LISA: Hopes and Dreams

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

With the Bullies all dead, Brad pushes the team forward to chase Lisa - but stop at a nearby Wrestling establishment. Brad has always wanted to be a wrestler, so this is more important than his missing daughter. Brad is a terrible and awful person.

After passing the "test" by intentionally losing his first match, Brad is free to fight in three divisions. Free for all is just party EXP grinding. The solo circuit is easy, but the last match is another "fixed" one where he must lose  the match or lose wrestler privileges, and tag team where he is partnered up with Shocklord who joins the gang once the pair win the title belt!

This game has some really nice fan art!

Victorious, the gang press on, finding another one of Brad's "friends" who sold Lisa out. Brad kills him too, and just like last time is caught unaware when the Joy gang jumps them. Their leader holds out Lisa and makes Brad choose: either he cuts off one of Lisa's nipples, or he'll have his men shoot three of Brad's guys.

Brad chooses to protect the girl, and so Ajeet, Garth and Bo randomly lines up and are mercilessly machined gunned down like ugly, rabid dogs. During this, Lisa manages to slip away but the Joy gang doesn't let Brad pursue - forcing one more choice: for Brad to give up an arm, or for them to take all the stuff from Brad's team.

Brad cowardly lets them take all his gang's gear. The Joy gang does so, laughs and leaves Brad's gang naked in the wasteland.

Insight: I highly recommend joining the wrestling group if only to unlock a save point next to a safe "only wrestlers can sleep here" bed.

Dead Island Riptide: Serpo Derpo

[Part of the Dead Island Diary]

Once all the dead are still, we decide that our next task is to try capture Serpo (if he survived the crash) to then force him to evacuate all of us. Of course his helicopter crashed on pretty much the opposite end of the island meaning we had to trek a fair distance (made longer by the D/C issues that plague this part of the game) before reaching the fort. During this there was a small highlight of me in a rage, sucker punching a wrestler zombie so hard that he went flying... to the moon.

We eventually found the downed chopper. A trail of blood walking away from the crash led us on our merry way to the interior where we eventually found the wounded pilot telling us that Serpo was up in the tower, and also that Serpo should die. No arguments there. Sure enough the suit wearing Serpo was at the top of the tower and we greeted him with a good number of bullets - only the man seemed impervious to them, he must be wearing a bullet proof suit! Instead he just told us that he had captured Harlow previously (when she went missing) and now she's a liability that could spread the disease if she escapes the quarantine zone with the not-quite vaccine mutagen. He promises to get all of us out of there if we stop her first. Why do we keep listening to this idiot?

There's a face you can trust.

Anyway, the rest of the NPCs do another quick cut scene run and this time all survive the trip to the Fort which they patch up as their next base. We on the other hand, decide to piss of Serpo by not going after Harlow and instead doing other things on the map. Just out of spite.

Dead Island Riptide: Criminal Scum deserve Death

[Part of the Dead Island Diary]

With the tunnels drained it was finally time to descend into the darkness to light and clear the way for the rest of our NPC team. The zombies were to be expected, but the gun wielding smugglers at the very end were a welcome surprise. Between the four of us they were easy to defeat and as a bonus provided us with some much needed firearms.

Upon reaching the exit we radioed back for the rest of our people to come through but obviously some zombies respawned on them as Wayne had not only been bitten, but he'd also been pushed into some deadly chemicals by Harlow in an attempt to protect the group. He rapidly mutated into what the game calls a "wrestler", which in my opinion was an improvement - too bad he had to die for us to progress. Took a fair bit to kill him though as he survive a full fuel tank of my chainsaw on him plus a few rounds of rage.

So THAT'S where wrestlers come from.

Once he was out of the way we could progress to the nearby ferry dock which was held by escaped convicts. They were surprised that anyone could survive coming through the tunnels, because obviously only tough customers could accomplish that feat. As expected they then tried to rob us (because criminals are morons) ignoring the fact that we had guns trained on many of their men during the whole conversation.

It was a brief but loud affair, one that saw all those fools put down like the animals they are. Having rescued a captive ferry man it was time to call the ferry, but this involved preparing some high level defences since apparently ferries are loud bastards that summon swarms of zombies. Not to mention that the ferry itself was carrying zombies when it arrived, including a new variety - a screamer, dangerous if you didn't silence her right away. Fortunately with the sudden surplus of ammo, none of this proved troublesome at all and soon we were finally crossing the lagoon to the city of Henderson.