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	Message: : : Chapter 1: The Great Pyramid : Last time on Tour of Duty, I reiterated the manual’s introduction as the : prologue to the write-up. Now I begin the game proper. I’m currently : writing this up in My Own Private Lh’owon but will be back by the time I : post it as there’s no internet up here. : I am playing the OSX port of Pathways into Darkness on an emulator, running : on windowed mode to allow me to take screenshots and write this up on : Word. (I don’t think my VM screenshots will carry over to the main OS) : After beginning a new game we start in the antechamber I was locked in last : chapter with my torch already on and staring at a dark hallway. : http://lion-o-cyborg-iii.tumblr.com/image/124501354437 : (I couldn't find out how to get the image URL itself after fixing the image : size so I've only left a log link here. I thank Perseus Spartacus for : fixing the other image URLs.) : It’s still 6:13 according to my watch and it appears that when I click on : another window so the view goes dark, the game pauses. I hope that means : the clock pauses too or else I’ll be writing these up for in-game hours at : a time. : Moving forward, we enter a junction in the middle of the floor: there’s an : orange pebble by some red pillars to my left near a rotting Nazi, several : bones here and there and a blue glyph in the centre of the room. : : I pick up the ammo clip in the corner and loot the body. My messages tell me : he’s a German soldier as if the red and black swastika on his sleeve : wasn’t obvious. I can’t complain because all adventure games (and some : RPGs too) do that sort of thing. He’s got some Walther P4 clips, a copy of : Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the pistol itself. : If I click the examine button, I get a nice little description of my items : with a little more imagination than most other games. It’s rather bland : right now but it picks up a bit later. : : I notice they spelt “Adolf” wrong but yeah, I don’t know any German off by : heart except for “nein” and I’ve more pressing concerns than the Fuhrer : “AH”‘s struggle. And I don’t mean his name if you catch my drift. (Feel : free to make a visual Red Dwarf Can’t cook won’t cook joke here.) But as a : trinket it will do. Into the canvas bag with that! : : The view-sprite looks a bit like the Walther from Wolfenstein 3D and the : picture looks like the pistol (a different one though I think) from : Bioshock Infinite. Also we hear a “Sonic ring” esque noise when picking it : up and I earn 1 XP for doing so. : Sorry for wasting time. Further on, we have a choice of right or left paths. : Going left brings me to a red pentagram and… Wait what the hell is that? : : I took a bit of damage trying to snap the bugger without the “shadow” problem : -due to the view window darkening when I pause- as opening the snipper : when unpaused leaves me defenceless and he wanders out of frame before : puking what looks like a ball of ass mould at me. (Yuck!). : This guy is a headless: a walking pair of orange trousers with a radula mouth : and long tongue where the belt is meant to be. When he fires, he keels : over like a pouty duck and spits the aforementioned smelly butt lint (it : could just be intestinal bile) and causing Eddings to cry out in pain. You : can strafe left and right with the Z and X keys but projectiles seem to : still hit you after dodging out of their path sometimes because your : hitbox is much wider than you think it is, so either Eddings is very fat : or the bile is clipping his ear. It hit me head on in the first two snip : attempts so it looked like it was going down his gob. It tastes like : Twilight Sparkle’s F’lickta maw sweat mixed with a 7 year old jar of : Branston Pickle. : Not wasting my valuable ammo, I jab him where his belly should be and he : yelps like a chicken before falling down after two hits. : There’s a ladder in the corner leading up a small round shaft to Lock & : Load. We however, backtrack across to the other path past a skeleton to : another similar room, but without the headless. The pentagrams like this : one and the one in the headless room are the respawn platforms of : prototype pattern buffers. (At least that’s how I’ve always seen them : anyway) : Sometimes, choosing a good savegame file can be a bit hard in a PID : playthrough, whereas in Marathon I just name them after the level I’m on. : Here you may need backups mostly because of the time limit, and you don’t : have many save slots. I think I’ll go with the name of the Marathon mod I : was going to make designs for: Path of K.A.P. : Don’t expect to see much in the way of this mod anytime soon as I’ve barely : started drawing concepts and just so far been thinking about both them and : story in my head. It was inspired by Pathways and the Binding of Isaac: : Rebirth while influenced by both personal events and dreams and nightmares : of my own but if I do eventually get around to building for it, I would : have to use Aleph One instead of Torch due to both Torch’s limitations