General Tips . . .
Assign the Caps Lock key as your run key. Always keep it down
except when doing some fine manuvering.
Learn to Grenade Hop (also called Jumping). This is very useful when trying to access a place that is too high off the ground to reach normally, as well as for crossing lava. The easiest way to do it is to face where you want to go, give yourself some running room, look down, then run at the point where you want to go, firing a grenade at your feet just before you reach a wall (or whatever). You will take some damage, but you should find yourself at the upper level. Make sure you don't fire right on top of the wall, because you will most likely die. Instead, you want to time it to be just before you reach the wall in order to take minimal damage. You can practice this on the second level, 'Bigger Guns Nearby.'
Grenade Walking is also important. In this case, you usually just need to get up to a high step. Back up to the step, aim
down, and fire.
You can also you SPNKR missiles instead of grenades...they'll take you much higher and farther than grenades, but are also much more deadly if mistreated.
Grenade Climbing is a difficult trick, and requires either full shields or invincibility, and a full load of grenades. You also need a place that is too high for a single grenade, and a good amount of straight wall that leads to that place. (A good example is the Deprivation Chamber on 'Never Burn Money'). Get back as far as possible from the goal along the wall (the wall needs to be perfectly straight). Then turn into the wall slightly (just a tap on the turn key). Aim down, and begin to run forwards. Launch a grenade. It should hit the wall and you will take some damage, but you'll be flying. As soon as your descent starts, fire another grenade down at the wall. Continue until you reach your goal. This is a very difficult maneuver to accomplish.
You can also reach high platforms with either the flamethrower or
the alien gun in the low gravity levels (the Pfhor ship levels).
Exploding Bobs: cunning. Daring. *Deadly*. They are innocent colonist that have been converted by the Pfhor into exploding bombs. These can be tricky the first time you run into them, but there are some easy steps that you can take to distinguish between a normal Bob and the exploding Bob. First, normal Bobs will always say 'They're everywhere!' (well, assuming you haven't played with the sound file), while the exploding Bob will shout 'Thank God, it's you!' Secondly, exploding Bobs are always green. Finally, if shot with the pistol, exploding Bobs will spill yellow blood, while normal Bobs will bleed red. Thus, if a Bob is in question, fire one shot at it and look at the color of blood that spurts out.
On the lower skill levels, there is a limit to how much ammo you
can carry (these are for Normal gameplay):
50 .44 Magnum clips
25 Fusion batteries
15 MA-75 clips
8 MA-75 grenade packs
4 SPNKR Missiless
3 Napalm Canisters
Remember that you can also have a full load in any weapon, so
theoretically, you have one more than what's listed above. It would seem that with higher difficulty levels, the above limits do not apply.
From Jason Martin Levitt (jason@cs.utexas.edu) comes a simple methodology for approaching any level:
1. Search for switches and room entrances by using
map mode.
2. Flip all switches.
-If a switch stays on after you've flipped it, don't
bother it again.
-If a switch turns itself off soon after you
flip it, that means either the change
was permanent, temporary, or reversable.
a. permanent change -- the switch is permenantly
off -- you can't turn it on again.
b. temporary change -- An event occured that
you need to deal with immediately. Generally,
this means you need to run to some nearby
place to take advantage of the change immediately
after hitting the switch.
c. reversable change -- For example, hitting the
switch causes a pedestal to lower itself and
stop. Hitting the switch again makes the
pedestal go up and stop. Sometimes, you have
full control in these situations i.e. you
can stop the pedestal at any point.
3. Look for switches in unreachable places on the walls.
Use grenades or rocket launchers on those.
[Ed: The Zeus Fusion Pistol will also activate some
buttons, but only on overload (hold down alternate
weapon button (default 'option') and wait a second).]
4. Look for entrances in unreachable places on the walls.
Ways to get to unreachable entrances:
a. Jump to them by using the "run" modifier key.
Often, switching to map mode before making a
jump makes it easier to see where you're headed.
b. Use pedestals if they're available by jumping
across them. Usually, you must be running to
accomplish this.
c. Use a grenade or rocket to boost yourself
up by aiming it at the ground and firing.
You do this by backing yourself up to the ledge,
aiming at the ground, and firing.
From Dan Bradley (dbradley@netaxs.com) comes this on friendlies:
On levels where there are friendly aliens present, such as
the S'pht on 'Welcome to the Revolution,' or the Defense
Drones (particularly in 'Beware of Low Flying Defense
Drones...') a good way to find secret doors is to follow
the aliens around. They know where everything is and will
lead you straight to the goodies.
