Articles – Page 9

Party Cake Peeps

There was a time, not too long ago, when Easter was a big deal here at TE. Actually, it wasn’t even called TE back then. So I guess maybe it was a long time ago. Yup, this is the worst introductory paragraph ever.

There was a time, long ago, when Easter was a big deal here. Not only was it exciting because I’d wake up to a buttload of free candy and maybe an awesome gift or two, but also because it was fun to write about. Well, the candy was fun to write about. I don’t know why, there’s just something that really clicks for me when it comes to Easter candy. More so than candy themed for any other holiday, even Halloween.

Alas, those days are naught but a memory, and while my mom does still put together a little something for me, I’m long since officially too old for Easter as I’ve always known it. Now it’s all about Jesus and brunch buffets instead of chocolate and jellybeans. I certainly don’t like the transition, but it’s not like I really have a choice, now do I?

Because of the wonderful power of maternal sympathy, the wife and I received a nice little package of goodies from my parents this year, and these Peeps are the most interesting thing that was found within. It also contained some mini Reese’s peanut butter cups, Cadbury Mini Eggs, a box of K-cups, and more chocolate footballs than I could count.

While at first it seems like it would be incredibly difficult to choose one thing to be the most interesting from that lineup, the Peeps have a serious edge that I didn’t even notice until I put the first one in my mouth Notice that they are, in fact, Party Cake Peeps. I didn’t notice this because I wrote off the festive box as just an Easter theme without actually inspecting it first.

So what defines the Party Cake Peeps? What makes them so much more interesting than their standard-issue brethren? Not a lot, I’ll be honest. It’s a stretch to call them interesting, even with that fancy-pants wrapper.

A Peep, normally, is just a chick-shaped marshmallow slathered in sugar. So, sugar wrapped in more sugar, if you want to be pessimistic. The Party Cake Peeps, on the other hand, are flavoured. I’ve never eaten -or even seen– flavoured Peeps before, so this was a major revelation for me. I didn’t know that the technology existed to endow the humble Peep with such a wondrous gift. The future truly is now.

Anyway, while the PCPeeps do bear a smell reminiscent of cake, the flavour isn’t nearly as strong as the scent, They mostly still taste like marshmallows, but with a little hint of vanilla? I’m not sure what the flavour is, I’m actually really bad at that. I know that there is a flavouring, but I am completely unable to identify it. It doesn’t help and disappoints me greatly that the package doesn’t actually tell me what it is, not even in the ingredient list. For all I know, these Peeps are party-flavoured, because that’s what the blurb on the back says. I wasn’t aware that “party” was a flavour.

The PCPeeps are also an irradiated shade of green, unlike the cool blue Peep pictured on the packaging. The little sprinkles are a nice touch. I like sprinkles because mentally I’m about six years old.

So, there’s not really much else to say about these little guys. Fact is that even flavoured, sprinkled Peeps aren’t nearly interesting enough to write about at length. I know; I just tried! Hell, thanks to this piece I might be the world’s most dedicated Party Cake Peeps fan by default. I doubt anyone else has or would even be able to put down more words about them than I have here, and I’m already padding this thing to high Hell. I dunno, I guess you could write a song or something about them. “World’s Most Dedicated Party Cake Peeps Fan” isn’t exactly a honour that I want to put on my resume.

Oh, and I suppose that if you absolutely need something to take away from this, yes, the Party Cake Peeps are yummy. A++ would eat again.

TE’s Top 12 Video Games of 2012

Another year has come and gone, and a big ol’ stack of videogames with it. I made a point in April to keep a list of every game I played throughout the year, and by the time July or so rolled around, I had decided to make up this list of the Top 12 Games of 2012. There are a few rules I decided to put in place for this list, though I ended up breaking them. Heck, there somehow managed to be 14 games in my top 12. Obviously the rules are more like suggestions.

Going in, I had decided that the games which would populate this list would have to be games that I started and finished in the year 2012. They would also have to be games that I’d never played previously. While most of the list fits this rule easily because they were released in 2012, I did make a couple exceptions. Technically there is one game that I did not beat on the list. However, I am right at the end of it, and I haven’t pulled the trigger on the ending sequence because there is more that I want to accomplish and I’ve heard whispers that ending the game ends the game for reals. Justified. The other exception is a pretty major one: a collection. I couldn’t help but add it because 2012 is the Year of the Video Game Collection and it’s by and large the best one I’ve seen so far. Also I did play through two of the games included on it this year. Good enough.

