Part 12: Episode 12: Power Up!

I'll level up our stats this time. Now that the enemies out in the open are "harder", there are more enemies that are of value to us.

But first, let's see what the lab geeks are up to.

Lab Visit #8

To watch this as a video, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcGMLfsB5Bs



Doctor: "I don't want to hear any more about this! This is not your responsibility!"
Guy: "We don't even know what this is doing to them! We might be killing them for all we know!"



Doctor: "I will not have this mission jeopardized because of your concern for electronic puppets, is that clear?"



Guy: "I'm not trying to jeopardize anything, I'm trying to get you to think this thing through!"



Doctor: "I'm sorry you don't like it. I don't like it either. The mission comes first, and that will not change! Understood?"
Guy: "Understood."



Gal: "It's a little tense around here. But you've picked this up fast, and you seem to be better-"
Doctor "-How's Five?"



Gal: "A little stronger, but not strong enough."




Gal: "The rhythms you've encountered have been becoming exponentially more dangerous. We expect that this will continue, so the further you go, the more power you'll have to have just to hold your own."



Doctor: "You've got to crash and Huffman as many rhythms in there as you can. No more long range kills. I want you to move in close, and get them before they fade out."



Gal: "It's risker, but it's a risk you're going to take. Here are your stats."

It looks like things are getting a bit tense back at the lab. The David-Duchovny-lookin guy is disagreeing with the Doctor about something ethical in nature. Meanwhile, the Doctor insists the mission comes first. It's too bad we don't have Number Four around to gossip with. Then we'd know what's going on as well as who the redhead is sleeping with.

I'll get us through a marathon of stat grinding. It won't actually take very long...

Time for some remarkably quick grinding!





We didn't net anything on that last visit to the lab. I just wanted to get the video.

Moving on...



There are more varied enemies, and the bosses almost always show up during storms.

For example, here I ran into Riberto.

We cannot kill these bosses, so I just run away.



If you're especially worried about running into bosses, you can always check the map. They show up as red dots.



I ran into Balkan here.



Another Hex! I hadn't seen any items for a while (at this point I think I've cleaned out the map!), so I figured I'd post something other than the droves of bosses I ran into.



I kill many Torks while we're out. At the moment they always outrank us so they get us the +1 rank as well as the stat boost (after the Huffman).



Killroys start spawning with pretty high frequency. They have lower defense and higher ranks but are much faster than Tork. Enemies always spawn in outside your visual range, so Kilroy's have a tendency to sneak up on you.

I don't know if I mentioned, but the game only spawns in two types of enemies at once. A boss counts as one of these enemies. During the beginning of the game, Goner was always one of the two. Now that we're further it can be a mix of pretty much anything.

We're doing might good now, just look at the stats on the hud! Let's check in with the lab and see if we get a pat on the back.

Lab Visit #9



Guy: "Okay, your D.O.A. levels are at 75 percent. You're almost there."





All that in 11 minutes. We'll be maxed out in no time.



I've started seeing a to more a lot more David enemies now. They are the highest ranking normal enemies. We can take them out pretty consistently now, although it costs a lot of ammo.



I see the boss Chance (Rank 4) during another storm.



Look at those high res textures!

By the way, we last outside of the DOASys for much longer periods now. I don't know when it happened, but the spires (blue, yellow, red) have started refilling stats at double the normal rate. Hanging around the DOASys is no longer a requirement.



The boss Loki (Rank 3!) is out for a stroll during another storm.



Rank 101!

Unfortunately, at this point I ran into a problem. I wanted to continue getting rank and stats out, but I couldn't. I ran into the bug in which only Goners would spawn in the game. I've been running into this during the Let's Play. It's a neat perk in which I could run safely to any boss. It's easy enough to fix, but to do so I have to return to the lab.

I figure it's a good time to save the game, so I head back to the lab!





The goons at the lab had nothing to say this time, but we're only 3 points away from being maxed out!



Oh what the hell! Actually, this isn't really a problem, but I was amused by the lazy, slap-in-your-face explanation presented here.

Being a disc-based system, 3DO relies on external memory for saved games. Unfortunately, 3DO did not have memory cards like Playstation did, 3DO had 32k of internal memory called NVRAM. Most games (and probably Immercenary) check the available space before starting up, and ask you if you want to delete some files if it thinks you don't have enough space for at least one saved game.

The game was complaining here because I didn't have enough space for an extra saved game, but I can always overwrite one of the existing ones.



Oh well, back to work.



I spot our victim. Another defenseless David



Hooraaay-what? Aw, damn it.

This is another way that the game tells you what boss is "next". Once you reach a certain rank, you're unable to go any higher until you take down the next boss.

You also can't huffman anything once this happens. So, now we're stuck at rank 101 at just below the maximum stats. I didn't plan it that way, it just happened. I also wonder if I have higher stats than the game "thinks" I should. By huffman-ing nearing every kill, you get the most bang for your buck.

Not that maximum stats makes you all-powerful anyway. Balkan is going to kick my ass a few times.



Well it's back to the DOASys. I suggest we kill Balkan next time. I'll collect whatever info we can get about him first.