Part 71: XV - Kill Command

Alright, let's get this over with ASAP. Ming-Xiao gets told to fuck off...



...we stock up on ammo and swap out the Dragon's Breath for a submachine gun that has a bit more damage potential for the amount of ammo we can carry...



...LaCroix is still foppy and sends us off to the Anarchs...



...Beckett is being mysterious...



...and Jack sends us off to Griffith Park. So we head there...



...and immediately run into this Elvis-impersonator looking motherfucker.



Apparently, this guy is the leader of a gang that we shot up in a garage? So I guess that was during Fat Larry's quest? Shit, man, I just don't fucking know. Note the rare usage of "gay" as a singular noun that is falling out of usage because calling somebody "a gay" just sounds dumb. And really, if you're at this point, just call him a fag. You know you want to do that, so just fucking do it. I don't even give a crap anymore.



And the fight is on! This one is actually really easy, because the enemies stay clustered, don't really move and are all busy shooting at Edward.



So I can just do this and kill them all in one clean shot. Handy.



The ride up becomes a bit of a problem, combined with the automatic companion-warps-to-you thing. When it's only Edward, it's not too much of a problem, the tram still goes just fine...



...but when Yukie teleports in at the same location, everything just locks up. Somehow, and I don't know how, Edward then warped to the right a bit after about thirty seconds, allowing the tram to continue up.



And the killer? When we get to the top, the companions disappear, presumably as to not interfere with the werewolf. Fucking brilliant.



Speaking of the werewolf, he's a motherfucker. Why is he a motherfucker? Simple - one thing has been changed about him.



He's much faster. This essentially guarantees that on a flat surface, it becomes literally impossible to keep him off your ass and you will be constantly losing health. Even the healing factor doesn't help much, since it's aggravated damage that heals a lot slower than he can dish it out. Pretty much the only respite you get is when he has to bust through a door or something like that, since that's still the same animation as in vanilla, which goes slower than the turbo-speed he now brings to the table.



It also becomes a lot harder to lure him in for the kill. He seems just happy to continually pace back and forth and not actually come in, but still claw the shit out of you should you step outside.



However, persistence pays off, and eventually, even the super-werewolf gets squashed.



And to cap off the shit, the companions reappear in the tram once we re-transition to the other map, and Yukie ends up blocking the tram from proceeding by clipping outside and catching herself against some pole, so I have to send her back to the haven.



Jack drops us off at the Santa Monica haven, and god damn, things have gotten crowded in here. However, Yukie isn't here - she somehow ended up disappearing in the shuffle, I guess? She's with Heather now, playing around in some sort of ethereal void. We grab VV to compensate.



Also, I find the Jock Shot video in the fridge. I've been looking all over for that! Well, it's too late to drop it off now.



Now, the blood hunt. This is where things get a bit interesting. You might notice that there's something a bit off with the above screenshot - the path to the right is blocked off. This doesn't quite show just what happened with the blood hunt, but essentially, they added even more roadblocks, which means you're taking the most winding path you could possibly take apart from getting completely ridiculous, of course with the goal being to shove you through more combat encounters.



Amongst others, we run into this Samedi here who apparently decided that sword and shield were the new way for vampires to go into combat. It didn't exactly turn out to be a wise choice. In general, the combat in this section isn't all too tough...



...at least until we run into the guy with the Dragon's Breath that just kills shit dead.



On the way back, I decide to give the Soul Reaver a shot. The special attack is just a knockback thing that deals some damage to you as well as the enemies. Not exactly useful. Also, it makes light saber noises. I shit you not. What the fuck were they thinking with this?



After dealing with the Dragon's Breath guy, we run into this gate you can't crawl under.



And the switch to open it is right behind you. Why is this here? Is it just supposed to make it harder to sneak through this section and just make it more likely you get into combat?



Next up, for some reason, is a gargoyle. It doesn't get a health bar like any other boss, but it takes ages to go down and when it does, we get experience points and a quest log mention that we killed it, so I guess it's a boss?



Finally, when we approach the taxi, some guy pops in out of nowhere...



...and the tanker drives away. It finally comes full circle? What the fuck is going on here?



Anyway, we jump into the cab and head down the independent ending road for obvious reasons. We stop by Mercurio's to stock up on ammo and then we're off to Chinatown.



So, the Ming-Xiao endgame level. What is there to say about it? No, really, what is there to say about it? It's a boring slog with a whole fucking bunch of enemies, and the level layout is confusing - at least I always get lost in the first part of the temple.



The Antitribu Mod version largely only has more enemies, as is to be expected. There's some special enemies occasionally, like this ninja with Potence that can actually do some pretty good damage, but they're few and far between.



Beyond that, it's largely just shooting dudes. Shooting dudes in the courtyard...



...and shooting dudes in the temple. We can skip all the way to the jade statue puzzle room thing and not actually miss anything interesting happening.



