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	Message: : : : Tempus Irae 6 Repository Four & Polygonium Opus : Last time on Tour of Duty, we found the Sistine Chapel, and ran around the : larger surrounding complex, finding switches, opening doors, raising lava, : and raising hell! We came to a slightly confused ending as parts of the : level were left unnecessary when we had already triggered the less than : obvious final door. : The very last moment was also curious, as a health canister spawned opposite : the L button, and ammo spawned by the wall just as we entered the : teleporter. Why is that curious, you ask? Well, because Repository Four : starts us off with no weapons and on rather low health – it’s one of those : whatchamacallit levels. Seriously, Word actually knows that word, and : corrected my putting “me” in the middle there, and it lists synonyms: : thingamabob and thingamajig among others. Such fun! : Anyway, as such it also has to spawn the uplink chip / manuscript that we : need to insert. Appropriately, the fourth one. : : Generously, it also gives us a Fusion Pistol, dual Shotguns, and some ammo. : There is also the usual 1x recharger here, so we can solve all our : problems as long as we remember to. If we hit the terminal without : returning the manuscript, we get a slightly different from usual message … : but we already knew something wasn’t right from the state we arrived in. : : : : I guess something went amusingly with the teleportation, and all of our : stuff, or a minimal approximation of it, somehow became separated from us. : So, let’s find out what’s up – manuscript deposited. Conveniently, this is : the first Repository level we can successfully start a new game from! And : with the weapons it gives, we’d be fools not to. : : : : It’s like Wheel of Fortune. I’ll have an R please, and could I buy a vowel? : And this stuff is pretty obvious … actually makes me think of : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaUkt59vY1Q for a laugh. Or the first : minute of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9IflKSwTFM – man how does : that stuff stay up? Anyway, we can be pretty sure the Pfhor are attacking : the ship we’re on – the one we started on … so we should recognise it, : right? Wrong. It’s more of a Ne Cede Malis to your typical Aye Mak Sicur, : if you will. : And so for a change, we’re not going back to Earth, but elsewhere on the : ship. As we arrive, with Earth still visible out the window, a terminal : rises up out of a panel. More information already! And instructions the : likes of which we haven’t seen in a while! And at least they sorted out : the shimmering in that logo. : : : : : : OMG too much detail, can we cope? So I guess the S’pht can’t be monitoring : everything at once, and some Pfhor are attacking the Sh’aptide, and maybe : preparing for a full-on assault, if the Pfhor are indeed logical. And life : support systems are not doing so well. Hmmm, I guess that is what the : switch in this room deals with off the bat, as well as hitting the lights. : I think it’s fair to see we take slight issue with the concept of a slow : but exponential curve, but maybe it was lost in translation ;). There are : four S’pht elders in stasis: bring out the S’pht. But the S’pht are : sleeping – well I guess you’ll just have to go wake them up now won’t you! : Where waking them up might just be a matter of punching them. : I mentioned a switch, and there are actually two right here – one activates : the other one as well as everything else, and the second one brings a lift : down with some Fighters attached. Black ones. Conveniently there is also : an assault rifle down here, and some ammo. We smack the Fighters and head : back up, to find a pair of Troopers bearing down on us; shotguns or AR : come in well handy, but it’s still annoying in the cul-de-sac we find : ourselves in. We might be able to get a nip of shields back from the 2x : charger right in front of us up here, before the Troopers can hit us, : because this corridor we are now in is more like an obstacle course, but : it’s a risky business in case they get a decent hit. : With those two dealt with, we can relax in this corridor briefly, and find a : pattern buffer in addition to the 2x shields, this is a turn up after the : lengths we’ve had to go to for pattern buffers in recent levels! There’s : also a partly open door, but open from the top instead of the bottom, just : to be different from Arrival. We can see a Fighter behind it, and kill : him, with some clever grenading – otherwise if he happens to wake up, : he’ll be plaguing the radar for a while to come. To the left there is a : locked door, so our only way out is around to the right. I guess let’s : have a look at the map and try to work out where that is. : : : This level is big, and I always thought that the name was just referring to : its having a really