Part 43: Episode XLIII: Expand Your Mind

When last we left our heroine, she was being shot at by a cackling Russkie who was quite pleased he got behind a shutter before Jill did. With that said, let's get crazy...

It wouldn't be a final area of a Resident Evil game if there wasn't a keycard fetch quest. Sure what sort of card wasn't specified. But I'm sure there's only a single one in the entire facility. Probably behind five locked doors and three dopey puzzles. Maybe a boss or two.

Jill ventures across the hall from where she began and gets crackin'. The other end of the hallway leads outside to the rope bridge from earlier.

The obligatory untidy break room with soothing music, supplies, and a poorly scribed file presents itself.

MANAGER'S DIARY

"Much cleaner..."

"Were currently at 6.75% efficiency. Which the safety supervisor says is within acceptable parameters."

"With a keycard reader which needs the power resupplied, a blood sample, two plugs, and a new fuse."

What university was this guy attending that within weeks he is able to call mutilated human corpses "guinea pigs" without batting a lash? Auschwitz U?

It would seem Umbrella's body disposal system is essentially flushing bodies down the toilet and pouring in some Drain-O.

I can't honestly have sympathy for a man who took a position as Umbrella Zombie Toilet Flusher.

There is a key on a shelf in the room, as well. Its significance will come into play in a while.

Jill heads through the door in the back of the room. This lands her in the Steam Puzzle Room™ There's also an elevator to her left, but it cannot be used for a while.

For no apparent reason, vents of super hot steam are blasting through openings in pipes around the center rail of this room. They're not broken or anything. This was an intentional design. Stupid as all hell, but entirely intentional.

Jill can deactivate the steam venting between switches found on the same center rail guard. Her objective is the console shown.

To get there, she has to press all the switches to make it up to the console, then press the switch next to it. This turns off a steam vent on the opposite side. She then has to switch press all the way to that side and press the newly accessible button. Pressing that turns on both vents in front of the initial console. She then has to go all the way back. Still pressing switches to deactivate vents, and then she can turn off both streams in front of the console to press the shiny button.

And that's the simpler of the two puzzles in this update.

With on half of the miserable security system deactivated, Jill treks all the way to where she initially began and foots it to the other side of the sewer. Where in the blue hell did Carlos go? This entire facility is essentially a linear straight shot. Is he out by the rope bridge having a smoke break? Lazy prick.

A second save room of the facility is found ahead. Which is nice, as that big room with the pool of toxic crap respawns four high end enemies {Brain Suckers or Hunter-Betas) every time it is entered. After this next puzzle, nobody is going to want to loose their head.

Anyway, another file!

SECURITY MANUAL

These meddling kids nabbed Dave in Accounting a month's salary.

"Those remaining in it will just become shambling ghouls. That is all."

Also to Jill's left is a water sample. It ought to be accompanied by a thunder crash.

A small laboratory is located in the next room. Noticed this place doesn't have a hint of Umbrella logos while the gigantic underground Death Star-esque facility had logos with logos on them?

There are two consoles in the room. The one to the right has an insert for a small keycard.

Which is actually the keychain to the previously found Facility Key. The console does something or other to it and now it has leveled up!

The console to the left is... The Water Sample Puzzle... This is the final puzzle of the game and depending on your luck on the randomization, it can be not too bad or it can be like Capcom was kicking you in the nose with spiked boots and then double jumping to do it again.

The object of this puzzle, to somehow measure the...something of the water in that vial stuck in a wall... is to match up with that top set of Tetris like blocks.

This is done by moving the A, B, and C columns left and right. Which doesn't sound too bad, right? Just match up the gaps, right?


Except each of the columns scroll about twice as long then what is displayed on the monitor, before looping around. There is no indication when they loop and I think they may be varying lengths. They also do not scroll in single block integers. They scroll by two. On top of that, each pattern usually has a few fake outs to make it look almost right, but whoops. One off. Scroll like a moron again and hope you're doing the right column.

Did I mention that in order to check how close you are, the bottom display plays what is in the three columns (with annoying beep music) in a slow five second process before giving you a "you done fucked up message."

The Clock puzzle with the balls is harder, but this one is definitely a bigger "fuck you".

There's the solution. This is one of the easier random ones. It took me about five or six minutes to complete. I went through the Dead Factory again to capture a certain cutscene on the alternate path. I got one which required stacking entire rows and three space tall blocks. It took me nearly half a hour...

Somewhere out there, Shinji Mikami is cackling into the night.

In any case, the security system to the random door, that no doubt has something of importance within it, is opened. Jill ventures back up there.

There's surprisingly little "glass tube with monsters in them" action going on for this late in the game.

Jill inserts that disc from earlier into the slot on the wall. Since the two idiotic puzzles weren't enough. (SPOILER: That or the game is forcing her to have a free slot in her inventory.)

Fancy that. Just five seconds later and the door would have been sealed and Jill would have completely missed this dopey, forced attempt at suspense.

"Don't ask me how I got past two sealed doors before you. I'm the motherfuckin' Nemesis and I don't give a fuck!"

"Time for a pimp slap you'll never forgot!"

"Gonna be disrespecting the tentacle like that? Then maybe you'll be more open to my exploring more...sensitive places, baby."

"I like the hard to get thing, but we've been doing this shit for two days now. It's time to let the romance embrace..."

"Gotcha, bitch!"

"OH LAWD! NOT THE PEE-PEE WATER! NOT THE PEE-PEE WATER!

So a half dozen explosions does nothing to thwart the Nemesis. He shrugs off bullets like they're nothing. His true weakness is revealed: toxic water.

I think such a weakness has been done before...

Since Resident Evil's level design is well established as being a "12" on the "1-10 Batshit Scale", this room has several valves around its perimeter which spew said toxic water. They can be activated only by being shot... That's the gimmick for the fight... 1997 FPS gameplay conventions...

"Goddamn woman! You burnt off my arm! You coulda just said you didn't wanna hook up!"
"Did the shooting and blowing you up several times not ring a bell?"
"I just thought you were a super freak."

"But don't worry, baby. I ain't mad. I still got it where it counts. Come and show Nemmy that..."
"Will you give it a fucking rest!"

Nemmy don't need no head to get head... Shit... She can't hear me... How am I still thinking? Man, I have got to stop going after the rough chicks...

Don't worry, Nemmy don't need no... Tenta-tentacle? W-where... NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Well, that was anti-climatic...

But at this point, he could have died by an infected paper cut for all I care.

Anyhow, the keycard not at all copied and pasted from Resident Evil 2 slips out of a dead scientist's pocket.

Jill escapes out the front just in time, despite the earlier memo noting that you cannot escape this room even with a keycard.

This FMV brought to you by Fallout 2.

You may have noticed the unused Resident Evil 2 monster graveyard in the previous battle area. That amounts to gross sludge in FMV world.

He must be wearing the same pair of pants Wolverine was in that third X-Men movie...

I'm sure nothing will come of that. Positive, in fact. So positive, I'd say this is the end...

Tune in next time for heavy artillery, Russian villainy, and things going explody in Episode XLIV: Missile Attack Confirmed

Bonus Content

Nemesis Spits in the Face of Locked Doors:
Video

Locked Doors Spit Back:
Video