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Before we begin, I must placate the good Mrs Bishop so she refrains from telling her husband who fathered the child she is carrying. As such, here's a rundown of our main team now, to show where the points from their promotions were distributed. I'd post the original stats for comparison, but this update has enough images as it is. They're on the first page. Get.
With chzr, I've mostly been focusing on making her a raw tank and prime damage-dealer, focusing on Strength with an IQ/Dexterity point here and there to give her some gun effectiveness and make the most of her potential skills - the game allows you to take skills later on which require high IQs and aren't available on startup, such as doctor, energy weapons and... toaster repair? I guess there's a broken toaster back at the rail nomad camp, but I remain unconvinced as to the usefulness of that one. Anyway.
With Ulminati, I've been focusing on dexterity and IQ. He's not a great character, to be totally honest, but I'm hoping to shape him into a premier marksman.
Here's Grunker. Grunker has been evenly balancing his strength and dexterity, since I'm not totally sure which I want him to focus on as of yet. I should probably make my mind up on that front.
With his pitiful strength, Alex is definitely cut out to be a marksman. With his decent IQ, I'm thinking of making him our first and foremost energy weapons user.
Skills-wise, there's not much to show. Everyone's initial skills have improved, and the only new ones I've picked up have been assault rifles for a couple of people (they seem like they'll be the major weapon for most of the game, and definitely outclass everything else so far except chzr... being chzr) and Brawling for Grunker to make him actually worth using in melee.
Back to the Temple of Blood. Slightly creepy here.
I think there's a motif here. It's not one I can really put my finger on, though.
I can't interact with the Priest in any way. I wanted to get his side of events! No moral ambiguity!
These aptly-named robots are the main guards of the Temple and present my main obstacle. And they are
dicks. Damaging them is a feat in of itself. Grunker's fists are rapidly becoming more and more useless. I want a chainsaw
As you can see, I quickly gave up on chzr's melee and Ulminati's one-shot rifle, and they exchange them both for the assault rifles I picked up from the waste pit. Remember that thing I was asking Blackadder about when combat skills start to increase? The answer is now, and damn quickly.
124 You see written here: "The launch code is MOTEKIM."
Hmm. Worth noting down. Obviously.
The darkened cell reeks of decay. You take a step inside and feel
something slick on the cell's floor. You stoop and touch it, then recoil as
if burned. The empty cell is full of blood!
Charming. What the hell is going on in this place? It certainly lives up to its name.
These
fucking things. We heal up quickly enough, but character death isn't seeming too distant a prospect now.
Points go into IQ and Dexterity.
I... just might heed that advice, actually.
The glowing torchlight flickers across a horrific scene. Men in
torn and blood spattered robes struggle against the ropes binding them to
massive steel tables. The tables slope down at the head and a catch basin at
the lowest corner is used to collect the dark flow of blood dripping from
the small wounds cut into each writhing victim.
Priests rush from one table to another, gathering buckets the way a
dairy farmer gathers the bucket of milk from his cows. They pour the smaller
quantities of blood into a hole in the floor, but you cannot tell where the
dark fluid drains away to in this dim chamber of horrors.
For a game that's very concise in its writing - or perhaps because of it - what we do see is very well done; to the point, atmospheric and scene-setting in a way that makes up for the primitive graphics. I'll definitely take this over yet another dingy Dragon Age dungeon with plastic bloom emanating from torches to illuminate copy-and-pasted generic torture devices. Please play this game instead of having a third run of DA to reinforce your opinion of how shitty it is, people.
If only this match with their names was a recurring theme in the game. It would make those Jerk encounters a lot more pleasant.
James?
That's not James Bond. It's a hobo. Well, fuck.
Nope
The Silicon Snipers, despite their impressive name, are... rubbish. They barely pierce even the bullet-proof vests some of our bros are still sporting. The only irritating aspect of them is the way they tend to pop up a few squares away, forcing a laborious turn-by-turn crawl towards them if we want to beat them down and save ammo.
Good stuff. We pick up another assault rifle and some grenades.
I may have mentioned these things being a bit rubbish.
Still, they whittle us down, little by little...
A pair of Blood Guardians flank a complex control panel, the like
of which you've not seen before in the wasteland. One of the guards looks at
you and you hear him mutter "infidels" under his breath. Beyond them you see
a large area of painted floor that looks very much like a giant chessboard,
but you can't begin to guess at what it might be for, or what it's doing in
the middle of a temple.
What?
Proof that even in the apocalyptic future, there will still be a brave few who do not consider turn-based combat to be outdated.
Disposing of them with a minimum of fuss, we move on. Seeing no other way forward but taking part, we agree.
You appear on what seems to be the lower half of a large
chessboard. A booming voice echoes through the game grid. "Do not stray from
the path if you value your health." Spectators fill the dark galleries to
hoot derisive jeers at you and wager against your success.
I have... no idea how to go about this. I don't think I missed anything explaining this game to me. Shrugging, I decide to go with trial and error.
It's painful, but never does anything worse than knock us out.
Over, up, over, down one, across one, then up... and so on. It doesn't follow any discernable pattern I can work out. Sigh.
