I know you guys tune in regularly for high-octane action, so you'll be pleased to hear that I'm still having a fight with a snail.
I'm also still losing my fight, which is a bit embarrassing really. Because, y'know... it's a snail.
I'm trying desperately to ruin this stupid mollusc's day, but it turns out they weren't being glib when they called it 'Hard Difficulty'. Speaking of which, I don't know why I chose hard difficulty. Idiot.
Given the disappointing lack of salt in my inventory, I chose the second best snail-killing option which was to make sure my fighters were up front. Makes sense, given it's what could be easily described as a 'fight'. True to his calling, Fighter One wasted no time in unleashing his secret weapon: falling over, stone dead, within two minutes of the battle beginning.
I don't question his methods. The guy's a professional.
The other three party members register their support to the prematurely fallen hero by flailing around wildly and mainly missing their target. Eventually, and with a devastating amount of health lost, we land enough blows to kill the snail.
It explodes into embers and disappears. I kinda which they'd do that when you walk into the kitchen late and night and step on one which has snook in with your bare foot.*
Blimey, that was exhausting. I can't see any way of bringing the village idiot back to life, but I can bring the other three to full health with a little nap. So, I do just that and the party dreams of giant gastropods wearing top hats.
A little while later and I'm fully healed up but my confidence is rapidly waning in the wake of the brutally difficult first fight. I proceed cautiously through Grimrock dungeon and find a little source of comfort - my compulsive brick-clicking uncovers a secret passageway, and I bag some extra junk for Throwy Girl to chuck at our mollusc foes. I also find some protective clothing which I kinda wish Fighter One was wearing ten minutes ago.
YEP I CLICKED ON EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE BUGGERS
Now I'm cautiously plodding through the dungeon (dungeon ploddin' FTW) and hoping I don't run into another one of these snails. Luckily I don't. I run into another two of these snails.
Arrgh. There's no way I can take on two at once, especially if they velociraptor me and attack from two sides. But that gives me an idea - what if I velociraptor them instead? I quickly lure one of them into an open chamber and circle behind it, darting forward and closing a gate in the corridor to separate the two. With the second snail no longer able to intervene, I dash back into the chamber with the first snail and use the open space to dance around him, slashing it as it tries to turn and face us.
Aha! The velociraptors become the velociraptees!
The tactic works and the first snail bites the dust. I open the gate and tempt the second snail down the cramped corridor and into the open space. He goes down with a few fireball blasts from Gargamel, which turns out to be surprisingly effective:
I move my dead fighter to the back row and replace him with Throwy Girl. She's not as good at direct fighting, but then again neither was the guy who's job it was to be good at direct fighting. And anyway it felt weird having a corpse lead the way.
I kill a few more snails and think the team is getting a bit more adept at dungeoneering. We'll just gloss over the bit where we got trapped in a sideroom for fifteen minutes before working out how to operate the door, and that I nearly jumped out of my skin when I turned a corner and saw this:
In a split-second, I form a quick mental judgement about what this thing might fire at me and decide the answer is not likely to be 'puppies'. I dive to one side. I'm actually a little surprised to learn that it doesn't shoot arrows or fireballs at all. In fact, nothing comes out of it; instead I'm supposed to put two gems into it in order to open the door.
I comb the area and make a mental note to inform the landlord he's got a damp problem in this dungeon because there's fungus growing and some of it is even walking around and kicking the shit out of me. There's no way this conforms to buildings regs.
Not good. Not good at all. While I'm trying to figure out how to jump on the mushroom's head, Mario-style, it lets loose with poisonous spores and kills Throwy Girl. We manage to kill it eventually, but the going is tough and another mushroom appears directly behind it. I attempt to run forward and close the gate between us before it can get to my remaining two guys, but I have no such luck.
I kill the second mushroom. He kills Fighter Two.
Since we seem to be operating on a 1:1 kill ratio in our struggles against the Goomba army, I'm desperately hoping that a third mushroom doesn't show up and kill Gargamel because that'll be the end of our time here in Grimrock.
Predictably, a third mushroom shows up.
I guess this is it, then. With his back against the wall, Gargamel feebly batters the mushroom with his bare hands in between blasts of his fire spell. The mushroom retaliates with some powerful blows as well as a volley of poison spores.
Gargamel raises his hands, closes his eyes and prepares to die. He uses the last of his MP to shoot one more fire bolt just for the hell of it.
Oh! Well done, G! I knew you had it in you, unlike the rest of your pussy teammates. Now let's find the gems we need and get out of here...
.... NnnnGGGghhgghhh. C'mon. Give me a break.
Legend of Grimrock is fantastic and I'm disappointed I didn't get further into the dungeon; I'll probably do some wrap up notes next week to close things off properly and talk about the game a bit more, but this is where we'll be leaving our embarrassingly inept party of four corpses.
As always...
... thanks for reading.- Zeke (@ironmanmode)
* So when I was writing about the snail-crushing thing earlier I came across this site. It's something that has no good business being in existence, is ENTIRELY NSFW (christ, it's not safe for anything), and you shouldn't click the link no matter what you do. Seriously.
