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	Message: : : VBB: Last time on Tour of Duty… oh, great, a rebellion map. The Endless : Total Carnage ammo I picked up is gone. Anyway… this one's going to be : another collaborative writeup, so Martin will be taking over later (that's : why the font in this writeup is getting special colors). : Well, at least we spawn right on top of an AR and a 3x canister to wipe out : the surrounding pfhor fighters, plus one drone that snuck in quietly. We : appear to be in an outdoor garden with a central stone tower. There’s some : doors that refuse to open and a very weird visual error where we can see a : tree through a bush. : : We find a neat staircase-ish rock formation to climb over with lots of guns : and ammo on the other side and more aliens teleport in. We can climb up : onto the wall and there’s a hunter in a window to give us annoyance doing : so. Once we’re up top and he’s dispatched, we can drop down to the other : side to the chapel-like building and hunters with a trooper friend : immediately teleport in at us. This map just doesn’t let up! : : : We probably could have gotten to the ledge on the other side of the wall, but : I didn’t quite see it in time to make it. Looks like there’s another way : up there, anyway. There’s some fighters hanging out in the chapel hall, : and in the bedroom… GAH, a yellow enforcer! Man, I’m back down to the red, : but at least a 1x canister teleports in on the bed. : : Getting up on the bed opens up a hidden switch… which just makes this inept : locked door sound effect (*thunk*) when I try to flip it. : There’s nowhere to go but up the side of the chapel, where a trooper ambushes : and kills me. Okay, starting over, this time I actually jump onto that : ledge on the side of the wall, and the door opens! Neat! Is this a secret, : or a shortcut? Perhaps it’s a secret shortcut =p : : Here there’s another bedroom with a bigger bed, and another yellow enforcer! : A chair will fold out when we approach it so we can grab that ammo on the : bed. When we do, we hear a platform move. Hmm… I could be wrong, but I : think it made this switch open. It’s inactive, just as the first. : : If we go down the stairs, we’ll just end up in a dead end with pfhor shooting : at us through a window. : On my way up, I discover that you have to punch that switch! Oh! Good thing I : didn’t jump down from this area yet. It’s no longer a dead end down there : after we punched it! There’s an orange cyborg and lots of fire coming at : us from above, but I make it through okay. And… argh, brutal death by : trooper and no pattern buffer. Is there no mercy on this map? : Well, we go through all that again, and we finally find the pattern buffer in : a big room full of sewage! And a lot of pfhor! The best way to handle this : is to dive under and fire the flechette at them from below. : Now's the somewhat arbitrary time I'll use to take a look at the map: : : If you look closely, you can see some 5D space in one of the bedrooms. : : : : : There are also five separate disconnected chunks on this map, and we'll be : getting teleported to one of the other four shortly. The writing "LEO : NARDO DAVINCI" looks great in the 3D render =) : Interesting to notice that there are also some distinct heights in some of : the later rooms, which we wouldn't know in relation to each other without : that 3D render. : Anyway, after using the pattern buffer, going back to the staircase where I : died reveals that it just leads back to the other side of the chapel. Now : I know that we need to punch that switch, which opens another door : outside. Actually, this is where we ended up by taking that shortcut. We : just opened that door on the other side of it. So let’s head back to the : sewage room, and go to the one room open to us full of bookshelves and a : journal by this Cosimo fellow. : : : : : (I'll stop including the book cover and back after this, but it's interesting : to notice the cyberacme systems inc. on those pages. How is this : translation system working? Does it overlay a HUD on the visor the SO : wears?) : So, Cosimo was a friend of Leo. We are immediately teleported away to another : sewage room with a puzzle to solve. We’re real happy about that after : being stumped by a pillar in Theater of Pain, eh? There are L buttons on : the wall to shoot, and it quickly becomes apparent that this switch puzzle : is a pain in the arse on the magnitude of Colony Ship and Thing What : Kicks. The switches open up more timed switches, and the room’s geometry : makes aiming difficult. When we look at the automap, we see what order : we’re supposed to shoot these timed switches, and when we look at the : spoiler guide, we read it mention that the number of decorations in front : of the switches is our non-map hint for the order… except switch #5 has : six bottles in front of it! Very Myst-like, and it won’t be the last time : we’ll see a visual clue for puzzles in this scenario; I have a feeling the : mapmaker was hesitant to put map writing in to give it away. : Martin: I wonder if you should put up the whole map and the 3d render, : where you mention the numbers on the map in the switch bitch puzzle? I had : forgotten about the 'hint' of number of objects in front of each switch, : and it's annoying enough just with the map writing - they did a good job : with puzzles here. VBB: Oh, uh, sorry. I already arbitrarily put the : map up there before teleporting in here. Go up there and look at all the : crazy map writing. : Some of the switches are just useless decoys, apparently, and when we solve : the puzzle, the walls open and (you guessed it!) a bunch of pfhor come : out. We’re surrounded on all sides, and this is a nasty thing to pull on : us after getting the switches right. Our best chance is to fight our way : into one of the holes they came from and hope to bottleneck the rest, and : it works; I didn’t die! =) These corners have ammo stashes and shield : canisters, so be sure to get them all! : A teleport opened up in the central column, which takes us back to the main : sewage room. A switch has opened on a pillar and a new door opened : revealing some floor. If we examine the wall with the switch, there are : narrow holes just wide enough for an enforcer (or juggernaut???) to fire : at us from inside. Annoying. In the new door is another decorated door : that’s