In our first Dead Island outing I had pretty much the worst beginning to a holiday ever, excluding Skegness in 1989, in which I came down with chicken pox the day we left. Talk about a viral outbreak - I managed to infect over twenty other kids in the space of a week. On purpose.
Winner, me.
Anyway, amongst the bunch of crappy stuff that happened last time (in the blog, not Skegness) I got chased by zombies, threatened by a survivor with a baseball bat and also see how much I’ve racked up on the minibar bill. The first order of business today is to convince the guy with the baseball bat that I’m not a zombie before he turns my face into a vaguely face-looking pulp. He screams at me to nod my head, so I do that. He lowers his weapon… and THAT was his test to make sure he hadn’t let a zombie into the compound?
Sure, because zombies don’t ever loll their heads back and forth or move sporadically. Man, I should bite this guy’s throat out just on general principle.
What’s even moronicker about it (a word I just invented meaning ‘more moronic than moronic’) is that this clown is supposedly the surviving group’s doctor. And I can see why they need need a dedicated health professional here - there’s loads off people in this ramshackle beach hut, most of whom are either banged up or fatally injured. Whoever that managed to persuade so many people to vacation on a place dubbed ‘Dead Island’ isn’t a travel agent, she’s a bloody travel wizard. Bet she’s enjoying her commission this month.
Psssst. Janine. I've got another one.
The hut seems to be in a state of panic. Probably because they realized their travel insurance policies don’t cover loss via zombie uprising, eh?
Eh? Am I right? Yeah, I’m right. Don’t talk to me about insurance companies.
After asking around and seeing if anyone else has an angry insurance complaint they’d like me to blog about, some woman grabs me and starts yelling about a dude called Sinamoi. He’s the guy who previously directed me through that charming hotel (with the lovely bar staff) and animated dead who were hellbent on ripping me apart. Turns out Sinamoi is now stuck just outside the hut entrance and being attacked himself, with none of the survivors willing to open the doors…
… man, that sucks. Shame there’s not someone with a low self-preservation instinct willing to rush out and save him. While I chill out here and see what supplies I can steal for my own end.
… Apparently I’m a good candidate to save him as I’m seemingly immune from the zombie virus!
… I guess? But I was kinda planning on hanging out here, enjoying this refreshing medkit and hitting on the girl crying in the corner.
…. But Sinamoi is the leader of the pack! He’s dying out there!
… Uh-Huh. Say, is there some kind of allocation system with the beds or can I have this top bunk?
OH MY GOD FINE, I’LL GO OUTSIDE AND SAVE HIM. Let’s send the only person in the room playing on Iron friggin’ Man bloody Mode outside to risk his life and save a dumb NPC. Damnit, give me a weapon.
A paddle. A wooden paddle. Look, whatever. That’ll do.
I prepare myself, someone throws open the hut doors and I’m instantly faced with a scene of carnage. Sinamoi, the guy in the fruity red number, is getting his ass served back to him with all the trimmings. I ready my weapon - not a second to lose! - and get ready to help him out. Mainly by walking back into the hut, shutting the doors, locking them, and seeing if there’s any spare medkits I can offer him through the letterbox. Alas, the game doesn’t allow me to be exercise any sensible form of survivalism because a zombie ambushes me from the right. I get knocked off the veranda and onto the sand.
Leaping up and ready to beat some zombie to re-death with my paddle of doom, a zombie smacks me from behind and I find myself on the floor. Again. Being humiliated once was bad enough, but the second time just puts me into beserker mode. I find my feet once more and swing the paddle - hard - and connect with a zombie’s jaw bone. It knocks the smelly bastard for six, so I quickly follow up while his back is turned and slam the paddle down on his spine.
It’s my first kill in the game, and let me just say that it felt as satisfying as it did so utterly wrong. Bit like catching yourself taking full advantage of this while nobody is in the house to hear you.
