Part 14: Mission X

Part 14 - Mission X

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HOxlyZR_9s

Well this was the hardest level so far, and took multiple tries to complete..at least I got a 100% on the enemies and secrets at the end.

The mission already starts with a weird assignment..fake a kidnapping? Well we'll just have to play along and see what happens..



The mission

First off, we get our instructions, which seem pretty simple enough:




As we progress through the first area, we see something new: switches that control gates. These are single-action only, once a gate is lowered the switch is disabled.



We progress through the area and find our first delegate to pick up:



When we pick up the fourth and last delegate, we get a plottwist..






And this is where things go off the rails..my first instinct was to follow the mission marker, thinking there was a landing site nearby to disable the bomb..

But this isn't one of those 'fly quick before the bomb goes off' type missions..no, we're taking damage intervals, with ominous messages constantly informing of us taking damage:





So I'm frantically looking where to go, running into closed gates with switches, and quickly losing health..resulting in a pretty fast death:



No matter, I'll just try again and see if I can open the gate in time right?

Nope



So after a few deaths I decide to look up a guide, and find out you have to keep boosting your health while normally playing the level..so it's a constant hunt for health pickups and other powerups like double shield and health restore.

Sadly, on my first run with the new strategy I run into a new problem..a bug where the switch doesn't open the gate, making my run doomed:



So after that I do a few more runs, where I try to 100% the enemies and find all secret areas in time. One secret area lies behind a closed door, that only opens after some unknown trigger is reached somewhere in the level..in one run it will stay closed, and the other it opens at some point. Not very helpful!

One thing that I did discover is a 'current status' overlay from the menu, very helpful in seeing how much secrets etc I found:



During the mission we also get some dialogue on entering new areas:




Looking back now, it's kind of suspect Riley didn't say anything..maybe we were set up? Perhaps we'll find out in these last levels of the game! Just a couple more to go.

Now I'll just have to edit all my runs for this level into a coherent video..