large number of polygons, but their guide says it is : actually a historical term for the art of polygonal masonry. And it’s such : a nice fit given that the scenario is set historically, but here we are in : a frickin’ alien spaceship! And as I said, it’s large. The 2d map is : actually remarkably satisfactory for most of the level – somehow there’s : not as much overlap as I kind of assumed. The 3d map is also really nice, : and shows off quite a large range of heights! It’s one of my favourite : levels of the scenario – I think that like with Kill Your Television, it : feels totally hopeless the first time through, but when you’ve cracked it, : it feels like a real accomplishment. : So around to the right. There is a set of stairs leading to a locked door, : and some Fighters shooting at us from ledges on both sides. When we get up : there, we find a switch tucked away on the right-hand ledge, and the door : opens. This also spawns more Fighters back in the corridor we came from, : just in case we thought we had an easy path back to the 2x shields. : Through the door, already we find ourselves among those sleeping S’pht : elders – we’re at point A on the map here! I’m seeing inconsistent : behaviours both among and within the difficulties. For a start, on the : level in general, all Fighters are black and all Troopers are grey, but : here the S’pht are all a nice blue colour on TC, but some are red on : kindergarten … or are just not there at all. : There are switches in all four of the stasis units here, but only the one in : the far left room seems to do anything. This time when I walked in to the : close right room, I saw the platform descending and crushing the S’pht. I : didn’t realise that was what happened; I guess it’s all timing. That one : is also the only one without its own door, maybe to show off that effect? : They all have Pfhor hiding behind the S’pht platforms also, just to keep : things interesting. As I mentioned, we can wake up the S’pht by just : punching or shooting them. Then they can be quite useful, or not, in : typical Marathon ally style. : The important room is the far left one – we can wake the S’pht, stand on his : platform, hit the switch behind, and ascend to the corridors above. There : we find some more ammo, more Pfhor, and a strange middle room that locks : us in with two Fighters, and requires us to hit a switch to get out. Then : we descend again through what was the far left room from our earlier : perspective, and somewhere along the line, all the doors opened, including : one to further into the level, and the S’pht woke up and are attacking : more Pfhor. We pretty much just take it in our stride, and head back out : to “the player’s deadliest weapon” and 2x shields. : Carrying on we find a room with a barrier up front and some Pfhor to shoot on : ledges. Shades of Halo’s obsession with taking cover all . the . time. I : quite enjoyed the bit in the new Doom reveal where they said Doom is not : about taking cover. Neither was Marathon! There is a staircase that almost : goes up to the ledge the Pfhor were hitting us from, but it takes a jump : to the right … albeit no step to the left, although we certainly are doing : the timewarp. That explains why they weren’t coming down to engage us. : There was an Enforcer up there for a change, who seems to be dressed in as : close to grey as they could manage on TC, but just the usual blue on : kindergarten. : There is a switch on the ledge to the left, but it doesn’t activate until we : hit one around to the right, in a curious room with a trench. We can here : Pfhor goo already, but it isn’t there yet. There’s some fusion ammo, and : around beyond, a switch, and what yields our illustrative screenshot for : this level: goometers as dubbed by PS. : : The switch gets them going, and fills the trench with goo. If we jump in : there, we get teleported to one of the raised spots in the previous room, : and find ammo up there – that’s a bit of a staple of this level, ammo in : harder to reach spots. We also find a cyborg spawned out there while we : weren’t looking, and that the switch to the left is now also available. : And it effects the most fascinating thing we’ve seen in a while – the : upward staircase turns into a downward staircase! And there’s our ticket : to progress. Going down it spawns Fighters behind us, no surprise, and : carrying on, we find a Trooper and then a tracking cyborg guarding a 2x : recharger (not marked on the map) and some ammo, including a napalm : canister, in a room with another goo trench – and to all of that I ask : “why”? There is no Tozt, and we have a clear path back to the pattern : buffer now, where we really should go soon, so why another 2x recharge? : And why the goo trench … well, no one expects the goo trench. And this one : isn’t even wide enough to fall in. Back out of that room we find a : terminal down the next