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	Message: : : Yeah... so this took longer than it should have – like, way longer. My : apologies – I basically got sidetracked on a dozen other things for the : last two to three weeks. I meant to write this up and get it posted Friday : before last, but never got around to it. So, here I am, back for my first : Tour of Duty since my "guest" contribution for By Committee : back in August 2014 (been a while, I'd say). : Last time on the Tour of Duty, Martin led us through a recreation level, : crushed a Juggernaut with a pool's child/adult isolation mechanism, and : hunted down Drones in a water maze. Isn't our new world fun? Kind of : reminds me of our old world, the one where we were able to literally punch : holes in alien soldiers with our super-human stre-- wait a minute, that : sounds the same as this world... : But that's besides the point. In the final terminal of the last mission, : Merlin tried to tell us where he was sending us, but was interrupted by a : sharp burst of static, and then told us he still lacked full control over : his systems. Not a lot of information to go on starting this mission, but : maybe we'll learn more after the loading screen is finished? : When we beam in, we find ourselves in a fairly large, pretty rusty and very : dark room. We must be in the Sewage texture set, which is unfortunate, : because that is my least favorite texture set (especially in M2) and it : tends to be associated with some mildly annoying levels – this map is no : exception. The overall mood of this level is very dark, with little light, : lots of rust, and a number of tight areas with little room to maneuver. : Near the back wall where we start are two Magnum clips (yoink!), which may or : may not be useful on this particular level (though they would certainly : come in handy if you were scratch-starting, something I dare not try on : this level). On the opposite wall is a terminal between two doors. It : would be foolish to go anywhere without first trying to get some intel, so : we naturally open the terminal: : So maybe this wasn't where we were supposed to go. Merlin is definitely : starting to worry about the integrity of his systems, his sensors are : going funky, and we don't have a lot to go on other than "hit any : switches you find." But we would have done that anyway, right? : Now to try out those doors. The one on the right leads to... nothing. It : won't open, yet. Opening the one on the left, we're in for a bit of a : shock, as directly behind it is a whole group of Fighters and, worst of : all, flame Ticks. If you've never encountered these before, they're just : like regular Ticks, but when they die, they burst into flame, making a : fairly dangerous explosion, and they will actively try to kamikaze on you. : Fortunately, if you keep your distance, you can shoot the one directly in : front of you, and he'll likely set off a chain reaction, blowing up all : the other Ticks and most, if not all, of the Fighters. : Just beyond the door is the first of the long series of switches we need to : hit. If you toggle it now, and then return to the first room, you'll find : that the right door has now opened, to reveal another door directly behind : it. Basically, the goal of this map is to find all ten switches and hit : them, opening a series of ten doors that will allow us to come back here : and enter the final room. : Going back through the left door, we find another, somewhat brighter room, : with a central pedestal and some [?spokes?platforms] coming out from : said pedestal. On this pedestal is an Assault Rifle (again, not : particularly helpful to us, but great if you're scratch-starting), and on : each spoke, there's an AR Magazine – much needed ammo. To the left of the : pedestal is a 1x Recharger, and on the far wall, there's a clip of AR : Grenades. Also on the far side is the entrance to a long staircase. A : purple Fighter is standing at the top of it, but he's facing the wrong : way, and doesn't seem to have heard the commotion with the Ticks earlier – : how inattentive! A few pistol rounds and some careful punching takes care : of him, though it's worth noting that this map has very few places where : the Fists come in handy – the tight spaces and the presence of these : stairs make the footwork very difficult. : Let's have a gander at the map before we go on: : The starting room is in the top left, and as we can see, the room we are in : lets us onto a sort of Nautilus shell-shaped spiral staircase. On this : staircase are four of the switches we need to hit (nice), and a large : number of enemies (not so nice). Amongst this pile of Pfhor-- I mean, : "pirates", are three Hunters and about six Troopers. The Hunters : are slightly troublesome given that we don't have a Fusion Pistol yet, but : the Troopers are the real threat here, as they will continue to be : throughout this level. The fact that we're fighting on a staircase makes : maneuvering