A correction: I went back to check, and it looks like Burnham probably does die in the crash. The truck explodes after you\u2019re thrown off of it, and I don\u2019t really see him getting away, so it looks like the flatbed was counter-intuitively the safest seat in the vehicle Jack\u2019s dynamite stupidity has once again proved an essential part of survival. I\u2019m not tallying Burnham\u2019s death as Jack\u2019s fault; honestly, if he\u2019d lived any longer, he\u2019d be Jack\u2019s only real competition on the professional asshat circuit.<\/p>\n
Anyway, this chapter has a lovely beginning: you wake up on a gurney in an insane asylum, attended by a doctor, a shady-looking agent, and J. Edgar Hoover. Those of you who paid attention in US History class will know who he is.<\/p>\n
Hell if I <\/em>know, mind. I think maybe he\u2019s a matador or something.<\/p>\n No, of course, he\u2019s a controversial leader of the FBI who used illegal methods to gather evidence and had dossiers on lots of famous political figures. Something of a hotly-debated individual, subject to a lot of contemporary debates on the issue of morality in the exercise of the law. In-game, this translates to the character tying Jack down, torturing him with electrodes, beating him, and forcing him into an extremely dangerous mission against his will and better judgment. I\u2019d be annoyed at this kind of heavy-handed characterization, but I admit to kind of enjoying watching Jack get electro-shocked. Hehe. Hey, keep it up, buddy\u2014shock him enough and you\u2019ll either fix his brain or fry it into charcoal, and honestly, I\u2019m not sure which I\u2019d pay more to see right now. What does Jack add to this operation, really? Hoover does mention that Jack is famous back in Boston, but you know what he\u2019s famous as? A detective. You know what detectives do? Mope around a scene after <\/em>the violence has gone down, talk to a bunch of drunk liars until they have enough drunk lies to find the edges of a truth, file reports, and wear unseasonably warm coats. Hoover seems to have confused \u201cdetective\u201d with \u201cSWAT officer,\u201d or perhaps \u201cJohn McClane.\u201d<\/p>\n Okay, so I actually have killed more people in the past hour than I have fingers and toes, and I seem to have absorbed twenty-one bullets and a dozen bone fractures in the space of an evening, but he doesn\u2019t know that. If he somehow did, he would also know not to trust Jack with any weapon more dangerous than a slingshot. Loaded with butter<\/em>.<\/p>\n Anyway, needless to say, Jack accepts. The next cutscene is of the car trip to the refinery, a car trip which probably include little in the way of license plate games and much in the way of awkward silences. Hoover\u2014and allow me to reiterate that this is the man who has been quite enthusiastically torturing and threatening me–is sitting in the seat to my side. He proceeds to give me a pistol and two magazines, stating that my profile says that I\u2019m, \u201cto be trusted.\u201d Uh-huh. This profile of yours; it hasn\u2019t been updated recently, has it? Just saying, you might want to re-evaluate to consider a few new factors. For example, I\u2019m more stressed out because of financial woes, I\u2019ve cheated on my income taxes in the past few years, I missed a credit card payment, and, oh yeah, you just tortured me and then coerced me into running this operation<\/em>. Just saying, my \u201cprofile\u201d might not be enough to go on, here. Cooperating with law enforcement in exchange for a paycheck is one thing, acting as lapdog for a sadistic twerp is another.<\/p>\n We arrive at the refinery, and Hoover outlines our objective in a little more detail: to capture the manager\u2019s son, Jacob Marsh, and interrogate him about the goings-on at the refinery. The manager himself should be out of town, but the security in the place is expected to be kind of heavy. A handful of FBI agents and a wounded, weary, disloyal detective who just failed his first job in months, versus a horde of well-armed entrenched cultist fanatics? How could this go wrong?<\/p>\n Well, for starters, you could have a guy go up to the main gates and very slowly open them, leaving him to get gunned down by a mounted machine gunner on the other side who\u2019s probably been enthusiastically waiting several months for this very opportunity. This barrage scatters the invading agents\u2014some of them take cover behind crates on one side, some of them take cover behind crates on the other, with a path in the middle representing the line of fire of the machine gunner. I\u2019m at the back of the group, hiding with Hoover behind the set of crates closer to the area we came in from. Luckily, my position seems entirely safe. Unluckily for me, my proximity to the supreme jerkoff means he\u2019s free to order me to dive out of cover, zigzag over to the main gates, find a side entrance, and neutralize the machine gunner all by myself.