I think that earlier on in the selection process I had another stipulation on what could qualify, but I’m pretty sure that I broke it so many times that I can’t even remember what it was. Probably would have cut down the eligible games to under a dozen anyway. That said, let’s take a quick peek at the honorable mentions. These are games that either didn’t quite make the cut, or games that I really liked but didn’t even come close to finishing. They all deserve to have words written about them, but this is neither the time nor place. So let us look at their boxarts and dream about what could have been.

Now that we’ve got those losers out of the way, you can go ahead and check out what games earned the most of my affection and/or time last year. The list is exactly as Nintendo-centric as you might expect, but there are a couple games on here that will probably come as surprises. I’ll warn you now though, the total word count goes ever so slightly over 10,000 words, so if you’re in, be ready for the long haul. Maybe go get yourself a sandwich or a drink before you get started.

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TE’s “Top” 12 Bands of 2012

I mentioned in the Top 12 Albums article that I think making up year-end Top X lists is silly, and I stand by that statement. It’s a super-easy way to farm up some content that takes very little creativity and considerably less effort than writing something with a more original topic. I should know, because I’ve written more than a few of these for those reasons exactly. I’ll admit it, I’m a hack. This is just a hobby, and not one I take particularly seriously.

All that said, I’m getting more joy out of subverting the usual list mechanism by creating it using nothing but a handful of mostly inaccurate data. There’ll be no pondering for me, no mulling over which bands I like the most versus which bands I think deserve most to be on the list. Nope, I just checked the “last 12 months” option on the Artists chart, and voila: the worst of the work is done for me!

Keep in mind that given the method I used to make the list, this only partially represents which bands I would have considered my favourites during the last year. One I actually put any thought into would look considerably different. Hell, I don’t think I could even make a legit favourite bands list for a given year. It seems like a silly proposition, so “most listened to” will in fact be the criteria.

Note that these numbers were accurate as of January 14, 2013.

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TE’s “Top” 12 Albums of 2012

It’s January of 2013 now, and January means nothing if not “time to make lists about stuff from the previous year” and I intend to carry on that tired, thoughtless tradition. And, I’m going to make it even more thoughtless by having raw data determine the contents of this list, rather than make decisions on what belongs here based on my opinions.

To that end, I’ve gone onto my Last.fm account and checked the chart of most played albums in the last 12 months. Of course, the numbers are just so slightly skewed because we’re already almost halfway through January, but whatever. I know what I’ve listened to in the last two weeks, and I’ve made adjustments where necessary.

This data has been compiled through two sources: my computer, where every track I’ve played is logged through the Last.fm plugin, and also my phone, where sometimes the iScrob app sometimes decides to log tacks when it feels like it maybe. iScrob is a really crappy app that likes to drop tracks and I didn’t even use it for the first few months of the year or most of the summer. Not included are any songs played through any other source like, say, CDs or the iPod app on my phone. Also not counted are any tracks whose “album” tag is not filled out, though I’m pretty anal about keeping my basic tags correct and complete. So the numbers are going to be incredibly skewed, but whatever! Looking at data gives me total wood. And here it is! (The data, not my wood.)

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How to Train Your Animatronic Dragon

As a rule, I don’t go to a lot of live events, or shows, or whatever you want to call them; things that generally take place in an arena or stadium and the tickets for which cost somewhere upwards of expensive. I’ve been to a few concerts in my time, but they aren’t a thing that really matters to me. I love live music, but going to concerts is low on the priority list. Even lower on my radar are any other kind of live shows, be it Cirque du Soleil or a play or anything else of the sort. While a live experience is always neat, not many of those things are really within the realm of my interests.

With this in mind, I was reasonably wary when my parents offered me the opportunity to go the the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular, Stage shows have never been my thing, and I’d never even seen the How to Train Your Dragon movie, so the odds were more or less stacked against me as I went in.

After the fact though, I feel like the me in this timeline needs to build a dimensional portal so that I can travel into other timelines in which Alternate Ryans did not go see the How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular, and punch them in the biscuits. If that doesn’t make sense to you, of if you’d prefer a tldr version: I loved the show. For anyone interested in all the other deets, read on.

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Ryan talks about Rayman

Video game characters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are big, some are small. Some are fun, slightly overweight plumbers, and others are cold, angsty teenage warriors. Many of them have not only their own series of games, but spinoffs and huge merchandise lines too. Of course, for every successful character, there are at least a handful that don’t have the chops to make it. Sitting almost squarely in the middle of that range is a plucky little hero who has no arms or legs, but a ton of heart.

No, not Plok. Why would I write an article about Plok?