David E. Coufal (dcoufal@MIT.EDU) notes that you can abort the
level transport at a computer terminal by pressing escape while
still viewing the message. This is useful if you need to get to full
shields or more ammo.
If you are looking for an alien weapon from one of the enforcers
on the later levels, then put away that flame thrower! It'll
toast both the alien AND the weapon. And, according to
Richard Johnson (johnsonr@hoshi.colorado.edu), a SPNKR missle
will also do the same.
David Duarte (DCD3529@ritvax.isc.rit.edu) notes that some doors, such as ones on 'Couch Fishing', 'Cool Fusion' and 'Colony Ship...', can be propped open. These door are activated by a switch, and will close after a certain amount of time. However, if you deactivate the switch just before the door finishes opening, the door will stay in that position indefinitely.
Matthew Russotto (russotto@pond.com) notest that you can abort a
terminal by pressing the 'escape' key. This is quite useful to avoid
a jump pad.
Richard S. Keirstead (rsk@paradigm.co.jp) describes a method for gettingoutside the Marathon or Pfhor ships: You'll need the following things to do this: a saved game of Eupfhoria, and your cheater pumped up a bit so as not to be distract by things coming after you. You also need to have a "short" physics model, one in which the player's physical profile is that of a midget and your line of sight is about knee-height.
Enter this level then find your way to the octagonal room at the bottom right of the map. Leading to this room is a grey-walled tunnel that appears to be shaking heavily. This is also the same place an alien teleporter drops you at one point. In the octagonal room, you can see the Marathon floating in space through the slightly V-shaped window.
Now you're "short" and can walk up onto the ledges of pattern
buffers and computer terminals. You can also walk up onto window sills. This particular window appears to have no glass in it, you can shoot right out into space.
Just run at the window and in your stunted profile, you'll go right
through the window and begin walking toward the Marathon. Go ahead and walk right up to it . . . it gets bigger and more pixelated as you get closer. It is really huge. Go ahead and fire some weapons to see what happens.
Now turn around a look back at the Phfor ship. I won't tell you what you see.
Bungie never expected you to be so short and there are other places here and there in the game where there are no panes of glass in the windows of either ship.
Next Chapter
Assign the Caps Lock key as your run key. Always keep it down
except when doing some fine manuvering.
Learn to Grenade Hop (also called Jumping). This is very useful when trying to access a place that is too high off the ground to reach normally, as well as for crossing lava. The easiest way to do it is to face where you want to go, give yourself some running room, look down, then run at the point where you want to go, firing a grenade at your feet just before you reach a wall (or whatever). You will take some damage, but you should find yourself at the upper level. Make sure you don't fire right on top of the wall, because you will most likely die. Instead, you want to time it to be just before you reach the wall in order to take minimal damage. You can practice this on the second level, 'Bigger Guns Nearby.'
Grenade Walking is also important. In this case, you usually just need to get up to a high step. Back up to the step, aim
down, and fire.
You can also you SPNKR missiles instead of grenades...they'll take you much higher and farther than grenades, but are also much more deadly if mistreated.
Grenade Climbing is a difficult trick, and requires either full shields or invincibility, and a full load of grenades. You also need a place that is too high for a single grenade, and a good amount of straight wall that leads to that place. (A good example is the Deprivation Chamber on 'Never Burn Money'). Get back as far as possible from the goal along the wall (the wall needs to be perfectly straight). Then turn into the wall slightly (just a tap on the turn key). Aim down, and begin to run forwards. Launch a grenade. It should hit the wall and you will take some damage, but you'll be flying. As soon as your descent starts, fire another grenade down at the wall. Continue until you reach your goal. This is a very difficult maneuver to accomplish.
You can also reach high platforms with either the flamethrower or
the alien gun in the low gravity levels (the Pfhor ship levels).
Exploding Bobs: cunning. Daring. *Deadly*. They are innocent colonist that have been converted by the Pfhor into exploding bombs. These can be tricky the first time you run into them, but there are some easy steps that you can take to distinguish between a normal Bob and the exploding Bob. First, normal Bobs will always say 'They're everywhere!' (well, assuming you haven't played with the sound file), while the exploding Bob will shout 'Thank God, it's you!' Secondly, exploding Bobs are always green. Finally, if shot with the pistol, exploding Bobs will spill yellow blood, while normal Bobs will bleed red. Thus, if a Bob is in question, fire one shot at it and look at the color of blood that spurts out.
