Final Fun Run

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

We were next tasked to escort the bastard chief Ope to someone who was infected but not yet zombified and he led us on a merry trek through the zombie infested jungle, often putting himself in harm's way just so we could fail the mission. We still managed to keep the bastard alive through to his ancestral tomb where finally he is ended via cutscene in a method I wanted to do when I first met him. Oh well, now we have some jungle girl who fits the bill. After the long run BACK through the zombie forest we leave her with Umbrella Corp for tests (yeeeeah that's a good idea) while we go off to gather some stuff to upgrade the barge. It's a nice trip through memory lane passing through all the previous areas again.

Once ready we return to Umbrella Corp to get the vaccine (that's why we left the chick there), alas the doctors are pretty stupid as they pressed the wrong button and unleashed upon themselves a whole slew of zombies. With all of them turned into undead turds we take the jungle chick, the naive chick, and the lying bastard of a guide (whose lies led us to a whole area we didn't ever need to get to) all the way to the "final stage" prison. There's a surprising amount of survivors here, all hardened crooks "ruled" by a tattoo covered dude. A few more quests to go around in here, going from cell block to cell block and it is great fun as the baddies, both living and dead, are wearing body armor. Still not threatening at all apart from the respawning rams, but more fun to whack around.

The game needed more of this, which doesn't even happen. Ever.
Events lead to almost everyone getting eaten (due to their own stupidity) so we high tail it to the roof to meet "the voice". Its a trap! He gassed us and stole the antidote. Erm, next time kill your victims moron. So our little party fights our way to the roof, making sure to clear EVERY zombie in the way just for the heck of it. Even the ones faaaaar off the quest path. Voice man has some decent shooters, but not as good as me. Even here in the final battle two pistol headshots kills em. A sudden zombie rush pushes us back momentarily before we break through to the helipad where Voice man, surrounded by SEVEN people in the cutscene, still manages to kill the naive girl before transforming into final boss. Obviously he was surrounded by seven STUPID people.

We laughed in the face of this final opponent as all he could do was run a little, fall over, then beg for mercy as DL raged his knives into him, Jim blasted him with his guns, and I smashed his face with my sledgehammer. In under 15 seconds this moron was dead. We then took his chopper and escaped the infected island, leaving everyone there to their fate. Way to go heroes! Still - for all the bugs, easiness, too many workbenches, and lack of logic on some characters parts, this pretty game let my brothers and I spend more time together which is always a big plus in my book.

And so our adventures here have come to a close, who knows where our travels will take us next? :)

The Evil Tribe

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

As I thought, we respawned in the middle of the guerrila camp but the enemies were too stupid to take advantage of the situation. It wasn't long before we wiped them all out including Afran himself. Once we got his boat we found ourselves a guide to take us closer to the prison. He didn't know a direct route so instead brought us to a laboratory that supposedly connects to it somehow. Inside we found another group of survivors and a doctor who seemed interested in finding out answers to the zombie plague, while still pretending that the whole facility is only dedicated to pharmaceutical/cosmetic research. Yeah right doc. What's this place called anyway?

That would be my guess!
The few side quests here are actually fun as the number of zombies is quite high. Interestingly enough it looks like the exploder type phased themselves out (possibly exploded their strain into oblivion?) as we haven't encountered one since the city. After being told that there are natives in the region who may have the answer to this whole mess we went to their village and were greeted with arena style combat against their "best warriors". Their best warriors who are zombies? Okey dokey...

After killing what I'd assume to be most of their tribe one of them had the gall to ask for some plant that will keep them from mutating. I told him to piss off. If you wanted our help, you shouldn't have tried to kill us yeah? Seriously they are lucky that the game has them as invincible, because I did try whack each of them on our way out. Morons like them don't deserve to exist.

Jungle Party

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Back in the Jungle (again) we start off with a long and annoying escort mission deep into the woods, and just like all the previous ones the person we are protecting is an idiot - running ahead all the time regardless of the enemies on the path. This area is huge and there are side quests aplenty for us to chase which involves many, many crashes. From experience I believe the best way to avoid this is to stay together (within 25m), never sprint too far, avoid using cars and avoid spinning fast. Its kinda restrictive, but it gives a bit of insight on how the Ram zombies came to be.

