#bluster blaster

So we open with Max flexing his power as president. As expected most of his policy is giant fighting robot based, sending them to all three dakota's to see who surivives, and he's being impeached every day this week except wendsday.. he's on trial for war crimes. But Max has more important things to deal with than plotting his future escape from a federal maximum security prison, for once. The Chief has a job: A new game, Reality 2.0 is sweeping the nation and brainwashing it too so our heroes and max have to stop it. Our heroes first have to save Sybil, whose beta testing the game via headset, and lost in the zone. So to get info we're going ot have to wreck Sybil's life for the second episode. Meanwhile Bosco has paranoidly moved all his money into the internet. As you can probably notice unlike a lot of the satire in these games, where there more funny knowing the time, the satire for internet 2.0 has actually aged better. While at the time it was clearly parodying the boom of things like second life and mmorpg's like world of warcraft, nowadays it comes off as parodies of laughable attempts at the future like the metaverse, vr googles, and crypto. I mean the money isn't in boscocoin but like Crypto the service he's using bancolavedero.com is just as sketchy as crypto and just as likely to give you all your money back! As such despite having all the money now to launder via the us goverment, we can't buy his real world item, a bio weapon, yet.

We can however do him a solid and get rid of the compettition: part of why Bosco's gone from small arms to full on biological warefare is because Jimmy Two Teeth has set up shop in his shop. Being the rat he is, Jimmy refuses to actually sell you the mini canon he has because he's afraid you'll just turn around and use it on him

Though in this case it's a self fufilling prophecy as while he succesfully gets a hit off on Sam, he gets shoved into the canon and used as ammo oddworld styles. I just love this solution and it provides some cathariss after multiple chapters of Jimmy either being obnoxious to our heroes or actively hindering them. I mean he fell down a manwhole but ther'es probably a whole rat city down there. He can play rat blackjack and visit some rat hookers. He'll be fine. This is more fitting.. being shot at some vr googles.

Turns out though Sybil wasn't hypnotized.. or at least thinks she wasn't so she's mad, but allows our heroes to take the broken googles and decides to move on. I've really started to feel sorry for sybil. In the first two chapters she was just running a random scheme and just having a good time… in the last few she's been targeted by the mob, had her heart broken, been swindled out of millions of dollars and now had her legit buisness ruined by our heroes.. for good reasons yes but it's still awful. I'm really hoping the next chapter works out better for her. I do applaud the team for making me care about this goofy side character though. So our team has to take the googles to the best part of this episode, the C.O.P.S. The Computer Obsolescence Prevention Society are a bunch of old machines who are hilaroius: We have their leader and mouthpiece curt, an old voice synthizer similar to steven hawkings, chippy, an old pong set, and bob, a talking phone who talks like the moviephone guy. And last and most of all we have Bluster Blaster an old arcade machine who constantly screams every sentence and wants to conquer all. Their working for the internet for the oldest reasons imaginable…

But gladly suply a lot of great comedy.. and our heroes with the chip to fix the googles. There's not much else to say other than their fantastic and I was delighted to find out they return in the next two games, and have a larger role in 3.

THe cops gladly give our heroes the chip. Problem is there's two heroes but luckily max's really big head qualities him for a special headset, so our heroes are off to the digtial world! Jack in, Sam and Max, Execute! Reality 2.0 is a fun setting being really sparse and seeming like a jab at games that come out mostly unfinished. Having played sonic 06 recently, the irony is not lost on me. While it is a BETA, so ti's a bit more forgivable, it's a very desolate place with Sybil stood in with a digtial copy of her, and no real detail. The only real features are bosco's itself, and Auntie Biotic, virus protection based on moira stump. Who was asking for her to come back I do not know, but she's passable.

We 'll deal with her later though first it's time to deal with bosco whose totally not brainwashed you guys honest. So in order to save him, we have to bop him in the head, but since for some reason we can't just.. use the boxing glove on him or reload the canon, we have to play the game his way and get 5 gold coins. Granted equipment usually isn't this cheap but sam and max isn't going to make you grind for several hours. or maybe ten minutes with 4x gil on, to do that. Point is you need to gather the coins.

