A brief guide to setting up a whole lot of fun in the hangar…

(6:10) Level 9 ('Keyes') on Normal. This demonstrates creating a good save for the Keyes hangar battle, the main aspects being to end up with an undamaged overshield plus a stash of spare weapons maxed out on ammo, and maximum grenades of course. It's the save I used for BCM116 and BCM117. There's some fun in here too, including a 'ceiling attack' shown in full - a relatively tricky part near the end. I did make one small slip in my work though. My needler is actually short of a needle, which I didn't notice until after I'd finished. Doh! Guess I'll just have to make do with 99.

Released October 22nd 2014, gameplay recorded September 22nd - October 17th 2014.

00:02 (Leaving the ship) I get the camouflage so I can just run through the early areas, and next I want the early shotgun, though it's not crucial. There's a Grunt lobbing a grenade at spores and I briefly toy with death as I gamble on getting past it. I'm just out of range when the blast goes off, phew! Then I get the shotty and hop over the carrier to make my exit.

00:23 (Outdoor work) After my camo wears off, there's some Flood slaying to do in this narrow passage. Here's where I start building up my shotty ammo. I want to be well stocked by the time I reboard the ship. I also grab the sniper rifle. At the grav-lift I head up the slope and see that the Elites have gone. Jumped off maybe. There's just a lone Grunt needling a carrier, and he gets amusingly blown off into the goo as I depart.

01:04 (Wraith room) At the end of the Wraith room a Flood drops his shotgun but it lands down below. Never mind - I'll get the ammo later. Another guy provides a pistol which I throw over the edge. When I follow, the Flood have started clearing off into the passageway, behaviour which was triggered by my earlier positioning somewhere above. I need to kill most of them before the big door will open, so I do that. Soon after, I'm tackling the reinforcements from behind the door. There's a carrier and I try to avoid popping it, else the bang would likely send weapons flying, making supplies harder to find. However, he gets popped by friendly fire. In the aftermath I get some shotty ammo and there's another pistol, plus a non-full plasma pistol which I take into the next fight.

02:00 (Adjoining areas) From this Flood attack I get a spare shotgun and a full plasma pistol, and enough pistol ammo to now make a full one. The spare shotty is going to be used in the rest of the set-up work. It has 30+ shells which should do, so I don't bother backtracking for more ammo - though you can always do so as shown. I clear the area under the hole then throw my various weapons down, except for keeping the spare shotty and spare plasma pistol. Then I get the overshield and drop down.

02:46 (Flood vs covies) When I approach the Flood area and see the carriers standing in an amusing line, I pop the nearest to speed up the covie-Flood fight. After a while I advance and hear an Elite being slain. The other Elite laughs heartily after needing something, but then gets a blast from my shotty. Grenades clear the next group of covies, though one Grunt spots me and I have to dodge a needle to preserve my overshield. After this I get more shotty ammo for the ceiling attack. I also got an AR and full needler, but I haven't shown that because I later got an AR and needler from the ceiling attack instead.

03:23 (Ceiling attack) The ceiling attack makes quite good watching and isn't too long, so I've shown it in full. Shotty blasting stops almost all the Flood from firing, but one guy manages a needle. After a while some spores turn up, but I anticipate the danger and get them popped before they can nibble my overshield (though one gets close). At the end there's still a guy stuck above, but his gurgling alerts me and I get him before he can shoot. In the aftermath I get a full plasma rifle as expected, and I also get what I thought was a full needler, but I fail to notice that the clip was short of a needle. Silly me. I was a bit distracted by the shotgun vanishing off a body.

04:45 (Final Flood, then weapon moving) Wiping out the final group of Flood is easy with the aid of a grenade, which I later replace. I advance my old weapons but pause to try and get the mass of bodies cleared, making weapon moving easier and safer. The needler does a reload sound every time I throw it, and that should've alerted me to the fact that it wasn't full, but somehow it didn't register.

04:58 (Finishing off) I throw weapons across the hangar checkpoint trigger line which is about halfway along the final purple side-panel, then I cross it myself but keep the checkpoint delayed with jumping so I can move the weapons a bit further (which is fiddly when you're jumping) and get the speech eliminated before getting the checkpoint.

Closing remarks My work on getting the footage for this movie was seriously hampered by the fact that my memory card stopped working. Ack! With a memory card I can always keep stages of the set-up work safe and try various ways of progressing things, then pick the progression I like best. But without a card I didn't have that luxury, and had to work differently. Decisions became more critical and consequential, which created pressure. If I'd had a card, it's quite likely that I would've re-done the end part where I made a mistake getting a non-full needler. Still, things turned out ok apart from that. One good thing about that end phase was the spare shotty vanished off a body. That gave me the opportunity to mention the danger of bodies, and to show how you can avoid it by clearing them.

I elected to show things using Normal because I think that's the difficulty on which most players would have the best fun, at least to begin with. Depending on your battle plan, Heroic can be seriously hard to survive.

In this save there's an Elite already aboard the Shade at the start. It's been a long while since I was setting up the battle but I don't remember that happening before. Actually I quite like it though, because you can be sure of having a fun target to grenade as you run in. As for why the Shade is manned, either the Elites noticed me or else felt threatened by the spores. There was some shooting heard after I became visible to them, and I'm pretty sure that was directed at spores.

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