If you somehow managed to survive a series of increasingly difficult and dangerous death games only to be forced into surviving yet another series of increasingly difficult and dangerous death games, what would you do?
With only twelve challenges remaining, we’re on the home stretch, but you know the shadowy lunatics running this asylum saved their best for last.
Not only are these challenges even deadlier
than before, each one pits us directly against
its creator, meaning we’ll have to learn
fast and think outside the box’s box if
we want any chance of making it out alive.
Oh, and just for fun, one of them is pretty
much just a heavily armed psychopath hunting
us down between matches, so there’s that.
I’m going to break down the mistakes made,
what you should do, and how to beat Every
Death Game in ALICE IN BORDERLAND SEASON 2.
It’s been days since Arisu was yoinked from
his reality and forced to fight for his life
in Borderland, and things just keep going
from bad to worse.
After losing his lifelong friends in a bout
of high-stakes Hide and Seek, he wound up
getting forced into a gang of violent beach
bums that were more concerned with killing
their fellow players than actually finding
a way out of this nightmare.
For a minute, it seemed like they might be
able to earn their ticket home by collecting
all forty numbered cards associated with each
trial, but come on, why the heck would someone
go through all the trouble of organizing their
death games like solitaire without including
the face cards?
Which brings us to where we are now.
With the last of the numbered games leaving
their home base in smoldering ruins, Arisu
and the remaining beach boys gather in the
city center after seeing signs the next phase
is about to begin, chief among them, the massive
blimps with face card banners floating just
overhead.
All right, starting things off with a bang.
Are you hooked yet?
Evidently, this next batch of challenges isn’t
as concerned with player consent.
Either that, or one of their fellow contestants
has finally had enough.
Whatever it is, we’re still dead if we don’t
find a way out of this shooting gallery fast.
We can see from the muzzle flashes that the
triggerman is posted up just below that H&M
sign, and we’ll want to run perpendicular
to his line of sight to make ourselves as
difficult to hit as possible, not straight
away from him like these two morons.
He’s using some kind of anti-material rifle,
definitely semi-auto based on the timing of
his shots.
My money’s on it being a Barrett M82 or
M107 chambered in .50 Browning Machine Gun,
as those are pretty much the pumpkin spice
latte of big-bore rifles these days.
A quality muzzle brake along with the rifle’s
immense weight will cut down on felt recoil
considerably, but the sheer amount of muzzle
blast will make rapid follow up shots difficult.
Because of this, we should time our movements
with each flash, running to cover as quickly
as possible.
Buildings like this one Arisu and friends
find will offer some degree of cover and concealment,
provided you’re smart enough to actually
duck your head below the windows; however,
cars will also work as long as we can get
behind the engine block.
Of course, once he transitions to his AR,
this becomes a totally different ball game.
Since it seems literally no one actually bothered
to bring any firearms from the beach resort,
our best option is still to break line of
sight as quickly as possible, except now we
have to worry about him coming after us on
foot.
The good news is that a massive tidal wave
of nobodies just spawned in to help pad out
the kill counter without sacrificing anyone
we care about.
Unless he’s targeting us specifically, this
nutjob’s priority will be stacking as many
bodies as possible, so our best bet is to
split off from the herd and leave him to it.
Likewise, we’ll also want to exercise a
little social distancing within our own group
to look less like a rolling Overkill.
Team
Arisu manages to figure out the second part,
but nothing from your former life of staring
at pre-rendered footage of a generic TV show
FPS will save you from getting mowed down
in a crowd of lemmings.
Before we move, we need to figure out exactly
where the shooter is to avoid running directly
into his line of fire.
Simply listening for the source of the gunshots
is a no-go as in this environment they’ll
likely be echoing off all the surrounding
structures.
This guy’s in a target rich environment,
and with all the chaos he’ll probably be
looking for movement, so while we still had
cover, we should have had someone less popular
peek out around the corner to see if they
could spot him.
From there, we’d move to the nearest building
that isn’t just a set piece and wait for
him to move on, although we’ll definitely
want to make sure it has an emergency exit
so we can’t get boxed in.
One thing’s for sure.
Once the running starts, we’re not slowing
down for anyone, especially the wounded.
Yeah, sure, I’m evil for wanting to save
my own life.
You realize that even if you could buddy carry
someone out without getting smoked, you lack
the medical equipment to actually keep them
alive.
Best case scenario, you drag them to safety
only for them to bleed to death or die of
infection later on.
Looking at the bigger picture, the most likely
objective of this goat rodeo is to put the
quiet kid on ice, although he’s not exactly
making that easy.
Since we weren’t given a time limit or shown
any kind of visible boundaries, our best bet
is to break contact for now and come back
once we’ve scrounged up some firepower.
After all, he shouldn’t be too hard to find
what with the Hindenburg following his every
move.
Of course, that’s all easier said than done
considering we can’t even stick our heads
out.
Fortunately, the triggerman has enough respect
for classic cars to let our friends Tatta
and Ann roll in without getting mulched.
I mean, it’s not like there’s a single
part of the cab that could actually stop a
bullet.
Which raises the question, why are you idiots
gawking at that thing like it’s a dinosaur?
Dude’s gonna kill you; run for your freaking
lives!
Bro, what are you doing?
In the time it took for you to make your cute
little remark, you could have easily super-manned
yourself into the backseat in time for them
to step on it.
Of course, none of this would have mattered
if you’d bothered to take your friggin hands
out of your pockets and moved like someone
who wasn’t trying to get perforated.
Eh, whatever.
I’m sure he’ll be fine.
Afterall, his character actually has a name,
unlike this car-full of imbeciles mindlessly
following the main characters to their inevitable
doom.
Ya know, you’d think after an unseen attacker
dosed one of your friends in the head, you
might try speeding up or swerving a little
bit to make it that much harder for him to
get the rest of you, especially once you’re
staring down the barrel of certain death.
Heck, at that point, a little quick thinking
could have handed you the game.
Just stomp on the brakes and feed him the
asphalt, followed by that good old fashioned
triple tap, of course.
This is one of the final bosses we’re dealing
with here, so I don’t think anyone would
blame you for doing a twenty second burnout
directly on his face.
It’s the only way to be sure.
In any case, our heroes shouldn’t be so
nonchalant about being tailed given we really
don’t know whether it’s just the one edge
lord hunting us down.
Fact is, after learning in the 10 of Hearts
that the games’ creators could be playing
alongside us, we should be wary of anyone
that’s not part of our immediate group,
and even then, how well can we say we actually
know these people?
Whatever the answer, it’s going to have
to wait, cause here comes ghost face for a
little GTA action.
Good thing Ann’s ready to jump behind the
wheel and show Tatta what real speed is.
That said, you can’t outrun a bullet, and
the King of Spades ain’t no Sunday driver.
Instead of trying to burn him on the straight
aways, we should whip this thing around as
many corners as possible to make it harder
for him to line us up.
Left turns in particular will force him to
either change hands or aim across his windshield,
either of which will make accurate shooting
even more difficult.
As for everyone else, without any way to return
fire, they’re pretty much just along for
the ride, although Kuina does have the homemade
hand grenade Chishiya gave her before they
got separated.
Unfortunately, without knowing how long of
a delay to expect, we can’t exactly time
it to explode underneath him, but we could
still try tossing it through his open window
whenever he pulls up for a kill shot.
Dud or not, it’ll at least make him think
twice about staying inside the car.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, as Death
Race 2000 ends with both vehicles wiping out
in separate head-up-butt related accidents.
Still, despite literally none of them having
remembered rule number four, the gang manages
to scramble away from the wreckage before
Gator gets his gat back.
It’s far from a clean getaway, however,
and in the chaos, Ann gets split off from
the group after stupidly helping someone that
probably wasn’t going to make it out anyway.
Down two members, Arisu, Usagi, Kuina, and
Tatta hold up in a nearby building for the
night and plan their next move.
Realizing, the King of Spades won’t want
to interfere with the other game masters’
operations, they decide to hit up something
a little less impossible to get him off their
backs.
Hey, sounds like a great idea to me, although
after barely getting away with our lives,
the last thing I’m walking into is another
King challenge.
Sure, it stands to reason the organizers at
that level would know more than anyone else,
but no amount of information is useful to
a corpse, and if the King of Spades was any
indication, the King of Clubs probably involves
a Glock and a six-sided dice.
Sometime later, the friends arrive at the
harbor to find a giant maze made out of shipping
containers.
By the entrance are four bracelets along with
a sign stating they’ll need five players.
Ah, man, I guess we’ll have to let a slightly
larger band of morons throw their lives away
in pursuit of answers that may not exist.
Bummer.
And here I was so excited to charge headfirst
into this without even a second thought, but
ya know, there’s only four of us.
Dude, for real?
You couldn’t just stay dead back at the
beach house?
Well, whatever.
This doesn’t change a thing.
As Tatta points out, Chris P. Bacon over there
is a colossal piece of garbage that will almost
certainly screw us over the first chance he
gets.
The fact he’s already got his bracelet on
means nothing.
If anything, it’s all the more reason we
should bag this one-way trip and see what
the Jack of Clubs is all about.
Dude can park his well-done butt in the shade
and wait for someone else to come by.
Nah, it’s fine.
Why not blindly trust this loser?
It’s not like our very survival depends
on winning or anything.
Besides, how bad could it possibly be?
Yeah, the answer is real bad, cause it turns
out the guy who created this thing is totally
nuts.
After monologuing to everyone, including his
own teammates, about the joys of prolonged
UV exposure, King No-pants kicks things off
by laying down the rules.
The name of the game is Shipment—well, that’s
what I’m calling it—and much like the
Call of Duty map, it’s an absolute cluster.
Brace for exposition dump.
Fundamentally, the object of the game is to
be the team with the most points after two
hours.
Each team of five starts with 10,000 points,
which are then divided among the players however
they see fit.
