just that, a game. Sure, you may say that there are good story lines in games, but the game is still just a game with a story. You play 45 minutes of game and you are rewarded with a 5-10 minute cut scene that tells more of the story, then you simply rinse and repeat until the epic conclusion. Some modern games are trying to change that dynamic. How can you make a good story that just happens to be a game as well? What if the story was played out the entire time you played the game and not just after a battle? Not a moment is wasted. The games of the future will have this dynamic. One already does. Heavy Rain is a unique game that you cannot fail. There is no moment in this game that does not tell the story. If your character dies, the story moves on without him and the ending changes. Your choices can give the characters a happy ending or end the story in tragedy. You will get emotionally attached to the people in this game in the same way you might with those in a good novel. In this way, games have joined the ranks of books and movies as being a legitimate method of storytelling.