Weekend adventure

 Andrew Barter 

Professor Maltman  

ENG 1101-46

23 January 2025

Shadows of Evil Easter Egg

First, allow me to say that if it's too cold outside I'm staying inside. I work Monday to Friday from 8:00 am - 9:00 pm and have weekends off. So I was going to attempt to go out and do something I've never done before, but I couldn't leave the house given the exceptionally cold weather. However,  I'm pretty sure this still counts because I did something I've never done before. 

The first time I attempted the shadows of evil Easter egg in Call of Duty: Black Ops III, it was pretty exciting. An Easter egg is a hidden feature, message, or inside joke that creators hide within video games, movies, software programs, or websites. These Easter eggs can be many things like secret levels in a game, hidden messages in a film, or unexpected functions in software. They are often used as surprises for users who explore or investigate thoroughly, adding an element of fun and engagement beyond the main content. Discovering an Easter egg can also create a sense of community with fans as they share their finds with others. For this Easter egg in the shadow of evil, you need four players so I did it with three of my good friends. One of them had beaten it already and the rest of us hadn’t. I had seen videos of people speedrunning it, but I never attempted it myself until last weekend. My friends had all seen informational videos as well, so we all had some idea of what we were supposed to do. The first thing to do was set up. It wasn't too difficult for me because I have a bunch of “gobblegums”, which are these little gumballs that have various abilities and perks within the game. Next, we had to find and activate all the rituals, which meant running around the map, avoiding zombies, and making sure nobody got down too early. Each ritual other than the first one summoned a Margwa, a massive three-headed beast that could instantly defeat you if you aren't careful. I always get scared when the Margwa appears because I don't want to die and lose my perks. Killing the Margwas isn’t too difficult, you just shoot them in whichever head is glowing. After a while, we finally got all the rituals done and opened up the Pack-a-Punch machine. What the machine does is make your weapons stronger but costs 5000 points. That's just the base game, there's still a few more steps for the Easter egg. 

Next, we had to build the Apothicon Sword. First you have to ride the train and look for symbols. Then you have to get an egg and fill it up with souls at four different locations. Once you’re one filling up the egg, you get the sword. But then you have to upgrade the sword. Which was awful because you must go around the map and summon Margwas at four different symbols. Each symbol summons multiple Margwas at a time. After completing that step, we did the flag step. We had to carry a flag to specific locations while dealing with a ton of zombies. If the flag took too much damage, we had to start over. If we complete the step, we get a “max ammo” drop which as you can imagine gives every player their ammo back. So, after taking the flag through all the areas of the map, you have the supposed boss fight. I say supposed because there isn't a boss, you’re just stuck in a lockdown and you have to trap the shadow man in the summoning key. It took a few attempts and some coordination because the shadow man teleports around and when he teleports above the summoning key one of us must be nearby and interact with it. Interact means pressing square or “A” on the controller or “F” on the keyboard. After trapping the shadow, we had one more step. One of us had to be in beast mode and shock an electric panel while the fourth player activates the train and went into beast mode and shocked a bunch of keeper protectors. After we completed that final step, a cutscene played. After the cutscene ends, the game ends as well, so before that happened, I closed the game so I could keep all the gobblegums I used for the run.