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Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply Within
Posted By: MartinDate: 11/6/13 10:29 a.m.

TOUR OF DUTY

16 – For Carnage, Apply Within

The name. The Story page has a well nicely written line: Play on the advertisements looking for people with certain skills, etc. Of course you are eminently qualified for this level.

And on Total Carnage it really is quite the experience. My suggestion for an alternative would be Compilers. They’re Everywhere. Can’t Stand ’Em. It is scarily easy to get overrun with them on several occasions here. I wonder just how many you can actually activate … I was trying to get an impressive screenshot, but I kept dying ><.

Last time on Tour of Duty we took a moment to experience déjà vu before getting blown away many a time. We got a lesson on Enforcer Evolution, PS style (I had actually forgotten we hadn’t met the new ones yet), and interesting musings on Tycho’s motivations. I don’t think I’ve ever taken that shortcut to the second half of the level, but I have always enjoyed the quick swim to the Tozt and on to the 2x charger. Other than that the second half is a major fizzer. But I learnt a few things, so it was worth it.

...

The beginning here is subject to change as we seem to start in quite different areas of the first “room” per spawn. And we’re liable to need a few. Whichever way you slice it, applying within the first door is bad enough: surprise Enforcers are no picnic. The second ambush inside the hollow platform is definitely best avoided!

Let’s take a look at the map:

Right, most of it is taken up by Compilerdrome, that lovely platform-hopping over lava zone, to which we will get in a minute. Really all that stands between us and the end of the level is a lot of death, no puzzly things to speak of here.

Moving on down the corridor to the east (the hollow platform was at point A on the map) we find a side room with a reasonably unhelpful terminal, from Durandal but with the f4k@ denomination on the login screen, which has been written about elsewhere as potentially indicating that at least something is fake here. Actually that started in IIHARL, did I miss something in the writing here? Does anyone have further information? Anyway, in the context of

this particular terminal, I’m not sure exactly what’s up; it seems fine to interpret these as Durandal’s death throes, which actually come to think of it are at least somehow fake, as the rumours of his death are a little exaggerated.

There’s a bunch of ammo nearby and a handy dandy 2x canister. Heading further along the corridor is a bad idea, as it triggers ridiculous numbers of Pfhor to spawn all around us; a death trap through and through as far as I’m concerned. Instead we head in to Compilerdrome, Fusion Pistol at the ready.

This place is cool. The textures are of course gorgeous, the encounters are epic, and the platform-hopping is quite unusual and good fun gameplay. So. I’d say it is wise to try to do away with a few of the compilers by retreating back to the corridor, before making a run around to the right and on to the terminal, 2x charger, and PB. Heading there right away brings on the first large group of compilers. Amusingly, the internets have someone suggesting that the collective noun for crossword compilers should be flummox but that sounds too tame for our kind of compilers. Also, searching for collective noun for s’pht linked back to this very series where I apparently asked about a collective noun for Pfhor. Great minds think alike I say.

We haven’t seen many compilers in M2 so far, but we certainly learn to respect them here, so much so that it never seems like they are thin on the ground when I think about M2. And we’re still not even close to the absolutely mental ones in Infinity! But yes, suffice it to say, it is very easy on this level to summon too many compilers and then you start getting thrown up in the air and/or into the lava. Interestingly the raised platform with Enforcer on the west side of Compilerdrome seems to be a blindspot for the compilers, and really saved my ass this time around when I got cocky. That area is just around from point C on the map, which is obviously of some sort of interest – oh hey! There’s a big ammo stash under the lava. Yet another thing I don’t think I ever knew *sigh*. Gotta make quite a quick swim for it, but well worth it; on my current save I was out of fusion ammo at the end of this level … now not so much!

So I mentioned another terminal, in the south of Compilerdrome it turns out; never really knew the directions. In fact I’m kind of surprised we go straight ahead from the entry door to get there; hard to keep track in platform-hopping. Anyway, that terminal is a Tycho one, and he has a lot on his mind!



So, Tycho would have it that what Durandal has been getting us to do is all for nothing; down to a misunderstanding on the scale of Lister’s cats interpreting the laundry list as a starchart, in terms of importance at least. That I looked back at Volunteers also means that I don’t now miss the fact that this terminal brings the Jjaro into the Marathon universe, screaming and kicking .. unless that highly secret map writing from Never Burn Money did, that is. And then there’s the idea of planets warping between solar systems, which Tycho says is just not what’s happening here. And if we believed him, it would all be very depressing. But with what we’ve read in S’pht terminals on our travels, we know there’s at least something to it. Tycho has proved that escape is impossible? Or perhaps he just has too high an opinion of himself … not like he’s the only one!

The next goal is to exit out the northeast of Compilerdrome, to the end of that corridor we avoided earlier, just past the certain death trap … instead a death trap with a way out, up the stairs. This is the part where things can get really out of hand. Running along above the east of Compilerdrome we trigger so many more compilers to port in as to be ridiculous. I’m sure there’s a lot to be said for doing this part slowly, but I feel that’s not how it’s designed. Oh well, I just had to reload a few dozen times to survive the carnage I brought upon myself, ending up using that blindspot I mentioned before – the compilers either don’t come up there at all, or they circle around beyond the opening at point D on the map and let you pick them off. They have something weird going on in general – I’m never sure where they head off to but they have a nasty habit of disappearing in the drome, and that tends to have scary consequences.

However you choose to survive this part of the level, the next part is the last part, with a door to the southeast leading to just a few more Enforcers, an ammo cache with 2x canisters, the final terminal (the first terminal we found also updates to give the final message, if you like), and one of the more fun exit runs on reloading. That’s right, if you’ve played through and have a SPNKR, you can missile your face against one of the columns and get straight up the top – which is also another option earlier in the level, and probably a feasible one if you manage to not lose health in the process.

So, that final terminal. We get a little more sense out of Durandal amidst more code ramblings.

So he’s not dead, but we’re now off to kill him. Neat.

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Replies:

Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply WithinMartin 11/6/13 10:29 a.m.
     Re: Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply WithinPerseusSpartacus 11/6/13 12:29 p.m.
           Re: Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply WithinMartin 11/6/13 12:56 p.m.
           Re: Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply Withintreellama 11/7/13 4:04 a.m.
     Re: Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply WithinHopper 11/6/13 4:55 p.m.
           Re: Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply Withintreellama 11/7/13 3:33 a.m.
                 Re: Tour of Duty - For Carnage, Apply WithinHopper 11/7/13 7:03 a.m.

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