Well, apart from the part where one of the statues I was pushing around to weigh down the pressure plates flipped its shit and was sort of stuck in a state between weighing it down and not weighing it down while clipping through the floor. I didn't stick around to watch, I didn't want to have to bust out noclip again, so once I made it into that staircase, I was gone. So, what happens when we reach the next part?



Fire dude!



Now we get to fight The Scorpion Eater, a ninja in yellow with a skull head that uses fire powers. God DAMN that's creative.



He's also accompanied by a bunch of annoying ninjas, so the fight takes longer than it really should and ends up wasting a lot of ammo.



Also, we get to fight the invisible man or something. It's some pants with hair floating in the air, you tell me what it is.



Getting the jade statues turns out to be a bit of an issue, since the four guards are all carrying Dragon's Breaths, but still, nothing too much to worry about.



One strange change is that you no longer put the statues in your inventory. Instead, they're grabbable items that you just carry around, and when you bring them to the right pedestal in the main room, they instantly lock into place. I'm undecided on whether this is better or not, but I know it's a strange change to make.



So, Ming-Xiao. She... wasn't much of a problem. It's odd to say this, but somehow, I didn't have a problem. I unloaded the entirety of the grenade launcher rounds I had without being interfered with, and when that wasn't enough to put her down, I just laid down fire with the AK-47 and cleaned her off the plate. How strange. Oh well, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, let's hustle on and bring this to a close.



Now, to get some more ammo... hang on. We can't get to Mercurio's or Trip's anymore. Well, balls, this is going to be an issue going forward. Oh well, off to Venture Towers we go.



Have I drawn attention to Chunk's yellow eyes yet? Because has yellow eyes. I don't know why, but he does.



The assortment of cops has been replaced with guys in football gear in lieu of actual riot gear, and none of them actually have guns, which sort of defangs this first wave of enemies.



We open the elevator, and instead of an elevator, we get a grenade dropping down, which is just fantastic.



Instead, we need to head to the Nosferatu entrance and climb up a ladder...



...from which we can jump to the elevator that we would have taken in vanilla, which brings us to the next section, which is the same as in vanilla. In fact, pretty much nothing is changed beyond "more enemies" up to the Sheriff, so let's just jump to him, because fuck it.



Well, before that, we need to dismiss our companions because again, they clipped into the thing that was transporting us and locked it up.



So, the Sheriff. He actually has been changed substantially in this mod.



Essentially, he switches between the two levels of the room by jumping up and down and doing some AOE attack, and he has both a gun and a melee attack with his hands.



He also has the same teleporting capability he had in vanilla, so if you hit him, he'll just go poof and appear behind you.



However, herein lies the crux of the problem with this incarnation of the Sheriff: His movement was changed. From what I can tell, he moves like the werewolf, but at normal werewolf speed. This, combined with a sluggish melee attack with his hands, means that he's INFINITELY easier to dodge than the vanilla version. And as such, he gets gunned down without much issue.



The second form also doesn't put up much of a fight, the two times it goes down from the spotlights give enough time to take it down with concentrated fire.



And that's it! No special boss at the end, no changes to the ending, nothing else! The mod is finished! This is how it ends - it comes in like a hurricane, kicks me in the balls so many times I don't believe I still have any, and then goes out like a wet fart with nothing much special. So I guess since we're done now, I should give a complete rundown of what I think about this mod, sort of a recap:

• To start off, the groundwork laid with the different clans makes for interesting gameplay. Things like Necromancy open up new options for going forward in combat, and it puts a new spin on the gameplay. This is a good thing.
  
• However, the new options come at a cost, and the combat rebalance essentially fucks the entire game squarely in the earhole. Combat difficulty is completely wacked out and forces the player into speccing for combat or risking getting stuck with an encounter they can't get past.
  
• The sound design is questionable at best and fucking laughable at worst. The musical choices are all over the place, and the sound choices are weird.
  
• The graphical changes are similar. Changes like what happened to Knox are just baffling in their unnecessariness.
  
• The mod claims that it does well in bringing in materials from the WoD, but really, it just throws in shit left and right for no particular reason, though I presume it's largely to pad out the combat encounters.
  
• WHY THE FUCK IS GROUT'S WIFE A BOSS FIGHT? WHY THE FUCK DID YOU ADD PLATFORMING TO THE GAME? WHY WOULD YOU ADD FETCH QUESTS TO THE FUCKING SEWERS? WHY WOULD YOU ADD MORE SEWER SECTIONS? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?
  
• In closing, I can not not recommend this mod enough. I can not condemn this mod enough. I despise it. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The lead developer has quit, and given development to other assorted modders. I have no idea if this is good or not, but things can hardly get much worse at this point. However, I will not be keeping up with development, because I have had enough. I might be giving it an unjust trial here by harping on an unfinished mod, but if it's unfinished, they shouldn't have put it out as version 1.X.
  

FUCK THIS MOD, PEACE OUT BITCHES, I'M FREEEEEEEE