Points are scored by either battling with
players on the opposite team, finding items
scattered throughout the maps, or touching
the opposing team’s base.
We’ll start with Battling since that sounds
the most interesting.
Spoiler alert, it’s really lame.
So, basically, you touch an enemy and whoever
has the most points robs 500 points from the
other player, and thus, the other team.
It’s impossible to tell how many points
the other player has just by looking at them,
so this makes it somewhat of a gamble.
To improve your odds, you can hold onto a
member of your own team to combine your point
totals while also making it impossible to
catch anyone.
Yeah, in the show they make it look like a
viable strategy for racking up points, but
there’s no way realistically you could actually
catch someone joined together like this.
I mean, I guess if they were really stupid,
but they’d pretty much have to be brain
dead.
Anyway, the key thing to remember about battling
is that regardless of whether you win or lose,
after a battle, you’re “out of commission”
meaning you can’t exchange points in any
way until you tag back in at your own base.
During this time, if a member of the opposing
team touches you, it’ll shock the living
crap out of both of you and knock you on the
ground.
Again, remember that one for later.
Next up are items, and they’re a complete
waste of time.
I’ll get to why here in a bit, but for now,
all you need to know is that there’s six
of them scattered around the map in shipping
containers and if you’re the first person
to touch one, you and by extension, your team,
will get the corresponding number of points,
which comes to 10,500 when you add them all
together.
Finally, we have bases.
Each team gets a home base.
If you touch the enemy base, you’ll get
10,000 points; however, this will not be deducted
from the other team’s score.
You’ll also be rendered out of commission.
As you could imagine, it’s extremely important
that you protect this thing, but the good
news is goalies are totally OP.
As long as you’re touching your own base,
your point total becomes infinite, and if
you touch another player, they, and subsequently
their team, lose 10,000 points.
Now, of course, most players, even after finding
items, probably aren’t going to have that
many, so this will most likely put them in
the negative, and that’s bad.
If at any time, for any reason, your score
drops below zero, you only get about a minute
to wax poetic before getting space lasered.
Dude, for real.
This game is baloney.
Going forward, we should remember to bring
a pen paper in to write down all the rules.
After all, the sign said no weapons.
It didn’t say anything about school supplies.
Oh, yeah, that reminds me.
Unless, specifically forbidden by the rules,
my go-to strat for every one of these is to
roll in armed to the teeth and whittle down
the competition as much as possible.
If that means spending all our time between
matches looting and scooting, so be it.
If I’m gonna go down, it definitely won’t
be because someone else had the foresight
to bring in a fork.
So, getting back to matter at hand, our cup
runneth over, cause I got two prime strats
that are sure to leave these losers breathing
out some new holes in their heads.
The first one I call “Shock and Awe.”
So, remember how I said the key thing about
battling is how you get knocked out of commission?
Well, it’s literally the only reason battles
are even worth it in the first place.
Seriously, plus or minus five hundred points
is nothing when there’s a 10,000-point white
whale flopping around out there.
Instead, we’re going to use it to turn one
of our players into a human weapon against
the other team.
First thing’s first.
We need to allocate our team’s points.
Obviously, whoever’s guarding home base
gets the bare minimum, which in this case
is 100.
Team Arisu figures this out right off the
bat, but where they go wrong is setting up
only one goalie.
Team Nerd, on the other hand, is going with
two.
They’ll stand back-to-back with the pole
between them, each one touching homebase with
their foot to keep both hands open.
This ensures 360 degrees of coverage and pretty
much makes it impossible for the other team
to reach in without getting got.
We’ll want our slowest and most blood thirsty
teammates here, as this will require zero
running and a killer instinct, so I’m thinking
Tatta and Crispy.
Obviously, Tatta doesn’t have much of the
latter, but he’s turtle slow and honestly,
I just don’t trust him to do anything else.
Of course, that leaves Arisu, Usagi, and Kuina
for the field team, and it legit doesn’t
matter how we divide the remaining 9,800 points
between them.
Really, as long as they all have enough so
that one or two battles won’t kill them,
that’s fine.
When the game starts, we’ll have Usagi use
her special climbing powers to get up on top
of the shipping crates and scout ahead, something
they take advantage of way too late in the
game.
Her goal will be to spot an enemy player or
players, at which time we’ll have one of
the others run over and battle them.
Regardless of the outcome, when that’s over,
instead of sending them back to base to tag
in, we’ll have them regroup with the other
two and carry on.
From there, Usagi will follow the now out
of commission adversary back to their place,
taking care to stay out of sight lest they
send their own parkour freak after her.
In addition to the obvious outcome of finding
their base, this will also ensure they can’t
catch us off guard with the same tactic.
Once we reach the objective, we’ll hang
back and wait for their player to tag back
in and leave the area.
Ideally, there will only be one goalie, but
the plan will probably work with two as long
as we’re quick.
When the time is right, the three of us will
charge in with the out of commission player
up front.
He’ll hit the goalie and/or goalies first
and incapacitate them, clearing the way for
the other two to tag the base and put us up
by a cool 20K.
All that’s left to do then is bring the
field team home as quickly as possible and
join the goalies in protecting the base, and
boom we’ve won.
Even if they managed to find all the items,
there would be no possible way for the other
team to make up the difference, which is why
looking for them in the first place is totally
pointless, along with the fact that there’s
an entire crap-ton of shipping containers
and the people who made the friggin game probably
know where they all are anyway.
Plan number two, is almost the exact same
thing, only with a different ending.
I call it Shock and Awe…
2.
The difference is, after Usagi follows the
out of commission opponent back to their base,
she’ll regroup with the rest of the field
team and go scouting for another lone enemy
player, preferably the same one as before
to add insult to injury.
Now, before we spring phase two, we’ll want
to use our clothing to fashion a rope with
How to Beat Every DEATH GAME in ALICE IN BORDERLAND (SEASON 2)
If you somehow managed to survive a series of increasingly difficult and dangerous death games only to be forced into surviving yet another series of increasingly difficult and dangerous death games, what would you do?
With only twelve challenges remaining, we’re on the home stretch, but you know the shadowy lunatics running this asylum saved their best for last.
Not only are these challenges even deadlier
than before, each one pits us directly against
its creator, meaning we’ll have to learn
fast and think outside the box’s box if
we want any chance of making it out alive.
Oh, and just for fun, one of them is pretty
much just a heavily armed psychopath hunting
us down between matches, so there’s that.
I’m going to break down the mistakes made,
what you should do, and how to beat Every
Death Game in ALICE IN BORDERLAND SEASON 2.
It’s been days since Arisu was yoinked from
his reality and forced to fight for his life
in Borderland, and things just keep going
from bad to worse.
After losing his lifelong friends in a bout
of high-stakes Hide and Seek, he wound up
getting forced into a gang of violent beach
bums that were more concerned with killing
their fellow players than actually finding
a way out of this nightmare.
For a minute, it seemed like they might be
able to earn their ticket home by collecting
all forty numbered cards associated with each
trial, but come on, why the heck would someone
go through all the trouble of organizing their
death games like solitaire without including
the face cards?
Which brings us to where we are now.
With the last of the numbered games leaving
their home base in smoldering ruins, Arisu
and the remaining beach boys gather in the
city center after seeing signs the next phase
is about to begin, chief among them, the massive
blimps with face card banners floating just
overhead.
All right, starting things off with a bang.
Are you hooked yet?
Evidently, this next batch of challenges isn’t
as concerned with player consent.
Either that, or one of their fellow contestants
has finally had enough.
Whatever it is, we’re still dead if we don’t
find a way out of this shooting gallery fast.
We can see from the muzzle flashes that the
triggerman is posted up just below that H&M
sign, and we’ll want to run perpendicular
to his line of sight to make ourselves as
difficult to hit as possible, not straight
away from him like these two morons.
He’s using some kind of anti-material rifle,
definitely semi-auto based on the timing of
his shots.
My money’s on it being a Barrett M82 or
M107 chambered in .50 Browning Machine Gun,
as those are pretty much the pumpkin spice
latte of big-bore rifles these days.
A quality muzzle brake along with the rifle’s
immense weight will cut down on felt recoil
considerably, but the sheer amount of muzzle
blast will make rapid follow up shots difficult.
Because of this, we should time our movements
with each flash, running to cover as quickly
as possible.
Buildings like this one Arisu and friends
find will offer some degree of cover and concealment,
provided you’re smart enough to actually
duck your head below the windows; however,
cars will also work as long as we can get
behind the engine block.
Of course, once he transitions to his AR,
this becomes a totally different ball game.
Since it seems literally no one actually bothered
to bring any firearms from the beach resort,
our best option is still to break line of
sight as quickly as possible, except now we
have to worry about him coming after us on
foot.
The good news is that a massive tidal wave
of nobodies just spawned in to help pad out
the kill counter without sacrificing anyone
we care about.
Unless he’s targeting us specifically, this
nutjob’s priority will be stacking as many
bodies as possible, so our best bet is to
split off from the herd and leave him to it.
Likewise, we’ll also want to exercise a
little social distancing within our own group
to look less like a rolling Overkill.
Team
Arisu manages to figure out the second part,
but nothing from your former life of staring
at pre-rendered footage of a generic TV show
FPS will save you from getting mowed down
in a crowd of lemmings.
Before we move, we need to figure out exactly
where the shooter is to avoid running directly
into his line of fire.
Simply listening for the source of the gunshots
is a no-go as in this environment they’ll
likely be echoing off all the surrounding
structures.
This guy’s in a target rich environment,
and with all the chaos he’ll probably be
looking for movement, so while we still had
cover, we should have had someone less popular
peek out around the corner to see if they
could spot him.
From there, we’d move to the nearest building
that isn’t just a set piece and wait for
him to move on, although we’ll definitely
want to make sure it has an emergency exit
so we can’t get boxed in.
One thing’s for sure.
