Rejection: Parody of Man

Strap yourself in for this one, because if you thought this game was crazy before, it's gotten crazier.

There are two ways into the "zoo" of Shinjyuku, south, which is where I entered before, and north, which I haven't. Here is quite the array of enemies, two stomach bigfoots, one regular bigfoot and an elephant. Curiously, my knife does a remarkable job of taking care of them all, dealing very good damage. And that "shocked" thing that pops up sometimes? It's me stunning the enemy. It's a good thing, because I need to hurt the elephants a lot to kill them. Although, since elephants sometimes ignore typical enemy behavior and instead stand there, I could be stunlocking enemies. Which begs the question, why not with the guns?

For a little while, it just seems like dead ends and plenty of XP, until I spot a door leading to somewhere that clearly isn't Shinjuku. Keep off area. Sounds friendly. I take a quick jaunt in. We got this cyborg thing called a Ramseed. If I can hit him first I can survive, but 80 damage a hit is way too risky to deal with right now. I also suspect this area is going to be important later, so I'm holding off for now anyway. Let's just say I think that K-Ko isn't going to be happy about where this is going.

An oddity of this area and Shinjuku is that there's an isolated section of the latter only accessible by going through Shinjyuku. Inside, I find some stuff again. Firstly, a Cz 75. Looking it up, I didn't realize it was somewhat famous, since to me it always seemed like one of those handguns that you put in to pump up gun type numbers. I better check it out even if I'm not going to use it. How does it handle? It kicks a little and does slightly less damage than the Mauser, so basically a slight upgrade over both of those, but not really valuable. Then the area actually connects up with an area just outside the camp that I didn't think was possible to enter. Whoops. Still, once I'm level 7 I go back to that door that needs the ID card.

Looking back, I suspect I just wasn't noticing how much damage I was taking.

Even inside this locked door. Nagano is suspiciously quiet. There are some interior rooms, which contain soldiers. All right, I understand how this is going to work, there are just more soldiers I have to kill until I reach a room which gives a cutscene. They even drop ampules. Then in the second room I reach I see a new type of soldier, I kill off his compatriots so I can get close and get a nice screenshot...and I get one-shotted. I quit at this point, deciding I've had enough for the day, which turns into six days. Whether this is because I got my ass kicked or because real life stuff and Aliens interfered with playing this shall be left as an observation to the reader.

Coming back, I immediately go after that guy again, and oh, look, one of his Mustache compatriots dropped a M72. As I'm trying to obtain powers of deduction like Sherlock Holmes does, I immediately determine this means there's a boss soon. So I should toss the M-16, because the M-11 is too powerful. And then I kill the guy without getting close to him. Now I need to track down another one, but apparently he's Rocky too. What's with the name reuse?

The next room over is a Bird, and some soldiers. Wait, the army is working with the Birds? And by extension the Rockys? What?

Getting back to the game not caring about its enemy factions, this area is laid out surprisingly simply, and with a suprisingly lack of enemies. North of the first west-east hallway there's just nothing but empty space, then the third hallway has enemies but also the exits. I backtrack to the rest of the first hallway. More enemies, more ampules, then a Skorpion Vz 68. You know it as that one Eastern European SMG from the '60s. Technically, I would expect it after a M-11. It's a hard decision to decide what to replace, but I can always reload if it proves borked. It seems to be about the same as the M-11, which tracks, but I replaced the Minimi with it.

These guys have an excuse in that they're pretty clearly the same thing, except these guys have a gun and a rocket launcher.

Oh, hey, it's the Rocky guy, finally. Yeah, he is different from the Rockys from the last area. I wonder if someone was accidentally duplicating some names. Right, well...he dropped a rocket launcher, a M47 Dragon. An anti-tank one, which I'm unfamiliar with. I don't really need multiple rocket launchers, unless I can get spare rockets for this one. Well, so much for the magnum.

Finally, before entrances to other areas, I find a M60 off another Rocky. Now this one is an improvement. It's slow to turn, but it hits hard enough that if a burst catches two enemies at a short enough distance, they'll both die. Technically the Minimi did this before, but less noticeably. The M47, meanwhile, is also one-shot, and thus is indistinguishable from the LAW until suddenly the LAW doesn't kill something, not worth it to keep both at the same time.

My final strategy here is to just grab a rocket launcher, then go for the dangerous-looking areas, grabbing the other rocket launcher if needed, then replacing the empty Minimi with the SAW, and if I run out of launchers the Skorpion.

I wonder what happened to these creatures after this?

At this point, I have three exits from here, one locked, one I pass up and one I go through. It's a lab. There are a bunch of zombified girls inside. Quickly, we hear a researcher. They're testing the zombie virus, Kusomoanfitamin. I think this unlocks some of K-Ko's repressed memories, because we then get a wall of text. (This is eavesdropping, not a flashback despite the weird way it appears)

A military task force is using the virus to create mutants. They're looking to put human genes into animals and vice versa with the virus. Both rejected the change. But the task force kept trying various things. K-Ko is the success of that project. K-Ko is naturally shocked and says she needs to think about this. The cutscene then ends awkwardly.

Now it's time to clear out the massive amount of military guys here. This big fight is somewhat underwhelming. I wonder if it was intended to be, since after all I've killed dozens of them to get to here and I have much better equipment now than I did when I first fought them. Maybe it's the ampules I have now too, the game is far too generous with them. I'm basically only ever in trouble when I try to be too stingy with stuff. Once the military is gone, I get a level up, now I'm level 8. I can look around, there's a computer I can't do anything with and a door with a bad odor behind it.

