Greetings, fellow kleptomcats, to another episode of A Jazztronomical Score. If you're just joining us on our merry interdimensional crime spree soirée, this is a semi-regular feature of mine in which I detail my various heists in the Garry's Mod "prop hunter" game mode Jazztronauts. I have the first and second parts lying somewhere around here, so just click anything that looks like a link.

To get you caught up from the end of the last update: I beat the game! That is, I found the milestone requirement of rainbow shards accumulated across all my travels, which triggered the "end of game state". I didn't want to show off the ending for obvious spoiler reasons - I recommend seeing it for yourself if you have a copy of Garry's Mod handy, as the Jazztronauts mod itself is free - but suffice it to say we're now in New Game Plus mode and things are... taking a turn for the sinister. More so, I suppose.

All that said, we're still on the hunt for some cat-specific fetch quest goals - namely some dolls, cars, headcrabs and paintcans - so let's see what the map generator computer can barf up.

Heist the Ninth: "zs_lv426 (Zombie Survival Map)"

My theory as to why zombie survival maps are usually empty regards the way these maps are structured to run on timers. Jazztronauts loads the map in their prime state and freezes any flags and such that might trigger (or triggers that might flag? Been a while since I've dabbled in Source), so the zombie waves never arrive. That's fine with me, because I imagine they draw from Left 4 Dead's colorful cadavers rather than the alien headcrab zombies Half-Life trucked with. If that's the case, they'll all be big ol' shambling "error"s because I never bought either of those games. Still, that just means more props left unattended for the stealing.

While the map itself ended up being nothing worth writing home about, I did make a few startling discoveries:

Heist the Tenth: "gm_battleground"

Well, how could I resist? If this really is a Battlegrounds map there should be cars aplenty, unless The FOO Show's Will Smith already came by and drove them all off cliffs and into trees.

To expand a little more on the NG+ cubes system: Hitting the cube will effectively destroy the map, removing all the brushes and props from the vicinity with the area of effect slowly expanding to cover the entire map in due time. This makes the map almost impossible to navigate in the long run, as the world becomes nothing but an endless ruby-tinted expanse where hard barriers aren't apparent.

To reiterate: everything is being destroyed, not added to the haul, so the cube is best left until the end when you're certain you've had your fill of the place. Fortunately, you don't seem to suffer any ill-effects from being inside the blast radius, but I still tend to set it off and run to a safe distance before bugging out with my ol' friend the mystical cross-dimensional jazz trolley.

Heist the Eleventh: "zs_abandoned_mall"

It might be poor form to follow one zombie survival map with another so soon, but who wouldn't want to go on a burglary rampage across a mall? I can only hope this place is stacked to the rafters with 100% off bargains if you catch my drift. I could certainly use the cash to buy back all the useful tools and upgrades I lost when we went to NG+ (though the NG+ mode was kind enough to give me a permanent income doubler as recompense).

Collecting those paintcans means it's time to hang out with our addled friend the Cellist again. This guy has all the best lines, so I can totally understand why his fetch quests appear to be easier than everyone else's. Either that, or I'm just being lucky with the maps I'm choosing.

For as much fun as it would be to troll the Gmod library for some decent Half-Life maps to fulfill the Cellist's latest request, I should probably focus on the other cats and their demands. The cars one seems the most attainable, so next week I'm going to attempt to wring some entertaining and elucidating content out of exploring parking garages. Wish me luck!