difficult (it's very hard to maintain traction with the floor : in this game when that floor keeps dropping away). : It's interesting to note that we're introduced to Troopers and Hunters after : Juggernauts in this scenario. Very unusual, I'd say, but at least the : Juggernaut had a simple weakness – these guys just have to be gunned down : with an Assault Rifle, unless you found the secret Shotguns on the last : level, but those don't have much ammo, so it's better to save those until : some of the later, more close-quarters parts of this map. : After slogging through this mass of enemies and hitting all four of the : switches on the way, we reach the bottom, only to find a drop-off into a : small pool of sewage. If we go down there, there's no way back out, but : there's another switch and a door – since there's nowhere else to go, : we'll have to drop down and trudge through the slimy muck. Better hope we : brought waders, because this is gonna get messy! : The sewage is at least waist-deep, and the lights are rather dark – overall, : the atmosphere here is very bleak. Going through the door and down a : narrow hallway, we come to another door on the right. Opening it, we come : to a very dark room, with a central pillar and two alcoves on either side. : On the front of the pillar is a switch, though not of the type that we : were hitting earlier. If we move forward to toggle it, we're greeted by : the murmurs of "pirates" on either side of us – it's a Trooper : ambush! Hitting the switch turns on some lights in the room, making it a : bit easier to see them coming for us. : The waist-deep sewage makes it somewhat perilous to use grenades, which, if : fired too low, can detonate in the sewage directly in front of you. This : makes this ambush something of a challenge. If you have the Shotguns from : before, you could use them now to take the Troopers on directly. However, : shells are precious, and it's easier to just retreat back behind the door : you came in from – the Troopers can't open it, so you can hide behind, : opening it when you want to either let a Trooper come to you so you can : gun him down, or pop out from behind cover and let a Grenade loose. After : a brief while, the ambush is dispatched, and we can now move into the room : safely. : On the left side (from our perspective as we enter the room) of the pillar : has a Pattern Buffer on it, the first and only one on this level. This is : actually quite critical, because there is no way to recharge your shield : from here until you can return to the original room with the 1x charger – : better save now, so as to make sure we don't pay too heavy a price for any : unfortunate accidents! : There's nothing else in the alcoves, but there is some much-needed ammo – a : pistol clip, two AR magazines and two grenade clips – along the northwest : wall. What's even more frustrating, believe it or not, is that there's a : Shotgun up on a high ledge in the east alcove, but as far as I can tell, : it's unreachable, because the ledge is roughly two world units above the : floor of the room we're in. There are no teleporters that lead to this : ledge, and the only way I even know that it's there is because I happened : to spot it in the map-maker. Maybe you could grenade jump up there to get : it? That would require you have taken very little or no damage in the : preceding battle, and it would be very little reward anyways, as there's : only one Shotgun and no ammo for it – in fact, if you already got the two : secret Shotguns on the last level, there's no reward here at all. Might as : well move along, then. : Heading to the south end of the large, sewage-filled room we're in, we see a : long corridor that ends in a wall below a door way up high. That doesn't : seem right, so we move closer to inspect this corridor – when you get : close enough, the floor raises up to form a staircase up to that high : door. Yay, we're getting out of the sewage! : At the top of the staircase is a small room with two of the switches we're : supposed to hit. Up ahead is a hallway leading to another door. If you're : feeling like there's something suspicious about this hall, you should. As : you approach the end, enemies teleport in all around you – specifically, : one Major Trooper in front of you, and two Minor Troopers and two Fighters : behind you. This is probably the most dangerous part of the mission, thus : the reason they gave us that Pattern Buffer a minute ago. With just an : Assault Rifle, this part is particularly difficult, as you have to quickly : gun down the enemies behind you to get away from the Major Trooper, who is : the main threat here. With Shotguns, however, this is a bit easier, and we : can retreat back the way we came to get behind a corner where the Trooper : can't shoot us. Popping out from behind cover, we can shoot at him as he : tries to march down the hall towards us. : With those nasties despatched, we can go through the door ahead. This leads : to another