: Kindergarten certainly was my preferred difficulty, and still is for stuff
: like Marathon: Phoenix (the final level on there is a killer, even on
: Kindergarten). However, it is no longer. Yesterday, I began a playthrough
: of M1A1 on Normal. I stopped yesterday at the end of Never Burn Money ,
: but now I'm already on the end of Neither High Nor Low (and no, I did
: not skip Colony Ship For Sale... like I did on my last Kindergarten
: playthrough). I am absolutely loving it.
Update: I just finished the game on Normal. It took only three days to go from start to finish, and it was a blast. I even accessed a number of the secrets in the early levels (including the hidden Flamethrower area on Smells Like Napalm..., which only took one attempt to do). Most of my deaths were by accident, interestingly enough, not by enemies shooting me to death.
In particular, I'm thinking of an Invisible S'pht blocking my path on the lava gauntlet in Ingue Ferroque and forcing me to blow myself up to speed things along, or me accidentally blasting myself with a grenade in a narrow corridor on Bob-B-Q before I could find the 2x Recharger, or me backpedaling away from Fighters only to fall into a lava pit on Habe Quiddam (strangely, one of the Fighters followed me in, only to burn up a short while before I sped things along with a grenade).
All in all, a very constructive and very revealing playthrough. This should help a lot when I'm writing my Tour of Duty series (speaking of which, I should get started on writing up an article on Cool Fusion soon).
Vale,
Perseus