This is where I got stuck entirely through every fault of my own. See I assumed since the goggles have an assigned button to take you out of reality 2.0, you coudln't use your inventory

Every item you have in the real world is avaliable to you. And neatly some transform, so the bug becomes a computer bug. It wasn't till reading the guide I realized I could do this.

As for who your glitching up that'd be the COPS who are gods, angry gods, of the new world and each control something. So you have to jack with them to get rid of width, popups, make your characters small, and with blaster because uh oh there goes gravity. The ways you use them are also clever and most you can figure out just from exploring: Jimmy is hoarding a coin in your office, so you have to get that from him by shirnking, and that itself requries you to figure out another mechanic: when you enter the digital world you enter from the location your at. So while the curb is too big for tiny sam and max to climb, you can simply jack out, go into the office, jack in and boom, Jimmy is violently mugged for a coin! Sybils is easy to miss, it's just behind her bookcase which you can get by going flat and finally we get the fun one of gravity, with sam deciding to become a feature film italian sterotype and max decides to call him a sell out. it's the best joke of a very funny chapter… the best one not involving an arcade cabinet screaming at you anyway. So with that we buy the long sord and get a decent enough send up of rpg combat as we fight a slime in boscos, handily despensed from a monster spawn point. This is where I got lost for a second. See I went back to the real world, as Bosco revealed his password is SO secure, he dosen't even know it, having it tattooed on him then having his memory erased. So naturally I grabbed the binoculars on his desk. problem is fitting the game's nonlinear nature you can get them AFTER you wake him up too, and my guide used this method. Thankfully I found another one, and found out I simply had to conk him out in the digtial world.

Since I can't just have a small monster do it, I used the sword, tricked bosco with the timeless "look over there" technique and found his tatoo which thankfully was nowhere near as low as feared. It's naturally bosco. He's smart at many things, survelince, knowing the goverment's after him, scamming our heroes, but this is a reminder he can be very, very dumb and we love him for it. So it's off to banco lavedero. To get in here you'll need some digitial paint from a digtial wizard whose TOTALLY not hugh bliss… though unlike moira I feel this seeming model IS the real thing given what we learn at the end of the chapter. This puzzle is clever as your liscene plate has the right color. Match em and you get past the banco lavedero fire wall. Inside we get a fun if somewhat long mini game: unsuprisingly this scam is laundering money from everywhere: the toy mafia, who sam rightly points out even if we knocked out one branch isn't exzactly gone, the goverment, bosco's mom. You simply have to get the arrows to point all the money to bosco. It's hilarious enough to work and even if you get stuck, it shoudln't take too long till bosco has the money and is forking over his bio weapon. This one I actually called: he just sneezes into a napkin. But hey it's enough to give yo ua computer virus.

To beat her though we need a chekovs gun.. but since tha't snot in the inventory we instead need some slime goop, gotten whenyou first get your sword as his sludgey machine is now an enemy spawn point and the results are just as dangerous. You take it out with some turn based rpg parody, though the shouting out of dexerity is just.. weird. This isn't dungeons and dragons, it's a computer rpg. It's hilarious enough though I dont' care enitirely.

WIth the goop you simply have to defy gravity again and go to a nearbye billboard and you get the unicorn sword. +2 baby! You can unstick it with the goop and then fight moira using the sword and another chekovs gun: early on you'll see a jack in the box surrounded by pop ups. Disable those, grab it, then enable them before the fights and you've got a shiled. It's a wonderful brick joke and with that you can mail the virus ot break the internet.

Problem is the interent.. plans to take everyone in it with her, so to save the world you have to brave the depths of gaming history, a TEXT ADVENTURE!

The Text Adventure bit.. is a lot of fun. You put all of boscos into your inventory, deal with a giant drippy pool of cute kittens , use their slime to dip boscos and then feed it to a shambling corprate presence, the greatest monster in all of rpg history. Yes over stabby mc mommy issues or Garnland, who will knock you all down. You feed him, get him tobarf up the internet's faith in humanity an save her from herself… and then she dies because our heroes knida gave her a virus. Yes our heroes killed the ineternet and I for one…

Sorry about that had to kick in the backup internet. Hard being a blogger these days. Anyways the internmet is dead and the most she can give our heroes is the mysterious mastermind behind all this is Roy. G. Biv… our heroes dont' take the obvious hint and go to dinner… as hugh bliss shows up as the face int he moon