Ok, got me a Banshee, now let's take a look around!

(5:36) Level 10 ('The Maw') on Easy. After snatching a Banshee I do a bit of exploration around the rendezvous area - including a spot of hog driving down below for fun. Coming next: a trip to the hangar, with fun along the way!

Released October 25th 2015, gameplay recorded October 18th 2015.

00:02 After snatching the Banshee I take care of the attacker with a quick blast, getting the checkpoint promptly. In the subsequent exploration I encounter various invisible surfaces beyond the ship, including an invisible floor and ceiling. Basically it seems like this portion of the ship is in a big box. Plasma grenades stick to the invisible wall and fizzle, but then vanish without exploding. Projectiles don't pass through; as you can see with a fuel rod shot, plasma fire, and a rocket. Cortana regularly nags me to get back in the Warthog.

03:14 Here's part of another play from after the checkpoint. If you try to backtrack, you find a wall blocking the way, which is a pity. After that, prompted by yet more nagging from Cortana, I blast the hog down (also scoring a hit in mid-air) then drive around a bit. Ok there's not a lot to do, but it's novel scenery.

05:09 This clip continues the original play, but I've cut about 30 seconds and we're now almost down to zero on the countdown. Looks like I won't be escaping on the Longsword after all! Cortana's final warning to "get back in the Warthog" comes a little too late. Someone explain it to her.

Closing remarks This play derives from the base save seen created in BCM159, with no further weapon accumulation. More specifically, I was using a derivation of that save in which I'd got to the drive start checkpoint. I've played that derivation many times, and it seems to give me something like a 35% chance of getting a situation where the right Banshee is empty and the left is manned. That's the situation I wanted for this movie, so I could demonstrate destroying the enemy with a single quick blast to get the checkpoint promptly - something I failed at the end of BCM159 (it's not as easy as it looks).

I would've liked to get this movie out sooner, but my Xbox started malfunctioning, which has been a little traumatic. When trying to record possible footage, the image went bad after about twelve minutes (like an interference effect), and when I tried again later, I got the same trouble after only about six minutes. So I think the graphics are close to expiring. This was rather worrying, not least because I had 90+ saves on that Xbox, and it would be quite a blow to lose them. As it happens, I already had another Xbox, which for years I've been using as a giant memory card to store yet more saves. Looks like that'll have to be my primary Xbox from now on; and I've now copied some of my more valued saves to it.

However, on close examination I realized that there are differences in the image it puts out. One difference is that it's not quite as sharp I think. At any rate, the white lines in the HUD elements at the top aren't quite as sharp; that's where I notice it. But a more prominent difference is that the image is horizontally stretched a bit. Actually though, I think the new Xbox is more correct, because when I examine the big circle you get with a zoomed pistol, it appears circular indeed (like I assume it's supposed to be), whereas with my old Xbox it had slightly less width than height. So it seems like my old Xbox may've been giving me a slightly squashed image all these years.

Anyway, I've started using the new Xbox for my playing now, and it was used for this movie. I've still got quite a lot of old footage which I expect to use in various movies, but because of the image-stretch difference, I'll be trying to avoid juxtaposing footage from the two Xboxes as much as I can.

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