Once the running starts, we’re not slowing
down for anyone, especially the wounded.
Yeah, sure, I’m evil for wanting to save
my own life.
You realize that even if you could buddy carry
someone out without getting smoked, you lack
the medical equipment to actually keep them
alive.
Best case scenario, you drag them to safety
only for them to bleed to death or die of
infection later on.
Looking at the bigger picture, the most likely
objective of this goat rodeo is to put the
quiet kid on ice, although he’s not exactly
making that easy.
Since we weren’t given a time limit or shown
any kind of visible boundaries, our best bet
is to break contact for now and come back
once we’ve scrounged up some firepower.
After all, he shouldn’t be too hard to find
what with the Hindenburg following his every
move.
Of course, that’s all easier said than done
considering we can’t even stick our heads
out.
Fortunately, the triggerman has enough respect
for classic cars to let our friends Tatta
and Ann roll in without getting mulched.
I mean, it’s not like there’s a single
part of the cab that could actually stop a
bullet.
Which raises the question, why are you idiots
gawking at that thing like it’s a dinosaur?
Dude’s gonna kill you; run for your freaking
lives!
Bro, what are you doing?
In the time it took for you to make your cute
little remark, you could have easily super-manned
yourself into the backseat in time for them
to step on it.
Of course, none of this would have mattered
if you’d bothered to take your friggin hands
out of your pockets and moved like someone
who wasn’t trying to get perforated.
Eh, whatever.
I’m sure he’ll be fine.
Afterall, his character actually has a name,
unlike this car-full of imbeciles mindlessly
following the main characters to their inevitable
doom.
Ya know, you’d think after an unseen attacker
dosed one of your friends in the head, you
might try speeding up or swerving a little
bit to make it that much harder for him to
get the rest of you, especially once you’re
staring down the barrel of certain death.
Heck, at that point, a little quick thinking
could have handed you the game.
Just stomp on the brakes and feed him the
asphalt, followed by that good old fashioned
triple tap, of course.
This is one of the final bosses we’re dealing
with here, so I don’t think anyone would
blame you for doing a twenty second burnout
directly on his face.
It’s the only way to be sure.
In any case, our heroes shouldn’t be so
nonchalant about being tailed given we really
don’t know whether it’s just the one edge
lord hunting us down.
Fact is, after learning in the 10 of Hearts
that the games’ creators could be playing
alongside us, we should be wary of anyone
that’s not part of our immediate group,
and even then, how well can we say we actually
know these people?
Whatever the answer, it’s going to have
to wait, cause here comes ghost face for a
little GTA action.
Good thing Ann’s ready to jump behind the
wheel and show Tatta what real speed is.
That said, you can’t outrun a bullet, and
the King of Spades ain’t no Sunday driver.
Instead of trying to burn him on the straight
aways, we should whip this thing around as
many corners as possible to make it harder
for him to line us up.
Left turns in particular will force him to
either change hands or aim across his windshield,
either of which will make accurate shooting
even more difficult.
As for everyone else, without any way to return
fire, they’re pretty much just along for
the ride, although Kuina does have the homemade
hand grenade Chishiya gave her before they
got separated.
Unfortunately, without knowing how long of
a delay to expect, we can’t exactly time
it to explode underneath him, but we could
still try tossing it through his open window
whenever he pulls up for a kill shot.
Dud or not, it’ll at least make him think
twice about staying inside the car.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, as Death
Race 2000 ends with both vehicles wiping out
in separate head-up-butt related accidents.
Still, despite literally none of them having
remembered rule number four, the gang manages
to scramble away from the wreckage before
Gator gets his gat back.
It’s far from a clean getaway, however,
and in the chaos, Ann gets split off from
the group after stupidly helping someone that
probably wasn’t going to make it out anyway.
Down two members, Arisu, Usagi, Kuina, and
Tatta hold up in a nearby building for the
night and plan their next move.
Realizing, the King of Spades won’t want
to interfere with the other game masters’
operations, they decide to hit up something
a little less impossible to get him off their
backs.
Hey, sounds like a great idea to me, although
after barely getting away with our lives,
the last thing I’m walking into is another
King challenge.
Sure, it stands to reason the organizers at
that level would know more than anyone else,
but no amount of information is useful to
a corpse, and if the King of Spades was any
indication, the King of Clubs probably involves
a Glock and a six-sided dice.
Sometime later, the friends arrive at the
harbor to find a giant maze made out of shipping
containers.
By the entrance are four bracelets along with
a sign stating they’ll need five players.
Ah, man, I guess we’ll have to let a slightly
larger band of morons throw their lives away
in pursuit of answers that may not exist.
Bummer.
And here I was so excited to charge headfirst
into this without even a second thought, but
ya know, there’s only four of us.
Dude, for real?
You couldn’t just stay dead back at the
beach house?
Well, whatever.
This doesn’t change a thing.
As Tatta points out, Chris P. Bacon over there
is a colossal piece of garbage that will almost
certainly screw us over the first chance he
gets.
The fact he’s already got his bracelet on
means nothing.
If anything, it’s all the more reason we
should bag this one-way trip and see what
the Jack of Clubs is all about.
Dude can park his well-done butt in the shade
and wait for someone else to come by.
Nah, it’s fine.
Why not blindly trust this loser?
It’s not like our very survival depends
on winning or anything.
Besides, how bad could it possibly be?
Yeah, the answer is real bad, cause it turns
out the guy who created this thing is totally
nuts.
After monologuing to everyone, including his
own teammates, about the joys of prolonged
UV exposure, King No-pants kicks things off
by laying down the rules.
The name of the game is Shipment—well, that’s
what I’m calling it—and much like the
Call of Duty map, it’s an absolute cluster.
Brace for exposition dump.
Fundamentally, the object of the game is to
be the team with the most points after two
hours.
Each team of five starts with 10,000 points,
which are then divided among the players however
they see fit.
Points are scored by either battling with
players on the opposite team, finding items
scattered throughout the maps, or touching
the opposing team’s base.
We’ll start with Battling since that sounds
the most interesting.
Spoiler alert, it’s really lame.
So, basically, you touch an enemy and whoever
has the most points robs 500 points from the
other player, and thus, the other team.
It’s impossible to tell how many points
the other player has just by looking at them,
so this makes it somewhat of a gamble.
To improve your odds, you can hold onto a
member of your own team to combine your point
totals while also making it impossible to
catch anyone.
Yeah, in the show they make it look like a
viable strategy for racking up points, but
there’s no way realistically you could actually
catch someone joined together like this.
I mean, I guess if they were really stupid,
but they’d pretty much have to be brain
dead.
Anyway, the key thing to remember about battling
is that regardless of whether you win or lose,
after a battle, you’re “out of commission”
meaning you can’t exchange points in any
way until you tag back in at your own base.
During this time, if a member of the opposing
team touches you, it’ll shock the living
crap out of both of you and knock you on the
ground.
Again, remember that one for later.
Next up are items, and they’re a complete
waste of time.
I’ll get to why here in a bit, but for now,
all you need to know is that there’s six
of them scattered around the map in shipping
containers and if you’re the first person
to touch one, you and by extension, your team,
will get the corresponding number of points,
which comes to 10,500 when you add them all
together.
Finally, we have bases.
Each team gets a home base.
If you touch the enemy base, you’ll get
10,000 points; however, this will not be deducted
from the other team’s score.
You’ll also be rendered out of commission.
As you could imagine, it’s extremely important
that you protect this thing, but the good
news is goalies are totally OP.
As long as you’re touching your own base,
your point total becomes infinite, and if
you touch another player, they, and subsequently
their team, lose 10,000 points.
Now, of course, most players, even after finding
items, probably aren’t going to have that
many, so this will most likely put them in
the negative, and that’s bad.
If at any time, for any reason, your score
drops below zero, you only get about a minute
to wax poetic before getting space lasered.
Dude, for real.
This game is baloney.
Going forward, we should remember to bring
a pen paper in to write down all the rules.
After all, the sign said no weapons.
It didn’t say anything about school supplies.
Oh, yeah, that reminds me.
Unless, specifically forbidden by the rules,
my go-to strat for every one of these is to
roll in armed to the teeth and whittle down
the competition as much as possible.
If that means spending all our time between
matches looting and scooting, so be it.
If I’m gonna go down, it definitely won’t
be because someone else had the foresight
to bring in a fork.
So, getting back to matter at hand, our cup
runneth over, cause I got two prime strats
that are sure to leave these losers breathing
out some new holes in their heads.
The first one I call “Shock and Awe.”
So, remember how I said the key thing about
battling is how you get knocked out of commission?
Well, it’s literally the only reason battles
are even worth it in the first place.
Seriously, plus or minus five hundred points
is nothing when there’s a 10,000-point white
whale flopping around out there.
Instead, we’re going to use it to turn one
of our players into a human weapon against
the other team.
First thing’s first.
We need to allocate our team’s points.
Obviously, whoever’s guarding home base
gets the bare minimum, which in this case
is 100.
Team Arisu figures this out right off the
bat, but where they go wrong is setting up
only one goalie.
Team Nerd, on the other hand, is going with
two.
They’ll stand back-to-back with the pole
between them, each one touching homebase with
their foot to keep both hands open.
This ensures 360 degrees of coverage and pretty
much makes it impossible for the other team
to reach in without getting got.
We’ll want our slowest and most blood thirsty
teammates here, as this will require zero
running and a killer instinct, so I’m thinking
Tatta and Crispy.
Obviously, Tatta doesn’t have much of the
latter, but he’s turtle slow and honestly,
I just don’t trust him to do anything else.
Of course, that leaves Arisu, Usagi, and Kuina
for the field team, and it legit doesn’t
matter how we divide the remaining 9,800 points
between them.
Really, as long as they all have enough so
that one or two battles won’t kill them,
that’s fine.