It's a prison cell, full of dead and presumably experimented upon bodies. Yeah, that smells. The text is basically saying that these are the failed experiments with the virus. After that I'm put inside the room. For no reason, because in-game there's nothing here. Maybe that locked door is unlocked now?

And they're still experimenting on people. There's dialog, but it's unsubtitled and impossible for me to make out over the music. Lame. I guess these guys explain why I'm encountering elephants in a place that shouldn't have them. The bears made sense since, you know, there are bears in Japan. The names on the lower left are professional wrestlers, though the two Japanese ones are translations of usually untranslated parts of the name.

Those shells look about the size of an anime eye, which puts the caliber of it to "do not get hit by it".

This monster, to quote the exact name, though in-game he's Plant, is very talkative and polite in his speech. He's glad K-Ko came here, while she wonders what kind of monster he is. He's not a monster, he's the head scientist. (But as some say, the monster isn't Frankenstein, but Frankenstein is the monster) This shocks K-Ko. He talks about using his biology knowledge to make himself evolve. (I don't think evolution has much to do with the grenade launcher on his left arm) "I am beyond human!" K-Ko calls him a mad scientist and says she'll smash him. I appreciate K-Ko having such a straightforward character. He then says he'll end her and complete his work in the lab...then he'll blow up the nuclear power plant. Then the secret of Kosumoanfitamin will be known. A little more back and forth.

He walks away in the cutscene and then faded clones of him appear. More text, which I don't understand, but it's something about how his bodily fluids contain plants. I actually spot him quickly, so I switch to the rocket launcher, but you have to aim pretty well to hit him, hit the clones and nothing happens. Guess I'm using the rocket launcher another day. And unfortunately, I can't really hurt the clones enough to kill them and trying to get a shot in at the monster himself is tricky. Not sure if I'm getting anywhere hurting the clones or if they can hurt me. I'm not getting hit like multiple guys with massive guns are hitting me, not even one technically.

A few more attempts clears it all up. Each time you hit the right Plant, he changes places with one of his clones. His clones do nothing except block you, and any time I thought I was damaging them, I was really shooting through them. The strategy, therefore, is to get him close to you, then hit him with the rocket launcher. Anything else will burn through way too many ampules and you just can't keep up with him with the automatic weapons...until I realize that multiple Plants are sometimes solid at the same time. I don't know if that's a glitch or intentional, but it doesn't change my plan. What does is I figure I need another level up.

So I optimize my weaponry here. The M60, of course. For some reason the guy who drops it continually drops it even after you get it, which means free ammo without having to go to base. But I decide to change the M-11 for the Skorpion, the former kicks too much and it's damage drops off so steeply I have to be one tile away for it to work.

I also take a quick jaunt back, I really don't need to since I'm getting plenty of ampules and infinite M60 ammo, but just to top off everything. This triggers a new dialog with the camp leader. K-Ko tells him about what just happened, which was at the National War College. (A fictious place apparently, might as well be a zoo in Shinjuku anyway) He's as shocked as she is that they're experimenting with the virus. It's horrible that humans are capable of things like that, she won't stand for it. He says something about not knowing about a politician inside the military and about how a coup is being planned. I remember someone mentioning a coup before, does that mean that the military is acting against the interests of the government? Seems slightly odd as a plot development, at least not without the military becoming a bunch of thugs rather than mad scientists. (As I got this bit confused with later developments, this may just be an error on my part)

Back against the head researcher Plant, I finally get him dead center with my LAW. Nothing. Crap. Worse still, my levelup has done nothing as far as increasing the amount of shots he needs to kill me. Well...maybe a little. There's nothing I can really do outside of just pumping him full of lead and hoping for the best, and this time I do it.

The text says he's down. She needs to reach the nuclear power plant, because when the time comes they're still going to blow it up. Guess his plan is still in motion. She's got to stop it. On his corpse she finds an ID card and more ampules. I think 5, I had 72, used 8, ended with 69. Finally, I get another level up, to level 10. And now I can explore this room. There's another desk. It says something about parts for K-Ko's suit, but I don't get an upgrade, must be an invisible item like the cards I have. There's another door, it's locked. I see another one. Wait, inner chamber?

Speaking of how weird they look, why keycards on their chest?

Oh, it's more unsubtitled dialog under music. I hear an isolated everybody is here, so I'm assuming K-Ko is glad to see these people. I think they might be the refugees. Who look like they're victims of experiments themselves. Just the eyes, how they seem to be short, and not in a natural way. Seriously, they look like human Furbys or something.

K-Ko now talks to a random girl, asking if she's okay. The girl isn't, because her older sister has gone somewhere and her father has become a demon. I think he killed someone. K-Ko tells her not to worry, he's probably still alive and thinking and to be strong.

They return to the camp, where K-Ko talks to the camp leader again. Just in-game. He asks about the people she brought, she tells him that they were captured at the National War College, could they please let them stay? He says it's all right, he's obligated. Then the conversation ends.

This is a pretty good place to stop for now. I have three new objectives, stop the nuclear power plant from exploding, which is probably related to the new ID card I have, and a person to find. I may have to kill him, but that's okay, if I can't shoot him, I can hit him with a rocket launcher. I do have to wonder how much longer the game is going to last though. We're not really fighting zombies anymore, and there's nowhere you can reasonably go after stopping a nuclear explosion and determining if you can cure the zombie virus. I guess the real answer is that we need to find K-Ko's father, or "father", I guess.

This Session: 2 hours 50 minutes

Total Time: 15 hours 30 minutes