and : the fact the Windows version isn’t out yet. (Not 100% anyway). : : So, taking the Ghostbusters’ advice, we climb up the ladder to the next : floor: Never Stop Firing. : Already there’s a save rune in front of us and the silence is unnerving. : There are no footsteps but I know what’s around those corners. : : I didn’t have time to dodge the bile before it hit me but the second headless : did accidently shoot the first one as I ran up to them so the first one : only took 1 hit. They sometimes appear to still need an extra hit if you : stab them and then they’re shot by other monsters, though friendly fire : can still finish them off for you. : Like in Marathon, you have glance controls for peeking round corners; the : Bungie equivalent to Thief and System Shock 1 and 2’s leaning controls. : They are Shift+ left or right which meant I could glance right just in : time to see and dodge another puke ball. : Saving in a new slot, I proceed down some more headless infested corridors, : dodging their puke and smirking when they hit one of their mates. There’s : no infighting in Pathways but monsters can still hurt each other at least. : : I can’t say much about the level design in this game other than how it looks: : it’s a set of repetitive mazes with automatic stone doors and some : puzzles, plus the very rare hidden warp zones to bypass certain other : floors like in Super Mario Bros, so I apologise if my write-ups appear too : simplistic, and don’t have too many screenshots as half the game is made : of those hallways. : What makes it memorable unlike Wolfenstein’s level design is the kind of : puzzles or routes you have per floor, the chilling, silent atmosphere : especially when playing late at night in a dark room as well as a better : variety of textures. Tell, me, what was your favourite Wolfenstein 3D : level: the blue, wooden and grey titular castle, the red, purple and grey : bunker or the yellow and grey castle? : Despite no actual difference in level design i.e. one floor levels and a : limited amount of wall angles, it at least feels like a multi-levelled : structure especially as you can go up and down between floors Ultima : underworld stairwell and System Shock 1 elevator style as you please : whereas Wolf 3D’s lifts served as level exits only. : Rise of the Triad at least had elevators that moved around sideways or at : minimum behaved like teleporters as well as Gravitational Anomaly Disks : that served as gondolas, lift platforms, stairs, walkways, toboggans for : the guards when they got bored etc. : Here, we currently have the green cobblestone and grey smooth stone floor and : ceiling textures of the pyramid proper. The door to our left here opens : when you pass; leading out to the middle path of the three we could take : earlier. I chose the right but you can start with Whatever You Please. : There may still be headlesses hiding in the middle path that can ambush : you when the door rattles open. : I also keep running over green rocks as Bungie hid ammo clips under them i.e. : layered behind their sprite and also in little alcoves to the side of the : halls. I just lay down for a bit in one in them as my health was a bit low : and was woken up a minute later by another headless and I’m now at 1.4 HP. : A couple of uneventful corridors later, we run into an undead skeleton in : a fancy headdress: : The game calls them zombies but they’re clearly skeletons. Like the headless : and other monsters, he looks like he’s goose-stepping as he walks because : they were all hand-drawn on paper and colored in Photoshop instead of : Doom’s (and possibly Marathon’s) method of digitising clay and metal : models. : Maybe one of those Nazi corpses came back, went native and is trying to : impress the saucy former Egyptian princess several floors down by : practicing his “Funny Walk”. Except she’s a ghast so pepper spray will be : the least of his worries if she gets offended by him. ;) : While unlike the skellies in Minecraft he has no longbow, he does however : chuck pieces of himself at me which sting a little. He throws one as I : unpause but I kill him in time with my pistol and find… : : …the men’s bathroom. Pulling the chain flushes the pan and spawns monsters we : wouldn’t encounter until Feel the power. There’s another one in the : women’s bathroom down the left path and pulling both lets us into the : disabled toilets in the middle path where upon flushing that one, the many : oozes combine into a giant shoggoth (sloppoth?) who proceeds to sing an : opera eulogy at us of “Shit day Aria”: : : It actually opens a door in the middle path partway, but not enough to : actually enter; we need to pull both chains to get in. : * * * : In writing the rest of this, from here, I’m sorry this has taken a while but : after writing the above passages and coming back home, I’ve recently been : sick with a stomach virus and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks : recovering. I currently write this section at home after wasting some time : playing the Binding of Isaac Rebirth. (On top of image URL