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	Message: : : Last time on Tour of Duty, we freed some Galaxans that we unfortunately had : to kill. We start off in a dark hallway, but if we move forward without : turning, we would miss the terminal in the small dead-end cylinder we were : teleported into. The faint glimmer effect on the lower walls may have been : done just to draw our eyes to turn around. Credit to nice, subtle design : choices that work when it appears in this scenario. : : : : : : : Ah, kill everything in sight. That’s the modus operandi of FPS games. When we : proceed, two pfhor fighters ambush us, and it’s actually hard to evade : getting whacked with their staffs in this cramped space if you want to go : fisticuffs on ‘em, but there’s a 2x charger right around the corner to : negate that bad idea. The lift replaces any bullets we plugged the pf… : PIRATES… plugged the pirates with, and there’s a door at the bottom. It : slowly opens to reveal a dark hallway full of, er… platforms of some sort. : : I think the terminal explained what these do? Oh yeah, it’s the “offsite : teleport control.” A a bunch of pirates running around on and between : them. But we can’t get back up! This is the second map in a row we lost : our 2x charger after leaving the first room! This Devil in a Blue Dress is : a cruel mistress. : A slot for a repair chip is on one side of this hall, and the chip is in a : drawer right on the other side! As map design, it feels pointless, but if : we’re supposed to suspend our disbelief that this is a real location, it’s : realistically convenient. Now I’m tempted to think of all the times in M1, : M2, and MI’s maps that these chips were located far away from the slots : they go into for no real reason besides “so the map won’t be too short or : easy.” All the ambient noised in this room stop when we insert it, so did : we just turn this thing off? And, err… : : These red recolors of that lh’owon slab thing are in an animation cycle : flipping between a mirror of itself. Um. Why? Now there’s a terminal. : : : So we activated the offsite teleport system, we didn’t deactivate it. : DiaBD guys, it might be a decade or two late to be a backseat editor, but… : you oughta check the ambient sound’s flags on those polygons. : And here’s what it says if we didn’t activate it before reading: : : : Which, um… isn’t true? I replayed this and you can open the door in this room : without using the chip, albeit the lights are shut off. Maybe it’s : referring to something else. : When we open the door, pfhor fighters storm out of the floodgates, but we : have the advantage of higher ground on this stairwell, and it looks like : there’s pattern buffers on the bottom! Oh joy, I’m happy to see it’s not : at the very end like Free Falling two maps ago (and Martin uncovered the : mystery of the disconnected room on the map, so if you’re going for 100% : with all secrets, you should go back and look at his reply to that : thread). Oh, but none of them are working! And there’s a deactive 2x : charger here, too. Ahahahahahaha pf’rk my life. One of the buttons raises : a door temporarily with a repair chip in it, and there’s a garbage : terminal here that looks like it’s just here to waste our time so the door : closes and shuts us in. : : : : But we can tab the door open on the other side, so phew. Putting the chip in : the slot available dims the lights and all this useful stuff is still : turned off, including a terminal we can’t read (I think Martin mentioned : this unusable terminal in an email?), but I think it opened a door? (Well… : no, that’s already open. I guess the only way to find out what exactly : these chips do is to play the map without using them and see what : happens.) And some more pf.. PIRATES are in there, including troopers, and : another 2x that won’t work; but there’s a pattern buffer that DOES work, : and an inactive oxygen charger for some reason. A button opens another : door with more troopers that come out to kill us. At least we got to save : here ;) : So, there’s a terminal in here: : : : So that other terminal wasn’t just there to waste our time. It was a message : from the galaxans! And… brain receptacle area? All these years I assumed : the biological part of the s’pht was in the top part, not the part you can : only see when they… well… flash you. I don’t think it’s ever been : confirmed where they’re sitting in there. : The next room (after clearing away the troopers) has a bunch of galaxans that : ambush us by dropping down from the ceiling ala Bigger Guns Nearby. : There’s weird pillars in this room, but one corner has ammo tucked away : that’s really easy to miss, so be sure to comb the area!a : The door in this room is a lift that takes us down to a big stairwell with a : bunch of pirates waiting to get ‘sploded! A good thing I can say about : this scenario is it gives us plenty of big, clustered groups to use SSM : missiles on! Btw, what does SSM stand for? At the top is a narrow hall : with one door that won’t open, but the door at the end opens up to a weird : room with a barred pool that has f’lickta swimming in it (and more : pirates). In my playthrough the last pirate standing successfully kills : off the f’lickta with its shock staff and he, in turn, succumbs to a : single magnum round =) : : The room has a button that does… idunno, but there’s an opening at the end of : the bars to the pool and we’re actually forced to dive under and do some : swimming to navigate here. How did this play out in the M1 version? Was it : the vacuum level there? But there’s a lift with an annoying water f’licta : that just won’t get out of the way, and we don’t have a flechette to make : quick work of him. At the top is a narrow hall full of those green ceiling : lamps, and one actually bars the path until we punch it! At the bottom of : a drop there’s a s’p… GALAXAN standing in the way of a button. : : But when we get too close, a bunch of pfhor—PIRATES—hop out in an ambush and : I scramble backwards for safety… but the stupid lift into swampwater makes : this… awkwardly dangerous. If there’s only one of those s’pht, maybe this : won’t be so bad, but one wrong move could mean death with the amount of : shield I have left. The s’pht — GALAXAN — out of existence, and there’s : definitely a second one floating behind him. This is a really annoying : battle as he has a habit of hiding and only popping out when I get close, : and I have to wait for the lift at each turn like this is a really slow : RPG. : The water in this area rises and lowers at an erratic rate; sometimes it will : be just lightly bobbing up and down and then flood the whole room to : nearly the top for a whole minute. There’s holes in the floor here where : the pirates fall down because stupid AI I guess, and it looks like a door : here is that same door that wouldn’t open that we passed earlier. : : : The one usable 1x shield recharger on the map is in this room, but there’s : nothing else to do here but presss a button, which opens a wall full of : pirates, a f’licta, and an orange galaxan. Great. There’s a terminal in : there: : : : : So I guess we gotta insert those chips. And in my research backtracking, I : can deduce that the non-chip button rises the holes in this room… so it’s : to our advantage to ignore it and let the pirates drown? huh. Oh, by the : way, here’s the full map; we’ve explored almost the whole place by now. : : Do you see it? When I said almost I wasn’t kidding. There’s a secret I : missed in the room after the big staircase! Tabbing that wall with the : octagon on the other side does a sleek door animation of 3 polygons : opening in sequence, and it’s a room full of ammo. : : And it’s not even that much. Just AR bullets and grenades. Come on, a 2x or : 3x would be appreciated, and I'm starved on the fusion plasma. Here’s what : the last terminal says after we’ve done our job. : : : : : : A reactor that’s about to blow? Oh no! And that AI name sounds very : s’pht-like… part of me wishes they’d try to make galaxans feel different : from the s’pht in dialect, but whatever. Maybe this is one of those : alternate universes where things that parallel each other are uncannily : familiar in all ways. Join us next time where we enter the galaxan ship’s : reactor and get a new chapter screen.
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