When the game starts, we’ll have Usagi use
her special climbing powers to get up on top
of the shipping crates and scout ahead, something
they take advantage of way too late in the
game.
Her goal will be to spot an enemy player or
players, at which time we’ll have one of
the others run over and battle them.
Regardless of the outcome, when that’s over,
instead of sending them back to base to tag
in, we’ll have them regroup with the other
two and carry on.
From there, Usagi will follow the now out
of commission adversary back to their place,
taking care to stay out of sight lest they
send their own parkour freak after her.
In addition to the obvious outcome of finding
their base, this will also ensure they can’t
catch us off guard with the same tactic.
Once we reach the objective, we’ll hang
back and wait for their player to tag back
in and leave the area.
Ideally, there will only be one goalie, but
the plan will probably work with two as long
as we’re quick.
When the time is right, the three of us will
charge in with the out of commission player
up front.
He’ll hit the goalie and/or goalies first
and incapacitate them, clearing the way for
the other two to tag the base and put us up
by a cool 20K.
All that’s left to do then is bring the
field team home as quickly as possible and
join the goalies in protecting the base, and
boom we’ve won.
Even if they managed to find all the items,
there would be no possible way for the other
team to make up the difference, which is why
looking for them in the first place is totally
pointless, along with the fact that there’s
an entire crap-ton of shipping containers
and the people who made the friggin game probably
know where they all are anyway.
Plan number two, is almost the exact same
thing, only with a different ending.
I call it Shock and Awe…
2.
The difference is, after Usagi follows the
out of commission opponent back to their base,
she’ll regroup with the rest of the field
team and go scouting for another lone enemy
player, preferably the same one as before
to add insult to injury.
Now, before we spring phase two, we’ll want
to use our clothing to fashion a rope with
a “go-to-sleep” loop on one end of it.
Once we find a suitable mark, we’ll have
our out of commission player zap them and
knock them down, and then the others will
rush in and loop the rope around one or both
of their feet, taking extreme care not to
touch their skin in the process as to avoid
a battle.
From there, we just drag them screaming back
to our base to have Crispy put the finishing
touches on them, at which point, we’ll go
up ten thousand, they’ll go down ten thousand,
and their player gets to tell us his entire
life story while we wait for them to get zapped.
Just like before, this will create a twenty-thousand
point deficit that will be impossible for
them to overcome.
Best part about either of these plans is that
they still remain perfectly viable even after
the other team first takes the lead.
Even more so because it cost them one of their
players and they ended up pulling their goalie
into the field to help search for items.
Unfortunately, Arisu decides to focus all
their effort on items as well, allowing the
enemy to rack up a massive lead in the process,
and by the time he realizes the value of out
of commission players, the king’s team feels
comfortable enough to leave three people watching
their base.
Still, they could have pulled it off had Kuina
immediately sprang into action the moment
Crispy cleared the goal post.
Seriously, what the heck were you waiting
for?
Not to mention the fact she got tagged making
the deficit that much wider.
Of course, I can’t pin this all on her.
After all, Arisu pretty much just laid there
and watched instead of using his special status
to lead block.
You were only shocked for a second, dude.
The guy Crispy shocked literally had time
to get back on his feet and jump kick your
friend out of mid air while you were still
rolling around on the ground.
What gives?
After that blunder, I can’t exactly blame
Team Arisu for coming apart at the seams.
Well, except for Crispy and what he does to
Usagi.
Say what you will about Tatta, he totally
called that one.
Fact is, there is literally no possible way
they could actually win at this point, ya
know, unless the King of Clubs himself decides
he can’t wait ten minutes to go on a walk.
You can see the scoreboard just like everyone
else, right?
You know they’re only down by five hundred
points, and it’s not out of the question
they could ambush you with a combined score
and turn things around.
For Christ’s sake, at least take someone
with you.
You’d still have two people to keep the
base locked down.
Ultimately, it doesn’t even come down to
a dramatic final showdown.
Arisu just straight up asks to shake his hand.
All right, okay, there’s a little more to
it than that.
Turns out the stress of his impending death,
coupled with years of being ashamed of his
own incompetence, pushed Tatta over the edge.
I mean, hey, nothing in the rules said you
couldn’t pull the bracelet off your teammate’s
mangled wrist and slip it in your pocket for
one final battle.
Oh, okay, says the bare-butt lunatic who built
a death game with like a million rules.
Sorry, I’m willing to take advantage of
my friend’s noble sacrifice in order to
survive.
You’re right; I’m the sicko.
Just hurry up and die, so we can get out of
here.
Wishful thinking, I know.
Obviously, the sky laser thing is gonna let
him filibuster a few more minutes of precious
life before the end.
But, at least we can find out something about
the situation at large, right?
Nah, not really.
Turns out he doesn’t really know anything.
Good thing we went with a king, huh?
Elsewhere in the city, it seems Chishiya managed
to give the King of Spades the slip, only
to throw himself right back in the thick of
it with a casual Jack of Hearts.
This one’s called “Solitary Confinement,”
but I think the name, “Death Sentence”
more-accurately conveys the nature of this
game.
The rules are fairly simple, but don’t let
that fool you.
This crap’s nearly impossible.
There are twenty contestants, all wearing
Dead Money collars around their necks.
On the back of each collar is a screen showing
one of four card suits.
Every hour, the players will separate into
individual jail cells and say out loud which
suit they think they have.
If they get it right, they go onto the next
round, if not…
Ouch.
Yeah, there’s gonna be a lot of that.
Using any kind of reflection to look at your
own suit is expressly forbidden, and since
it changes every round, your chances of guessing
your way out of this are basically zero.
Instead, your only real option is to ask your
fellow players what it is.
Sounds easy enough, right?
After all, what possible reason would anyone
have to lie?
Well, I’m getting to that.
Ya see, hidden among the players just so happens
to be the Jack of Hearts himself, and the
game will run indefinitely until either he
dies, or everyone else does.
So, now you see the problem; the only way
out of here is to trick the jack into saying
the wrong suit, and since we have no idea
who that might be, no matter how we approach
this, the only way out is by systematically
eliminating other players until we finally
get our man.
Naturally, the easiest way to beat this one
would be to go into it with at least one close
friend who you trust implicitly.
At that point, it would be impossible for
either one of you to be eliminated, and you
could both simply lie to everyone else and
sow complete and utter chaos without fear
of reprisal.
However, being this is a Hearts game, pretty
much no one would think to do that since under
most circumstances you’d be required to
stab your buddy in the back.
Speaking of which, the use of weapons or violence
of any kind to kill other players is strictly
prohibited, so we can’t just battle royale
our way to victory.
That said, there’s nothing that says we
can’t severely injure people to the point
they deliberately provide the wrong answer
to end their own suffering.
Only problem is, you’d still need someone
to watch your back, so to speak, and attacking
others is a great way to get the ax.
Take Mr. Affliction shirt for example.
Yeah, we all know how this ends.
Seriously, how could you not see that coming.
At the same time, the geek should have known
better than to nail this dirtbag.
Even if it’s justified, being the first
person to take someone out will undoubtedly
raise suspicion, and he totally pays for it.
Fact is, all he had to do to keep bully bro
from beating on him was give him the answer.
Besides, it seems pretty unlikely the jack
would be so quick to paint a target on his
back.
Which brings me to the core of our strategy.
There’s absolutely no way to identify the
jack based on anything besides how they play
the game, so we’ll have to find a way to
make him expose himself.
At first, one might think we need to create
a situation in which no one could possibly
lie without getting caught, kinda like the
nutcase in the blue dress does by forming
a group to keep each other honest.
The problem with doing this is that everyone,
including the jack, will know that taking
someone out or trying to manipulate people
will immediately make them a target, and thus
nothing actually gets done.
Sure, there’s no time limit, our visas can’t
expire, and we have enough food and water
to last us quite a while, but after a few
days of no one sleeping longer than an hour
at a time, pretty much everyone will be too
delirious to be trustworthy, and there’s
a good chance we might end up sleeping through
our date with destiny.
On the other hand, if there’s no accountability
at all, then no one trusts anyone, and people
will start blowing each other’s heads off
left and right, which is just as bad for the
jack as it is for us, since they also depend
on getting answers from another player.
This is pretty much where little Miss Robespierre’s
group falls apart.
She turns it from a circle of trust into her
own private hit squad and everyone becomes
so paranoid that they eventually turn on her.
Thank God for that one.
I mean, I get she wasn’t the jack, but only
a total freaking psychopath would go bopping
around like a Disney princess in this nightmare
world.
We’re all probably better off without her.
Ultimately, all this is to say that we need
to strike a balance between order and chaos
to get through this, and that pretty much
means there can be no single solution that
encompasses the entire group, nor can everyone
run off on their own.
Instead, we, meaning our individual player,
need to find a single partner early on, preferably
someone less intelligent and/or assertive
than ourselves, and make them understand that
they’re just as dependent on us as we are
them.
We then need to ensure they trust absolutely
no one else by constantly reinforcing this
notion in their mind, which will only become
easier once everyone else starts cutting each
other’s throats.
This is the same strategy Chishiya, suit bro,
and the ex-con all employ, which is why they
and their respective toadies all make it to
the final six.
Central to this approach is making sure our
partnership is publicly known.
That way, jack or not, they won’t dare take
us out in fear of being isolated.
Of course, for that very same reason, we’ll
want to make sure whoever we team up with
is mentally and emotionally stable.
Oof.
Yeah, good luck explaining that to everyone
else.
Barring this unforeseen development, our only
way forward would have been to remain vigilant
for any signs of cross contamination between
pairs.
With six players remaining, the jack wouldn’t
betray his partner directly as this would
leave him the odd man out, but he may try
to single out and subtly manipulate members
of other groups into moving on their teammates.
However, this wouldn’t come out of the blue.
In all likelihood, the jack would have been
conspiring with this person in secret for
some time now, which is all the more reason
we need to keep an eye on our other half.