<\/p>\n So, let me get this straight. I am:<\/p>\n 1.)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Behind cover The gunner is making a huge racket. If I shot Hoover and ran, probably nobody would ever notice it\u2014I could always come up with some excuse later, like he got winged and asked me to go for help or something. But of course, shooting him isn\u2019t an option. Well, actually, no, it is an option, but it doesn\u2019t do anything besides make you feel marginally better, like if I\u2019d held up my index finger and thumb and pretended I was crushing his head. Alright, screw it: you want me to go from entrenched cover to entrenched cover to take out that goddamned machine gun nest, that\u2019s just what I\u2019ll do. Did I miss the part when Call of Cthulhu became Call of Duty?<\/p>\n After a few frustrating tries, I manage to sort of make my way to the main gates without getting torn apart. I open the side door, and he seems to notice me, releasing the gun and firing conventional weapons at me. I get beside the door frame, lean in, take careful aim\u2026and unload my entire magazine into him.<\/p>\n And totally miss every single shot.<\/p>\n There are no crosshairs in this game, and I swear that when you lean, you end up aiming for some random spot in the middle of nowhere. In my attempt to hit him with my inaccurate pistol, I end up wasting a ton of ammo without hitting the guy once. Okay, get back, reload the gun, lean again\u2026<\/p>\n This time, he manages to hit me, while I have continue to have no luck whatsoever. I reload again\u2014this is my last mag. If I blow through this, I\u2019m screwed.<\/p>\n Aaaand I blow straight through it without hitting him, because apparently I can\u2019t shoot for peanuts. I would reload, but since the game runs on checkpoints, I\u2019d have to do the whole running-dodging sequence again, and I\u2019m sorry\u2014not in this lifetime. Eventually, I\u2019m forced to damn the torpedoes and charge straight in, pistol-whipping him very slowly to death while he attempts to give me a heart transplant made out of lead.<\/p>\n I am frustrated, bleeding, out of ammo, out of medical supplies, and out of dignity. The mission began four minutes ago.<\/p>\n This whole thing is going to be more fun than a barrel of goddamned monkeys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A correction: I went back to check, and it looks like Burnham probably does die in the crash. The truck explodes after you\u2019re thrown off of it, and I don\u2019t really see him getting...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[220,300],"class_list":["post-1845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play","tag-clod-of-cthulhu","tag-lets-play"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nAccording to Hoover, the Marsh gold refinery near Innsmouth has been a subject of inquiry for a while now; hence the investigation of Mackey, that cryptic bastard who was always loitering around not quite <\/em>telling me what the hell was going on. Mackey was getting close to figuring out exactly what was going on at the refinery, but he mysteriously disappeared\u2014perhaps his habit of loitering around in a very nice suit not doing much of anything tipped off the townsfolk that he was up to shonky business, or perhaps they just figured that their track record for outsiders isn\u2019t looking too good. Regardless, Hoover has decided to damn all of that \u201cinvestigation\u201d crap\u2014the Federal Bureau of Investigation has no time for those shenanigans. Time to do a lock-and-load door-bashing raid of the Marsh refinery, killing any sentries that interfere and kidnapping one of the proprietors on location. He has decided to take Jack with him, for reasons that are powerfully unclear.<\/p>\n
\n2.)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Near a car
\n3.)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Armed
\n4.)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0With a man who just tortured me
\n5.)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Who is telling me to make what is basically a suicide run
\n6.)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0So we can enter a building, where I will be involuntarily subjected to further risk<\/p>\n