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Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place to go
Posted By: Steve LevinsonDate: 1/24/04 7:24 a.m.

All dressed up, and no place to go. When we last left off, the our UESC crew mates were in the process of retrofitting their escape pods to use as auxiliary thrusters to get the crashed ship we've been playing in off the ground. We were in the process of transporting when . . . what the? We find ourselves outdoors overlooking a vast canyon. This is a sprawling and complex level designed by Colin James - there is a secret terminal late in the map where he wishes us well. Don't you just love to hate the first part of this map? After waiting and waiting for those pillars to synchronize on Beer, Wine . . ., we now have to survive a series of ledge jumps and take out a host of troopers and hunters with limited ammo to reach that first pattern buffer. Failure to do so means - you guessed it - redoing that pillar sequence. Falling into the canyon is not an option. If only the two devlins that live down in the canyon could roam freely, you might have a chance of fisting them (yes, it can be done as we'll discuss soon). Unfortunately Colon keeps them penned into your only escape route so that you absolutely have to waste badly needed ammo to take them out. You just can't afford this, so falling pretty much means starting over.

Once you do come up with a successful strategy for taking out all the monsters (trigger, retreat, dodge and fire from behind obstacles works for me), you'll find yourself in some sort of entry to a vast complex. A terminal puts us in touch with Dire, who tells us that the teleporter on the last level misdirected us to an old abandoned Interplanetary Industrial Transporter (IPIT). According to Dire, Earth sent a bunch of these all over the galaxy to replace the CHRIST's used to transport supplies to Mars. Huh? The CHRIST's come strait from Marathon - they were huge ships used for resupply operations, but ultimately proved too expensive to maintain and were abandoned, leaving Mars impoverished. This was the basis of the insurgency on Mars and the plot to take over the Marathon and use it as a CHRIST instead of as a colony ship. Interplanetary transporters would have certainly made CHRIST's obsolete, but if the UESC had such technology, why didn't they use it? Perhaps they developed this technology after the Marathon Trilogy, but I thought that the CHRIST's were long gone by then. Besides which, CHRIST's should have been made obsolete by the FTL technology obtained from the Pfhor. The only reason for the CHRIST's in the first place was the efficiency of using a natural elliptical orbit around the sun to carry supplies from Earth to Mars using minimal fuel. FTL changed all that. Still, there is a definite appeal to the concept of IPIT's that could be used to transport supplies instantly anywhere we could set up one of these stations. Which brings us back to our story - we are going to get this IPIT - apparently an alien one - back online so that we can use it to return to UESC space. Sounds like a plan. The only problem is that we need to find a couple keycards and, oh yes, the Pfhor seem to have their own plans for this station. And the local inhabitants like things they way they are and are more than happy to devour you.

What follows is essentially a series of mazes with switches to flip, wires to smash and keycards (repair chips) to find and insert. Some of the switches are fairly well camouflaged, so you need to keep a keen eye. Although you often have to retrace your steps and there are many places where it might not be clear where to go, fortunately there are transporters that usually bring you to where you need to go next, avoiding what would otherwise be tedious. This is very nicely done. I really like the varied spaces in this level, which include outdoor areas, lava pools, underground caverns, narrow hallways, temple-like structures and so on. There are also several secret areas with nice stashes of ammo for the player with an interest in exploration - my kind of level. There is an area where the player is besieged by devlins. Fortunately, these are not restricted in their movements and can be coaxed one at a time up the elevator and into the room with the turrets, which will finish them off nicely. You can also coax the devlins to attack each other, and you can even practice fisting them - they are really no more difficult to take down than cyborgs - you just need to keep moving around them while you fist them - it takes a while, but they will ultimately succumb to your punches. In the end, however, the story descends into the ridiculous. General Dire takes credit for your heroics and abandons you to be eaten by the devlins. Fortunately, the IPIT's abandoned AI, grateful for its reactivation, takes pity on you and sends you on your way.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place to goSteve Levinson 1/24/04 7:24 a.m.
     Re: Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place toMark Levin 1/24/04 8:38 a.m.
           Re: Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place toDr. John Sumner 1/25/04 3:40 a.m.
     Re: Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place toKeith Palmer 1/24/04 12:17 p.m.
           Re: Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place toAdam Ashwell 1/24/04 1:21 p.m.
                 Re: Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place toSteve Levinson 1/24/04 9:57 p.m.
                 Re: Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place toBalzac 1/25/04 12:12 p.m.
     Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Wejam The Carter 1/24/04 5:16 p.m.
           Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***James Smith 1/24/04 6:02 p.m.
           Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Mark Levin 1/24/04 9:16 p.m.
                 Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Adam Ashwell 1/25/04 4:47 a.m.
                       Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***thermoplyae 1/25/04 5:39 a.m.
           Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Steve Levinson 1/24/04 10:00 p.m.
                 Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Elliott 1/24/04 10:32 p.m.
                       Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Steve Levinson 1/25/04 6:56 a.m.
                             Sponsored by Kenneth Williams ;) *NM*zudo 1/25/04 9:40 a.m.
                             Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Wejam The Carter 1/25/04 2:47 p.m.
                                   Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Bob-B-Q 1/25/04 3:40 p.m.
                                         Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Wejam The Carter 1/25/04 5:11 p.m.
                                               Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***D-M.A. 1/26/04 12:58 a.m.
                                                     Re: Evil Volunteers - ***Mature Content***Wejam The Carter 1/26/04 6:15 a.m.
                                                     There you go bringing ASS into it again... no msg *NM*Andrew "Document" Nagy 1/27/04 2:10 p.m.
           Perversity lies in the eye of the beholder =) *NM*Vid Boi 1/25/04 12:10 p.m.
     Re: Evil Volunteers - All dressed up, no place to Tasnu Arakun 1/25/04 3:24 a.m.

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