Quite possibly the most obliging doorway you'll ever meet…

(4:50) Level 9 ('Keyes') on Normal. Relating to the Keyes hangar battle in which covies and Flood spawn repeatedly, this illustrates the door ambush plan using a shotgun. I tackle it in three ways. First with extreme prejudice, trying to blast the covies mostly point-blank. Then I target the Elites only, from the nook of the door (which actually takes a bit of practice). And finally I have some fun tagging a lot of Grunts.

Released October 22nd 2014, gameplay recorded October 18th 2014.

00:02 (Extreme prejudice) With all these ambushes the play is quite samey so I won't give a blow-by-blow account. Instead I'll just say what I can. In this first play I'm really trying to stick it to the covies with aggressive close-range thrusts, which is quite satisfying. Right at the start here, I grenade the manned Shade, which saves me getting a bit of plasma in the back. I still get some fire coming my way for a while though, until the platform Elites focus on the Flood.

00:15 At the door, the first Elite and Grunt get blasted in the face very nicely, getting the ambush off to a good start, showing the attitude I was aiming for. Some of the later covies don't get a point-blank blast though, because I sometimes back off a bit, trying to stay reasonably healthy.

00:58 I'm just starting to reload when a blue Elite comes out. I could still have fired of course, but he got so close that my instinct was to instead quickly tag him and jump over, avoiding his swipe. That turns out rather nicely, setting off a chain reaction which also kills the final Grunt (and you can briefly see multiple bodies flying in unison). Meanwhile another blue emerges and he gets tagged too, after surviving a shotty blast. In all there were 14 Elites and 13 Grunts.

01:08 With the door ambush over, I turn to find a Flood running at me. I lob a quick plasma but that was a dubious idea, hazardous to my safety! But it misses so I just blast him - and the guy behind. I then find a Flood who's down on the ground. I throw a frag but instantly wish I'd used a plasma instead, partly because the frag bounce is slow. When I back off from his fire, he moves and the frag blast is too far away - so again I resort to the shotty. Nice final view though.

01:31 (No Elites allowed) This time I'm aiming to blast the Elites while letting Grunts pass. The Grunts tend to last quite a while against the Flood, and consequently the flow of covies is mostly made of Elites. To additionally vary things from the other two plays, I take up a position in the nook of the door, and my aim is to stay there for the killing. It's actually quite challenging because the Elites emerge fast and I have to get them quick or they could run off. Or beat me to a pulp. As much as possible I'm glancing at my tracker to try and gauge when to expect an Elite to emerge, so I'm ready for it.

02:10 Nice example of an Elite trying to instantly whack me, but getting killed before he makes contact. But then I have a spot of trouble. A blue emerges and my shot only wings his head and he whacks me. I whack him back as another blue comes out, and my shot goes between the pair of them. This isn't looking good! The newcomer whacks me but also makes contact with his buddy, propelling him away somewhat. My blast finishes that guy off, though I was actually going for the newcomer. That guy starts running off but I bring him just before he's out of my line of sight. Phew!

02:40 Another nice example of an Elite trying to whack me but getting killed - though I take two blasts to put him down. There's just one more Elite after that, giving a total of 22 blasted. There were 5 Grunts.

02:48 Seeing from my tracker that no more Elites are spawning, it's time to finish things off. A frag sorts out a meeting between a Grunt and two Flood, then I head to the platform for a look. There's some firing as I approach, and for a moment I think it might be an Elite firing down at spores, so I throw a frag. But when I get a clearer view I see that the platform is empty. I find an Elite down below the end though, and I throw a plasma grenade to tag him. That narrowly misses so I throw another. Then I was thinking, "Hmmm, there's a danger here", realizing that the Elite was about to get blasted up my way. But I decide to stay where I was anyway, thinking I'll probably be ok. Bad decision! The first bang sends his loose grenades up my way and the second sets them off. Oops! It made an amusing ending though, which is why I selected this play for the movie.

03:16 (Grunty tag-fest) I didn't start this ambush with the specific intention of tagging the Grunts, but when I tagged an early Grunt I thought "Hey let's keep that going" - so it turned into the main feature. On my entry I hop over the purple boxes on the left this time. It's higher there but still quite easily cleared.

03:35 Here's the first Grunt I tag - which was probably because I was reloading the shotgun. I tag the next six Grunts after this.

03:47 When I tag this Grunt the bang sets off some plasmas dropped by earlier Grunts, and I lose my shielding. Yikes! Hazardous work.

04:00 I miss with my attempted tag of a red Grunt (he weaves a bit), so I turn and get him on the back as he's running off. I successfully keep clear of all plasma bangs, but an Elite in the passage isn't so fortunate. He goes up when a chain reaction is set off by my plasma that missed.

04:15 As I recall, I anticipated this Grunt's emergence from either my tracker or his sound or both. I move forward to get him just as he emerges, then I circle around a bit. When I miss a shotty blast at a red Elite I decide to give him my next plasma, and blast the Grunt instead. I take bad damage when the red runs at me, but I'm ok. The final Grunt I just blast, having broken the Grunt tagging sequence. In all there were 16 Elites and 10 Grunts.

04:30 Spawning is over so I head for the platform. Still some fighting going on there. I throw a plasma to take out the Shade, then a frag for the closer guys - a blue Elite and two Flood. The frag doesn't quite kill the blue but it sets off a loose plasma which does; and meanwhile the Flood have gone flying too. The blue and one of the Flood settle on the ground below; and it all makes for a good amusing ending on which to finish the movie.

Closing remarks Ah, I enjoyed that! It's been way too long since I had fun with this battle, and with this hilarious door ambush. There are more ways to play it, including using other weapons than the shotty, but you can expect some of that in later movies. I'm looking forward to those already!

Unusually for one of my combat movies, I didn't actually do many plays for this. I got sufficiently pleasing plays quite early, with some memorable aspects. With the 'Extreme prejudice' play I liked the way the ambush ended, with a chain reaction. With the 'No Elites allowed' play there was that extra comedy aspect right at the end where I got myself killed. As for the 'Grunty tag-fest', there were a few things in that plus I thought the comedy at the platform would make a good ending for the movie. But I may well revisit the tagging idea sometime. This was really just the first time I got into tagging the Grunts. With more playing I could probably get something where I tag more and keep things more controlled, for example. There's definite potential there.

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