The second half of Ten Thousand Spoons is less than 300 polygons, and a very quick play. We meet some old friends, get a new toy, and further the story a bit. The first hint we get of where the initial story is going is the garbled text in the opening terminal, which is similar to some seen on the previous level but somewhat closer to English.
The Hunters on this level are all major even on normal, and seem to be much more difficult than I remembered (or maybe I'm just rusty). They have also regained their distinctive sound from Marathon 1. Also borrowed from Marathon 1 is the danger stripes texture which appears near the end of the level. There's a texture visible on some scrolling displays in the first room which seems to have been heavily inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation (if not lifted directly from it...). We also meet some friendly drones and some VacBobs.
There's an unlikely ally halfway through: A new type of wall turret that hates Hunters and shoots a rapid stream of charged fusion bolts. Be careful not to get in its way, as it won't stop shooting and can kill you in an instant.
Near the end, we are told we're going to kill Karth Pa'Korh, and given a new weapon to do it with. The MOW-MDN/36CM Assault Rifle was actually designed by Randy Reddig while he was still at Double Aught and working on Marathon Infinity. It was very nearly included in the game as an upgrade to the M-75, and got close enough to be included in the Anvil splash screen. Dire and his science officer Rogart also give you some new grenades for it, but they only last for this level; the gun is identical to the M-75 in every way but graphics. They also mention a "prototype" weapon that wasn't ready to send to you yet; don't forget this, as we haven't yet seen how much time the Evil storyline covers (and it's a LOT).
Fighting Karth Pa'Korh is relatively uninteresting, except for the fact that you can only use grenades. Therein lies a problem with the fight: There are only 4 grenade magazines (one in the gun, two you pick up, and one spare that will teleport in if you return to the drop-off point during the fight), they're the only things that can hurt Karth, and it takes quite a lot of them to kill him (at least 10 for me, probably more on higher difficulties). So, if you're having an off day and miss him a lot, there's a chance you'll run out of ammo and won't be able to kill him at all. On the plus side, if you do manage to get up the platform puzzle without killing him, Dire will send his congratulations on the job you didn't do and teleport you out anyway.
(One final word about that platform puzzle: I didn't like it at all. I'm usually forced to wait around for the platforms to synchronize before I can make the jumps, which is just annoying.)