On the lower skill levels, there is a limit to how much ammo you
can carry (these are for Normal gameplay):
50 .44 Magnum clips
25 Fusion batteries
15 MA-75 clips
8 MA-75 grenade packs
4 SPNKR Missiless
3 Napalm Canisters
Remember that you can also have a full load in any weapon, so
theoretically, you have one more than what's listed above. It would seem that with higher difficulty levels, the above limits do not apply.
From Jason Martin Levitt (jason@cs.utexas.edu) comes a simple methodology for approaching any level:
1. Search for switches and room entrances by using
map mode.
2. Flip all switches.
-If a switch stays on after you've flipped it, don't
bother it again.
-If a switch turns itself off soon after you
flip it, that means either the change
was permanent, temporary, or reversable.
a. permanent change -- the switch is permenantly
off -- you can't turn it on again.
b. temporary change -- An event occured that
you need to deal with immediately. Generally,
this means you need to run to some nearby
place to take advantage of the change immediately
after hitting the switch.
c. reversable change -- For example, hitting the
switch causes a pedestal to lower itself and
stop. Hitting the switch again makes the
pedestal go up and stop. Sometimes, you have
full control in these situations i.e. you
can stop the pedestal at any point.
3. Look for switches in unreachable places on the walls.
Use grenades or rocket launchers on those.
[Ed: The Zeus Fusion Pistol will also activate some
buttons, but only on overload (hold down alternate
weapon button (default 'option') and wait a second).]
4. Look for entrances in unreachable places on the walls.
Ways to get to unreachable entrances:
a. Jump to them by using the "run" modifier key.
Often, switching to map mode before making a
jump makes it easier to see where you're headed.
b. Use pedestals if they're available by jumping
across them. Usually, you must be running to
accomplish this.
c. Use a grenade or rocket to boost yourself
up by aiming it at the ground and firing.
You do this by backing yourself up to the ledge,
aiming at the ground, and firing.
From Dan Bradley (dbradley@netaxs.com) comes this on friendlies:
On levels where there are friendly aliens present, such as
the S'pht on 'Welcome to the Revolution,' or the Defense
Drones (particularly in 'Beware of Low Flying Defense
Drones...') a good way to find secret doors is to follow
the aliens around. They know where everything is and will
lead you straight to the goodies.
David E. Coufal (dcoufal@MIT.EDU) notes that you can abort the
level transport at a computer terminal by pressing escape while
still viewing the message. This is useful if you need to get to full
shields or more ammo.
If you are looking for an alien weapon from one of the enforcers
on the later levels, then put away that flame thrower! It'll
toast both the alien AND the weapon. And, according to
Richard Johnson (johnsonr@hoshi.colorado.edu), a SPNKR missle
will also do the same.
David Duarte (DCD3529@ritvax.isc.rit.edu) notes that some doors, such as ones on 'Couch Fishing', 'Cool Fusion' and 'Colony Ship...', can be propped open. These door are activated by a switch, and will close after a certain amount of time. However, if you deactivate the switch just before the door finishes opening, the door will stay in that position indefinitely.
Matthew Russotto (russotto@pond.com) notest that you can abort a
terminal by pressing the 'escape' key. This is quite useful to avoid
a jump pad.
Richard S. Keirstead (rsk@paradigm.co.jp) describes a method for gettingoutside the Marathon or Pfhor ships: You'll need the following things to do this: a saved game of Eupfhoria, and your cheater pumped up a bit so as not to be distract by things coming after you. You also need to have a "short" physics model, one in which the player's physical profile is that of a midget and your line of sight is about knee-height.
Enter this level then find your way to the octagonal room at the bottom right of the map. Leading to this room is a grey-walled tunnel that appears to be shaking heavily. This is also the same place an alien teleporter drops you at one point. In the octagonal room, you can see the Marathon floating in space through the slightly V-shaped window.
Now you're "short" and can walk up onto the ledges of pattern
buffers and computer terminals. You can also walk up onto window sills. This particular window appears to have no glass in it, you can shoot right out into space.
Just run at the window and in your stunted profile, you'll go right
through the window and begin walking toward the Marathon. Go ahead and walk right up to it . . . it gets bigger and more pixelated as you get closer. It is really huge. Go ahead and fire some weapons to see what happens.
Now turn around a look back at the Phfor ship. I won't tell you what you see.
Bungie never expected you to be so short and there are other places here and there in the game where there are no panes of glass in the windows of either ship.
Next Chapter