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Tuesday June 9, 1951 9:05am - The beginning of the end

Last time we saw Greg Bradley he was worn out from an afternoon of hot lovemaking with everyone's favourite redhead.

When I got up it was surprisingly cool in the house - normally my room was sweltering hot. Rather than move 3 feet to the window to check the thermometer, I just calle the weather station.





Interesting, but ultimately pretty useless.

There is a game mechanic where the ant behaviour is affected by weather conditions - mild, hot, cold etc. I've never bothered figuring it out because there's not really much point.

I drove to the university to see what Dr. Wells was up to. Maybe he had researched more information from the ants now that he was convinced of their existence, and how very dangerous they are.



This is one of the first events we've seen that doesn't happen if you convince the mayor about the ants early. We'll see at least one more.

What? Even for Dr. Wells, professor of idiocy, should realise that giant ants running around are pretty dangerous. He said himself that they're huge and are likely to kill..

To kill, eh? This might be the perfect way to rid myself of the bumbling oaf. After all, it would hardly be my fault if he got eaten alive by ants.

Then I remembered that he still owed me $20. The hell I was going to let him die with his debts unpaid.





Finally, he was a little bit respectful and cogniscent of his place in things. I decided that I would help him, but it certainly wasn't going to be free. I think killing some ants was worth at least $50 more.

I snapped off a couple of shots without looking over Dr. Wells' head.



Damn I'm good.



Damn I'm good. I was almost out of grenades and dynamite after that though, so I headed home to refill my stock.

After picking up another couple of bandoleers, I noticed that my car was running out of gas again. All that driving around I was doing really drained the tank fast since my car only got about half a mile to the gallon.

Stopping at elmer's, I noticed he was absent as usual, but then I saw a piece of paper taped to the inside of the shop window.



You have got to be kidding me. Is this National Retard Day? With everything that's been going on, how could Elmer possibly think it was a good idea to go hiking in some remote place. Even at the best of times he was normally too scared to leave his shop.

I needed him though, he was the only person around here who knew how to fill up the pumps. Once they ran dry, Lizard Breath would be in bad shape.





The moment of self-doubt passed when I took aim and brought down the behemoth with only two shots.

I reflected on the strange situation where a geologist should be a better marksman than he was a scientist. Then I bit out the pins from two grenades at once, and threw them both at two ants, and the moment passed.



I went about the slaughter in a business like fashion, and I carried on for a long while even after the ants began to retreat.

As I had grown used to, I was weary after two battles in such short succession. The sun was just coming down from its noon peak as I drove home, ready for another 16 hour rest.

I supposed that maybe I shouldn't be sleeping quite so much while giant ants were roaming the desert, attacking and killing innocent civilians, but the truth was that I really didn't care. I couldn't even remember why I had come to this godforsaken town in the first place.

All too soon the sunlight crept back into my room, signalling the turning of a new day.

As far as I can tell, towards the end of the game there is less and less that actually goes on that's very interesting. The game seems to intend for you to have all the information you need at this point, and presumably you should be trying your best to get into the nest to blow up the queen. There's still a few interesting things to do though, so we're going to keep going for now.

Realising that I still hadn't collected my debts from the good Doctor, I drove out to the university to cheer myself up with some good honest extortion.



I pointed out that he could in fact thank you enough, by handing over large quantities of cash. It might also help if he made good on his promise to figure out a way to kill all the ants other than his immensely unhelpful dribbling so far.

Unsurprisingly, he stared at me blankly and neither handed over the money, nor gave me any such useful information.

Maybe I'd have more luck with Elmer, although somehow I doubted he'd give me any kind of useful reward either.






Wait.

Wait, wait, wait!

I have a flamethrower? I have a fucking flamethrower?! How did I not notice this before, and how come no-one has told me about this before? How come Elmer has actually just been useful?

So many questions, so little time. I just gave a satisfied little sigh, and took the large can of flamethrower fuel Elmer handed me. It even had little skulls and X's on the side! Truly it was a thing of beauty.

This is totally pointless. We can only use the flamethrower in the last level, and as far as I know saving or letting Elmer die has absolutely no effect on the amount of fuel you have. Which really sucks, because it is awesome at exterminating ants.

Filled with newfound optimism, I visited some of the other lowlifes and useless incompetent fools around the town, hoping that Elmer's new usefulness might have affected them.







Although no-one seemed to feel like being useful, it looked like the town was getting pretty anxious. Hopefully the mayor would see sense soon, but he was still reluctant to call out the guard.

It looks like everyone is aware now of the giant ants. They're moving closer to town if they're attacking the west farm, so it probably won't be long before we're totally overrun. Soon there will be giant ants walking down lizard breath, eating people like they were candy, destroying all the buildings, annihilating everything in their wake!

Having said that, it was about time for me to have a good snooze. Before doing so, I thoroughly searched my house for my supposed flamethrower, but came up empty. I wasn't too worried, the grenades were doing ok and I was sure I would find it if the time came.

The next morning I decided that maybe I should try to convince the mayor to let the guard join the fight. With any luck, since he knows that the ants exist now, he'll be able to be persuaded to help us exterminate the bastards.





It was time for harsher measures. I took out some razor wire and rubber tubing, and set to work.

A couple of hours later I had a signed order from the mayor to put the town on alert, which freed up the guards. There was a little bit of blood on the corner, but I didn't think anyone would mind. Frankly no-one really liked the mayor, but he was the only person who stood for office. He would not be missed.

After such a terrible scene though, I needed to cheer myself up before getting to work. I hadn't seen Dusty in a while, and I'm positive that keeping her hanging will break her - she'll take me back now for sure.



They come back to Greg Bradley, Don Juan extraordinaire. The women always come back. I promised Dusty anything she wanted and more, but she wasn't willing to come back to my place just yet.

Finally it dawned on me. I didn't need to care about the town or the people to want to get rid of the ants, I needed to get rid of them for the simple reason that they were huge cockblocks.

No more Mr. Nice Guy, it's time to get down to brass tacks. I took the order from the mayor to the Police.





It made perfect sense to everyone involved. When giant ants are attacking and you have a military base at your disposal, you should put your lives in the hand of the local Geologist. I felt overqualified, but I decided to help them out.

This is the last 'new' game mechanic really outside of the last level. We can freely place police, army, construction workers and civvies anywhere around the map to help hold off the ants. I can't be bothered doing this properly, and it doesn't really make much difference, so I'm just going to show off the army's firepower.



I had a look at the situation map, and ordered all the army to the South West Volcano Cone, where I knew there would be plenty of ants.



Then I eagerly went there myself. This was going to be awesome. To pump myself up for an extra large battle, I took some of the opiates I kept around for a special occasion.



Woahh, this is a bad trip.





This was going to be epic. I mean super-epic.



Man that was good! Nothing like a good bit of mass-murder to get you going in the morning. I needed to refill my belt and bandoleer though, so I drove home. When I got there, Biff was hanging out looking creepy.



Oh hell no! The ants can take the farms, the ore plant and the quarry. They can go rampaging through cult's barns and ravage innocent townfolk, but I will not let them take my airport!

Time for a can of Bradley-style whupass.

Next update: The Battle for Middle Earth Lizard Breath is upon us!