And then I had to do it again because, funnily enough, I had no idea it would ask me this. At least it's still not as annoying as that fucking Enclave fucking floor puzzle in the fucking oil rig fuck shit I take science just so I can avoid that fucking thing
A lake of blood! I've always wanted one of these. chzr uses her swimming ability, and we explore the moat, being bitten by fish that do little damage through most of our armour.
Slimes! Just like my Japanese Dragon Quests
There's a few groups of these, and they give fair experience for little trouble.
Nothing like corroboration, I guess. Still not sure what this is for, but anything that involves launch codes is
probably something we want to get right first go.
Not my HEAD!
HEADS! intact, we finish our tour and heal up on the island. There are no random encounters in this area, so we're free to rest unmolested.
Now, let's find those snipers. You can enter combat mode to do stuff like reload, unjam and... probably some other stuff in the same way that you can enter "encounter" mode to hire/talk to someone.
They're not quite as clever up close. Loot loot loot.
Poppin moles. Alex's SMG is coming to the end of its usefulness, but it's still pretty good for razing minor mooks.
The gate is locked. Alex picks it for us, as ever, and the game unexpectedly compliments us.
Though that was probably just so we would let our guard down. Not sure if this was an automatic detection or through chzr (or someone)'s perception. We jump over the plate, and brilliantly enough, it immediately offers us the chance to jump straight back over. I do this backwards and forwards for a while, because I am easily amused.
Bloodbeasts! They're dogs, by the way.
They're pretty tough, but no match for our assault rifles on full auto. I try to let Grunker get a few kills in too; want to level him up so we can give him the IQ points to start using rifles himself.
We chase down the remaining cultists. We must be nearing this group's twisted leader... time for answers. Or murder. Both are considered roughly equal and indeed interchangeable in the world of Wasteland.
The bumfacebeasts give excellent experience. This leads to the strange scenario of a group of AK-wielding nutcases chasing down some cowering dogs so that a Chinese ninja can beat them to death with his puny yellow arms.
IQ it is.
As you might expect from his surroundings, the demon-priest is an
utterly corrupt individual. A flowing blue robe covers his diseased body..
and a foul smirk twists his face askew. He smiles and teeth blacker than
ebony glint in the half-light. Palsey's wracked hands grasp the Bloodstaff
tightly and threaten you with it. '"You will not have it," he whispers
harshly. "You cannot take my life!"
Is his name Palsey or does he have palsy? Am I supposed to know his name? Does it matter? No.
There are a lot of mooks here. Every funny little blob-monster up there represents one group, as in this group of nine. This could take some time... at least the blobertbeasts can't do much to hurt us, but every little counts.
There he comes. Time to clear up the rest of this mob, and quickly. Grunker equips and throws a grenade into the mob.
Not bad... the creatures are pretty resilient, though, and might take something a bit more heavy-duty. Grunker grins and prepares a plastic explosive.
Felicia is down, and chzr and Alex try to revive her between them. Grunker throws his explosive, to slightly better effect this time.
Three instant kills.
Felicia still teeters on the brink of going critical, while the rest of us mop up the remaining bloodbeasts. And then the man himself comes in...
Felicia is finally healed. Our attacks do little to scratch the Priest, while he misses us consistently in return. Our Chinese demolitions-expert ninja, his mind filled with the sheer, primal joy of exploding things, whips out a rocket launcher and brings the cleansing.
Good night, sweet prince. The Bloodstaff - presumably, this time, the real thing - miraculously survives the rocket hit intact, and we retrieve our prize. Time to get out of here.
The stairs lead us into a strange garage or... something. Sometimes the primitive graphics make it a bit hard to tell what the hell we're seeing.
Although you do not recognize it at first, the object before you is
massive and sends shivers up your spines. You study it, splitting up to
explore both sides at the same time. From the other side someone yells,
"It's a missile -- but the insides have been removed!"
Oh, okay. How this fits in with anything else in Needles will have to remain a mystery. As will, er, most of Needles.
Don't we just. :Smug:
Wait, should we really be telling him the-
...what?
Puzzled and not slightly disconcerted, we approach a... teleporter... in the upper right. We materialise outside of the Temple, and in our relief, we walk straight into a blob of radiation and receive radiation poisoning for our trouble. To the doctor!
Yes, yes, just get on with it.
We are Desert Rangers, sir! No reward is nece-
We now, of course, have more assault rifles than we know what to do with. No reason not to give one to pretty much everyone... though I was hoping Felicia would've been killed off by now. Ah well, a packrat's a packrat.
Engine in hand, we return to the garage where our useless jeep is stored.
They were strange indeed, sir. I'd say "fortunately, we solved them", but we didn't. I still don't understand what the hell that was all about. The mushroom cultists don't seem very nice themselves. Ah well, we killed some bad people and got our just rewards. And that, bros, is what real RPGing is about.
Oh, what a shame. Now we have to walk half a screen or so if we want to return.
Well, we're now in Las Vegas. A city that survived the nuclear war mostly intact, because the house bet against the missiles hitting Vegas, and nobody wins against the house.
Sound familiar? Could we be meeting a certain calculating, sheltered genius in the casinos of Vegas? A great philanthroper, an intellectual giant and man of great wisdom who seeks nothing but the betterment of humanity, yet one often rejected and harshly misunderstood for his trouble? We will... but perhaps not the one you might be thinking of.
Next update: THE BSET UPDATE YOU WIL L EVER SEE BROS