In this case, Chishiya discovered suit girl
was taking orders from the guy with the hair
after realizing they were surreptitiously
confirming each other’s symbols with color-coded
snack bags.
It’s freaking ridiculous if you ask me,
but whatever.
They probably would have gotten away with
it were it not for our guy’s Jimmy Neutron-level
plot intelligence.
Yeah, sure, you did.
However we go about sussing out the jack,
once we find him, we need to approach him
in secret the first chance we get and tell
him we think it’s someone on the other remaining
team.
Doesn’t matter who; we just need him to
think he’s got us fooled to make ourselves
appear like less of a threat.
Now things get messy.
If he was working with someone on the other
team, we just let nature take its course and
then fatally shun the surviving player.
It’s what they get for being a chump anyway.
This is when mutual trust with our teammate
is more important than ever.
With only our pair and the jack’s pair remaining,
the two of us need to split up and independently
meet with the jack, each of us claiming we’re
going to do the other in.
Provided he takes the bait, the jack will
then proceed to flip on his own teammate,
thereby hosing himself in the process.
It’s far from an exact science, for sure,
but it’s pretty much the only chance we
would have at that point.
Rewinding for a second, if it turned out the
jack was in cahoots with our partner all along,
then we’d have no choice but to put him
down, leaving us in the exact same position
Chishiya finds himself in right now.
Chill out, Geralt of Rivia.
We’re not pwned yet, although admittedly,
it’s not looking good.
That said, there is an upside to this situation.
Since everyone thinks we’re it, we can do
and say literally whatever we want to try
and mess with them.
I mean, there’s absolutely no way we can
trust them to give us the correct suit now.
In fact, Chishiya ends up playing this to
his advantage by using the two phony bologna
answers he receives to make it a 50/50.
Well, Jesus, when Anton Chigurh says it, it
doesn’t feel like that much of a win.
Now, he did improve his odds past 50/50 by
asking the others as well.
With club and heart out being phony answers.
That leaves diamond and spade.
None of the other players had a diamond and
two of the other players already had a spade
which is the potential max if all the suits
were being represented equally between remaining
players.
So the obvious choice is diamond.
Either way, it’s all we got, so I hope you’ve
been brushing up on your ESP.
Nah, you know this dude’s gonna clutch it.
I can’t even remember any of the other guys’
names.
Unfortunately, even if we guessed correctly,
we’d be pretty much done for unless we found
a way to get through to the others beforehand.
After all, the jack would probably assume
he took us out of the picture, prompting him
to waste his partner and psy-op suit girl
into taking hers out along with herself.
At that point, it’d just be the two of us,
meaning we’d both be left with a 75% chance
of blowing our heads off.
Fortunately for us, suit guy and the ex-con
bonded over the urinals and forged a secret
alliance of their own, allowing the three
of us to dramatically emerge from our jail
cells one by one to rain on the jack’s parade.
As for why his own partner didn’t light
him up, it turns out Arisu isn’t the only
one looking for some answers.
Like I said before, nothing in the rules says
you can’t make them wish they were dead.
Ugh, finally.
Your stupid parlor game gave me a migraine.
All right, let’s check in with Arisu and
company.
Having lost Tatta to exsanguination, the main
group is down yet another player, and to make
matters worse, Kuina left to wander a massive
city patrolled by a heavily armed psychopath
to search for a single person that may not
be alive.
Can’t see that going sideways.
As for Arisu and Usagi, they take advantage
of their newly extended visas to rustle up
some grub the old-fashioned way.
Jesus, you’re really gonna try catching
rabbits by hand?
It’s called a snare, you pillocks.
Seriously, it’s a good thing this isn’t
one of the games or you’d both be screwed.
In fact, ya know what, that’s my death game.
We’ll tie some kitchen knives and razor
blades to them to make it sporting.
Catch three rabbits before time runs out or
get smoked.
I call it Blood Bunnies, rank: God Emperor
of Spades.
Hopefully, it makes the cut for Season 3.
Suddenly, a nearby commotion leads them to
the site of a massacre.
Hmmm, I wonder if this has anything to do
with the roving gunman smoking everyone in
sight.
I know, let’s ask this guy.
Dude, for real.
That’s what you’re gonna lead with?
Oh, well, he wasn’t all that helpful anyway.
Regardless, it’s time to GTFO.
The fact there was someone clinging to life
around here suggests stuff went South somewhat
recently, meaning the killer might still be
in the area.
We can check the other bodies for warmth if
we want to be sure, but I wouldn’t even
waste time doing that knowing the King of
Spades could be lining us up with the fifty
this very second.
Nah, it’s probably fine.
Might as well just corner ourselves inside
this RV-turned-dark room to watch some loser’s
home movies.
After all, I’m sure he captured something
truly profound and not just a bunch of disjointed
garbage.
Let me save you a watch.
The film is composed mainly of random nonsense
culminating in a dramatic interview with some
lobotomite who claims she remembers how they
all got here.
But just as she’s about to say something
totally unverifiable, you-know-who shows up
to tell her about the rabbits.
Well, at least now we know what happened,
as if it were actually a mystery.
The good news is, Spielberg managed to get
some footage of Ann before he got dosed, so
at least we know she’s still alive, right?
No, not really.
She could have just as easily been killed
immediately after this was recorded, and even
if she wasn’t, there’s no telling where
that was captured or where she was even headed,
so this was pretty much just a complete waste
of time.
Only question now is why is the ground shaking?
Well, wouldn’t you know it, everyone’s
favorite mass murderer came back for the sequel.
What, you idiots never heard of the killer
always returning to the scene of the crime?
That said, the only way he could have known
to start lighting up the RV would be if he
had some kind of tracking technology, which
makes sense, considering there’s an armed
satellite watching our every move.
Of course, this means our only option is to
run like heck, as hiding is completely out
of the question.
It’s also one of the few times when splitting
up actually makes sense, even if it means
we have to search for each other later on.
Not only can he only go after one of us, he
might just bag it all together in favor of
more densely clustered prey he can mow down
all at once.
It’s kind of his thing.
However, while Arisu manages to give KoS the
slip, it seems he’s not out of the woods
yet.
Wait, was that a spear?
Great.
Can’t wait to see how this turns out.
Fortunately, instead of getting trussed up
like a hog, Arisu awakens sometime later to
find he was rescued by his former beach buddy
Aguni, along with his stalwart teenage sidekick
Akane.
Evidently, they knocked him out to stop him
from getting himself killed, ya know, cause
a serious head injury isn’t gonna be a huge
liability out here.
Seriously, you couldn’t just pull a classic,
“come with me if you want to live?”
At least then you wouldn’t have to carry
his butt.
Quick sidenote, in case you were wondering
how Akane became the blade runner, turns out
it happened shortly after she entered the
zone.
One second, she’s gossiping with her girlfriends
walking home from high school, the next minute
she’s standing in the middle of a stadium
with 16 randos.
This one’s called, “How to make soccer
less boring,” and it’s a seven of spades.
The object is to not die horribly as the entire
stadium caves in on itself.
Oh, yeah, that looks fair.
Strategy-wise, not a lot I can say besides
run like Tom Cruise and keep an eye out for
exit signs, and even then, if your number’s
up, your number’s up.
In the end, only Akane made it out alive,
but not without taking a piece of rebar through
the shin.
Fun.
Lucky for her, she was able to find a doctor
willing to operate, for a nominal fee, of
course.
Turns out even in the upside down, nothing
in this world is free, which our hero is about
to learn the hard way.
In exchange for saving his life, Arisu’s
rescuers conscript him into their mission
to hunt down the King of Spades.
What’s their plan, you might ask?
Don’t worry about it, dude.
Why don’t you just hang out at the tent
and relax, we’ll take care of everything
else.
Safe to say, on a manhunt if you can’t figure
out who the bait is it’s probably you, but
at least they were nice enough to give him
the pump action.
Let’s hope he knows how to use it, because
here comes the big bad right now.
Hmm, looks like he’s got himself a sweet
pair of dual tubes with the white phosphorus.
I call dibs on those when this is over, that
is, provided our new friends get off their
butts before he remembers he has an assault
rifle.
Huh, that was a lot easier than I thought
it would be.
Well, don’t just stand there.
Someone put a quadruple tap in this guy before
he pulls a selfie!
Dude’s running nods, a light fifty, and
friggin frag grenades.
Obviously, he’s gonna have some kind of
plate carrier on.
See what I mean?
What a waste of an ambush.
Now you have to deal with him head on, and
that’s probably not going to go great for
you, especially since a third of your attack
force can’t even stand up to the recoil
of the weapon you gave him.
For real, Arisu’s lucky he got blown off
the edge before things got too crazy.
This guy’s basically John Wick, and he’s
got the equipment to match, so if the three
of us couldn’t take him out in the surprise
party, we should have just hit him with another
flare and broke contact.
After all, if a grizzled vet like Aguni couldn’t
take him in one-on-one gun-fu, what hope do
the rest of us have?
Killer moves and all, but ya know what would
have been more disruptive than a flying jump
kick?
One of those broadheads through his eye socket.
What, is that bow just for decoration?
Oh, well, props to her for keeping Aguni’s
narrative arc alive.
Something tells me we’ll need him later
on.
Now on his own, Arisu sets out to find Usagi.
Yeah, good luck with that, dude.
Might as well check in on Kuina to give him
time to search.
Looks like she landed herself in some kind
of one v. whatever cage match.
Yeah, Jack of Spades my butt.
How is a single person supposed to fight off
over a dozen people armed with pipes and machetes?
At least, with the King we could go around
recruiting an army of nobodies to soak up
all his ammunition while we hide…I mean,
supervise from a good safe distance.
Actually, never mind.
She seems to be handling things just fine
on her own.
That said, for those of us without her level
9000 plot armor, our only chance would be
to use one of the loose weapons to knock out
the only overhead lamp lighting up the dojo.