They are obviously infected multiplayer characters.
There are less zombies here than in the city, though they throw in another type - some butcher thing that's supposed to be scary but is really just another stupid waste of space, so it is quite safe. Seriously, I just punch them to death - that's how useless they are. The jungle itself with it's winding paths and invisible walls proves to be a more devious foe, especially when combined with network drop outs. There are also a lot of non-zombie hostiles, all of whom do not know how to take cover properly or shoot straight which makes them easy pickings for a team of experienced fps players.

Of note is a heavily infested ghost town (the only place so far where there are enough running zombies to be semi-threatening) which we kept going through on a quest to get a russian satellite phone due to bad quest pathing. This took us the longest to complete having to explore quite a bit before locating an alternate route to the bunker. Also we found Friday the 13th's Jason who was a fun easter egg to take down (twice), especially now that I have his chainsaw (x2). Still doesn't beat my magic wand modded Gabriel's Hammer from Mother Hen - it sends the bad guys flying! Jim and I have finally begun to run low on cash too. About frigging time, but I suspect a raid into the city will fix that up really quick.

Anyway our next task is to get a boat from Afran, the leader of the local thugs. We were deep in his camp when he unleashed his secret weapon: Overheating DL's machine. Due to the late hour we had to call it quits there, and given the last checkpoint was in his camp I expect all his dudes will be respawned and surrounding us when we log in again. Maybe they'll actually manage to hit us this time?

Over, Under and Out

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Our next task was to get all the speakers in the city working to broadcast the message of Mother Hen at the church to try get all the scattered survivors together. A very worthwhile venture in my opinion, so the three of us headed up to the rooftops to repair all the busted systems. The zombies certainly began coming out en masse at this point, especially in the "containment zone" (it obviously didn't do its job too well huh?). Rams galore have begun to turn up as well, and seem to be the only thing so far that is a threat to the party. Endless waves of sprinting infected come a close second.

Just like that "other" zombie game.
After a few other menial tasks we were sent to go get supplies from the rich district which was only accessible through the sewers. Ironically, the sewers are cleaner than the streets above. Not too far in we were introduced to Dead Island's version of the Boomer. The slow tubby isn't very dangerous though.

We emerged at the town hall smelling kinda foul, but nowhere near as putrid as the scum taking refuge there who plainly refused to help us. At least one fella sent us through a secret way (sewers) to a supermarket held by some gangsters though, and we were more than happy to break in there and kill all of them. I lost sync somewhere here and had to redo a whole bunch of things solo, but it seems the number of enemies and their HP is adjusted to supposedly balance it. I would have prefered the numbers we fought through the first time though as my individual run lent on the boring side.

Anyway, with plenty of supplies now as well as a good amount of ammo we returned to the city proper back through the overrun town hall (they had it coming) where we discover our naive helper friend decided to try supply the goons in the police station and were promptly tasked with saving her using a secret passage (aka sewers).

Jim was overjoyed as we got in and murdered the whole bloody lot of them and took their stuff for ourselves, then it was back to the greatly reduced group of Cinnamon who decided to help us get in contact with the mysterious radio man we heard at the beginning of the game. I believe it was also a good ploy to get the heroes out of his hair so he could continue his murderous rampage. It would be great if he is actually the main bad guy.

Scumbag City

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Having finished with the resort it was a comfortable drive straight into the city for the usual task of looking for supplies. Right at the get go we find ourselves near a church whose door is being rammed by a big dude in a straight jacket. Finally a decent opponent, but alone he is still no match for the 3 of us. There are lots of survivors inside the hall but generally they begin to all blend into some faceless form that just gives silly quests and we end up not caring about them. Especially the bastard who wants us to put posters for him all over town. Who exactly would see these anyway?

