Level 11 - Magnum Farce

(click map above to open it in a new window)

Goals

• Pick up a chip

Walkthrough

At this point, there are several routes you can take. You can head down the tunnel behind the pattern buffer, and take one of the slow-moving elevators down (they lead to the same room), or you can head back out, and north around the first lava pool. If you go downstairs, you'll be greeted by a lava pool with a narrow walkway around the edges, and a bunch of baddies firing at you from pillars, and from the walkway. Your goal is a switch against the back wall (B); the easiest way to get through here is at top speed, being careful only of the cyborg and enforcer that might be blocking your path at the far end. Once you get on the elevator, you're home free - take it up to the switch, then jump down and run back to one of the doors. You can close the door behind you, and wait out the slow elevator in the relative safety of the anteroom you're in. Occasionally, a cyborg will take the other elevator up, and be waiting for you at the top... you'll see him on the motion detector, and so can prepare for him.

Save again after returning to the top level, and head out towards the lava pool. Follow the path around the edge of the lava (going north), and you'll enter a room with a central cage filled with 3 lava f'licktas. Kill these (circling them while shooting them with a pistol works well... eventually you'll cause one to go berserk, and when the fighting is over, another shot or two will kill the last one), and head east.

In the northeast corner, there are two doors, one heading east (C) and one heading north (D). You can head north if you like... but you'll hit a dead end before too long, at H1. (It might be nice to simply wipe out the compilers waiting for you in there right at the start, anyway.) Going through C puts you in a large area with a staircase going nowhere (F). Head to the north wall, and hit the switch you find. This will expose another switch... which will reverse the stairs. In the newly exposed tunnel are several more lava f'lickta. If you don't particularly like them, especially in groups... you can reverse the stairs again quickly, after the first one or two come out. This brings them to you in digestible quantities. When they're all gone, head into the tunnel. (You're not going anywhere... you're simply clearing out another ambush.)

Stepping into the tunnel will trigger a bunch of cyborgs and fighters above. Get out of the tunnel quickly, before you're trapped... fighting these guys is much easier in the open. When THEY'RE all dead, head to the south wall of the area (opposite the switches). There's a large fake wall (E) there (Tony did this a lot, early on), with some stairs behind it. Follow these in both directions, taking care of the monsters you trigger as you come to them. (If you don't clear them now, you'll deal with them later... and they're far easier from this side.) If you like, drop back down to the pattern buffer behind A and resave.

Head back to F, and into the tunnel. Stop at the lip... you'll trigger a trooper below you. The lava has a huge tide here, so wait a sec, and he'll get fried. As soon as it begins to go down, jump to the ledge that runs from about 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock around the wall, and head into the tunnel. Don't stop; there are no baddies here, but the lava's coming back. Jump across to the small elevator with the alien weapon on it (G), and take it up. (Careful... don't fall off!) Done right, you take zero damage here. The top is a good place to rest... your next step is to jump down to the platform you see in front of you. Doing so will trigger three compilers, who circle the platform, firing at you. The close quarters makes this a very dangerous proposition. To escape, you have to shoot a switch on the south wall, which will raise the platform to the ceiling. You can now jump across to the far side. (If you miss, you'll end up taking a lava bath... while it is possible to climb out of the lava to the small ledges surrounding the platform, it's quite difficult to get back to the south side, so that you can fire again at the switch to bring it back down... don't miss.)

On the other side of the door are two lava f'licktas. Kill 'em, and jump down. There's a pattern buffer... and a switch on the back side of the pillar (H). There is also a cyborg (and a second one released when you hit H). Switch H does two things: it opens a teleporter just to it's right (the south side of the pillar), and it opens a door at H1. Take the teleporter as quickly as you can (there's no need to kill the cyborgs, unless you want to); it'll put you above the circular lava pool you fried the trooper in. (If you didn't clear out the fighters on the ledges behind the fake wall, here's where you'll pay for it.)

