A Fighting Chance

A Fighting Chance is the fifth mission of Escape Dead Island after the previous mission Marathon and the next mission Stories of the Dead.

Synopsis[]

After Linda is bitten by a Bouncer, Cliff needs to explore the island to find help, starting with the airfield.

Walkthrough[]

After Linda is bitten by a Bouncer, Devan takes her back to the mountaintop while Cliff decides to push on alone, presumably towards where the plane crashed, as they saw a smoking plane fly overhead while tending to Linda
You are faced with two Shamblers that break through a fence in front of Cliff. They're not too difficult to deal with, just make a heavy attack to knock them down, then execute or beat them to death on the ground.
It's important to note that if you quit the game then reload just after finishing the last mission, the two Shamblers will not see you, and it's possible to stealth kill them instead of fighting them.
You can now go through the broken fencing they came through. Follow the pathway through a cave until Linda started to talk to you via the two-way radio. Keep going as she talks to you and you'll climb up a few ladders with a new objective to investigate the crashed plane.
Along the way, after you go up a taller ladder with some GeoPharm crates next to it, stick to the right to go up a slope through some bushes. Once through, keep going to find a body with a medkit and, more importantly, an army knife. This will replace your screwdriver and is a massive upgrade for stealth kills.
Return the way you came and push on through the cave. You'll emerge at a waterfall and there's a Shambler eating a body. Put your new army knife to good use and kill it.
You can stick to the path if you want, but it's easy to get ambushed, so stealthily make your way through the sides of the path as you go, that way you can see most zombies before they sneak up on you.
In front of you is an overturned burning car. Two Shamblers are eating from it, but if you skirt around them you can either kill them or avoid them. It's a good idea to kill them, however, as they're guarding a medkit and they're always useful for more health. If you do engage in a fight, another zombie will crawl out from under the car, so be ready.
You're now faced with a choice. You can either go forwards to the front of the GeoPharm Labs and go around that way, or push through the jungle to your left. If you go left, there's several Bouncers that will ambush you, but if you go via the labs there's a lot more Shamblers, so the choice is yours. Either way, you're not going to either places, you're just travelling through them. Something else to note if if you go via the labs, a medkit can be found in the far corner, by the piping.
However you go about it, you'll see a zombie eating a body in the middle of the path. This doesn't seem like much of a problem. However, when you get closer another one fall from the sky to join it. Presumably they were hopping around the trees like Tarzan. Either way, you end up with two to fight but if you're quick you can kill one before the other gets up.
Be cautious as you go on from here, since this is Bouncer territory. There's several wandering around here and if you're not careful, you can easily get ambushed by one or more of them. Stick to the sides of the path and crouch down for stealth. Be very sure nothing can see you if you need to cross from one side to the other. Stealth kill the Bouncers if you can.
There's a blocked tunnel in front of you, but you can crouch under the rubble to get through. Continue to the other end of the tunnel.
You'll emerge back in the sunshine again with some siren going off in the distance. This is the airfield, so it's just a little further.
Enter the airfield and go towards the plane. Once near, a cutscene will play showing Xian Mei unconscious in the plane. Cliff kills a zombie nearby as Xian wakes up and kills a zombie with a katana. Cliff tells her to stay back as it's not safe. You then get control of Cliff again with a load of zombies in front of you.
However, behind you is some pistol ammo and a medkit in front of the crashed plane. Take them before fighting the zombies. There's three Shamblers and they're close enough to bunch up together. Use a heavy attack to separate them and take them out one at a time.
After killing them, Xian dodges Cliff's questions and instead decides to take out the alarm. She then hands Cliff her pistol and tells him to kill anything that gets close.
You now finally have a firearm, and it's going to be needed as a horde of zombies is coming for you.
Aim for headshots on the Shamblers coming for you. When you hit a successful headshot kill, the game will go into slow motion for a second, giving you a good opportunity to aim up another headshot. Use this to chain headshots on the zombies. If you are a really terrible shot and run low on ammo, Xian Mei will drop more for you behind her.
This is important as after dealing with the five Shambers, a new zombie is introduced, the Spitter. This guy will spit acid at you from range, so using your new pistol is a must. Explosive barrels are scattered around the airfield, however, so use them to good effect to damage or kill the Shamblers and Spitter when they're close to one.
Once the Spitter is dead, if you want to conserve ammo with the Shamblers then you can, since they're easier to deal with, but Xian will always give more ammo when you're low for the duration of this attack, so you might as well enjoy having infinite ammo.
Once all the zombies are dead, Xian will have disabled the alarm as well as open the door. She tells Cliff to get off the island, but he refuses, citing Linda being bitten as his refusal. When asked by Cliff if she could turn into one, Xian doesn't answer and just tells Cliff to follow her. They enter the security office and Xian tells him that if there's a cure, it'll be in the lab, but to get in there you need a master keycard. You can't get in because of a power surge in the staff village and you need three additional keycards just to enter the room where the master one is. The power surge is stopping Xian from tracking the three keycards, so Cliff needs to enter the village and stop the source of the power surge, wherever that is. This ends the current mission.

Notes[]

If you run back to the mountaintop after the cutscene, Devan and Linda will not be there, even though you ran there right away. This will not change even if you turn around and go back there after Linda radios you with the news that they reached the top. We can assume, however, that they went into the building that's up there.
If you do go up the mountaintop and then back down without first fighting the Shamblers, they will have despawned by the time you get back down. This is a very long-winded way of getting rid of them, however, so you might as well just fight them as normal.
While traversing the tunnel towards the airfield, after the wider area where Linda radios you again, you can see a room filled with poisonous gas. Obviously, it wants you to have the gas mask to get what's in there. However, if you've been collecting all the medkits you can find, you will actually have just enough health to get in, grab something and get out. If you do this quickly, you can get the items early, as well as possibly unlocking an achievement along the way. The goods consist of another medkit, shotgun ammo and pistol ammo.
This is the first time you meet a Spitter in the game.

New Game + Differences[]

While going from the mountaintop to the airfield, you go past the entrance to the GeoPharm Labs. You also have an option to cut through the jungle past a previously locked building that has an entrance to the Underwater Labs. This building can now be opened with the mysterious keycard and inside is a large medkit for +3 health as well as the unlabeled keycard.
Ammo carries over from the last game. Whatever pistol ammo you had when completing your last campaign run through, you'll have it all here.