Just then, some red lights in the room begin spinning and an alarm sounds. I take it we’ve just caught up to the current activities of Vyse and company. De Loco picks his ass up out of his chair as he wonders to himself just who could have broken in. It’s the return of the DURRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!! Also, we see for the first time that De Loco is a midget and he wears green curly-toed shoes. Way to go with the stereotypes, game designers. (And yes, I know that midget is not the PC term, but if I call him a dwarf, you might think I’m talking about an actual fantasy-type dwarf. So go write an indignant letter to people using the term for non-fictional characters or something.)
Anyway, De Loco peers through the glass in the floor to see his most favoritest person ever. Showing that the Big Book of Bad Guy Catchphrases is not exclusive to the other Valuan admirals, De Loco creeps, “Ah! Vyse! How nice of you to drop by. You saved me the trouble of finding you.” He deduces that Vyse is after the Moon Crystal and therefore Isapa. And he didn’t even need a VCoE to figure that out! In one last bout of Sekhmetting, De Loco announces that there’s an assload of traps in the mines. Well, that’s just peachy. More evil laughter and crazy death wishes for Vyse. Yes, yes, we fucking get it.
Back to our intrepid adventurers. They all gasp in unison as the door slams behind them. “Um… the exit just closed by itself,” Fina notes. Ohhhhhhh. That’s what just happened. Jesus. And then it gets worse, as Vyse not only states the retardedly obvious, but uses a cliché to do so: “I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”
DURRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had to get that out. Whew, I feel better now. With nothing to do but continue on into the trap-infested mines, Vyse enters the next room. Again, the door shuts behind him. This is actually redundant, but it’s all dramatic and shit.
The next couple of rooms involve heading up a ramp adjacent to a mine cart track and crossing over said track at various points. With random battles to make it especially fun and thrilling. Even more fun is hunting for the Chams for Timmy — I like watching footage where it looks like I’m just randomly walking in circles and running into walls. And speaking of Timmy, I think I like my name of Spermachu better, so I’m going to change it. Even though it’s come to my attention that there are people out there who have trouble keeping track of nicknames on recapping websites. But you guys are smart — I trust that I can say “Vyse feeds a Cham to Spermachu” and you can use your advanced deduction skills to figure out that I’m not referring to Pippi or Drachma.
Okay, back to the boring mine dungeon. I know that descriptor is unnecessary, since when have we ever had an interesting mine dungeon? At one point along the path, Vyse encounters three tic-tac-toe squares spanning the path. His good old strategy map tells him to cross over the one with the X on it, not the Os — the Os will drop me into a pit and I’ll have to work my way back up. This saves me a bit of time. Sure, it’s always fun to fumble my way through the dungeon, backtracking as many times as necessary, but in this case, I don’t really want to end up with hours and hours of dungeon footage. I hope that’s acceptable.
More walking up ramps and over tracks until Vyse encounters a 3-by-3 grid of Xs and Os that he must navigate again. At long last, Vyse reaches a room that looks different. A walkway with a metal grate for a floor splits into three sections that meet at the far end of the room. Each of these sections has a trapdoor in the center with a triangle on it. The strategy map tells Vyse not to step on the center one, but in an effort to get a tricky Cham in the area, Vyse the Tard accidentally does. Instead of going splat on the ground far below, he ends up in a mine cart that takes him back to the beginning of the area. Sometimes I’d like to take a cattle prod to the game designers.
A Ixa’takan slave NPC in the room where the mine cart crashes gives Vyse the lowdown on the dungeon’s traps. In addition to the “step on Xs” one, which we already knew, he tells Vyse to check below the triangle trapdoors for mine carts and to only step on the ones without mine carts. Or, he could just follow the directions of the strategy map and not be a dumbass. Whichever.
I’ll spare you the riveting journey back up to the room with the walkways. This time, Vyse walks over the correct one and intelligently searches the other side of the center trapdoor for that evil Cham. Derp! Finally, he heads through a door underneath a giant painting of two entwined dragons. Possibly having sex.
Down, down into the depths he goes. Along the way, he finds some unlocked metal doors which open into small metallic cells containing treasure. I would make another snide remark about the security, but I already suspect that De Loco has something special brewing in his messed up head for me, so I’ll let it go. So yay for treasure!
Why would I want to read that freak’s mail?