From there it becomes a simple game of reverse
Marco Polo until the time runs out.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about the name.
Hmm, how about, “Be a main character.”
I like it.
Okay, Arisu, find her yet?
Actually, yeah, she was at the first game
he decided to play, only she’s not alone.
During her travels, Usagi ran into an orphan
who somehow managed to stay alive long enough
to make it this far.
Great.
You’re telling me in addition to fighting
tooth and nail just to barely save our own
lives, we have to babysit this brat from now
on?
Could you imagine if we had to carry him through
something like the Cargo Container game?
He’d make Tatta look like Pre-2018 Kratos,
ya know, the cool one.
Oh, and to top it all off, you brought him
to the Queen of Spades, not even a clubs game
where we could at least count on working together.
Plus, for all you know it involves powerlifting,
or I dunno, maybe more of this:
Ya know what, fine.
I’m sure the kid will be a huge asset, and
not corrupt our sense of self-preservation
one iota.
Let’s just get to the rules.
So, this one’s called Waifu Tag.
You’ll find out why here in a minute.
For starters, there are two teams: the challenger
team, us, with 16 members, and the Queen’s
team with only four.
Each player wears a vest with a large button
on the back and lights indicating which team
they’re on.
The game itself consists of 16 rounds lasting
five minutes each.
In round one, the Queen’s team will try
and tag as many of us as possible.
Those who get tagged will be unable to move
until the next round, at which time they’ll
become members of the opposite team.
Of course, you probably already know where
I’m going with this.
In round two we chase them, and it goes back
and forth like that until the end of round
16 when whoever has the most players on their
team wins.
Yeah, if you’re like me, right now you’re
thinking something like, “why the heck wouldn’t
everyone just let themselves get tagged so
that we can all be on the winning team.”
Well, there’s a catch.
Each team has a king who isn’t allowed to
change sides, and take a wild guess who our
king is:
Yup, that figures.
Thanks again, Usagi.
I’m kidding of course.
This is an absolute non-issue.
What do I care if some random rugrat gets
insta’d in this craphole?
It’s gonna be a lot more humane than all
the other horrific ways he could go out.
Tough luck, little bro.
The rest of us are lining up on round one
to join the winning team.
Of course, there is one more caveat here I
forgot to mention.
If we win on the Queen’s team, then we technically
haven’t beaten the game, but we will be
allowed to remain here as temporary citizens
and continue playing against other teams of
challengers until someone inevitably wins.
So, okay, we can’t actually end this nightmare
unless we win as the challengers, but therein
lies the beauty of it.
As long as we fight for the Queen of Spades,
our visas won’t expire, and the King of
Spades can’t touch us.
At that point we just hang around here and
build our strength while other players work
through the rest of the face card games.
Eventually, this will be the only game remaining,
at which time we’ll have both the ninja
warrior skills and the map knowledge to turn
the tables on the Queen of Spades and earn
our ticket home.
“But, Nerd,” you say, “the Queen’s
team only has four players, including herself.
How do we know she won’t just keep three
of us and let the rest get zapped?”
Well, by some strange twist of fate, it turns
out she has some kind of weird crush on young
Arisu.
For real, check this out:
See what I mean.
That’s the gravy train right there, fellas.
I mean, I could think of a lot worse than
playing concubine to some warrior queen.
Yeah, sorry, Usagi, we’re gonna have to
put a pin in that awkward romance of ours
until we can finally sort this out.
You understand, right?
Of course, there’s no telling how long it
might take for all the other games to be cleared.
From our penthouse suite in the parkour tower
we might be able to see the other face card
blimps exploding as contestants finally win,
or secretly question each new wave of contestants
in Waifu Tag as to how many other games there
are left.
It could take some time.
I mean, that King of Spades dude was hard
as heck to kill.
We might eventually be forced to start a family
with her.
Just think, she’s become fully invested
in our future together, her better judgment
being corrupted by rising oxytocin levels
as she carries our Nerd spawn, her athleticism
and physical fitness taking a hit from the
pregnancy.
With the last of the other games being beaten,
and the Queen being compromised, it’s the
perfect time to betray her and run off into
the sunset with Usagi.
All it took to ensure our victory setup was
a child sacrifice, directly causing the death
of countless waves of contestants joining
the challenger team, indirectly causing the
death of countless waves of contestants whose
Visa expired, betraying a pregnant chick we
got to fall in love with us, and keeping our
true lover at a distance while we started
a family with an evil but hot Queen chick.
2EZ.
Now, with our setup complete, we employ my
foolproof strat to put this one in the bag.
I call it, “300ish” First thing we do
is allow ourselves to be tagged by the challenger
team before they lose the numerical advantage.
Once it’s our turn to defend, instead of
scattering like a bunch of stupid cockroaches,
we all hang together in a sort of phalanx
formation and back ourselves into a corner.
After all, they can’t tag us if they can’t
reach our backs, and the rules allow us to
fight back as long as we don’t use weapons.
Now, just imagine how mad off she’ll be
when we stab her in the back.
Yeah, we’d better be ready to scrap, because
this will be a literal battle of life and
death.
It goes without saying the best fighters will
be up front, with everyone else watching their
backs and making sure no one gets dragged
out of the ranks.
If all goes according to plan, we’ll be
able to maintain our numbers throughout the
round, at which point enemy players will likely
see the writing on the wall and start begging
us to tag them over.
Now, having said all this, I suppose we could
implement this same strategy from the very
beginning if we’re just dead set on saving
the bedwetter.
I get it, some people just have bizarre emotional
hang ups that prevent them from doing what
it takes to win.
That’s just reality.
Whatever the case, we’ll want to have a
back up plan in case we lose the advantage.
I mean, I have the utmost confidence in the
previously mentioned approach, but it never
hurts to have a plan B. In that case, Usagi’s
idea of winning the other’s over by inspiring
them to strive for something greater than
playing pawns in the queen’s gambit isn’t
a bad idea.
In fact, we should have started doing that
from the very beginning.
Okay, not quite sure what all that means,
but it seems to do the trick.
Probably also worth mentioning how most of
the winners on the Queen’s team would probably
be killed off to make room for the next batch.
Even if it’s not true, a little FUD can
go a long way, especially when there’s lasers
involved.
Other than that, it’s just a matter of running
the others down and falling back to the phalanx
formation whenever we’re on the defensive.
Of course, the Queen of Spades isn’t going
to just lay down and die, so we’ll probably
have to bait her into an ambush using Arisu
and then rush her as a group to put her out
of commission permanently.
I’m sure Usagi won’t have a problem with
that.
Ultimately, the challenger team pulls it together
in time to save the boy, and all it cost us
was the surest path to surviving the card
game as a whole.
As for the Queen of Spades, she decides to
go out with a bang.
Huh, well, I guess it’s more of a sickening
thud.
Oh, and before you ask, she didn’t share
anything valuable about the overall situation
before getting zapped, so I guess we’re
all gonna have to stay tuned to figure out
just what the heck is going on here.
All right, what’s next?
Well, elsewhere in town, it seems Chishiya
decided to pit himself against the King of
Diamonds, but, dude, like, why though?
After beating the jack of hearts you’ve
got like eleven days on your visa.
Let someone else tackle this.
Nah, who am I kidding?
No one without their own page in the wiki
is pulling this one off.
This game’s called “Meltdown,” and despite
involving math, it’s actually very entertaining
to watch.
For this one, all five players, including
the King of Diamonds himself, are strapped
to their chairs.
Each round, they’ll go around the table
choosing numbers between 0 and 100.
The average of their choices will then be
multiplied by .8 and whoever is closest to
the resulting product wins, while the others
all lose one point.
Everyone starts at zero, and if you drop down
to negative ten, you’re out, which is where
these giant scales come in.
With every lost point, they fill up with a
little more sulfuric acid until you’re eliminated,
and then…
Oops.
Spoiler alert.
As if we all didn’t already know who’s
gonna be walking out of here.
Also, new rules are added after each death,
but we’ll deal with those when we get there,
which is going to be soon, by the way, cuz
this one’s worse than the Jack of Hearts.
So, strategy wise… holy crap, man.
Let’s start with what we know.
Picking a number over 80 is pointless, since
80 is the largest possible output, and since
everyone knows that, picking a number over
64 is also pointless.
Of course, then that would mean picking a
number over 51 is pointless, which would mean
picking a number over 41 is pointless, which
would mean… yeah, you see where this is
headed.
It’s a race to the bottom.
If everyone picks zero, then the answer will
always be zero, meaning no one loses and this
game lasts until we all die of dehydration.
Well, either that, or we all lose at exactly
the same rate, thus everyone gets melted at
the same time, and that won’t do either.
Oh, and just to get this out of the way, there’s
no indication whatsoever that outside weapons
and cold-blooded murder are off limits here,
and given there’s an acid bath involved,
I’d say this is definitely the game where
we’d want to give those a try.
I mean, considering, everyone’s belted in,
all you’d need is a knife to cut yourself
free and do the deed.
We also know for sure Chishiya has at least
one of those home-made explosives squirreled
away, but without knowing the effective blast
radius, it’s probably best we save it for
the one v. one.
So, back to the maths, just like Jack of Hearts,
the only way we can move things along is by
creating conditions where other players can
be eliminated, and that means making decisions
that aren’t perfectly rational.
Sure, you can try to predict what others would
do, but they’re going to be basing their
actions on predictions of what everyone else
is going to do, leaving us with a never-ending
cycle of predicting people’s predictions.
Just saying, you should probably listen to
this guy.
I mean, just look at his hair.
This is what does-in the first two guys.
They both think they can read everyone’s
minds based on what the most logical choice
would be for them to make, but people don’t
really work that way.
Fact is, the guy who created this game is
a lawyer, not a mathematician, so unless he
double majored, the solution here probably
doesn’t involve solving insane multivariable
equations in one’s head.