I’m talking about Rayman, of course. That little guy created by Ubisoft way way back in 1995. It’s kinda sad that I can call 1995 “way, way back” without meaning it as a joke. The point here, is that I didn’t play Rayman for years. Hey, can you blame me? I didn’t have a Playstation yet, and I wasn’t big on PC gaming outside SimCity 2000 and Duke Nukem 3D. Given the chance, I probably would have played the game too, since it was an action platformer and I was still pretty hesitant to leave that genre’s warm embrace.

I think the real thing that kept me from Rayman was that none of my friends were interested in his game. Since he wasn’t on a Nintendo platform for four years, Nintendo Power, still my number one video game news source at that point, understandably didn’t have any coverage of the game. The internet was still pretty new in my household around that time too, also it was dial-up. I mostly used it to find breeding charts for Dragon Quest Monsters and to engage in some Yahoo chat. So really, I’m not entirely sure if Rayman was popular at all in his first few years. All I can tell you is that I’d certainly never heard of ‘im.

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Terrible Monster Costume from the Haunted Sea

It wasn’t long ago -in my second-to-last article in fact- that I proclaimed my love for campy old monster movies. Really, I’m a huge fan of the “drive-in movie” regardless of whether they contain monsters or not. Creature features just seem to be the dominant sub-genre in this case. Any why wouldn’t they be? Cheesy monster movies just work better when you’re huddled up in your car, out in the blackness of the night. You’re much more vulnerable and secluded that at a theater or in the safety of your own home. Not that most of these movies were ever frightening, but the setting definitely added to the movies’ atmosphere.

I don’t know for sure if the average drive-in screen is really bigger than your run-of-the-mill movie screen, but just by merit of it being out in the open, being forced to look up at it, it sure seems bigger. Maybe it’s because most of my drive-in experiences took place when I was about as tall as an Ewok. Anyway, whether it’s really bigger or not, putting a monster up on that big screen makes the monster seem bigger too, greatly enhancing the flavour of the film. Also, add a pinch of salt and a sprig of basil. Delicious!

Not that I’ve ever had the true drive-in movie experience. By the time I was old enough to understand complex concepts like “movies” and “the drive-in,” the golden age of cinema was long over, and with it the drive-in movie. By that point they didn’t make (nevermind show) movies like Phantom From Space or War of the Worlds anymore. No, when I went to the drive-in, I got to see stuff like Batman Forever and The Phantom. That said, going to the drive-in was definitely more about the experience than the movies for me.

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I Screme, you Screme: Cadbury Screme Eggs

The guy who is way too into spelling in me is going nuts right now. On a short trip away from my desk yesterday to seek out some throat lozenges and lunch, I came across something I’d never seen before: Cadbury Screme Eggs.

I’ve been mostly out of the candy scene for a few years now, only occasionally browsing dollar store candy aisles in hopes of finding something that has some sort of ridiculous quality to it. Barring the Star Wars Mega Egg -which I’d file under “Star Wars” or “Disappointing Garbage” before “candy”- it’s been over three years since my last candy article. And another three years to the one before that. I need to get out of my video game writing rut.

Hey, maybe three years from now I’ll rustle up the will to write another one.

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Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition

Internet, I have a problem. I’m addicted to Fargo.

Maybe it’s not so bad as addiction, but the summer trip south to Fargo has become a tradition that I can surely not break free of. I need it. I need it so bad that I managed to convince my now-wife that it’s where we should spend our honeymoon. So maybe it is bordering on addiction. I’m not a psychiatrist, I don’t know these things. Surely there’s a better way I could have started this article.

As usual, the trip was mostly to get away, relax, and just be together for a few days. And from what I’m told, that’s mostly what a honeymoon is about too. So to that end the voyage was perfectly successful. Of course we also spent a buttload of money. Like, way more money than we were even allowed to spend while down there. By some random stroke of luck, the amount you’re allowed to spend when crossing the border increased on the day we came home, so we didn’t have to pay duty on what we spent over the previous limit. It’s the first time crossing the border was a truly pleasant experience.

To that end, I should note that this is by no means a complete list of things I bought in the States. I’ve obviously excluded anything The Wife bought, because this website is about me me me me me and God forbid I give anyone else more than a passing mention. I also spend a bit on a few little house things and some clothes that I don’t feel are nearly interesting enough to write about. On that note, let’s take a look at exactly what I judge to be “interesting.”

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CD Review: The Greatest Video Game Music

Foreword: Just so nobody gets the wrong impression, I really like this CD. I just want to share my thoughts on it. Not all of them are nice. Thanks for understanding.

