Sugar Shack 48: Greene: Piddling Sibling Rivalry
Greene is tough enough that he doesn’t need a lair or a datacenter to hang out in. He struts his stuff on a street corner in Manssen Park (-836. 1. -61), distantly surrounded by Disciples always posing but always careful to give him a respectful distance. He can see them, which seems to intimidate them no end. Protection is beneath Greene: he just wears a dark sleeveless T-shirt, some tight leggings, de rigueur fingerless gloves, and that’s it! No shades! No coat! No Panama hat! And no hair, either! I expected some tough-guy talk, like Robert Deniro (my dream come true), but he spoke with a British accent, and Anglicisms pervaded his speech: “bloke”, “quid”, etc. Even his name reflects this. It’s not “Green”; it’s “Greene”. Nice touch!
Greene seems to be the sponsor for the Disciples, and as such it’s mystifying that he does not share any of their traits: the long gloomy locks, the grey pallor, the surly demeanor, the cheap vests, the preoccupation with sanguine ceremonies. Is this supposed to be beneath him? Or has he recently taken them over, and not had time to re-make them in his image (or vice versa)?
Like all the other colors of the rainbow, he does not play well with his brothers and sisters, and almost everything he does seems oriented towards disrupting their plans. Regrettably, he seems so focused on what they are doing that he lacks any overall strategy of his own. So, while we might hear about Grisaille’s inane, insane scheme to take over the lakes in Westview, Greene never seems to think that big. In his unconscious, he is still at the breakfast table with them all, fighting over donuts. Let that be a lesson to us!
1. Special Delivery
An average, run-of-the-mill (or should I say “run-of-the-mille”?) courier mish. Drop off a code packet. Your contact is an “embedded program that performs counter-morale as a manager for a corporation located in this building”. Whatever that means! The contact is high enough level to have a polite assistant, Janeth Clark, who announced me and afterwards said that she hoped the meeting went well. I wished I had had a red pill to give her. Her boss merely validated the quality of the data. At the next stop, the recipient for the packet has a backstory: a former prime data miner for the Machines. He observes “Seems that he just cannot resist a chance to go after his siblings. Hell of a family, these people.” I love touches like this! Then I rushed to upload the data in one of Greene’s mainframes. There, the contact harangued me to hurry, and then as soon as I was done, she said she would be able to take a good look at the data tomorrow! Is that familiar or what?
N.B.: I did not have hacker loaded for this mish, so I was not able to get anything from the computers I found. There might have been codes or notes from Cerulean, as we find in the next mish.
2. You Get What You Pay For
The code did not live up to its billing and Greene wants the provider, Chilton, punished. Of course Chilton claims he did not know. After the work was done I rummaged around his computer and found a message from the “blue lady” (presumably Cerulean) warning him that trouble was on its way. I found that with Rifleman packed to the max, and then Hacker packed as far as it would go, I was able to easily dispatch my enemies, and at the same time hack any available computer. This helped me, for example, to open up locked rooms, which is always a good thing.
The big loose end here is how Cerulean knew I was on my way, so that she could send a warning. This would have been worth a mish of its own, to track down and identify the leak. In the missions I did for Cerulean, there was no indication of anything like this.
3. Unwelcome Guests
As part of her machinations, Cerulean has been amassing strength in Greene’s territory. The limey cannot abide this infringement, and sends you to wipe them out. Simple! No trouble finding them, or with any escaping. They’re simply hanging out, waiting for the world to end. Even with all the gunfire, they just sit in separate rooms, and do not come to each other’s aid. Baffling! It made me wonder if this is where Cerulean sent her lesser Boys to die, if their performance reviews were too far below normal.
4. Smash and Grab
The concept here is mildly ingenious. The father of all colors, Mr. Black, has given some rare item (a tracking device from the Machinists- yay!) to Cerulean. Greene tasks you with breaking in and stealing it. Why, you might ask? The clever Greene has two reasons: to embarrass his sister and get the item. This is fairly straightforward break-and-enter work. When you take the device to one of Greene’s flunkies for safekeeping, an assistant tells you that Greene is really impressed with you. As he should be!!
5. Triple Cross
“Sugaree, good you see you, old fruit.” He seems to be under some sort of stress here, judging from his fractured syntax. Cerulean and Grisaille are teaming up, and he wants to disrupt this with a bomb. (Careful readers will remember a mission of Cerulean’s involving brokering a truce with another gang.) First get the explosive from a bomb-maker who, it turns out, is very excitable, not what one might expect in such a line of work. “Here, man! Take a look at this bomb! It’s awesome! One of the best I’ve ever made!” Then, “I never get to use the bombs, just once I’d like to be there when they go off. BOOM!”.
Then go to the site, do some killing, put the bomb on one of the bodies, and that’s it! Greene’s hope is that the meeting will be disrupted (at least), and Cerulean and Grisaille will lose trust in each other. Sure, this makes the world a better place, but if this is a treble-cross, where was the double-cross?
There was one major disappointment. At the end of these give missions, Greene says he is thrilled with your work, and wants to give you a gift. Make sure you have enough inventory space! I did not, and will forever wonder what it was I missed!
Conclusion: Greene’s missions on the surface offer some variety from the Spectrum family squabbling. His faux-British congeniality is a pleasant change from most of his siblings. And there are no bugs or showstopper logic gaps with his missions. But at the end the feeling you have is that you have been helping someone fight with his brothers and sisters for their father’s attention. Most of us have been there and done that, and are more inclined to risk life and limb for something more meaningful.
This review and many others may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other writings relevant to MxO.
