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	Re: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...
	Posted By: PerseusSpartacus	Date: 7/25/13 3:03 p.m.
	In Response To: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals... (Martin) : Previously on Tour of Duty we might have found Bernhard Strauss. We also : might have killed him, early reports are sketchy on the details. He may : even have been among those prone on test beds. Either way, we did our best : to leave no respawning Pfhor alive, and Durandal obligingly let us : leave.... I don't think we killed Bern[?h]ard Strauss. The reason is simple. On Nuke and Pave (it's the only terminal in existence there, so you can't miss it), Durandal says: I wish that I had made him experience the humiliation that he inflicted on me, but he died before I got the chance. He also says at the end of Neither High Nor Low: I will be watching everything. If we killed Bernhard Strauss, and Durandal was watching everything, you'd think he would know we did it, and would respond to that somehow, perhaps even teleporting us into space and leaving us to get zapped by the Pfhor. : Back to that walkway. Who builds such a thing? When it is purely to : (literally) trip up the player, I'm reminded of Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy : Quest, on encountering "the chomper": "What is this : thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of : chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No, I mean we shouldn't : have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?" "There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to." ;) : I've certainly fallen in the slime my fair share of times. Of course it : didn't used to be such a big deal thanks to Tozt-style takeoff! And given : that I tend to relax and get a bit careless after checking in at the : pattern buffer, that was quite an asset... Well, now that the TOZT only half-works as a jetpack, falling into that slime is a death sentence, plain and simple. Unless of course you can grenade jump your way out. : This path ends somewhat surprisingly with a very large room with yet more : enforcers and troopers. Again M1A1 was incredibly strict with exploration : on this level, and that was especially the case with this room. I trust : this is better in the beta (which is said as beater, just so you know). Yes, M1A1 was terribly strict with exploration, which led me to believe that Eupfhoria was actually an Extermination level. Also 'beater'? I always thought it was like 'baytah'. Then again, I say it 'Dur-uhn-dahl' when a lot of people seem to say it 'Du-rand-ul'. Oh well. : I've always loved the Pfhor door graphic and associated sound. First knew : them from Waldo World Arena, where I spent much time getting killed by my : brother back in the day, and of course my favourite part, suiciding with a : SPNKR into a just closed door - good times! And the sound was used in : another of my all- time favourite games, Escape Velocity: Override, for : the launching of Azdgari fighters. That game still holds the record for : the longest I've accepted waiting for a game to load up, at over 5 : minutes, while RAM Doubler did its best to convince it we had more than : 8MB. I too love the Pfhor doors. Very galaxy-like. I also am reminded of Waldo World Arena whenever I see them. : Anyway, through the current door, we find a small Fighter ambush from a : dead-end room with some freaky wall textures as Hamish recently mentioned. : More importantly, we find a 2x charger! Clear, after the first : playthrough, this is where we come first. Otherwise we always run the : risk, also recently discussed, of carelessly saving with too little health : to make the slime jump ... or is it? I have made a similar mistake on Eat : The Path, twice! But more on that ... in a few months' time at this rate. More like a year at this rate. :P Indeed, the solution to this problem is quite simple, but not very obvious. Hamish has his own version which removes the running, but I don't quite understand it. : Further on we find more fighters and enforcers around a central pillar with : four slime streams coming out from it, and it turns out that Pfhor don't : cross over even the very narrow slime channels, which makes the enforcers : all the more annoying. It is an interesting design - what is this : structure? What is this place overall, and again, what is the slime for? I : was reading the story page a few weeks ago, as one does, and was reminded : of the idea that the egg room on Ain't Got Time Pfhor This represents a : reactor - I know that's still a few levels hence, but could this be along : those lines as well? With the slime providing power to whatever systems. : Of course the question really has to be asked, why is it kept uncovered!? If the slime really is meant as some sort of fuel or something for a reactor, I think the fact that it's uncovered is meant to signify how little the Pfhor care about safety - a species that sends its crew to die in droves as cannon fodder and will use the death penalty nigh-indiscriminately probably wouldn't care about a few idiots falling into slime deposits. For all we know, the corpses just make the fuel more potent! : Carrying on, through another door, a trooper snipes at us from a much higher : vantage point, or we just SPNKR him before he wakes, as he deserves. : Indeed, "he". Troopers have always been male as far as I'm : concerned. Enforcers are really the only Pfhor I've always considered : female. Not sure why originally, but they do seem to be wearing green (yes : green) dresses. Funny, I never thought about gender distinctions in the context of the Pfhor. I just assumed they were all male, or that there was no such distinction with the Pfhor. : After wiping off the dirt and glue (need to get back to Tempus Irae, Civ V : expansion claiming too much time!) we have our second? encounter with : deactivated hunters. They are deactivated, and we may know this from their : brown "shell", for want of a better word at this point. I guess : green means going :D. The fact that they're deactivated is obvious on Total Carnage (where everything becomes Major), but on anything less, it becomes quite plausible to find a bazillion brown Hunters bunched together. Somehow I'm picturing Rockslider physically ducking to avoid getting killed. :D : Thanks to PS for the opportunity to practice such a post before hitting the : hard stuff in M2 :). I'll be back for the next level as well - bonus! Not to mention Try Again. ;) Vale, Perseus

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Replies:

	Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...	Martin	7/25/13 2:08 p.m.
	Re: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...	PerseusSpartacus	7/25/13 3:03 p.m.
	Re: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...	Martin	7/25/13 3:16 p.m.
	Re: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...	PerseusSpartacus	7/25/13 3:33 p.m.
	Re: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...	Martin	7/25/13 3:42 p.m.
	Re: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...	PerseusSpartacus	7/25/13 3:51 p.m.
	Re: Tour of Duty - Two Times Two Equals...	Godot	7/25/13 10:03 p.m.

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