Among the many, many wonderful things Stephanie bought me that were amalgamated into my wedding gift (that girl spoils me rotten) was a compact disc entitled The Greatest Video Game Music. I can’t help but feel like maybe the London Philharmonic Orchestra was trying to start something with me there.

Calling your compilation The Greatest Video Game Music is setting the bar pretty high, as we video game nerds love us some video game musics. A cursory glance at the back of the cover confirmed my suspicions that it was something more akin to The Most Marketable Video Game Music. More evidence of this is that the image on the cover is a soldier with a cello on fire and a helicopter in the background. VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT ALL CALL OF DUTY. Goddammit. Stupid Sony and Activision ruined everything.

Anyway, that’s starting to deviate from my point. Or is it? I don’t know, I’m confused about where I was taking this. I guess something about how many games are represented on here that I didn’t even know had music, nevermind music that anybody bight consider to be the greatest. Oh, sure, you’ve got representation for the mainstays like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy. There are a few you might not not think of off the cuff but definitely belong there, like the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Tetris themes (more on the latter in a bit). Then there’s… the rest.

“I didn’t even know ____ had music.” You can fill in that blank with any of the following games that are represented on this CD: Splinter Cell: Conviction, Fallout 3, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, and Battlefield 2. There are a couple others in there that puzzled me, most notably Bioshock, Oblivion, and Mass Effect. I know that all of these games had music, but none of them had memorable music. Chalk that up to the games being so immersive that I didn’t notice music in the background if you must, but I couldn’t hum you a single tune from any of those titles. The tracks from these games didn’t even seem familiar to me when I listened to them, so that.

Back to that contingent of FPSs though. Is it really necessary to include tracks from both Modern Warfares and Battlefield 2? I can’t imagine that anyone who plays those games cares at all about the music in them. Same thing with Splinter Cell. They probably could have replaced at least two of those entries with something a little more fitting, say a track each from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and MegaMan 2? You know, games with music that people actually care about. Maybe even too much in some cases. Halo 3‘s inclusion I give a pass because it’s just not a personal interest; I’ve heard many people laud the Halo soundtracks.

The two that really make me scratch my head are the tracks from Advent Rising and Angry Birds. I’ve never even heard of Advent Rising. And Angry Birds. Angry. Birds. Nobody but nobody who is going to buy this particular CD is in the Angry Birds demographic. Yes, I played it. But that was before I downloaded real games onto my phone. Is there even any music in Angry Birds past the title screen?

Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto IV, and World of Warcraft also seemed a little out of place to me. But at least those are gamers’ games and not paint-by-numbers FPSs.

So maybe I think the track selection could have used a little fine tuning. Of course I do. Every single (real) gamer who looks at this CD will have a whole lotta corrections to make. There are so many games out there with fantastic music that it would be impossible to pare it down to a mere 20ish tracks, even if you didn’t double-dip for a few franchises. The real question here is if the compilation that the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose works. The short answer is “Yes.”

The long answer, if you’re up for a few more paragraphs, is just a lot more music/game nerd over-analysis and picking. And the first thing that I want to say is that I hit the nail on the nose: the two Modern Warfare tracks and the Battlefield 2 theme are ultimately forgettable. Generic war-sounding tunes, mainly to a marching drum beat with some technoey stuff thrown in to try to differentiate them. Sorry, LPO, you shot too wide. Reign it in and play for the people who love video games, not the people who play shooting games because that’s the fad right now. Gamers love video game music, Bros do not. Not a single Bro will buy this album, and that is the hard truth of it.

The Advent Rising, Oblivion, Splinter Cell, Fallout 3 and Uncharted tracks didn’t make a mark on me. Its not that they were bad, it’s just that they didn’t stand out in any special way. They sound nice in my ears, but not so much that I’m ever going to have them buzzing through my head when my earbuds are out. The track included from Bioshock made me wonder why it was there, because it was more moody ambiance, and not actual music you might listen to independently. I can see why fans of the games might get into any of these tracks though.

You know, what? No. The Splinter Cell track wasn’t forgettable, it actually sounded kind of like it came out of Metal Gear Solid, just less grandiose. I consider that a compliment; MGS games usually have pretty solid soundtracks.

I was impressed by how much I enjoyed the Grand Theft Auto IV and World of Warcraft tracks. The GTAIV inclusion (“Soviet Connection”) isn’t particularly elaborate, but it’s got a punchy percussion line and some beautifully deep horns. The strings throughout lend the piece a real sense of gravitas and tie the whole thing tegether in a neat little bow. The WOW track (“Seasons of War”) works in a strong but not overstated vocal group, and works up from a very slow, somber start into an almost victorious melody before rolling back down into more of a battle theme that makes brief use of an almost tribal-sounding drum phrase. Again, it’s not big and flashy, but that’s probably what makes it so great.