trouble) : If you can imagine a top-down 2D version of PID with similarities to the : original Zelda and a difficulty curve so steep it loops around Earth and : Sol before ascending into the blackness on space, and dropping nukes on : anyone who dares to climb it except people who are forced to hack the game : in order to win, that’s pretty much what Isaac Rebirth is like. : : Sparing you guys the details, I work my way back to the chain with slightly : more health than last time and pull it. I now find I will have to use the : Save Anywhere cheat occasionally if I die and reload too much. I don’t : normally do this unless its dinner time and my pork chops aren’t going to : eat themselves; but it’s more for preventing me trudging back countless : times just to continue the write-up. : The noise mentioned in the messages is actually audible but definitely not : faint. It’s the sound of both the chain clanking and the door in the : middle path opening. I think it echo's as well but I can't be sure. I walk : back to the middle path door; we can use that as a shortcut back to the : save rune. : I’m ambushed by a headless after saving but I dodge his shot and drop him. : Now I take the left path through some twisting hallways with more squid : chickens and pass another door. This one connects to another part of the : left path but a second door just past it links back to the middle path : again. : : A headless approaches from around the corner and the door opens when I pass : it. Like the other one, there may still be more headlesses hiding in the : middle path. I found one on the return journey from the right so maybe I : got them all. : Just around that bend I find the other side of the outer path door. There, I : find a couple of Walther clips among some bones in two side rooms; each : guarded by a headless. The second one comes to investigate when I kill the : first. More twisty headless halls later I find yet another outer path door : and a crossroads just beyond. : : The left path is just a side room as the right path eventually loops back : around. A tag team of two headless jump me as I start down it: the one in : the side room shoots but I dodge and kill it only to just barely avoid : being lint-balled by the one at the end of the hall. More wanderings later : I kill two or three headless and a skeleton before finding the second : chain. : : I go to sleep (uninterrupted this time) before pulling it in order to heal. I : couldn’t get a screenshot of the dialog box so I may have to cheat and add : it in from the PID story page. (Post writing, I've just looked for it in : the Story Page's image page but I can't find the image page so I can't : show it. Sorry.) : After pulling it and with full health; I walk back through the outer path : doors to the inner path door to the middle, stopping to grab the ammo clip : I missed in the side room earlier. There was another headless in there : when I arrived so either there were two all along or the first one : respawned. : And now, I walk up the middle pathway (into darkness) passing some pillars : and bones, fighting headless and picking up more clips. The middle path : weaves more tightly than the others and there are a lot of headlesses : here. Finally I find the door we opened with the chains, guarded by four : headless and a skeleton. : : After all that trouble, we enter the columned room inside and find the yellow : Isfet Crystal. : : : We earn 2 XP for finding it and now we can talk to corpses. That stiff on the : ground floor should be a good start. We return down the middle path to the : ladder and climb down again before saving. : Now it’s time to use the yellow crystal. Currently I stand on the Nazi’s : body. : *clears throat* : CATO. MATA. AMUTADRESPTGHDFLISGHLIDFHGKIDS! : : : I ask him about the jungle but he waves away the question. : : Maybe he had a bad time outside. This is the Mexican rainforest, although : look how coming in here helped him. : : So, anyway, urm… Mr amnesiac German; since you’re dead do you mind telling me : what happened? : : : We will be hearing a lot about Muller from most of these guys before meeting : him underground. However we can’t get underground because the two doors : are locked. I ask about the doors. : : : Playing an instrument in a certain way to open catacombs/dungeons? Maybe some : of the Nintendo team behind the first 3D Zelda were Macintosh gamers. ;) : I can ask him about the blue rune but it isn’t necessary. He doesn’t say : anything else so let’s leave him and go to the left ladder room again. : Before I leave, let’s show everyone the map of the last floor we were on : courtesy of Perseus Spartacus: : I won’t show an image of the Ground Floor just yet as we can’t yet explore : the whole map until after we use the Alien Pipes. : Thanks to everyone who put up with me and my errant ramblings, and I’ll give : you more errant ramblings in Chapter 2 of the PID Tour of Duty. I will : definitely be tackling Lock & Load but there is the Mario dilemma in : They may be slow afterward.
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