Sinamoi is still flailing around like an epileptic earwig, so I uncharacteristically throw all caution to the wind and dive right on in with my paddle swinging. I do a good job (if I do say so myself) of keeping zeds at bay while cracking some skulls at the same time, leaving one enemy still standing. He has the sheer impudence to take a point of damage off me, so in return I not only beat him to the floor but I also go all Ed Norton in American History X on his ass and stomp his head in:
After saving Sinamoi, a cut scene happens in which a zombie rises up behind my unwitting character. Sinamoi spins around and throws a machete past my shoulder and it slices the zombie’s head like a melon. Oh, so you had a machete back there? While I was saving your butt with my wooden paddle? What the hell is wrong with you people.
I’m able to level up at this point, but all this does is serve to remind me how rubbish it is being the ‘blunt weapons’ guy. I’m able to choose either a ‘fury’, ‘combat’ or ‘survival’ upgrade. His fury and combat upgrades are as dull as dishwater… oh, but what’s this? Regenerate 10% of health per minute? Niiiiice. Very nice indeed. I’ll be having that, then.
Oh, yet more excitement!
Player Goldenaxe is nearby. Press J to join.
Well. I can’t say no to a player called Goldenaxe, can I? I might get hooked up with a hot barbarian chick.
Goldenaxe appears from nowhere but is sadly not a hot barbarian chick. I would have even been happy with the stumpy dwarf - anyone with a better weapon to bring to the party than my paddle. But alas, it’s just ‘some guy’ who proceeds to talk to Sinamoi and kick off the next mission in which we need to relocate to another base.
But here’s the rub - Goldenaxe is apparently ‘busy’. Busy with what? We’ll never know. Maybe he’s gotten carried away singing Carlie Ray Jepsen songs in an unbreakable cycle of karaoke videos on YouTube. But whatever he’s doing, what he’s not doing is accepting the mission; nothing will happen until Goldenaxe does this, and I can’t do anything in the mean time.
All of a sudden, Isaiah2003 pops into the room from nowhere. I think he realizes the pickle we’re in, too.
And then Eric_Bear joins. That’s three of us now waiting in the hut for this Goldenaxe muppet to finish up his smoke break or whatever he’s doing and return to the game. We mill around, each of us holding our paddles like we simply can’t wait for Banoi’s first ever Rowing Regatta:
After we each take it in turns to unsuccessfully paddle Goldenaxe to death, I give up and drop out of the multiplayer session. The other three vanish from the room and I accept the mission myself. I’m told to find the security guard from the bungalows nearby. I don’t know why I’m doing it or what it’s for, but being a classically-conditioned gamer, I don’t query it. Of course we need a key card. Why wouldn’t we need a key card?
I leave the hut tentatively, and the slightest noise or movement makes me spin around like a startled duck. I also realise later on that I left the doors wide open and the survivors utterly exposed. I march onwards regardless, until somewhere in the deep recesses of my childhood I can hear my dad yell “Were you born in a barn?” and instantly feel guilty so I walk all the way back to close them. I also check to make sure I haven’t changed the thermostat settings while I’m at it.
Back out into the terrifying world I don’t encounter much resistance on my way to the bungalows save for a lone fat-ass zombie who I take down with my newly found broomstick (building a veritable arsenal here, guys). When I’m actually in the compound however, it’s a different story. A swarm of zombies who are busy feasting on some delicious corpse hor d’oevers by the pool notice me bumbling around. I square up to them as they sprint around the pool towards me and clutch my weapon, holding fast and raising the stick above my head, waiting til they get within range to strike. The second they do, I run the opposite direction.
Eventually they corner me so I’ve got no option but to enter conflict, which is not my style at all. But since it’s been thrust upon me I let them have it, raining down on them with a Broomstick Apocalypse the likes of which have never been seen.
Just as I think I’ve taken them all down, a zombie leaps from behind a parasol and totally takes me by surprise. Dude, you’re ruining the ‘broomstick apocalypse’ vibe I had going on! In my state of panic, I try to kick him away but forget which key it is to kick. The zombie is neither intimidated nor deterred by a man turning a flashlight on and off while repeatedly crouching, so he pulls his fist back to throw a whacking great punch my way.
To my surprise (but probably more to his surprise), a second hand enters the proceedings - a second hand holding a second broom stick, swinging in from my right and virtually taking the creature’s damned head off. What on earth?
I HAVE A NEW FWEND!
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To make up for the musical travesty I linked to earlier, here’s Ted from Scrubs singing the finest song ever invented by mortal men. You’re very welcome.