The MGS2 theme is practically untouched, which is great because that track’s official form is perfect. The same goes for “Liberi Fatali” from Final Fantasy VIII. I guess the orchestral version varies a bit, but it hews quite closely to the original and that is just the way I like it. I was honestly a little disappointed that they didn’t do much in the was of arranging for Super Mario Galaxy‘s “Gusty Garden Galaxy,” because since it was recorded by an orchestra to begin with, a more elaborate arrangement would have been the best way to make it stand out. I love the song though; the string chorus alone is enough to put a big smile on my face.

That brings me to the set of songs that sit in a strange limbo between my opinion poles. “Super Mario Bros Themes”, “The Legend of Zelda Suite” and “Final Fantasy Main Theme” are all fantastic songs. So why was I kind of disappointed with their showing here? These are where the legacy of video game music really begins. These are the big three. It is not my place to question them.

I don’t know why, but I have a hard time appreciating hi-fi versions of the SMB theme. It just sounds wrong when played on anything more advanced than maybe a SNES sound chip. The LPO does a fine job with what they’ve got, but I guess I’d just rather they’d taken a piece from a more recent game. Nintendo doesn’t even re-use the original Mario theme all that often (in the main series), and when they do it’s in its natural state or heavily arranged so that it sounds okay without the blippity-bloopities. The underwater part sounds beautiful on strings, but the rest of the song was not meant for real instruments.

I’ve heard this particular Legend of Zelda suite before. I was sad because I wasn’t expecting a repeat. It’s still great though!

The Final Fantasy theme is a stirring string-based piece with some faint horns to give it a little body. It is the most beautiful track on the album. It is so deeply ingrained in my soul that sometimes I get a little misty-eyes when I hear it in a new FF game. What could I possibly have against it? I was secretly hoping it would be the Final Fantasy IV version of “Prelude”, which I like just a little bit more.

The most surprising tracks on the disc, I found, were those from Halo 3 and Mass Effect. Mass Effect especially because I’ve played through the game twice and never noticed the music at all. But if “Suicide Mission” can speak for the rest of the soundtrack, it must be amazing! The track starts of with a fairly simple beat, and then layers on instruments one by one, until it builds into an incredible “here we go to save the world” kind of thing. It’s deathly serious, but keeps your spirits up by mixing in some uplifting phrases into the generally foreboding melody. It’s perfectly suited to the atmosphere of Mass Effect, and I feel like I should give the game another round so that I can stop to appreciate its musical accompaniment.

As I said before, I expected pretty good things from the Halo 3 song, “One Final Effort,” and I was not at all disappointed. I thought it was really weird how much praise the Halo soundtracks get, but if the rest is as good as this single example, I might have to look into actually listening to the full soundtracks.

The brightest spot on this disc, however, comes totally out of left field both in the fact that I wasn’t expecting it to be my favourite track, and also because it starts way off from the source material. The Tetris theme, of all things, is apparently where the LPO decided to really show their stuff. It opens up with a peppy drum line, onto which other instruments gradually join, and then finally launches into a brief piano solo of the main riff. A horn comes in, and the drums return, then things just go out of control with the melodies and beats changing almost as much as the instrumentation. About three quarters of the way it slows down into a horn-driven waltz, and gradually picks up steam again in layered repetitions of the tune until the end.

Oddly enough, it kind of ends up sounding like it was arranged to fit into the Kirby’s Air Ride soundtrack.

Understandably, you kind of have to work with the Tetris theme to make it compelling. In its natural state, it’s repetitive and basic, not unlike Tetris itself. So it stands to reason that if you were going to have an orchestra play it, they’d probably want to do a little arranging. And this is great! The end product is marvelous! I’m just a little disappointed that the rest of the CD (or at least what I’m familiar with) didn’t take nearly as much creative license as this single song did. Granted, you might also argue that gamers want to hear the music they love in a format that they recognize, but there are entire communities based around remixing video game music. I really think it could work.

Anyway, I’ll stop talking about how this CD could be “better” now. It’s great the way it is. Maybe I haven’t gotten that through enough. It’s wonderful. I really like it. Big props to the London Philharmonic Orchestra for this one. If you’re going to buy an album of video game music as played by a major orchestra… well, I’ve never seen another one, but I’m sure this one measures up nicely to any others that could theoretically exist. There are certainly far worse ways to spend twentyish bucks.

I think if I’d seen it live I would have complained a lot less.