Part 5

Since there's not many pictures in this update, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you what our main character looks like.



Oof.



This is like the fifth dialogue tree in the game where talking is completely useless. Also, for God knows what reason, the game repeats Tony's chapter ending line.

Tony: Step through the door, partner. You're gonna dive like a condor to a corpse.
Jason: That's very funny. Now get back in the cockpit and fly this plane. I'll double what I gave you before. [Whoa, $300? Calm down, moneybags!]
Tony: People will pay enough for your death, now jump.
Jason: Who wants me dead?
Tony: Enough talk - out!



Because Access Software just can't do anything right - you actually can't give up and jump out of the plane. Going too close to Tony (i.e. near the door where he wants you to go) results in...

The pilot shoots you in the heart, then tosses your lifeless body out the door.

It uses the same graphic as when B.O.B. shot you, which you might notice, is not anywhere near the heart. Dawdle, and...

Tony: I'm waiting.



Notice now, Tony's no longer bracing himself with his other hand. If you wait too long:

Tony: Enough talk, I'm just gonna shoot ya.

Since Tony is about to die, here's his video montage. BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS FOR A GUNSHOT EVER.



The trick here is that if you manipulate the cage of geese while his hands are both on the gun, they fly out and he fires a couple shots and falls out of the plane.

(If you do it early, the game just says "Not yet," effectively giving you the solution.



You just solved another timed puzzle in Amazon! Get ready, because from here on out, the game is rock hard. Timed puzzles like these actually only last a few seconds.

This really sucks for an adventure game, because you barely have enough time to examine your surroundings, much less try stuff out. For our next timed puzzle, the game helpfully informs us...

As the screams of Martin fade into the distance, Jason knows he's not out of the woods yet. The plane is losing altitude and heading for the jungle floor....

After using four ellipses (what is with video games and that?), Access Software decides to talk down to you and tell you, "Oh, but you're not safe yet- there's no pilot!"

No fucking shit!

I'd actually have preferred something more Darwinian where it just doesn't tell you anything, so stupid people - after killing Martin - would just wait for the flight to land then get made fun of like: "No one's flying the plane now, moron."

Fortunately, with Martin gone, now we can jump out of the plane!



Oh. That didn't work. Sadly, the parachute is too small to be used. (The game lets you know this after you die, of course.) Since you can't examine items in your inventory, the only way to know this is to examine it before you pick it up.

Thanks, Amazon! We'd better go the cockpit.

The handle is jammed too tightly to move. Apparently Martin's last shots went right through the mechanism.

If you saw the "Chapter 5 in 30 seconds" clip, you'll note Martin only gets off 2 shots. Keep that in mind. Anyway, in the game's only good puzzle, you have to use the parachute on the handle to open the door.

You wind the parachute shroud around the door handle and toss the canopy out the open cargo door.





The bad news is that Jason can't really fly. The good news is that he can identify the aircraft equipment. So descriptions in here are "standard altimeter" and "airspeed indicator" - most likely because the game engine couldn't handle time-based text too well, and they didn't want to give you any indication of how long you had left to solve the puzzle.

Interestingly, for no reason at all:

The copilot wheel had been jamming, so it was disconnected.

Yeah, never mind programming errors and shit, but feel free to give me the backstory of Tony Martin's plane. And as if the game weren't fucking ridiculous enough - examining the windows:



Yeah, effin' gorgeous.

Well, wait too long and we get a fairly gruesome death.



Great. We'd better determine why this plane is plummeting to its doom. Looking at the two holes in the cockpit reveals:

Smoke: Oil smoke resulting from a bullet ruptured oil line.
Fluid: Hydraulic fluid drips from a bullet ruptured line.

So let me get this straight. In Tony's flailing, he fires off two shots and one is to the tail of the plane.

That means his other shot rutpures through the door handle mechanism and continues unimpeded into the cockpit. From there, it maintains velocity somehow, makes a slight left turn and ruptures the oil line. Then it comes back out into the cockpit and for a half-second hovers - in mid-air, mind you - before returning around to enter the hyrdaulic fluid line.

That... is one magic... awkward reference to JFK. (Anybody even get that, or am I really too old to be doing LPs?)

Fortunately, if you pull back the throttle, raise the flaps, and pull back on the control stick, Jason safely lands the plane.



I guess.

The whole thing capsizes and our reward for two very short time puzzles is, in fact...



A third. Now the plane's filling with water. The most obvious solution is to just swim to shore, but...



You get eaten by pir-

...

...

...

Oh, now what the fuck is this.

They drew a skull on his face? That looks horrible! Holy shit! I'm Johnny Bad-artist, but I could do a better job than that. Why is his hair like that? Why didn't the piranha eat his neck or ears? Or eyes? It doesn't even look funny, it just looks awful!

Ugh.

Well, at any rate, this is a somewhat unfair puzzle as it requires moving a box.





A good. A box marked "Raft". Now it's not even a puzzle.



Combine the raft with your bicycle pump (you took that with you in Episode 4, right?) to get an inflated raft. Strange, didn't we have $1000? I know we bribed the ticket agent and we gave Martin $150. So unless we gave the agent $850, something ain't right...

Anyway, use that on the river outside and...

The small raft handles remarkably well in the lake, which is still churning from the airplanes impact [sic]. Jason painfully inches his way to shore, losing his money along the way. [Bullshit, Amazon! You took that out of inventory earlier than that!] His neck feels like it has been stretched by the hangman and he could use a good chiropractor.



Despite having no great idea where he's going or where he landed, Jason somehow just walks to Rio Blanco.

I'm not kidding.

Fortunately for Jason, the plane crash occurs near his destination of Rio Blanco. if you look up the word 'dirty' in the dictionary, there could be a picture of Rio Blanco. On the plaza, there is a water well made of adobe bricks. A crumbling cantina stands beside an ancient flea bag hotel that once housed the traveling robber barons. Even the Catholic mission has long been deserted...



Yep, somehow, we're in Rio Blanco. And just because they felt the game was making too much sense...





So, I'm thinking update 6 will be a regular update like this, but also with the "Episode in 30 seconds" thing I tried before.