If anything, it’s more about convincing
people to think and feel a specific way.
So, onto the number picks.
To start things off, I’ll go with something
pretty much middle of the road, and just like
Chishiya, that’s 32 (80 / 2 * .8 = 32).
For what I’m sure are a variety of different
reasons, everyone else goes with a number
close to this, with the King of Diamonds winning
on 29.
Now, logically speaking, as we all lose points,
our answers will start trending toward zero
since that would be the safest choice, but
as stated previously, once everyone starts
doing that the game can’t progress, so I’d
probably just drop my number by only half
each time to keep from causing a panic (32,
16, 8, 4, 2, 1) Once we notice everyone’s
answers drop below, say 5, we should shake
things up like Chishiya does by dropping a
hundo in the next round.
Bruh, you think I don’t know that?
The point is you all lost too.
Of course, had everyone still chosen zero
here, Chishiya would have been the only person
to lose, but since this lady went with a 1,
she ended up winning and the rest of us, including
the King all lost a point.
Herein lies the object of the game; bleed
everyone out as quickly as possible.
By maximizing the amount of chaos in the system
and making the safest bet unsafe, it ensures
that at least four people will get dinged
every time, especially those that choose zero.
Outside of that, it’s just a guessing game.
The fact the King won four times in a row
is purely coincidental.
However, let’s say everyone, including whatsername,
all picked zeros and only we, as in Chishiya,
lost.
The next round, I’d go with 100 again to
make it glaringly obvious to everyone that
they could very likely hurt all of us by picking
a number between 1 and 47 (101 / 5 * .8 = 16.16
& 147 / 5 * .8 = 23.52).
Afterall, we would have been every bit as
hosed picking just 1 as 100 at that point,
but it wouldn’t have stirred things up as
much.
As soon as it’s clear that someone else
understands this, things will have reset in
a way.
I’d bring my number back around 32 again
in case someone followed my example and then
gradually coast back down towards zero without
actually hitting it.
In this case, Chishiya only had to win twice
to outlast the first two players, who both
picked zero more than anyone else in the game,
including on their final turns.
Ah me!
At least have the decency to do them both
at the same time.
The anticipation, my god.
With two players down, we get two new rules.
First, if two or more players pick the same
number, they all automatically lose, even
if that number is correct.
This means we can’t all just zero out to
save our own skins.
The second rule states that if someone’s
choice is a direct match with the output number,
everyone else loses two points instead of
one.
However, for some reason after hearing all
this, everyone hits zero, which along with
1 and 2 are the numbers multiple people are
most likely to choose.
Plus, by picking zero, you’re ensuring that
you couldn’t possibly hit the output number
dead on since it would have to be higher than
that by virtue of the others having picked
something else.
As for how this development influences our
strategy, it doesn’t.
If I’m Chishiya with minus eight in that
situation, I’m starting things over with
a nice 32 and hoping for the best.
Win or lose, I’m going from there down to
16 just like before, which would put me close
to the 23 Chishiya went with.
And in a shocking turn of events that would
give Jim Carrey fits, that turns out to be
a bingo.
Question is, how?
Oh, you straight up guessed, is that what
you’re trying to say?
Yeah, get out of here with your prime numbers.
No one’s buying it.
Not to mention the fact you would have had
to have known the king would be going with
a 1.
Whatever.
Get melted, lady.
Let’s get this over with.
Now down to only two, the final rule is revealed.
If one player chooses zero, the other player
will insta-win by choosing 100, and with that,
the game has just morphed into rock, paper,
scissors.
Think about it, zero beats one because 1 divided
by 2 multiplied by .8 is .4, and 1 beats everything
above it because the final output would always
be less than half of the other number.
It’s actually worse than that, however,
since picking the same number would cost us
each a point, and with Chishiya at minus 9
to the King’s minus 7, that would be the
end of it.
I hate to say it, but our chances of pulling
this off are dismal—one in twenty-seven
to be exact—so unless this stone-faced ghoul
has a major tell, I’d say it’s time to
open up our can of whoopbutt.
Fortunately, for Chishiya, he was able to
piece together this dude’s entire life story
in the short amount of time they’ve been
sitting across from one another.
It turns out he created this game to completely
remove himself from having to choose who dies
by leaving it purely up to chance.
Knowing this, Chishiya straight up tells him
he’s gonna choose 100, thereby forcing the
decision on the king regardless.
And guess what, dude deliberately loses three
times in a row because of this.
I’m sorry.
You say you’re jealous of the guy that just
got melted to death by a vat of acid?
Yeah, you definitely belong here.
Well, that was fun.
Of course, were this a sane world where the
villains wouldn’t just rollover and die
once you guessed what they had for dinner
last night, we’d be forced to actually play
this guy, and that would almost certainly
be the death of us.
There’s no strategy we could employ here
that would give us any kind of advantage.
That said, people have overcome far worse
odds than this.
We’d just have to trust our gut and see
what happens.
With the KoD getting stewed, we’re down
to only two remaining face card games.
Well, the only two that matter anyway.
Just for fun, I’ll run through a few honorable
mentions that didn’t even get their own
segments.
First up is the Queen of Clubs, “Balls to
the wall.”
Yeah, it’s basically Multiteam Dodgeball.
Not much I can really say here besides don’t
get hit, and try to remember the five D’s
of dodgeball: Deflect, Dominate, Distract,
Disarm, Disable.
Ya know, this one would be kind of awesome
were it not for the whole, losers get lasered
aspect of it.
Oh, and as you can see Kuina and Ann were
finally reunited, so take a wild guess which
pair is coming out on top.
That said, it’s worth mentioning this is
yet another game where we have no idea whether
outside weapons are allowed.
If so, Ann needs to slap leather on that snubnose
and start throwing lead.
Statistically speaking, people are much easier
to hit with a dodgeball after they’ve been
shot.
After that is “Gym class hero.”
Much like the rope climb in actual gym class,
central to completing this one is to get tough
and not be a punk.
Evidently, the Jack of Clubs himself is among
the players, and the game runs until he falls
to his death.
It’s unclear whether everyone knows who
he is right off the bat, but either way our
strategy remains the same.
When the game starts we need to slide as far
down the rope as we’re allowed to and use
the S wrap technique to hold ourselves in
place.
From there we tie a stopper knot in the line
and hunker down until this mess eventually
sorts itself out.
Yeah, good luck keeping that up for any amount
of time.
As long as our bright idea doesn’t catch
on, the other’s will be dropping like flies
in no time, especially the Jack after fighting
off who knows how many players.
Otherwise, I’d much rather take my chances
seeing who can hang out the longest without
falling asleep than bet the farm playing Tarzan.
This next one is a classic: “Flee the beast.”
At first, I wasn’t sure why the King of
Hearts would be about solving a Labyrinth,
but it actually makes perfect sense.
You see, there’s an easy trick you can use
to solve pretty much any maze, called the
“Left Hand” method.
Basically, you take your left hand, ball it
into a fist, and then savagely beat the guys
next to you so the monster has something to
chew on while you find your way out.
Piece of cake.
And finally, we’ve got the Jack of Diamonds:
Mahjong.
Ya just… ya just play mahjong.
Yeah, so I don’t actually know anything
about this game, but my suggestion would be
to cheat, and/or roll a frag grenade under
the table when no one’s looking.
Other than that, I’m not quite sure what
I’m even looking at here.
I mean, is this normal, this amount of screaming?
Mahjong nerds, let us know how you’d rig
this one down in the comments.
Okay, now we’re down to the last two, and
wouldn’t you know it, they’re right beside
one another in Shibuya, back where it all
began.
Ya know you’re about to get down on a boss
fight when you find a pristine over/under
shotgun and shells just lying out in the open.
However, that’s going to have to wait, as
just as Arisu and Chishiya are about to reunite
for one final mission, our old friend Crispy
clacks off a game of his own.
What, do you want him to try again?
Nah, that wouldn’t be sporting.
Like I said, this is his idea of a game.
Call it, Idiot Royale.
Dude even tosses Chishiya piece so he and
Arisu can finally hash out that whole, “you
set me up to get killed back at the beach
house” thing legitimately no one remembers
nor cares about at this point.
Wait, are you guys seriously going to indulge
this freak show?
For real, Arisu watched firsthand as this
dirtbag brutally assaulted his girlfriend
back at the harbor and he doesn’t even have
the nerve to waste him on sight.
No, instead he straight up turns his back
as part of some self-sacrificing nonsense
he’s suddenly adopted.
Bro, your best friends threw their lives away
so you could survive, are you really gonna
crap on their graves by letting this slime
earhole you right now?
Fortunately, before Arisu can symbolically
throw his gun aside, Usagi shows up in time
to remind him what he’s fighting for.
Nice one, Gandhi.
It’s a good thing Chishiya was there to
throw himself in front of the bullet.
That said, she wasn’t exactly doing herself
any favors standing there like a deer in the
headlights waiting to get popped.
There’s literally a rusted-out car every
fifteen feet out here.
I mean, just moving in general would have
made it difficult for him to hit you one-handing
it from a distance like that.
Oh, well, no time to worry about it now.
It seems all this gunfire got the King of
Spades’ attention.
Lucky for us, these last two blimps drew in
plenty of cannon fodder to keep him occupied,
including all of our surviving friends.
Huh, starting to get a little déjà vu.
However, unlike before, this time we actually
have some firepower of our own.
I mean, we’re not gonna use it, even when
he’s literally walking up for the coup de
gras, but at least it looks like we’ve gained
something since our first encounter with this
psycho.
Seriously though, there’s a reason solo
missions aren’t really a thing.
It’s pure chaos out here, and as good as
Mercenary X could possibly be, there’s simply
no way he could keep from getting blindsided
while he’s hyper focused on the panic-stricken
players running all over heck.
Yeah, just like that.