At the end of all the ramps, Vyse emerges into yet another grated walkway room. This one may or may not be the same room at a lower level — I’ve kind of stopped trying to make sense of this dungeon. This time, the trapdoors have Xs and Os on them, but I actually want to fall through some of the O doors this time to get some more treasure. And — this is the really awesome part — the only way to go after collecting the De Loco Mail is back to the beginning via mine cart. Sometimes an exclamation of “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!” just isn’t enough to convey my rage.
Skies of Arcadia meets Silent Hill.
Back in the second grated room, Vyse drops down the other O trapdoor to another level with triangle trapdoors. I have no idea how I got through this part without a strategy guide the first time. Dropping down one of the triangles leads to a door. And finally we’re fucking getting somewhere. Because the next corridor contains some more unlocked cells, and one of them holds Elton John. Seriously, the guy is wearing a white uniform and he has glasses and Elton John hair. Elton is all, “Who the fuck are you?”
We never find out why Elton is just standing around his cell instead of opening the door and at least getting some exercise if not leaving. Instead, Vyse asks him if he’s Isapa. Now, this guy looks about as much like an Ixa’takan as I do, but Vyse is stupider than the rest of us, so he would ask such a question. In fact, Elton’s true identity is Centime, the dirty pedo captain, but my nickname still stands. “Then you’re Hans’ [‘]father[‘]!” Pippi shrieks. Grinning even wider at the mention of his pretty young man, Elton deduces that the group must have visited Whorteka. “That’s where my beard wife and [‘]children[‘] are… Everyone was okay, right?” he wonders, hoping that no one has damaged the merchandise. Vyse assures him that the group was as fine as they could be under the circumstances. And by “circumstances” I’m talking about Elton’s…inclinations, of course.
Elton says that he refused to help the evil Valuans, so they stuck him in this empty cell without even a potty or a porno mag. But now that the Ass Pirates have opened his unlocked door, he can help them find Isapa. He manages to refrain from patting Vyse on the ass on his way out of the cell.
At the end of the hallway, there’s a nonworking elevator. With his mad engineering skillz, Elton can power the elevators on. According to Elton, this is the only way to reach Isapa in the depths of the mines. I’m so glad that he found all this out before his imprisonment, or I’d be screwed. He fiddles with the control box for a while — he’s good at fiddling with things — and soon the little lights are blinking away. “Woohoo! Wow, [Elton], you’re amazing!” Pippi squeals, unaware of the danger she’s in.
Elton basks in Pippi’s admiration, announcing that he’ll go on ahead and disable all the traps. Again, there’s no indication of why he didn’t do this before. I think it just may be time for a poll.
Loading ...After getting his ass kissed by Vyse and promising with a wink that they’ll see him again, Elton leaves via the Black Screen of Lazy Game Designers. I feel safer already, and I’m an adult. Vyse rides the elevator to the next level. The map indicates that I’ve been on this level in a different area, so I’ll just take its word for it. I end up at yet another grated walkway, this one leading upward in a series of ramps. Holy crap, I know where I’m going and yet I still feel lost. Vyse heads through the door at the end of the ramp and finds another elevator.
Don’t fall asleep yet, because this dungeon is almost over. I’m even happier about this than you are, believe me. Vyse crosses a solid metal walkway and heads through yet another fricking door. This triggers a second cut scene in De Loco’s office. I never thought I’d be so happy to see the little fucker. He’s still prattling on about Vyse’s impending death. Just to spice things up a bit, here is some of the psycho’s dialogue: “And when you die, I want you to die slowly! Yes… slowly… really slowly… I want your brains to gush out of your head.” How sweet. Incidentally, he’d really enjoy watching me during the FFX pond scene.
Fruity enters once again, breaking into De Loco’s extreme Sekhmetting. “I didn’t mean to interrupt one of your intellectual monologues. I came to tell you that Vyse has broken into the mines,” he tards. Okay, the interplay between these two is funny. I approve. De Loco proves that if he were a little more insane, he might even be able to become a recapper: “…And you figured this out all by yourself? What gave it away? Was it the alarm? Maybe it was the sirens.” Heeeee. Fruity brushes off this insult to his intelligence — probably because he’s too dumb to notice that he’s been insulted — and informs De Loco that he, Fruity, will take care of this little problem. With a flip of his hair and another flourish of his cloak, Fruity leaves to fulfill this promise.
De Loco is all, “Whatever, bitch!” He doesn’t think Fruity has the masculinity or the skillz to eliminate Vyse. Plus — and follow closely here, this is important — De Loco wants to kill Vyse himself. In fact, he very badly wants Vyse to die. I know, where did this come from all of a sudden? A dastardly giggle brings us to the fade out. Suspense!