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 | Tour of Duty - Bigger Guns Nearby | |
| Posted By: PerseusSpartacus | Date: 6/29/12 12:07 p.m. |
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Welcome to the second edition of Tour of Duty. Seeing as we have a lot of ground to cover, and we're only in the very early levels, I'm gonna speed things up a bit at first. I'll slow down on the posts once I get to more interesting levels, but for now we'll go kinda fast. This edition, we'll discuss level 2 (or 01, depending on how you look at it) of M1A1, 'Bigger Guns Nearby'. Once more, we begin inside a little offshoot of a room. If we look around, we'll probably see this:
So this is a jump pad. The last one we'll ever see. Well, that's another story. As you can see, it's kinda dim in here. At this point, we're probably used to it, given how we've been crawling through the narrow passageways of Hangar 7A for the past few minutes. This level seems a little more open, but the geometry is weird. Instead of the sharp 90/45 degree angles we saw for most of Arrival, we have some pretty odd geometry here. Our first encounter with a Fighter isn't very tough. Okay, it's a little painful for the alien, but it's the same with most close encounters. The first terminal is a little inconsistent, if you ask me. Leela mentions finding the Assault Rifle before she even explains what our goal here is (our goal being to find the Assault Rifle). First she says: "I cannot teleport you out of this section from here, so you will have to leave from another terminal after you find the assault rifle." Then on the next page she explains: "There is an M-75 Assault Rifle/Grenade Launcher and ammunition at this location. When firing on the fully automatic setting this weapon is highly inaccurate, but the grenades hit hard and it's the best we can do right now." All very odd. Of course, there is the fuss about the fully automatic setting on the Assault Rifle, which you can read about here. In sum, a tantalizing terminal. Moving on, we find ourselves in a dark area. If you follow the right wall, you can surprise a Fighter from behind. Always feels good to snap some poor alien's back with a nice punch. On the other hand, new players would probably take the left wall and get surprised from the rear by the chittering of a Fighter. Either way, the fists do him in easily. We can go into the room with the platform stairs, but they are currently down and thus we can't quite get to the Pattern Buffer and the door. Oh well. The encounter in the Assault Rifle room isn't too hard on lower difficulties. Use the pistol to take out the Compiler, then mop up the Fighters with your Fists. On harder difficulties, however, you may want to ensure that the Fighters engage you in the large green room just a little ways back, that way you have some nice space to run around in and develop enough momentum for some expert run-punching. Once that's done with, we can repair any damage received from the battle with that handy 1x Shield Recharger. We can also stuff a fresh clip into our Assault Rifle and prepare to get messy with it - I'm sure some AR- and Grenade-inflicted carnage appeals to all of us, given how we've mostly been playing lather, rinse, repeat with the Fighters. Now, the switch in this room doesn't seem to do anything beyond deactivating the lights in this room. I'll have to study a bit with Weland. The next few rooms aren't very tough. Indeed, in the first dark room with the sunken pit, the three Fighters (one Purple, one Orange, and one Green, when playing on Kindergarten) tend to make a beeline straight for you, at which point you can pop a grenade right into the middle of them and take them all out at once. No mess, no fuss. Okay, there are some pretty bad yellow stains, but those blend in nicely with the caution stripes. Remember to grab the two Magnum clips for your pistol. As Leela said, ammo for the AR is scarce, so be prepared to fall back to your pistol. In fact, your fists are probably a better weapon for dealing with the Fighters. A short while later, we finally reach the switch which raises the stairs in the room below, allowing access to the Pattern Buffer and airlock door we saw earlier. At this point, with a bit of trial and error with grenade hopping, you can enter the raised area at point A1 on the map below:
Inside are two invisible Compilers waiting to give you a nice toasting and some ammo for the AR. Could come in handy. After investigating the secret room and heading up to the Pattern Buffer, we are eventually presented with a drop down to BioCore Vent #88A. Once we go down, it's difficult to get back up to the first part of the level without performing a tricky grenade jump. Normally, we would proceed straight through the normal path to BioCore Vent #88B, but we can skip the stairway and grenade hop up to another secret area, located at A2 on the map above. Inside is a Infravision Powerup, which colorizes our view so that friends (i.e. BoBs, which we have not met yet) are green, Pfhor are red, and the environment is blue. Unfortunately, S'pht show up blue as well, making them blend in with the background, and with all these Compilers floating around, we may not want to grab that powerup. After a bit of fighting through passageways and into a room with three pillars, we eventually encounter a trap. A trap, you say? Yes; if you proceed far enough, you'll trigger Compilers to drop down in front of and behind you, cutting off your escape route (temporarily). Luckily, you can spring the trap early by firing a shot into the air, causing the S'pht to drop down prematurely and allowing you some room to retreat if need be. After taking out the four Compilers that attack from above, we enter the final room. A quick bit of combat with some more Fighters allows us room to read a bit about tertiary doors and stuff being controlled by some guy named Durandal. I pound the switch, head up the elevator and read the terminal. Ah, so that's who Durandal is! This final terminal mentions something interesting. Leela says: "Tycho controls the science and engineering network." Skipping forward seventeen years, in M2 Durandal says that: "I wish that I had made [Bernhard] experience the humiliation that he inflicted on me, but he died before I got the chance." - Terminal 1, Nuke and Pave My question is, did Tycho kill him (Bernhard Strauss) without telling Durandal? It is quite possible that, in his rampant state, Tycho killed Bernhard. On Sorry Don't Make It So, Tycho implies not liking how he was bossed around by the colonists: "The Pfhor rebuilt me; the colonists never did anything but use me: "Tycho, realign microwave dish forty-nine" "Tycho, display the x-ray diffraction analysis of sample eta-seven," "Tycho, run a lambda diagnostic on the ramjet's magnetic field apparatus." - Terminal 1, Sorry Don't Make It So Isn't it possible that Tycho took his dislike and rage out on some of the colonists, including, perhaps, Bernhard Strauss? On the other hand, on Beware of Low-Flying Defense Drones, Tycho says: "I want you to pay for what you've done to these poor people. All of these people whom you've killed. They deserve vengeance." - Terminal 2, Beware of Low-Flying Defense Drones Of course, Tycho always was a fat liar about his intentions. ;) The music on this level is pretty good. It's more uplifting than the track for Arrival, but neither is it unfitting given the dimness of the level. It's also kind of suspenseful, which suits the level given how it twice makes reference to Durandal and prepares us for more plentiful combat (by giving us an Assault Rifle). We're on our way to learning the Tru7h. The lighting of the level, as I mentioned, is often dim, but at other times is nice and bright, a trend which carries on to the next level. I also find it interesting that, at several points, we can stare through the ceiling into outer space. It feels like a night sky glittering with stars, and you have to think about it to remind yourself that you're in a spaceship. On that note of being inside of a spaceship, the second edition of Tour of Duty has come to an end. As always, feel free to voice your opinions on what I said in this post and on the level in general. Cheers,
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