NewShoes Hunts a THING

A sharp series of brief chirps awoke Major NewShoes from his dream. Gone were the sandy beaches with big waves that seemed to yell: "SURF's UP," and the unlimited amounts of Beer (well, as is so typical in the places that offer "Free unlimited Beer," Beer typically means watered down Beer that would be legal to sell in Utah to begin with, and "Unlimited" really means you will not be served "until you put that thing away. You're disgusting!" Oh and "Free" is only free if you paid in advance). Anyway. Beaches: Gone. Waves: Gone. Water with below average alcoholic potency: Gone.

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What remained was a sober room in an equally sober house used to quarter elite military personnel on assignment in foreign countries. For the last few months, NewShoes had been on a covert operation in an attempt to overthrow a puppet leader placed there by a foreign government, which replaced the puppet leader placed there by the good guys after the old puppet leader placed there by the foreigners was eliminated by colleagues of NewShoes. Still with us? If not, no worries, this is just a bit of an introductory story that will soon not be relevant to the plot at all. Think of it as a product placement within a movie, without a product, and not in a movie. That kind of deal.

NewShoes turned on his PDA to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently those in charge found something better for him to do, as his current assignment had ended abruptly, and he was ordered to head on down to ROCKtropia to investigate rumors about eerie activities happening on one of its moons. Because his message was one of those messages, and the PDA one of those PDAs, he tossed it out the window where the PDA dutifully self-destructed just as the Dictator's car passed, killing him and his pet Hippopotamus in the blast. Muahahaha.

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Arriving at ROCKtropia, NewShoes proceeded towards the space station able to take him to the moon. Strangely enough, it was masked as a movie theatre. He rolled his eyes, wondering how on Earth ideas like this were thought up. There must be a whole government department with people constantly kept drugged to their ears coming up with new schemes to "cleverly" mask important places as common use spots.

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Once on the moon, NewShoes sighed. How typical of the military. He found himself dressed in nothing but his briefs, stuck in an arctic environment. The military always was considerate like that, and did not even have the courtesy to supply him with the tools that kept entire generations of Russian and Finnish people from freezing: copious amounts of home-made alcohol.

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Some lady that NewShoes noticed WAS wearing something that appeared nicely warm and made of recently-clubbed seal, but she sent him onwards to talk to other people. Entering a camp, NewShoes quickly located the Armory and proceeded to interrogate everyone present. A grunt tried posing him with a challenge to kill some wolves in a wager for some clothes. Shoes mauled, murdered, tortured and bruised the soldier until he died from it, grabbed his clothes, and then killed the wolves anyway, just to prove he was not a pussy.

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Some uppity-looking officer asked if he ever shot a gun, and rather than answering him, Shoes took apart the assault rifle offered to him in under 10 seconds, put it back together in equally record time, and then blasted the officer in the face a few times just to make a point.

Looking at the table with guns the officer had been pointing at, Shoes groaned. Pea shooters for crying out loud. No gun on that table would have the firepower to cause any real decent amount of damage. Shoes liked weapons that boomed and roared when one pulled the trigger. Guns that shot with such velocity that the person on the receiving end would actually see their spleen splatter on the wall before their brain registered what happened and sent out a signal: “That mushy spot once fit neatly in that crater in their body, and oh dear...”

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After checking out the rest of the compound, Shoes concluded there was not much more to achieve here. He ran into some female scientist (a geek skirt), who handed him a med kit. Well, technically, bandages would be a more accurate description. He also met a technician who asked him to go fix some satellite uplinks. Seeing he had nothing better to do at the time anyway, Shoes obliged, and upon return, he was awarded with a neat 4x4 vehicle, that while driving turned out to be totally unsuitable for arctic conditions. And not a 4-wheel drive anyway, but oh well. It was free, and better than running.

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Within a few minutes of flooring the car, Shoes reached a second camp. A burning car, typically used by special ops was on fire nearby, and there were signs of struggle everywhere. The power in the base seems to have gone out though, so Shoes addressed that issue. This sounds easier than it was, but luckily Shoes was well-trained in Sudoku skills. He then attempted to restore satellite communication. While doing this, he stumbled across what appeared to be semi-domesticated wolves, only one of which was alive. The others looked as if a giant hand had somehow turned them inside out and made hand-puppets out of them.

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There was lots of blood and gore everywhere in the camp, and mysteriously, a big block of ice, with a large hollow in it. Either someone made themselves a giant margarita (Shoes could go for one about now), or something far more sinister was going on. Once the satellite dishes were properly functioning again, his walkie-talkie sprung to life, carrying a message from the military commander who informed him he should leave the camp immediately, and make his way to a temporary outpost created by a small team.

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There, a lone scientist was standing, completely oblivious to his surroundings. He seemed to be severely traumatized, so Shoes smacked some sense into him. The trembling geek told him that the block of ice contained some alien life form that inserted itself into the wolves they captured, and then took them over. It later on also turned on humans. The soldier squad had it on the run, and chased it up the mountain, so Shoes figured he would follow and offer his assistance. Should the alien appear to be winning the struggle, he figured it would at least provide some entertainment.

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Grabbing a flamethrower from a crate, he rushed up, killing anything that confronted him on the road, right up until he reached the peak of the mountain and found himself entering another small base. Like the other camps, this one also seemed abandoned, and fires were raging everywhere. All buildings were abandoned, but Shoes did discover what was supposed to be a supply depot. Stocking up on ammunition, his attention was drawn to a horrible smell, apparently coming from a big hole in the floor.

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Peeking through, he saw it led down to a massive cavern underneath the ice, which was crawling with just about the weirdest creatures he had ever seen. They looked like they had living sticks as limbs, with tentacles sprouting out of its head, and a giant whip like arm that swung like a scorpion's stinger protruding from its back.

He unloaded on the mutant, but quickly discovered that the alien's skin was a lot tougher than usual, requiring him to fire at it for several minutes before it finally collapsed into a smelly, bloody and gory ugly heap. During the fight, rumbling had started to sound, growing louder by the minute. Shoes figured that the noise of his gun might have caused cracks to appear in the ice sheet overhead, and feared the cave the monsters were in might collapse.

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As the grumbling continued and got louder, he realized his hunch was right, and he dashed for the exit, dodging Things and giant pieces of icy debris on the way. Diving out the exit, the cavern collapsed, burying the Things inside.

Shoes breathed a sigh of relief. If no other Things escaped, that ought to make the world safe once more. For now...

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I would like to add that while I have been critical of NEVERDIE in the past, I had an absolute blast on Hunt The THING. I found the missions to be refreshingly different from what we have seen before in the Entropia Universe, and absolutely loved the whole atmosphere of The THING.

The detail in the objects and surroundings were a nice touch, as was the ability to "loot" from objects. The music was very well-picked, and overall, I really enjoyed exploring the arctic world. Too bad the whole experience ended already :)

NEVERDIE, or anyone on the NEVERDIE Studios team, if you happen to read this, you guys did a great job, and deserve credit for it. I'm very much looking forward to see what more you lot have in store for us.

 

I see what you did there. Let me assure you. "HARD"ly...

hoho.