corridor! : : : : : : : Oh damn, the shimmering is back. And the Wheel of Fortune stuff, but this : time I’m stumped! It does come as a bit of a relief though, as that sci-fi : technology lesson was hurting my brain. Superheated plasmatic antimatter : between magnetic containment vessels eh? Straightforward you say. Good for : you! And then suddenly we’re in the middle of a Pfhor Western, with a blue : Hunter saying “You killed my brother: step outside!” It makes me think of : some secret dialog stuff in Halo, where several Grunts will tell strange : stories if you do things in a certain way. In English, of course. At least : this stuff is pointed out as being translated. I love the phrasing “this : hunting-moment” – they seem so formal! And much like the S’pht joke, we : don’t get to see the name of the Hunter dance lol. And finally, a whole : lot of garbled stuff but thankfully the minimal words of our goal made it : through unscathed. Drain the central core. Neat. : And by the looks of things, that’s just around the corner! Indeed, both ways : from here take us to overlooks on a large pit of goo, at point B on the : map. There are a few other stepping stone entrances around the place, and : our next port of call is … another jump to the right! There’s a Fighter : off to the left who tries a few shots at us before heading off to patrol : his currently dead-end corridor. He’s best dealt with now, or he might be : a pain later. Grenades are the best medicine. There is a middle platform : with a 1x recharge canister, but that’s not much of a temptation at this : point, and jumping up there doesn’t tend to end well. And as I said : earlier, we should probably save before carrying on from here, because : making the jump is not a sure thing. When we do make the jump, we find a : shiny new pattern buffer, but just in case. : We also find another switch, which opens a door into a large dark room. At : the far end, our blue Hunter usually rises on a platform quickly out of : reach, before we can deal with him. Indeed, the guide says there’s nothing : we can do about it, but the Rampancy boys managed to kill him up front, : and in one of my loads, he came right out towards me, so everything is not : necessarily as it seems. Our little hole here is scant cover to wait for : the Troopers to come to us, and there’s no point anyway, as we suddenly : find we are also cut off from our pattern buffer by an obnoxious platform. : Okay so a little testing just confirmed that we can actually cheese this : by remaining right next to the pattern buffer and grenading the switch. : Then the Hunter goes nowhere, and on kindergarten we can kill even him : with one overpowered fusion bolt, wow! But it’s probably not a great idea : on TC, due to the cover thing. And we would also miss the rather : attractive design of the room, wherein only the squares on which the Pfhor : are placed are lit up. : Moving on, we find a little path out of the massive room, and it doesn’t have : any ammo or anything to show for itself! Shades of the Defend THIS! : crusher. The little corridor takes us to some Fighters and another : one-switch-activates-another mechanism. We can also run straight past the : Troopers into this area, but they do come to find us. : The switches open a door between two force-field walls, and permits us access : to the corridors behind them, halfway down the narrow central corridor. : These connections really confuse the Pfhor if we get them close – they : seem to lose track of us. There’s nothing to see in there just yet, rather : we head down the stairs at the far end of the central corridor, to be : greeted by Fighters, a Trooper, some ammo, a terminal, and a switch. : : : : So even if we killed our Hunter in the previous room, here he is again, in : our terminals, shimmering our logos. And having just chickened out on that : platform, he now says he wants to fight it out! Well, I guess when we find : him again. In the meantime, we’ve got a switch to hit, and then we’ve got : to find out what it does. And it turns out to open a door at the far end : of the corridors just above us, where they intersect again above the : stairwell, just avoiding 5d space I think. Those corridors are nicely done : in bright green, reminding me of the awesomeness of the M2 textures. : The door takes us to some shotgun ammo, a corridor, a lift, and then another : overlook on the central core. The door automatically opens to a Trooper, : but there’s also a switch – I guess just in case that failed? We’re right : above where we first saw this place from, and confused as to where to go : next. The safest bet is to first head back to our initial pattern buffer! : We can jump to the middle area but there is not much we can do there at : the moment besides drown in goo. So back we go, and back we come to our : initial vantage point. : This time we can take the jump to the left, where the