"Noww we know where to finnnnd yoouuuu!"
The town itself was pretty much a big rubbish pile, and DL was beginning to have difficulty to keep track of all his thrown weapons. Fortunately it seemed there were more than a few "bad" guys who were immune to the outbreak (I suspect Cinnamon is one of them), and majority of them are equipped with firearms. Guns are nice! They work well on people, not so good on the living dead though. Ofwhich there are pleeeennnnty. Oh yeah there's an exploding version too but they're so lame I almost forgot to mention them. The rammers when combined with a good number of other things did start putting up a decent fight though.

Quests and groups of survivors (both good and scum) are also big in number here - it's like this outbreak is a quasi-fail. If 3 of us can clear the streets just imagine what all of the survivors working together could do? Cowardly idiots. Taking control of the pump station from a group of non-zombie thugs is definitely a highlight in this section, and the most WTF moment came when we restarted once and were all kidnapped (glitched) to some military outpost in the jungle (next area?) which we had to fight our way out of and walk back to the dirty city.

Apparently some punks have taken over the police station too and keep broadcasting about it on the radio. Jim reeeeally wants to get in there and shut them up but we haven't found a way in yet. Also on the radio Cinnamon tells us to hurry up and mentions that he wants to kill a little girl in passing. So glad we're taking orders from him.

Act I: Completed

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

After helping a few more "sole" survivors who decided to hold out on their own (a.k.a.idiots), we moved on to the next task of getting a strong enough ride to break through the firey tunnel to the city. Cinnamon happened to know there was one parked in the hotel carpark and it turns out to be an armored bank van. How does a life-guard know these things? I suspect he's not one at all, and more a murderous thief.

The hotel interior is nice and pretty one way, though having to restart due to network drop outs did make it more challenging that it should have been. On one occasion it decided to start all of us out at the farthest house on diamond beach! Also it turns out, the minute someone rejoins the game every single zombie you had killed respawns out of thin air. Good to know! :P

Ofcourse we did run into some b.s. sidequests in the form of a hotel guard wanting to know the fate of his gay guard buddy. We found the fool and he made us go get drugs to kill him. Erm. I could have just head stomped him y'know?

So the remaining guard dude let us through and opted to stay in the zombie infested hotel (dedication!) and we finally got the armored van. Cinnamon seemed disappointed there was no money inside, then sent us to get it upgraded at a nearby mechanic. The helpful dude knew his time was running but upgraded it for the mere quest of defending his shop till he was done. Oh and taking his daughter with us before he turned, which is quite beneficial as apparently she has a gazillion pockets to hold our stuff.

Speaking of stuff, I do really like the weapon upgrade ideas we are coming across. Can't wait till I get the blueprints for this:

Game of Homes

My fiancee and I recently purchased a nice little house and over the past week have begun what I shall call "the game of homes" (so unique, I know). The neighbours all seem nice, most have cute doggies too, and the water and power in the house was all running a-ok. Alas, I think during the previous owners move they introduced House Bugdaryen to this territory and now there is a minor infestation of the germanic creepers. I've gotten pest-control group "Fumapest" to try handle it but so far their spray and my traps / supporting poisons have had little effect I think. My cousin recommended a gel option as that was how they defeated the Bugdaryen's they encountered previously but on Fumapest's return visit they still opted to spray again anyway. Hopefully the guy knows what he's doing, otherwise I am going to make good use of his 6 month warranty.

In the meantime I've gone and upgraded the locks and kitchen flooring but am still missing a few utilities. I'm slightly annoyed at IKEA as they apparently sell incomplete bed frames which is going to result in me trekking all the way out there to find the missing pieces again. I do like their shop though. The whole walk-through part is neat and the warehouse section (where you pray to God you have written down the correct location of your item, lest you be lost searching for it forever) is quite impressive.

Welcome to IKEA.
Lastly it seems there was an electrical anomaly drifting in the area last night as a number of power points have suddenly failed, and even devices not connected to wall sockets (completely remote infact) were playing up. We'll need to get an electrician in to sort that out. With any luck he may also be able to fix the non-working TV.