E2M6:
The level's title just makes me wish this was a Doom-clone, because then at least I'd get a sweet new weapon. Not that I need a new weapon, its just always nice. Right out the gate there are guards. This room is interesting, there are two potted plants blocking access to a couple of doors, one that seems to have a corpse in it. Oh, well. And my ammo problems from the last level is solved by a well-placed secret. Something tells me I better hold on to my health.
Then the level gets...bad. Not bad in the sense that it isn't fun, but bad in the way its laid out. I go through a section of the level, some guards, scientists, turrets, exploding barrels. I'm being cautious so I don't end up killing an informant. But then I come across a non-moving informant. Now, the exploding barrels/drones have a short range, shorter, I think, than the PDU. And this informant is right up against a drone. My beautiful 100% completion rate, gone. Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe I can work around this.
It is quite a terrifying experience trying to clear out this level. Too many scientists are informants and there are just too many scientists. Even if one wasn't standing against a tank I need to destroy to get 100%, they'd still be easy to take out. I guess I'm going to have to stand the loss of points. I haven't looked at the code for Blake Stone, but I would think the developers would want to avoid things like this? No matter, after clearing out the area, its clear there's no changing this.
On the northwestern corner there's a swarm of enemies hidden behind pillars, which just compounds this level's problems. Because there's also some turrets and friendlies. Great. After narrowly saving another informant's life, the pathway forward is blowing up a wall of exploding barrels and then entering the room behind it. Great. Well, I could bypass this by going through a one-way door, but I'd still have to destroy it on the way out. This gives me a keycard, which in turn leads south.
First, a secret...cafeteria. Which leads to a hallway full of blood. Which leads to a room full of scientist corpses and sentinels, plus a PDU. I feel like I'm trying to be told something, but I don't understand what it is. I guess the northern area behind the barrier is unreachable. Joy.
Moving south, there's a room bereft of scientists, radiation. Just me, some gold and a few exploding drones. The generosity continues, with a room full of enemies, including nothing but hostile scientists. Curiously, there's an electrical barrier there, the only way to turn it off is a switch behind a door. This gives me the exit key.
More straightforwardness. Why did all the enemy scientists have to be here? Then, another disaster strikes. While trying to push walls inside a secret I push something 1 block in. After an amount of time I wish I didn't have to spend, I return to where I left off, but don't screw around in there. Clearly I fucked something up. The continuing layout of the level is interesting, cafeteria, then inside cafeteria, what appears to be a radiation shower, with a corpse.
And that's the level, minus half the secrets. I did figure out how that secret worked, there was just a guard in the way. A dirty trick I'm not in the mood for at this point. With that...well, I haven't found everything, but at this point there's not much to be worried about. I'm missing two things of enemies, one being the one the scientist is standing next to, the other...who knows and cares at this point? I want to make it clear if I was playing this for fun I would have given up at around this point. I see no advantage in watching the game screw me over for no reason. The secret level is on this floor, so that's going to be fun.
E2MS:
Ah, what a track. Like something from Skyroads. Skyroads never put friendlies in front of explosives...probably because neither of those things existed in that game. Skyroads would never screw me without a way out. Skyroads also never gave me the fuzzy feeling of blowing up everything, but that's another thing I'll ignore. There's a truckload of ammo here and I'm sure a truckload of enemies.
More or less the same configuration as the last secret, big arena, tons of enemies. Less items on the ground though. The only thing are a select few health items. After that, just hordes of pod aliens and guards. Probably why this level is called Pod Alien Storage and Transport. There are so many I'm forced to fight them with the self-charging weapon. Good thing there's enough room to dodge.
So after clearing out the main area, just barely, clinging onto life, strapped for ammo, things begin to look up a little. There's a little ammo with a key, and a secret opens up to rooms full of ammo. Sure, it happened after a few terrifying encounters with some werewolves and a member of the Star Troopers, but I'm back...with 1% health. Now, what's on the way back?
Gold bars...so...recap. I'm nearly dead. I'm sure I'll run out of ammo the second I step on the next floor. I have to sacrifice my precious 100% mission rating because someone forgot to put the fragile informants not next to an exploding device. Fortunately, exploration solves my first problem. No matter what, I have to sacrifice something. Well, I'm not getting informant points without the other two, so goodbye friend. Funny thing, it's actually worse for my mission rating but better for my score.
This Session: 2 hours
Total Time: 18 hours
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