Head back and save again, then return to door D, and head down. You have compilers and drones to deal with in the first room with pillars... then a whole passel of nasties in the smaller room beyond. You need to take the elevator up the right side of that room, and then head for the south end; the back of the wires-covered pillar has a switch on it (J) that raises a walkway through the middle of the opening lava pool. (You can see it behind you, if you turn around.)

Back you go, to this opening area, and across the newly raised walkway. On the other side, there's a terminal buffer and a 2x recharger to your right, guarded by several lava f'lickta. On the other side of the walkway, there's a battle raging in a large courtyard (let it go for the time being), and another fake wall (L) leading to a passageway around the side of the courtyard. Take it, wiping out the waves of baddies that come at you. (Hint: you can seriously decrease your work by running halfway up the corridor towards the far end, then backing up when you see stuff teleport in. There are fighters in the front of the wave, and lava f'lickta in the back... the f'lickta are really not very discriminating when it comes to attacking, and most of their shots at you will hit fighters instead.)

Once this corridor is cleared out, you'll find a switch at the far end. This switch starts a small elevator that will bring you up to M, a ledge in the northeast corner of the courtyard. (Once you've come near the switch, a gap forms in the outside corridor; to get back that way you need to grenade-jump across.) Clear out the baddies on your side of the lava stream, then drop down into the courtyard and run to the platform that's going up and down in the northeast corner. Take it up to M, and (if you haven't already done so) take out the enforcer standing there. Hit the switch, and you'll open a small teleporter behind you. This will bring you to the central platform in the courtyard... hopefully you've already killed the cyborg there. Jump down to the south side, and take the platform against the south wall up to the corridor. Go back and save.

When you started, there were stairs running down into the lava on the west edge of the opening lava pool. These ended in three white pillars, and if you looked closely, a door behind them. (Actually, two doors... but only the front one's locked.) When you hit switch B, you opened the door... and when you hit switch M, you opened the pillars. You can now enter that area. Move fast, so you don't burn too much. Watch the two purple compys on the other side. The door on the far wall opens to an L-shaped area. At the bottom of the L is an elevator; take it up, and follow the ledge around. You'll find a switch (N) and a 2x recharger. (You'll also find that you've awakened a few hunters.) Go back towards the elevator that brought you up to the ledge, and from that end, jump across to the alcoves on the other side. The left alcove has some ammo, the right one takes you to a new room. It's dark. If you're not happy about it being dark, head all the way around the outside to the south edge... the lights will come on as you pass under a bridge (P).

Now the switch you hit (N) opened a door that you can't get to yet (N1). If you headed clockwise around the dark room, you opened the door on the west wall as you passed the southeast corner... if you headed counterclockwise, you triggered the door on the east wall in the southwest corner. Confused yet? The most efficient way of doing this is heading clockwise, to open the west door... then heading around (or through the middle) to get there. Follow the passageway and you'll find a switch, guarded by several lava f'licktas. This switch opens the last locked door blocking your exit from this area (R1).

Heading back around (making sure you've passed through the southwest corner), you'll find two passages behind the east door. They are both short, and they both lead the same place: to the area right in front of the exit door (R1). They also wake up all sorts of stuff on top of the ledges. You can ignore this stuff and leave (just head south, the door there is slow but it'll open, with a teleporter inside), but you'll be missing a few fusion batteries on the ledges. Your choice.

The teleporter brings you back to the starting point, where you'll find a door open in the wall behind you (R2). Head upstairs, and you'll find a chip, hanging in midair. Grab it, then pass into the alcove right next to it. This will teleport you back to a ledge overlooking door A, where you can recharge, save, and use the terminals to teleport out.

Available Weapons and Ammo

Secrets

• In the lava pool in the basement behind the first pattern buffer, there's a shotgun and some ammo (S1).
• In the small lava-filled enclosure with the lava f'lickta (S2), there's a fusion pistol and magnum ammo. The wall on the north side is fake; you can get in and out there.