corridor is not such a : dead end anymore. Instead it leads us to a series of lifts – one of those : where we go up, jump across, hit the switch, and repeat, x4. But on : triangles, instead of squares like the end of Bob-B-Q, and also without : those nasty Hunters. Right up the top, the last switch is a bit different. : It drops the goo level and sends us all the way to the bottom of this : cylinder off the side of the central core. And suddenly it’s empty! We can : walk through a corridor back out into the core, and then find a switch on : the outside of the central pillar, which brings down platforms around its : outside and reveals the blue Hunter, in a really anticlimactic kind of : way. He seems to be weakened from time spent in goo? Or was that save on : kindergarten ;)? : Then we can get inside the central pillar of the central core, and it becomes : a lift back up to the top, where we find a platform has extended towards : progress! A few Fighters come across it towards us with great agility on : such a narrow walkway. Then there are just a few more as we head around : and actually follow the outside of the triangle lifts room, seeing in : through the transparent force-field texture. And after a bit, we find a : switch on the wall, and suddenly realise where we are, as it opens the : door we saw partly open in the very first corridor! What a lot we’ve done : in order to get nowhere. More than 3,000 words, and I’m not sure we’re : halfway through this level yet! : The next thing we have to figure out is that the door at the other end of : this corridor is now open, and that’s where we’re headed next. And it : takes us (dun dun duh!) outside the ship! A few Fighters, a tracking : cyborg, and then we’re -definitely- outside. Open to space even. If we : fall down just here, we get ported back up, but facing the wall instead of : up the stairs, which is annoying if it happens during the fight with the : cyborg. Up ahead, there’s a huge open space area, some Drones rising out : of it and heading straight for us, and an Enforcer in the distance beyond, : also taking it out on us. This part is a weird design. There’s a big : platform blocking our way if we try to continue around, and the switch is : by the Enforcer, which is a bit of a pain with the whole distance thing – : the Enforcer, more so than the switch – but if we just drop down into : space, and head to the far end, we find ourselves teleported up to the : Enforcer’s side of things, and that’s much more convenient! We can hit the : switch just to show off then. : Next up is a wide corridor, and then a very narrow one coming off it, : concealing a Trooper. That corridor is so narrow that the Trooper can’t : move, and when he dies, his corpse just floats there. It is quite : disturbing to walk through; I tend to close my eyes! : Opening them again, I find myself in a huge curved passage with a goo channel : in the middle, and three tracking cyborgs coming along the sides towards : me. In mad convenience, their grenades have a habit of landing in goo, but : this is still a pain on TC. I remember having very little ammo by this : point the first time I played the level. Once the cyborgs are dealt with, : we eventually find a shaft to drop down off to the side. : And now I’d say we’re in the second half of the level. There’s no way back : anyway, that’s for sure. Going forward, a few Fighters drop down from : above an open area, and then we enter another area with computery textures : on several long narrow walls, along with blue plasma textured cylinders : all the way to the ceiling. We get to fight in what feels like supermarket : aisles, except that there are Troopers above us as well as Fighters on our : level. There’s also a switch for a lift to go between the levels, and up : on the resulting ledge, a pattern buffer and locked door to the right, and : a switch and very slightly open door to the left. There are some weird : things going on with spawns in this area – I saw one Fighter suspended in : mid-air in the previous room, and walking around to that switch seems to : spawn another Fighter out there as well, which is really odd given what : the switch does. It opens the locked door opposite, fills the previous : room with goo, and drops a platform to block off the door we came through, : lest this room fill with goo as well. But if something is blocking the : platform at the time, it gives up, and we get the curious situation of : liquid suddenly ending in the corridor. I found this out while : misremembering the method for getting to the secret nearby, and putting : myself on that platform while shooting the switch, but the very next : playthrough, while writing, a Fighter caused the same thing to happen! He : must have been so close to dying in goo! : Anyway, we’ve got progress to make again! But first, I have to ask, where did : all that goo come from, and why? I mean, we drained