Endless Ocean: Mini-Mixes

I'm currently reviewing Endless Ocean, Nintendo's new sandbox-style scuba diving game for the Wii. And as much as I love the game's exploration and leisurely pace, I'm a little disappointed that Nintendo didn't take a minute to step back and add a features or two to the game before shipping it to the States -- sorta like they did with Animal Crossing (which was actually the second, enhanced version of Japan's Dōbutsu no Mori).

Anyway, aside from the game's flimsy customization, the biggest oversight is the in-game mp3 player. You can throw songs onto an SD card and listen to them while you're diving or futzing around on The Gabbiano, but the damn thing only seems to repeat the same track over and over. That's why, with the inspiration of the NeoGAF forums (and particularly the great advice about Audacity from user Xristot), I've created a series of Endless Ocean Mini-Mixes, seven bite sized tracks filled with ambient-electronic weirdness and three more upbeat "topside" selections to provide a soundtrack when you're training dolphins or developing film.

If anybody else out there wants to share their Endless Ocean mixes, please post in the comments or jump into NeoGAF's Endless Ocean thread and link 'em up.

Here's the playlist, with links to the source albums.
1. Asea (zShare Link)
Neu! - “Im Glück” from Neu! 1
Tortoise - “Along The Banks of Rivers” from Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Booka Shade - “ Lost High” from Movements
Eluvium - “Under the Water it Glowed” from Indecipherable Text

2. Shimmering (zShare Link)
Kraftwerk - “Heimatklange” from Ralf & Florian
Growing - “Cumulusless” from Color Wheel
The Orb - “Falkenbrück” from Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt
David Bowie - “Subterraneans” from Low

3. Submerged (zShare Link)
Symbiosis - “Umbra” from Clandestine Electronic Subculture
Massive Attack & Mad Professor - “Moving Dub (Better Things)” from No Protection
Fila Brazillia - “Weasel Out Of The Muck” from Luck Be a Weirdo Tonight
Mr. Scruff - “Fish” from Keep It Unreal

4. Other (zShare Link)
Brian Eno and David Byrne - “Mountain of Needles” from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Ghost - “Daggma” from Snuffbox Immanence
Animal Collective - “Throwin the Round Ball” from Danse Manatee
Hu Vibrational - “Friends and Gardens (Corker / Conboy Mix)” from Microsolutions #1

5. Surge (zShare Link)
Steve Reich - “Section 7” from Music For 18 Musicians
Andrew Thomas - “Untitled” from Fearsome Jewel
Apparat - “Not a Number” from Walls
Hu Vibrational - “We Walk” from Beautiful: Boonghee Music 2
The Art of Noise - “Moments in Love” from The Best of The Art of Noise

6. Sonar (zShare Link)
Cornelius - “Wataridori” from Sensuous
Sam Prekop - “Faces and People” from Sam Prekop
Tortoise - “Dear Grandma and Grandpa” from Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Can - “Sing Swan Song” from Ege Bamyasi

7. Siren (zShare Link)
Uli Teichmann - “Piano Tec” from Pop Ambient 2006
Tim Buckley - “Song to the Siren” from Starsailor
Radiohead - “All I Need” from In Rainbows
Labradford - “and Jonathan Morken. Photo provided by ” from E Luxo So

8. Topside Tracks 1 (zShare Link)
Manu Chao - “Me Llaman Calle” from La Radiolina
Joe Strummer - “Filibustero” from Walker Original Soundtrack
Peter King - “Mr. Lonely Wolf” from Shango

9. Topside Tracks 2 (zShare Link)
The Beach Boys - “Don't Go Near the Water” from Surf's Up
Gal Costa - “Que Pena (Ele Já Não Gosta Mais De Mim)” from Gal Costa
Grupo Oba-Ilu - “Shango” from Santeria: Songs for the Orishas

10. Topside Tracks 3 (zShare Link)
The Maytals - “Pressure Drop” from The Harder They Come Original Soundtrack
Sound Dimension - “Solas” from Jamaica Soul Shake Vol.1
Prince Jammy - “Fist of Fury” from Trojan Dub Box Set Vol. 2

Thanks for the interested everybody, I took down the .zip link because I was getting close to my bandwidth limit. Grab the individual tracks at zShare!

Cloverfield: Third-Person Shooter

Movie critics like to toss around comparisons to video games as a kind of short hand for thin stories, ADD action and CG monster mayhem. The flick Cloverfield may be the first movie where these parallels may really have some weight behind them. I caught the movie earlier this week and was struck by how many moments of video game deja vu I'd felt while watching it. There's a sequence in a helicopter that reminded me of a half dozen different rail shooting levels -- the most recent example I can think of is Blacksite: Area 51. In the Midway game you're in a chopper looking down on giant monsters as they rip through a huge bridge span. The scene's been in a dozens of games. The only thing missing from the similar sequence in Cloverfield was the mounted chain gun and the trigger button.

