Limbo of the Lost Part #10 - Episode IX: The Ping-Pong

Part 10: Episode IX: The Ping-Pong

Welcome back, folks. I'm not going to lie to you. The rest of this chapter fucking sucks. But, luckily for you all...I'll be gutting the vast, vast bulk that makes it suck. Backtracking!

But first, let's help out Chief Indianredskin McPowwow with his bird problem. We actually have the tools to take care of it already.

By "tools" I of course mean a makeshift slingshot composed of a glass eye and an eyepatch. This too reminds me of the story of David and Goliath. If you removed all the relevant parts of the story of David and Goliath other than a slingshot and then made that part really stupid too.

Luckily for the chief, Captain Briggs is a crack shot with his improvised weapon and murders the fuck out of the noisy bird. Not pictured: The spike the crow impaled itself upon after falling.

Chief Blackhawk thanks us by unloading some useless shit that was taking up space in his closet. Why, it's a bird cage... Which, we probably could have used to trap the wondrous, if somewhat annoying, talking bird instead of braining it... Oh well!

"Blackhawk's name not 'Balckhawk'! Paleface subtitles make Blackhawk wonder how ancestors fell to such uneducated bags of douche."

And that's that for Blackhawk. There's one useless task down. Many, many more to go...

Oh, Briggs... You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

If we return to the room we can find Chief Blackhawk chilling out next to the impaled remains of the bothersome crow. I told you the thing got impaled. Captain Briggs takes no prisoners.

A two minute trip to the central room.

Alright...so we've explored the bulk of this chapter's setting save two barred paths:

Arach's locked door - REQUIREMENT: A bug for him to eat.
The secret path behind the gauardian - REQUIREMENT: A warrior's soul.

Well, we don't exactly have the means to obtain that Warrior's Soul deal yet, but we know where the munchies for the pun named fellow on the ceiling are located...

Backtracking all the fucking way back to Bugsy's pad...

As it turns out we can use the jar with the cotton ball stolen from O'negus along with our bottle of chloroform to get the necessary means to steal a grub from Bugsy's stash. It is a vicious cycle...

I'm not sure what the cotton ball is doing if Briggs just fills the jar with the chloroform like a jackass. But, who am I to argue Adventure Logic?

Creepy Crawlies? The fuck IS that thing?! It looks like an aborted chestburster. I wouldn't be as annoyed with this roundabout nonsense if they gave a better description than "grub". Well, at least Arach's requirement is met now...

Backtracking all the way back to Arach...

Oh FUCK YOU!

Right... So Arach isn't interested in our meager glass grub offering. We somehow have to augment it to suit his tastes. Meanwhile, he's content to stand in place and eat ants or some shit off the floor... Oh well, I guess we can try shanghaiing that Warrior's Soul from O'negus' collection. To do that, we'll first have to...you guessed it...backtrack!

...all the way back to the beginning of the chapter...

So, as it turns out Ben needs to relinquish his cache of chloroform in lieu of a hefty sack of saffron for our newest caper.

Would you look at that? They actually tried to make it look as though the text wasn't just typed out in a default style in MS Paint. Too bad the bag in the previous screen looks completely different in that regard... Anyway, saffron. Now, for those not well versed in the culinary arts, saffron looks like this:

It's a flower with a sort of sweet honey aroma and a bit of a bitterish taste to it. It's used in all sorts of dishes around the world, mostly in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and southern Asia. In general, it gives a yellowish hue to meals using it as ingredients. You don't need to worry about any of that. The point is, it's a red/yellow deal (leaning toward the yellow in coloring when mixed.) You know what it most certainly doesn't turn things (especially water) when mixed?

Bright green. Unless the unclean water from Bugsy's tap was really the fucking Ooze from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there is no earthly way mixing saffron into it would result in bright green. Hell, just if the developers looked up saffron on Google and just saw it turned dishes yellow and thought:

"Well yellow plus blue would mix into green!"

Yeah sure...if water were bright blue paint and not a clear liquid. And even then, things don't mix that way!

Moving on before I have an aneurysm... Oh wait...backtracking half way across the map again...

After a long, paint drying caliber excitement filled journey we can finally swap out the phantom Ecto Cooler jar with the warrior's soul. Since they look exactly alike.

I'm sure O'negus won't notice the replace bottle is no longer glowing bright green and flashing. He's a drunken Irishman, after all. He'll never sober up enough to pick up on that. Oh and don't even try to invoke Terminator 2 you pricks. I could have watched half of that film in the time it takes to do this part of the chapter.

With nothing left to do here it's an retracing of our steps back to the central room and looping back to the nearly identical right most passageway. Five minutes or so of travel time. Terrific...

