: This is the living end, folks... Your last trip to the Pfhor ship in this
: game. All you have to do is plow through swarms of Wasps, a few squads of
: Troopers, and reach the exit.
: You stat off next to a 2x health charger, which you will probably need very
: badly after the previous level. Do NOT clear your clip here, or a pile of
: Wasps will rise from the slime (to which they are apparently immune, as
: they are also immune to the lava on the Marathon) and butter your muffin.
: The network of slime canals they live in is actually quite complex, too
: bad there's no way to explore it (I don't believe there is ever enough
: space to grenade hop out of it).
: The first room you reach has the first of the level's surprises: Troopers
: fighting Compilers. The Troopers will probably win, since the Compilers
: don't seem to want to move. This whole room strikes me as some sort of
: programming center, where the Pfhor would bring Compilers to receive
: orders or renew their telepathic bonds every so often. It would be here
: that the S'pht first realize that the Pfhor cyborg is dead and they are
: free.
: The next set of corridors, with a drop, has a nasty deathtrap: Right around
: the corner from the ledge is a slime canal set at just the right point for
: you to fall in if you just run around the corner without looking. Step
: carefully sideways off the edge and continue jumping.
: What's that assault rifle doing there? Sadly, I think we must chalk this up
: to gameplay. You do need grenades to complete this level, and it's been
: two levels since you've gotten any new ammo.
: Make sure you take the right turn from the assault rifle first, and open the
: doors that let you out of the only suicide room in the game (not counting
: a grenade hop). In this room, I saw something new on this runthrough: One
: of the troopers had already gone bezerk, before I fired a shot, and was
: attacking the Wasps buzzing around him. Hmm...
: Next stop is the... incubator, I guess. Much has already been said about the
: Pfhor egg, and I can't add anything to it, so go read the appropriate
: Story Page section. When grenading the switches, don't forget that on the
: Pfhor ship, the grenades will travel in a perfectly straight line. Also
: don't forget that the alien egg is bulletproof, when trying to shoot the
: trooper or the hovering wasps. Another interesting point about this room
: is that the rows of hovering wasps are divided exactly into Major ones on
: the left and Minor ones on the right (on Normal. On any other difficulty
: the game will interfere with the monster types and one row will end up
: mixed).
: I must say that OS X made defeating this and the previous level very
: difficult. Large numbers of monsters and heavy projectile activity make
: Classic slow to a crawl, and even the greatest Marathon masters have
: trouble when running at one frame per second(!).
Another point about this level.
HoT Question of the week #23:
Riddle me this?
Time is limited.
I have no words but I must read.
Four switches and a choice.
Choose wrong, switch none,
and I might fail.
What level is this and why?
