In our last Dead Island excursion, we trying to get from Sinamoi’s hut to somewhere else to do something or other. I’ve entirely forgotten what the objective was. Save someone? Unlock a door? Close the Oblivion gates? The hell if I know.
But hey, it doesn’t matter - we made a friend! His name, FamilyMan0989, suggests he’s male but I prefer to think of him as the hot chick in the bikini by which he’s personified in game. I get the most out of the lovely avatar by keeping FM0989′s cute butt in view, but to be honest this is just a secondary benefit to the main reason I’m hanging behind: using women as human shields against zombies. Yeah, and what?
And it pays off. We come across a bunch of zombies on the way to wherever the heck we’re going to do the thing that needs doing. You know, that thing. We’ve got to do the thing!
Whenever we run into conflict (or it runs into us) my travel buddy is the first to deal with it. Thanks to my policy of staying five feet behind her at all times, she usually doesn’t have the option. This strategy is really paying off for me, especially since I get to hang back and take cash out of the pockets of the recently slain while she’s busy saving our lives. A perfect system, in fact! I can’t see anything that would undermine the arrangement we’ve got going on.
Five seconds later and my friend is dead.
Hmmm. Maybe I should have helped out a little bit more.
Continuing on alone, I come across this survivor who is sitting it what literally appears to be a blood bath. Gross, man - everyone knows that taking a bath is the same as sitting in a pool of your own filth. I only ever have blood showers - it’s way more sanitary.
I swig from a bottle of jack while he washes his knees in filthy blood. Maybe he needs assistance, I muse. But no, I’m not in the mood to help anyone today and/or ever. It’s just not how I play these games. I’m a lone wolf - I look after numero uno, and don’t like partnering with anybody e… hey, FamilyMan0989 is back! I push her onwards as we (she) slaughters her way through enemies and ever closer to the blip on the map I’m supposed to get to for whatever reason.
And we do get there, eventually. After a bit of searching around in the bungalows, we find the keycard and the quest is now updated, with the new mission of objective being ‘return back home with the keycard’. What bungalows? What keycard? It’s still not ringing any bells, but at least we now know what ‘the thing’ is even if we don’t know why it’s important. It’s like being a protagonist in a Dan Brown novel, running around with random artefacts for seemingly no reason.
On the way back, FM0989 appears to have come down with a slight case of total and utter bloodrage. She starts off by trying to break her iron pipe over the skull of the blood bath guy, before going on to actually breaking her iron pipe over the skull of a zombie. It dies instantly, but that doesn’t stop her from standing over its body and laying into its mushy head further with her bare fists. This attracts the attention of more zombies; I’m not going to talk about their fate, but dear God I bet they regret sticking their undead noses into her business.
Charicteristically, I cower in between to large terracotta plant pots, clutching my paddle and weeping. When will the violence stop? I don’t like it when FM0989 is drinking. I don’t like all the hitting.
At the same time, she’s a formidable force to have on my side and as such I really don’t want her dying again. I decide to make a more concerted effort to help out. My only weapon breaks pretty quickly; I give up trying to helpful. Maybe some other day.
We make it back to the hut and give Sinamoi this thing. He thanks us for bringing back the keycard to the lifeguard station. Oh, I remember!
The whole plan was to move all the survivors to the currently locked lifeguard station. I dunno, what was wrong with the ramshackle hut? Regardless of how picky the group is being, Sinamoi has asked FM0989 and I suggest that we head out again, risking our lives to not only find the station but also to kill all the zombies in and around it. Uh-Huh. Before I nip out, could someone take a look in the fridge and tell us how we’re doing for milk? I might as well pick a pint up since we’re popping out anyway.
Oh, I see... someone also thought it'd be fine to use my beach towel. Ahem.
I arm myself with what is effectively a small twig and head out onto the beachfront. Because we’re apparently a bunch of total slobs, nobody thought to get rid of the bodies outside while we were gone last time. I’m not going to make a thing of it - we’re all adults here and can do what we please - I just don’t think it’s acceptable to live like we’re students again just because we’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. I mean, could you guys not smell the bodies? Or did it just not bother you as much as it does me? Come on, guys. A little bit of common courtesy goes a long way.
So while they’re all putting their feet up, drinking warm beer and playing Red Dead Redemption on the xBox, we’ve got to go out and find a better base. Hopefully one with a PS3. Except when I say ‘us’, I’m actually alone; FM0989 also doesn’t like being some NPC’s bitch and she storms out of the session in a huff.
That puts me in a bad mood, until I discover he has a heavy iron pipe on him. That puts me in a great mood. Funny how slightly-better-than-a-stick weaponry can send a guy all bipolar.
I plan to test out how good this heavy iron pole is on the next available zombie. Or survivor, I’m not fussy.
Oh. Hello…
