Part 16

Remember to support your local LPs if you want them to keep going. LPers are people too.

gallilee said: "After this I'd like to see a playthrough of Delphine's point and click adventure (future war??). Can't remember if I finished that, only that it was fucking awesome and had a great soundtrack.

I'm probably one of few that played that game."

I referenced Future Wars a couple of pages back, that was another game I had on my Amiga. Never actually finished it, though, got as far as the damn maze section at the very end and lost my inclination to continue. You can see a lot of visual and stylistic similarities between it and Flashback. It, too, had a lot of things coming out of fucking nowhere (e.g. robot wolf in merrie england)

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, alien planet.

The trouble with these climactic organic levels is that it's hard to tell which bits are alive.

Conrad gets in some sightseeing and some morph killing.

More morph killing. So far the morphs have been considerate enough to stay on wide open platforms, making combat easier through the roly poly strategy, but that won't last.

Incidentally the morphs in blob mode are going to be pretty hard to spot in these screenshots, what with them being pretty much the same colour as the background. I'll try to point them out with comments or speech bubbles where necessary.

A switch to open a door.

Conrad begins his trek into the bowels of the planet. Ugh, unfortunate choice of words there.

I think this is the room Pendragon was referring to. The morphs defy the habits of most video game enemies by actually ganging up on you rather than having it out in single file. It's three morphs against one Conrad. In many ways, the battle is a fitting one - enemies with a thousand different faces taking on a guy with no face at all.

Luring the morphs to the bottom level seems to be a helpful tactic, because as we know Conrad and his crouch and roll have the advantage on wider floors.

Morphs dealt with, we move onto the next section and another locked door puzzle.

The tripswitch in the bottom left opens the door.

The other tripswitch closes it again, and we can't jump over it because we have to roll under the green thing (Conrad is standing up because of a bug). We could just use the teleporter - the teleporter is pretty much our 'get out of puzzle free' card from now on - but there's an alternative.

There's a robot mouse on the top platform - the friendly wholesome non-exploding kind that can be picked up and placed elsewhere - which will cheerfully run back and forth forever wherever you put it. It shall keep the door open.

Could have probably used a rock we picked up from the previous room instead, but I feel sorry for the little mousey on that tiny platform, I wanted to give him more space to run around.

What's this? Another human? Better let him out so we can exchange morph killing strategies.

Strangely, the door on the lower level opens only after we shoot it. Perhaps I scared it. Now we can access the switch to release our new friend.

Ah, crap.

Roll around, shoot, kill, you know the drill.

As we walk past the terminally wounded prisoner, he hands us his treasured pencilcase.

This cunt of a room provides a morph and few adequate environments in which to fight him. There's not enough space on the middle or bottom layer to roll around so we're going to have to climb up to the top, and it's basically pot luck whether or not Conrad gets hurt by the morph on the way.

Eventually we make it and redress the balance somewhat.

We find a personal computer lying around which presumably belonged to the fresh corpse next door.

On it, we find his diary. Let's read about his secret crushes and giggle!

Oh no! Better act fast!

Roughly 170 days passed since that last entry. I guess after the initial enthusiasm he just kept putting it off. I've been there.

The text implies that this dork is responsible for all of Conrad's misfortunes. Lucky for him he's already been murdered.

"Tomorrow" eventually became "in a month".

The master brain gets grouchy if it doesn't get its nappy time.

That would be the pencilcase the guy gave us. If he's not bullshitting it's either a fantastically tightly packed explosive or a fantastically brittle planet.

The bomb sits around gathering dust for close to a solar year before he decides to carry out the plan. Perhaps he's a little absent minded, or the morphs know how to take on the form of naked chicks.

Exposition exhaustively expired, we take another lift down.

There's a curious red dog-like creature running around down there. It seems to be a mindless beast of very little threat, but Conrad takes no chances.

There are a total of 3 of these creatures in the game, all of them in this, the last mission. They die in one shot and their purpose is negligible at best. I guess Delphine had already finished animating it and wanted to throw it in somewhere.

We drop down into what passes for a corridor around here.

The next room to the right showcases a chasm and a morph on either side. With all these flat open spaces around they're easily put down.

Triggering the camera on the ledge above - yes, the thing with the tentacles is the local equivalent of a camera - summons a lift. I take that as an invitation. Ground floor, please.

Another quick morph encounter to spice up the trip.

In the next room, another of those red dog things shows up for its allotment of face bullets.

Conrad falls into a devious trap and is ambushed by another of those morphs he's been killing so many of today.

Conrad finds a key on a rather misplaced section of blue-grey flooring. Or the cutscene animators were too busy drinking wine and eating baguettes to make more than one 'picking up key' video.

Fortunately a teleporter is provided, which teleports us onto the platform directly above.

Conrad takes the lift back up and heads in an as yet unexplored direction.

I wonder if the subtly unsubstantial nature of this bridge comes into play later.

The key opens up this area. And look, a new password, as good a time as any to end an update.

This was the 16th of an eventual 18 updates. We're getting perilously close to the end.

Next Update: Was That Really Supposed To Be The End Boss?