We can now stop moonlighting as Shang Tseng and dump off our stolen soul on the Stone Guardian. I'm not even going to get annoyed by the hole in dialog about the guardian choosing not to translate part of his speech, despite the fact he's not translating anything as it is being decoded via the magical Babel Fish seal.

Going down the hidden path...

We now find ourselves in the Arena of Pain; a more apt title for this part of the game there couldn't be.

Anyhow, there is a metal spear encased in a glass orb. Sure...why the hell not? Now, we need this spear, obviously, or it wouldn't exist. Adventure game logic! Anyhow, smashing the thing open with something heavy is not an option. That would be far too logical. Remember how that grub we picked up before was a "glass grub"? No? Me neither. It doesn't help once the thing is obtained it's just referred to as a "grub". Long story short...

...it turns out the little phallic abomination eats glass. Sure, I guess that works.

Despite the glass grub clearly not eating the base of the orb, the spear is freed and has fallen to the table below ripe for the taking.

Excuse me, Briggs? You've stolen numerous things right from out of clearly inhabited rooms non-stop now...multiple times with the occupants still in the same room with you... But now in the "Arena of Pain" you get cold feet about swiping shit? You baffle me, Captain.

Yeah sure, Briggs. No need to arm yourself while wandering around hell. I'm sure chatting up people in a chipper tone will go swimmingly for the duration of the adventure.

Our little friend the grub erupts into a horrifying Doom Fly. One which...politely hangs in mid-air awaiting Ben to casually scoop him up back into his jar of knock out drugs.

Alright, finally some progress! Now, back to Arach...again...

This is getting ri-fucking-diculous...

You know how Arach's last gift was pretty gross? Err...yeah... He's stepping up his game...

So Arach rips off the end of one of his fingers to give to Ben as thanks. All the thing is used for is to unlock the door next to him. That is umm...yeah... That is a thing.

Next in our long, boring journey of bullshit and endless walking, we come to a new dead end at the "Doors of Destiny". There are four doors. Three metal and one wood... Take a wild guess what we have to obtain now?

Backtracking... Backtracking never changes...

It took ten minutes of wandering in circles for me to find this room. And that was after I looked up a walkthrough for a hint. It turns out there's actually a very important room to the south (ie toward the camera) of the dopey passage with the dog warning on the wrong wall. I hate this game.

The hidden-via-awkward-as-hell-entry-placement room contains a pair of urns filled with oil and sawdust. Alright, then. I suppose those are sensible to store together. We'll need to utilize both of these to capture the fearsome Wood Gator.

As for the sawdust, Benny can just stuff his pockets full of the stuff. He's not picky about that sort of mess.

As for the oil, Ben demands we fuck up poor Bugsy's trophy to contain the mess. I'm not sure why we couldn't use one of the several other stolen containers. You'd think you'd want a cap on a bucket of crude oil. But, Benny plays by his own rules.

All...the...way...back...to...Wood Gator...lair...

So, how do we go about catching the menacing Wood Gator? Well, first of all we have to pour oil into a small, barely noticeable hole next to the gate. This...somehow...lubricates the gate opening mechanism in order for Ben to yank it open.

Next, we need to empty the sawdust from our pockets into the cage old undead John Redcorn gave us. Now, I bet you're thinking we need to rig some crude trapping mechanism so it'll slam shut behind the beast when it goes to collect its meal, right?

Nope... The Wood Gator is just kind of retarded like that.

Now, what we do have to do is appease Benjamin's constantly fluctuating nerves about handling shit. In this case, we must subdue the creature so Briggsy can successfully shove it into his pants pocket. My first guess was to use the spear to carry the cage at a distance for safety not unlike a hobo sack. But, that wasn't the case.

Actually, we need to drape that "tatty" curtain we tore down earlier over the cage. This instantly renders the Wood Gator unconscious because...

...

...What? Did you want an answer out of me? I am not nearly high enough to come up with a sufficient answer to any happenings in the minds of those who made this trainwreck.

*grumble* "I am not a happy sailor you know!! I bet you are afraid of something...perhaps we will find out eh? It's alright for you, you don't have to carry it!"

Yes, there are four lines of Briggs bitching before he finally collects the cage. He makes me find a new little way to hate him every update.

And so this chapter too is almost over. Thank heavens!

The final stretch of mind rending tedious backtracking...

At last we can ditch the wood gator and begin the final puzzle of this infernal thing.

Look at that shit eating grin on Benny there. He is just so proud at himself for this destruction of property.

Cor is not a word. You just made that one up!

Anyhow, there is a button behind that door. Nothing else special...just a button. You know...it occurs to me now... We still have that torch, don't we? Couldn't we have just burned that sonuvabitch down and saved twenty minutes?

The button causes the door on the far end of the room to open. There is nothing behind the door. All Ben can do is shut it. This causes the door to the right of the derelict wooden door to open. Closing that one causes the far one to open again. I think you can see where this is going. We of course have to...