locked, and an ordinary door that will open for us. It contains a : blue chair with a 1x canister and another note by Cosimo: : Sounds like Leo sure was a renaissance man. Get is? Get it? …bad joke? : Fine. Time for another s’phtty puzzle. We’re teleported to a hallway in : front of a door that won’t open, so we have to turn around and we see a : window overlooking a maze. : : Behind us is an L switch, which does… well, when we turn around, we see the : teleporter open in the maze; which I’m assuming is timed. Sigh. Pushing : the button again does not hold it open. : : The maze is crawling with pfhor fighters creeping around, and you gotta love : that map writing. : : To get this, we need to remember to go Right, Straight to the end, Left, : Right, Left, and Right to the finish! Back in the sewage room, another : switch opened on that pillar, and it’s pretty obviously a juggernaut, not : an enforcer, that’s trapped inside. This makes saving at that Pattern : Buffer in it’s range of sight very annoying. Martin: I thought it was : a blue hunter inside the switch pillar? I didn't think a jugg would fit. : VBB: I thought it was an enforcer at first, but the spoiler guide says : juggernaut. The thing inside the pillar shoots fire rings, so it can't be : a blue hunter. Is it a blue hunter on kindergarten? Maybe it's just a : fire-flinger, like the poop-flingers (that's team NARDO's name for it, not : mine) we'll be seeing on the next map. : Behind the third door are some troopers that we can sneak up on and another : Cosimo note. : : An in joke? : So… who is Cosimo? How did he build these puzzles? How did he make his books : teleporters? Why did he insert illustrations of black pfhor fighters and : juggernaughts into them? : All these questions and more may or may not be answered, as I'm now handing : over the writeup to Martin. : Martin: This third puzzle is called "Climb the highest mountain" : and this is very Colony Ship except that the switches are in the same : room! Backtracking is a thing of the past, quite appropriately. There is : one raised block we can stand on, and shoot an L switch in the far wall : from. This raises that platform to a point from which we can jump to two : more - one of these allows much the same process, and well, you get the : pattern. Drones come in at intervals and make a nuisance of themselves : with the large range in heights in this room, a piece of the puzzle one : wouldn't mind being missing! At the top point the pattern changes and a : lift against the central pillar shoots up. I just watched it go by - : whoosh - and - whoops! Have you tried switching the L switch off and on : again? Yes, that does work, and we reach the teleporter in the middle : pillar. : We find ourselves starting back in the room with the Pattern Buffer, which is : really kind of them! And the third switch is open on that pillar island : over the sewage. No surprises, the fourth and final door around this pool : opens. Over to the right we get a dead-end room, and through a window, is : this unique? An invisible Enforcer! We can take him down gradually through : the window ... and that weapon is certainly rather visible by comparison! : : VBB: I didn't kill the shadow enforcer. He was too much of a nuisance on : TC. I thought I was using the HD textures pack for TI, but your screenshot : looks like a lot higher res textures than mine. Maybe I turned it off and : forgot. Martin: Right, on my side I have to turn the graphics on to : open gl classic rather than shader because the Surface GPU doesn’t show : the landscape graphics in shader mode, so we all have issues lol. I also : really like the xbla hud plugin for proper fullscreen, and bigger : screenshots :). VBB: Thanks, I'll try that. Okay, back to you. : Martin: To the left we get one more terminal from Cosimo. Leo was : decorous, tasteful, and he would never write his name in massive stone : blocks - well, why would anyone? Especially ones set high above sewage : pools, because that would just be insane ... but I guess anyone drawing : pictures of Pfhor in Renaissance Italy books had to have a few issues. : This is a far cry from that guy writing about replaced floor tiles and : leaks. : : So we do indeed get teleported off into an L shaped room, connected to an E, : and then an O. Then there's a long corridor and the map tells us this : puzzle is called "What's in a Name?" which is something familiar : to us all. And then it's a similar story with NARDO - ohhhhhh, what's in a : name indeed! In the bottom left of N there is a platform sound going on, : but I think it's just the one not far to the west in the maze puzzle. : Between the D and the O is a sewage pit with a 2x shield recharge canister : in it. And at the bottom right of -this- O, we get teleported off to ... : his surname, which -is- in fact written in massive stone blocks set way up : above sewage pools. There are Pfhor running about up top as well, but : conveniently there -are- teleporters around the place in the sewage, so we : don't have to worry too much about falling off. VBB: I was mired in : the Nardo room's sewage for a long time until I found the teleporter, so : falling off was tough for me; and there's no rewards for falling in the : holes within letters =/ : Martin: Not surprisingly, at the very end we jump to a teleporter and wind : up back in the switch room. The last switch can now be pressed, but so can : some of the others, and it is hard to actually remember which is the last : one! VBB: I saved pushing the 4 buttons for the end, so no confusion : for me =) : Martin: I think it might be that they will all perform the final action, : but it stumped me rather, especially as this final action is not at all : obvious. Yes, we are kind of expecting a final teleporter at this point, : but where? Well, at risk of Never Leaving this level, I looked it up, and : then headed up to the upstairs bedroom where we once punched a switch. And : sure enough there in a side wall, in all its glory, was the teleporter. I : could have used that being less obscure so, yeah, I'm still not satisfied. : Well, at least it's over. VBB: Remember that 5D space area I showed : off in the map above? This is it. So it's no mistake, then. Pretty clever, : team nardo ;) : Next time on Tour of Duty, Martin will be tackling You Gotta Sin To Be Saved.
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