Minor moments aren't all that ties Cloverfield, I think inextricably, to video game storytelling. There's something inherent to the movie's reality TV gimmick that makes it feel more like a game than any movie I've ever seen. The movie is a series of continuous shots. Most filmmakers save the long shot for special occasions -- scenes that need added immediacy. Cloverfield has only a handful of edits: moments when, for one reason or another, the camera stops shooting. Otherwise, the flick is one long string of extended shots. The camera rolls and rolls as the action happens, rarely pausing for breath, almost never missing a moment.This is how we experience nearly every video game we play. The only difference is how the camera is handled.

The Cloverfield camera is handled by an amateur. He's in the middle of the action. Because of this the camera (and our perspective) gets knocked around quite a bit. That's a far cry from the steady camera work of Lakitu. When I think about the third-person video game camera, I always think back to Super Mario 64 and that moment when Mario walks up to a mirror and we see Lakitu, the bespectacled turtle, floating on a cloud, dangling a movie camera from a fishing pole. In my mind Lakitu is the default cinematographer of all 3rd person video games. Part of me thinks that it was the introduction of Lakitu that made games too complicated for the average player. Because when we're playing Super Mario 64, we're really responsible for two characters. We move Mario around. And we have to keep tabs on Lakitu to make sure he's giving us the shot that we need. These new perspectives complicate things. Are we Mario? Are we Lakitu? Or are we the camera that Lakitu is dangling?

If you're even remotely sensitive to motion sickness it's hard, when watching Cloverfield, not to feel like the oft jostled camera. But we're also meant to relate to the cameraman himself, Hud (either a stealth reference to video game 'heads-up displays' or the Paul Newman movie). Hud's contribution, besides lugging the camera halfway across Manhattan, is to bring a secondary love interest into the picture -- probably my favorite part of the movie. The flick's "A" story is about Rob, the guy whose going-away-party gets interrupted by the monster attack, and his subsequent quest to save his girlfriend. But the more interesting subplot, where Hud crushes on Marlena (played by Mean Girls starlet Lizzy Caplan) reminded me more than a little of Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

There's a sort of pairing off that happens in Cloverfield. And Hud, the camera guy, finds himself matched with Marlena -- a girl he'd been admiring at the party before everything went to crap. These quieter moments feel more first-person, because, even though we're looking through the camera lens and not Hud's eyes, we're practically in Hud's skin when he hits on Marlena. Later when she leaps out of the darkness to save Hud's hide from alien creeps, it's hard not to see the parallels between Marlena and Alyx Vance, the kick-ass love interest/sidekick in Half-Life 2. I can't speak for other people, but I'm pretty sure I formed a crush on Alyx because of 1) proximity, 2) peer pressure (her father and Professor Kleiner practically begged us to propagate the species) and 3) she was the first video game character I didn't need to babysit. Hell, she saved my hide more than a couple times. Cloverfield's Marlena practically wields a crowbar.

No More Heroes vs El Topo

Suda 51 has mentioned on several occasions that his forthcoming No More Heroes was influenced by Alejandro Jordorowski's cult western El Topo. For the uninitiated, El Topo is a violent, experimental film full of graphic imagery, spiritual undertones and political satire. It's widely considered to be the first midnight movie and claims John Lennon as an early supporter.

Jordorowski stars as the titular El Topo (Spanish for "The Mole"), a man who sets out on a quest to slay four "masters." As I mentioned before, the story of one killer looking to snuff his rivals isn't anything new. It seems Suda 51 is interested in El Topo's motivation to kill his betters. Both Travis Touchdown (the protagonist of No More Heroes) and El Topo are urged to kill by a woman. El Topo's seductress, Mara, eventually proves to be his downfall. The vain woman is likely a symbol of man's selfishness -- El Topo abandons his son to be with her and takes on the task of conquering the masters at her bequest. Eventually El Topo is betrayed, hits rock bottom and goes through a Siddhartha like transformation, eventually paying his karmic debt and becoming enlightened.

No telling if Suda 51 will follow the plot that closely, but the similarities between Mara and No More Heroes character Sylvia Christel (herself a reference to the French starlet of Emmanuelle fame) are worth noting. Sylvia, a member of the assassin's league the UAA, sets up Travis' kills -- calling the shots, so to speak, while Travis does the dirty work. Sylvia also seems to enjoy looking at herself in the mirror -- a fixation shared by Mara.

By a strange bit of synchronicity there's a good chance you'll be able to walk into Target on January 22 and buy both the game and the obscure foreign film it alludes to. El Topo is on Target store shelves as part of an IFC promotion.

El Topo Official Site
No More Heroes Official Site - Japan
No More Heroes Official Site - US