I guess the armoury had run out of goodies by the time this guy turned up…

(5:07) Level 3 ('The Truth and Reconciliation') on Normal. My horde of 131 Grunts and Jackals produced via the Grunt-Jackal spawning trick included a weaponless Grunt who likes to pretend he has a fuel rod cannon. He made an appearance in BCM151 but I also wanted to give him a movie of his own. So here's five minutes of fun, put together from various plays.

Released September 27th 2015, gameplay recorded July-September 2015.

00:02 (Visit to the muster bay) The main part of the movie is made up of clips from multiple plays, but put together in a way that makes it appear like a single play. At the start here, when only these external guys remain, I get the Grunt down by shooting his foot, though it would've been possible to instead do it by making him leap in surprise, as seen in BCM151. I quickly kill a few other covies who came down, then crouch to start getting some good views of him. The game got so overloaded, he spawned without a weapon. But for some weird reason, he acts and sounds as if he's got a fuel rod cannon! There's more footage of him as he heads for the muster bay, but I block him at the pillar.

01:40 The game was so overloaded that nobody spawned in the muster bay. Also I killed the few covies from my horde who managed to make it that far, so the muster bay is deserted. I play around with the Grunt a little, and as you see, he bluffs with grenades too! Calls out the lines according to the Grunt combat handbook, but can't actually throw.

02:58 In this clip the Grunt seems to have a bad case of the shakes, making him seem scared. Of course, what's really happening is that he's in some sort of glitchy state, his pose rapidly switching between two states.

03:30 After giving him a shock, he runs off again, crying "Need help!", so I go and get him some. There's an Elite down the passage and it's easy to make him mad so he'll chase out after me. Of course, I have a spot of mischief in mind. By putting myself in the right spot, I get the Elite to whack the Grunt. That wasn't so helpful after all eh grunty? I subsequently miss a tag on the Elite, but he gets blasted anyway.

04:23 (Stack search) As an extra bit of fun, I go looking for the fuel rod joker in the stack. Not an easy job! I jump up to get a high foothold, and for a while, most enemies still haven't seen me; a glitch arising from overloading. Furthermore we have a 'no projectiles' situation, so no enemy fire is hitting me. However, that only lasts until the game is able to remove a body; specifically the Grunt I whack. I start taking damage, and from there I know I won't survive long, especially as more and more covies latch on to me. However, I get a good view of the freaky Grunt at last (after spotting his feet sticking through the ceiling), and tag him. I'm dead before the bang goes off, but at least I knew I'd be taking a lot of covie critters with me!

Closing remarks This wasn't the first weaponless Grunt I got with the trick. Earlier I got one with a horde of 125. However, this guy was easier to work with because he could more easily be isolated.

My original notion for the main part of the movie was to have a single unbroken play in which I got the Grunt down, got some good footage of him as he headed for the muster bay, and then had a bit of fun there, including getting the Elite to come out and smack him dead. But it would've been a tough job to get good footage for all those stages, especially the last bit. I probably would've needed loads of tries to even get something I half liked. Also it takes a while to even get to the point where I can do a play. Each time, I have to wipe out the non-externals, which means suffering some horrendous slowdown for a while. So instead I went for another approach and combined clips from different plays - albeit in a way which gives the impression of being the highlights of a single play. I thought that worked ok. That took a lot of pressure off me, and has doubtless resulted in better footage overall.

The first clip is from July 10th, when I was working on BCM151 (about going to the extreme). The rest of the movie footage is from September. Some from the 10th, then after a delay while I worked on something else (coming shortly), some from the 24th and 25th.

I had to do a load of plays for the stack search. It was rare to get a decent play in which I got a good sighting of the Grunt and then caused a satisfactory explosion. Most times I didn't get a decent view of him at all, before being killed. When I did get a good view, I was often killed before I could tag him. And even when I tagged him, he was very often killed by friendly fire, causing him to vanish along with the grenade. It was all quite frustrating, and a bit of a pain too because of the slowdown. However, I got a handful of candidate plays over the course of probably more than three hours in total. I chose this one as the best, partly because of that other Grunt I killed first, which was amusing, and partly because a Grunt delivers a line right at the end, which was a very rare occurrence.

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