Saturday, August 8, 2020

Blake Stone: Ammunition and Weapon Storage

E1M7:
I like that title. It makes me think this is going to be a nice and straight-foward level. Three locked wrong ends. Nice Tons of options here. My only real option takes me to a ton of scientists, most of which are friendly. And a yellow key card. I haven't even seen the door yet. Once I pass through a pair of one-way doors it becomes apparent why. A trick. There's a locked door and a one-way door inside here. More hallways, turrets and our friendly neighbor informants. The dumb ones.
So I take the one-way door, I can enter the locked one later. There are two hallways, effectively the same. Each contains scientists, turrets and a few big boys at the end. With little in the way of health and half of the scientists being friendlies, its designed to screw you over somehow. Enemy and scientist placement is just so tight here.
Right, locked door. Turrets. Sure are a lot of turrets here. A neutron disruptor guarded by a few drones. Then there's the big attraction, a huge area full of turrets. Its so overwhelming they even stuffed them into the secret area. This is actually a fairly fun little encounter. They're even becoming generous with health again.
Inside another secret, the final hidden switch area. Its a bit lame, just a ton of gold, and another group of monsters hidden behind a one-way door. Not even any secrets inside here. Oh, well. Back on the normal path, there's a corner with a single scientist for some reason.
Oh, the red key already? I am over halfway done...Just some monsters, no evil scientists this time. However, there is a actually locked off area. Something I think is the first time this game did that. With that out of the way, there's a split pathway, one leading back to the start, and one leading to more treasure.
Soon enough, the floor's secrets are finished with a series of 4 barriered rooms. Two with Star Troopers, two with just gold. If I didn't have a PDU, this would be a problem, but I do, so it isn't. The levers don't precisely mesh with how they should be, not sure if that's supposed to be a trick or not. They're more secrets inside one of the rooms, but they're just gold.
The last leg of the level just contains a bunch of Star Troopers trying to hide in little alcoves. Nothing too troublesome, despite the low ammo I have at this point. I missed a single scientist, but I quickly remedy that issue.
E1M8:
Not this music again. Who did this music anyway? What second-rate Bobby Prince did this? It is Bobby Prince? What a shame, because this level has a nice visual theme going on here. A nice cafeteria opening the level up. A single guard and two informants. After dealing with the guard and checking for secrets I have three options available to me.
Oh, I see I picked the bad door. I don't know what kind of security office this is, but the layout here is freaking weird. It amounts to a series of hallways with weird corners. Its looks like a racetrack someone designed while on coke. This is further enhanced by most of the level's secrets being a series of hidden rooms.
Eventually, I make my way to this section in the western half of the level. Its open season, but its not like the rest of the level wasn't open season either. That's the yellow key, the door is on the other side of the level. Here there's another one of the barrier and switch are in different locations. This one's just in the general area, but it did trip me up for a second.
The locked section starts off as more of the same, weird, strange hallways. Offices my butt. The usual mixture of guards, drones and turrets. Its got some plasma things nothing to worry about. At first, then I push a wall and out come the fun brigade. With turrets. Something that can be learned here, just because you can make something harder doesn't mean you should. I feel like the plasma generators clash with the more cautious playstyle of Blake Stone rather than work with it.
With that out of the way, I have 92% and two floors left to go. I can tell you right now those two levels are going to have more of me mentioning how fun these plasma generators are.

This Session: 1 hour

Total Time: 9.5 hours

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