the central core, and : the goo didn’t seem to go anywhere, then we wandered past a whole channel : of it, and now it’s dropping from the sky? The wonders of Marathon physics : and logic! Where would we be without them :)? : Anyway, through that door that was locked before, we find ourselves on the : ledges overlooking the new goo. So if we could have got up there without : dropping the goo, could we have continued regardless? Dropping off the : side is what gets us to the secret, a 1x recharge canister up above, yay. : Continuing on, we find a terminal! : : : : : : : Some bad S’pht translation, and a lot of repetition – they’re cut off from : the group neural network, did you hear that? I especially like the idea of : an obscure elevator, but I’m still not actually sure which one they mean – : off the far side of the bridge? Or is it more immediate – I guess maybe, : given that the first one we come to needs us to find a switch. But that’s : after dispatching a couple more Troopers and passing the door we will : eventually unlock from the other side. So yeah, that lift isn’t working, : and I guess the other way is security or maintenance? It’s an odd room : with a window out to a bunch of Drones, and further away, a bunch of rods : coming out of another part of the ship, with some Troopers visible, but at : their end the windows are solid…. : Back in the current room, there’s an alien-looking pointy bit, and the switch : is hiding in there, along with a 2x recharge canister. Going in there also : spawns another brotherly blue Hunter, who again dies very easily – what is : up with these guys? Anyway, we can now go up the obscure lift, and we find : ourselves on what I think I always assumed was the bridge, but is actually : the “upper deck” according to a later terminal. There are a lot of Pfhor : up here, and the best approach to this fight is to run around the back and : go into the central bunker – there there’s only one Trooper, and there’s a : 2x recharge station, not just a canister, so we can happily take the place : out in a war of attrition. : There’s also a switch in that bunker, and that gives us access to the lift at : the far side … but not of the bridge, as I did indeed call it earlier :). : This one descends to more open space, and then we open a hatch back into : the lower level of the ship. More blue Hunters are best dealt with before : going down there, as these seem to be of the proper toughness, and we can : still get back to the 2x recharger if we don’t fall in. If we fall off : into space, we end up back up the top as well, so that’s handy. : When we do jump in, Fighters spawn back up on the ledge, for some reason. : They seem reluctant to follow us down, so they can be pretty much ignored. : The next room has some more blue Compilers to help us out on … the Bridge! : It’s another sizeable fight, with Enforcers, Troopers, and Fighters, from : different sides and heights. And just when you think it is safe, there’s : another Enforcer that gets triggered, but I’m not sure exactly how. It : turns out this is what we were looking at from the security/maintenance : area; it really is a nicely designed level – much like I remarked with : Downward Spiral, areas fit together in ways you just don’t quite see : coming. : There are a few useful things upstairs from here, but they’re all disabled. : What we have to do here is recognise the red bar graph thing from the most : recent terminal, which is in the middle of the room downstairs, and just : happens to somehow be a switch – the crystalline matrix of the ship. Not : an easy one, but this scenario does worse. The fact that we can’t get back : to that previous terminal without dying is a shame here. Anyway, the next : one finally shows signs of victory. : : : : We’re heading straight back to Earth – no need to go to the repository room : as we don’t have anything new! And in the meantime, we’re following some : last minute (/obscure?) instructions. But as we emerge back out to near : our original obscure lift, and take it back up, we recognise the image : from -that- terminal, and it turns out to be a flag! Which we switch from : Pfhor colours to S’pht colours by way of a switch that used to be : disabled. : Going along maintenance tube 23 looks more like taking a lift down a long : way. A newly activated lift right next to the original obscure one, and : really just as obscure. And the primary material synthesis station turns : out to be mainly blocked off, force-fields keeping us out of the juiciest : looking ammo areas, but I guess we can’t complain. No bugger would listen : anyway. : And a final terminal confirms we’re heading back to Earth. The Pfhor are : readying the Juggernaughts, and the S’pht are getting better at : translating stuff into English … and that’s why they were slavers and : slaves respectively! : : :
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