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	Message: : : Last time on Tour of Duty we hit switches and had some fun with 5D space, : then ran away from some MoaHs and did indeed get out of the station. And : now we should be at the primary power facility. And we start right in : front of a terminal, so we can ... yes! We can confirm that the teleport : went according to plan - well done Mithrandir. Now we're on an : extermination mission combined with inserting a couple of uplink chips. : Should be fun! : : : : : We're in a sewer area - I guess the power is some kind of bio deal? I've just : realised it is a reasonably typical place for Marathon to have power stuff : going on. There are a couple of Fighters right here, then just to the west : and along a bit is a quite subtle door in the wall - I actually missed it : for a good while when I played through when we started this ToD! It's : pretty important too, because within the room inside, after we dispatch a : few more pirates, we find a wall locker with the first uplink chip - wow : that was quick! : And not only that, but back out and past the terminal, there are stairs up to : a small room with more pirates, a Pattern Buffer, and a weirdly opening : and closing section of wall. If we go in past it and wait for it to close, : another wall opens to reveal where we insert that chip - it's not obvious : that that's what we're looking at; it looks more like a standard switch, : but there you are. That should be the mission half done! Yeah, right :) : At the bottom of those stairs we can also see down through rusty fencing, : some Troopers and a 2x recharger, mmm.... Continuing on past where we : found the chip, there's another interesting mechanic. A switch on the wall : lowers the platform blocking our way, and reveals a Hunter on approach. If : we step past the blocking platform, more pirates jump down from above for : a two-sided attack - tricky! But that's not all: there's a passage up : there, and if we stand on that platform we can just reach the switch to : send it back up, and there's a bunch of ammo up there to sweeten the deal. : A switch in the north wall sends the platform back down. : A couple of sewer F'lickta were also down there waiting for us in what turns : out to be a landing in a spiral staircase going both ways. We head down to : start, and wade through a passage with several doors coming off it. The : first right takes us to several encounters with pirates, including some : that pop out of containers to take us from behind. At the end of this area : is a loop around with several Fighters that don't seem to want to move. : Shooting them to get them out of the way, we find a door to a back room : with two Galaxans and a terminal. This offers an update on the mission - : it seems that the original signal that started our adventures might just : have been a ruse, to take attention away from the impending pirate attack : - IN SPACE! So we're to hurry up ... but this is Marathon, and outside of : Rubicon, time never mattered much. : : : : : First left off the initial sewer corridor has a F'lickta and a Pattern Buffer : - so soon!? Second right has a really nice ammo cache, as was promised in : the first terminal, including shotgun shells here, woo! We also meet the : Troopers we spotted down by the 2x recharger earlier, because here in the : wall is the lift we were looking at, and we can take it up to said : recharger ... and a weird death trap hole, but not the pit of the title, I : don't think :) : Around the end of the initial corridor we find tables of SPNKR ammo and an : adjoining room with actual SPNKRs! Plenty for everyone, like one extreme : to the other for this scenario. There's a switch that reveals another : switch here, but the second switch doesn't seem to want to do anything. I : guess there might be something to do with the random square room on the : map as we have seen in past levels? It is an annoyingly shaped map anyway. : I'll bring it up here, just before we head to the massive open space - the : real pit. : : That's back up the stairs and up again. It's a commitment going in there : because there's a dropoff. What a hassle. There're loads of pirates in : there! It's probably grenade jumpable but it would be hard to avoid damage : down there. At least we now definitively have a SPNKR, so we can just have : some fun from the edge! : Once down there, we note that there isn't much in the way of an exit ... but : there's a hole in the middle! Falling down there teleports us to the small : tower nearby, from which we can hit two switches down very narrow : corridors north and west. These open sections of the wall north and : southwest. If we head north, we end up at a terminal complaining that we : haven't finished the mission, and have to head back to find a teleporter : that gets us out - conveniently to the landing, from which we can go save, : recharge, and re-ammo depending on difficulty :). : : : : If we head southwest instead, we encounter some really weird map behaviour - : it seems to report open areas where there are walls - all the way up as : far as we can see. And this is not the last time things go weird like : that. There are a few pirates, and a door that opens based on proximity, : and which is worth following up, because it has a 3x recharger hidden : away! More pirates follow as we explore this sewer passage, including some : popping out of a container behind us yet again - the M1ness of this : scenario is quite fun sometimes, the need for containers rather than just : teleport spawning, and I just keep looking for secrets inside them! : At the end of the passage we get teleported to a small area with a terminal : and another uplink chip wall closet. The terminal even tells us it's : there, which is nice. It also warns that the pirates have sent in a : Juggernaut, and we're like what! We thought we were done here. Instead, if : we go to the corridor behind and insert the uplink chip, the teleporter : that opens just takes us back to the fail message on the final terminal - : they're still not happy. Conveniently though, as Mithrandir says, the : teleporter we're supposed to go through renders us invincible so that we : can take on the Juggernaut in style! Oh, and THAT is where that little : square room comes in: it houses the inincibility powerup. : : : : : The Juggernaut also has MoaH friends - they never mentioned that! They all : take a pounding, and I think I was on Kindergarten just now for the : writeup :). Now, assuming you have killed all of the other pirates on the : level (or whatever the actual requirements are, you can repeat the trip to : the southwest and then head to the final terminal. The other terminals on : the level are no longer active, and Mithrandir explains that this is due : to our powering up for that fight - that's kind of cool. He also talks : about new aliens on the orbiting ship, and experiments being done on them : - and we're off to ... watch? I guess that's a good plan. : : : : : Billy is taking the next level again. I decided to make this a double feature : tonight, and got it all done on my four hour bus trip :).
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