hallway, with an indented light containing an AR magazine on : our right, and a terminal on our left. Let's read: : : This terminal actually reminds me of the terminal way back on Defend THIS! : in which Leela explained her initial findings about the Pfhor and the : different types of enemy we had yet to encounter. So we now have a future : objective in sight: saving Rock Island Station. I'm a little puzzled by : the reference to "normal space" – any ideas what he might be : referring to there? : Merlin tells us to return to the transporter room so we can make our way to : the surface. There's still a ways for us to go yet before we can get : there, though. Directly ahead and on the right is a small, open door with : a green light at the top, which leads to another tiny room with an : identical passageway on the far left. This little bit of architecture : reminds me of the early parts of Colony Ship for Sale, Cheap , with the : awkward, dark passageways filled with Lookers waiting to explode under our : feet. : Interestingly enough, the room just past this contains the M2 equivalent of : Lookers – namely, more Kamikaze Ticks! The map editor actually calls them : "Tick Kamakazi", which is a very odd spelling (or mis-spelling) : indeed, but whatever. There is a central stairway here, with two dark : areas on either side. Two Troopers sit at the top of the stairs, and a : whole host of Ticks wait on either side of the stairs. Fortunately, the : Troopers will actually shoot at the Ticks, so we just have to sit back and : kill only one or two Ticks that actually come after us. After that, it's : fairly easy to mop up the Troopers. And what a mess those Ticks leave – : corpses everywhere! : There's nothing of interest in this dark room besides the stairs, which lead : to a drop-off. Again, with nowhere else to go, we take the plunge, only : this time there's no sewage at the bottom. Unfortunately, there's a fork : here, with two narrow passageways leading left and right, both rather : dark. Some of the Ticks from earlier actually came from these corridors, : but we didn't see them come out, so you'd only know this by looking in the : map editor. Whichever way we go, after coming to a corner, we hear enemies : teleporting in up ahead. Specifically, two Major Fighters, two Minor : Projectile Fighters, and four Minor Troopers. Again, Shotguns might help : a bit, but we don't have much ammo yet, so it might be wiser to just hose : down the "pirates" with our trusty Assault Rifle – after all, in : these close quarters, most of the bullets are bound to hit, so why not : capitalize on the improved efficiency? : It turns out those two pathways both curve around to the same place. On one : side of where they meet is a small alcove, and on the other side is a : hallway. Inside this hallway are the last two switches we need to hit. : This may appear to be a dead-end, but if you step into the alcove on the : other side, you'll be teleported back to the room where we found the first : switch and the 1x Shield Recharger – thank goodness, we could probably use : a recharge right about now! Funnily enough, if you had stepped into the : teleporter before hitting those last two switches, you would've had to : go all the way back through the level just to get to them again – there'd : be no enemies to deal with, but still, who wants to go through that sludge : again? : Once that's done, we can head back to the starting room. The terminal is : closed now, but the right-hand door has opened up – in fact, it was ten : doors arranged to form a hallway, which is now open. This leads to the : final room – which is actually quite bright – in which we encounter : another enemy for the first time again – Compilers! The terminals in the : exposition level at the start of this scenario explained that these : Compilers are no longer S'pht, but rather "Galaxans", who it : describes as "mysterious aliens from another place who hold no malice : for humans, but don't like to be crossed." : It's sort of odd that they say they have "no malice for humans", : because these Compilers are actually hostile! Not only that, but a few of : them are invisible! They are all easily dispatched with an Assault Rifle, : though you could save ammo by using your Fists. If you retreat out to the : starting room, however, the invisible Compilers become significantly more : dangerous, as they are very hard to see in the dark. Better to deal with : them in the brighter final room, where their shadowy forms stand out : against the well-lighted walls. : Not much else in this final room, other than the end terminal, which we shall : read: : Well, I guess that does it for this level! Next time on Tour of Duty, I'll be : taking us through an even longer level, featuring a treacherous door, an : open-air courtyard chock-full of pirates, a series of anatomical : analogies, and civilians that just won't get out of the way! : Vale, : Perseus
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