Not sure why everyone would be celebrating
right now.
Has the blimp exploded yet?
No, which means he’s right about to pull
a T800 and start doing his thing again, only
this time we get to see his final form.
While it seems no one in this universe has
ever heard of a double tap, the auto assault
did serve as a nice diversion for us to regroup
in a nearby building, and look who decided
to join the party.
Kinda crazy that Aguni and Akune would both
happen to be at this random lobby we held
up in, but, hey, I won’t question it.
Now that we’ve assembled literally every
single morally good character with both a
first name and a heartbeat, we’ll need a
plan to put the bad guy down for good, and
apparently Arisu’s got something.
He wants to lure the King to a nearby pharmacy
where they’ll use a crap ton of aerosol
to amplify the effects of Chishiya’s last
remaining soda grenade.
I mean, it’s creative, and all, and I’m
sure it’ll allow everyone to participate
in ways that showcase their respective strengths,
but here’s the thing:
All three of these statements are facts, and
all three of them are reasons this plan is
unnecessary and ridiculous.
You see that weird gray and black thing Aguni’s
holding.
That’s a Howa Type 89, and it gives him
the power to take life from farther five feet
away.
Sure, he’s down to his last magazine, but
for the reasons mentioned previously, that’s
all he’s going to need.
While Agent 47 is busy clowning on everyone
out there, we just need our buddy here to
draw a bead on him while he’s preoccupied
and it’s over.
Depending on what kind of plates he’s wearing,
body shots might not do the trick, and it’ll
be pretty difficult to land a head shot from
a distance unless he’s standing perfectly
still, so our best bet would be to go for
the lower torso and upper thigh.
No matter how battle-hardened you are, a fractured
pelvis is going to ruin everyone’s day.
As for the King’s limited ammunition, he’s
probably not going to just run out all of
a sudden and call a timeout.
Instead, he’ll probably fall back to resupply
and reengage at a time of his choosing, neither
of which we can really predict.
When it comes right down to it, the sole objective
of his game is for us to take HIM out, meaning
if he wants to, he can just hold up in a skyscraper
and pull a Cold Skin until our visas expire.
That is to say, luring him anywhere might
not work, since he has no real reason to follow
us, least of all into an enclosed space with
gas pouring out of it.
Of course, all of this is beside the fact
Arisu’s plan hinges on a completely untested
weapon that might not even work.
Are we really about to stake everyone’s
lives on a science fair project?
I guess so, cuz here goes Aguni kicking off
the relay for death.
Yeah, I could spend twenty minutes covering
all the ways their plan goes to crap, but
for the sake of time I’ll just whittle it
down to the gems.
Jesus Christ.
Someone get this guy a spinoff.
Seriously, dude, this home brew MOAB of yours
better work, or else literally everyone you
care about just died in vain.
Yeah, it’s about the time you see five people
all more capable than you sprawled out in
a pool of their own drippings that you start
to think maybe this was a bad idea.
Could have just put Aguni in a second-story
window and we’d all be standing over this
guy’s scarred up corpse by now.
Just saying.
Well, it’s too late to dwell on it now,
because the big bad wolf is standing right
outside the door.
Only problem is, he doesn’t exactly have
to know about you filling the place with a
kiloton of Axe body spray to realize this
is a trap.
I mean, he saw you run in there with a loaded
shotgun.
All I can say for sure is, thank God he was
using a 9 millimeter.
Looks like Aguni wants the Platinum Chip back.
Here’s hoping this thing actually works.
Cool.
Yeah, that was great, and all, but if you
had a loaded gun this whole time, why didn’t
you just put one in the back of the dude’s
skull when he was standing outside the door.
I mean, staking our survival on your ability
to perform some Top Shot crap with a serious
head injury seems pretty irresponsible, doesn’t
it?
Eh, whatever.
It worked, I guess.
Nothing left to do now but scrape up what’s
left of Usagi and pay the Queen of Hearts
a visit.
Nah, I’m kidding of course, she’s actually
fine.
Well, she has those stab wounds on her legs,
but trust me, she’s all right.
In fact, literally all of our people are totally
fine.
Kuina’s fine, Ann’s pretty much dead right
now, but she’ll be fine.
Oh, and Chishiya and Crispy, yeah, they’re
both totally fine.
Heck, even Akane’s fine and she basically
got shot in half lengthwise.
Everyone is just fine.
Down to their final challenge, Arisu and Usagi
scale a nearby building where they find Queen
Mira eagerly awaiting their arrival.
Gotta admit, he’s taking a huge risk bringing
someone he cares about into a Hearts match,
especially THE Hearts match.
Might have been a better idea to go this one
alone.
This last game is called “My God.
I can’t believe they’re really playing
Croquet.”
The rules are pretty straight forward.
Each side gets two balls.
To win, you need to put the balls in the…
Wait, why am I doing this?
The rules are Croquet rules.
We just have to play three rounds of this
absurd game and we’re done.
We don’t even have to win.
Uh-huh.
I think I’m starting to get it now.
There’s no possible way it’s that simple.
Shut up.
No, it’s not.
It couldn’t be.
Otherwise, someone would have done this already.
The fact she mentions giving up is a major
red flag.
Why would we give up if this were all it is?
There has to be some kind of slow and painful
torture involved, ya know, besides playing
croquet.
At the very least, she’s just going to try
and drag things out for all eternity.
And sure enough, after making it through two
sets, Mira suggests they postpone the final
leg to have a tea party.
Boy, it didn’t take long for the other shoe
to drop on this one.
So, obviously the correct answer is “no,
thank you.”
There was nothing about drinking tea in the
rules, and anyone with a fistful of brain
cells could tell this is where she tries to
make us quit.
At this point, if demanding we continue isn’t
enough, I say we immediately resort to violence.
Now, in the beginning of the game, Mira said
outside weapons were allowed, and while she
didn’t specifically mention how they were
to be used, she also didn’t say we couldn’t
blow her head off.
However, as Arisu comes to realize, this might
not be such a great idea.
After all, the only way to clear the game
is to complete three sets.
Well, maybe.
The rules did say we have to make it all the
way through, but they never said anything
about us playing with her.
I mean, just look at the set up for this game
compared to all the others, no electronic
collars or wristbands tracking our every move,
just balls and mallets.
For all we know, we can play the last set
with Usagi.
Fortunately, we don’t actually have to waste
her to give this a try.
If the Queen flat out refuses to budge on
the issue, I say we tie her up with shoelaces
or something and give it a shot on our own.
If that doesn’t work, well, it’s not like
she’s a bodybuilder or anything.
We could probably just force the mallet into
her hands and swing for her like an overzealous
golf instructor.
It’s certainly worth a try.
Oh, of course, there’s one thing I’m forgetting.
God dang, Arisu and “muh answers.”
Sure, he might act like he doesn’t want
to wait, but you just know deep down he’s
dying to ask her all sorts of questions.
Questions she’s not gonna be able to answer
because literally no one here knows anything.
That much should be obvious by now.
For Christ’s sake, dude, just do me a favor
and don’t drink the tea, because that has
to be part of her shtick.
If it doesn’t make you hork up your insides,
it’ll probably take all your bad thoughts
and turn them into good ones.
Ultimately, the Queen recognizes Arisu’s
obsession with the truth is the only thing
that could slow him down, so she decides to
give him exactly what he asked for.
It turns out, this entire experience has been
one giant VR simulation, a video game, if
you will.
Evidently, in the last thousand years, humanity
progressed to the point where all our needs
were met except our thirst for adventure,
and so the world’s population is kept on
continuous dopamine drip by inserting themselves
into this world.
Crazy, right?
Ya don’t say.
Man, it’s like she has no reason to be truthful
with us.
And, it doesn’t stop there.
She just keeps puking up plot twists over
and over again.
Oh, plants took over the world, and aliens
are experimenting on us.
Oh, you’re actually synths being used for
high stakes underground gambling after a nuclear
apocalypse.
All the while, Arisu’s just eating it up
until she laughs right in his face and tells
him she was lying.
So, what do you think happens when she hits
him with the solipsism narrative?
It’s all in your head.
Your friends died in a car accident and you’re
in a mental hospital.
He buys it without question of course.
Jeez, man, it’s like the Invention of Lying
or something.
I refuse to believe this is actually the final
boss.
This is more like some kind of semi-serious
epilogue after the real threat was dealt with.
Only thing is, out of everything he’s encountered
so far, this comes closer to doing him in
than anything else.
Seriously, if it weren’t for Usagi seeing
straight through this nonsense and pulling
Arisu back from the brink with her burning
love, it would all be over.
And in the end, after all this, we didn’t
even have to make Queen Mira eat her own hair
to get back to the game.
She’s just so moved by the strength of their
bond, she lets herself get spaced lasered.
Oh, god, finally.
It’s finally over.
We beat croquet.
Of course, before we wrap this one up, I guess
it’s only fitting we share what really happened.
After all, you did stick around till the very
end.
It was a meteor.
A meteor hit Tokyo and basically killed everyone
that was involved in the games.
Those that survived to the end and declined
the offer to become citizens ended up coming
back to life in the real world.
Those that didn’t, didn’t.
So, it was some kind of limbo state where
the dead could fight their way back to life.
Or maybe it was all just a crazy dream.
I guess that’s up to you.
In the end, Arisu and all his new friends
made it out alive.
Well, except for Tatta.
However, had he taken our advice, he could
have probably changed that, and spared them
all a great deal of suffering in the process.
That said, there is one death game I can’t
quite say we were able to definitively beat
without plot armor, and that’s the King
of Diamonds.
As far as I can tell, it’s a complete game
of chance no matter how you slice it, and
for that reason, I think ALICE IN BORDERLANDS
SEASON 2 was only Mostly Beaten.
Moral of the story, if you can’t beat them,
join them, gain their trust, and then stab
them in the back once they depend on you for
love and support.
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