The top of that descending Pelican looks inviting. Let's check it out!

(7:20) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. This shows my adventures into riding on top of the descending Pelican, courtesy of a grabbed Banshee. It starts with my early tries and first success back in April. The rest was done just recently and uses a different save, with a red pilot and a rather slow-witted Grunt. A tricky bit is when the Pelican accelerates forward a little, part way down. In the movie that's why I keep falling off the wing tip, and it also sends me off the front fuselage. Incidentally, all the grabbing technique seen here is now outdated, due to some improvements I've been making - which I expect I'll relate soon.

Released July 3rd 2016, gameplay recorded April 10th and June 24th-30th 2016.

00:02 (Early failures and first success) These first five clips are from about an hour's play on April 10th, when I tried riding the Pelican for the first time. I'm using my arch method for grabbing the Banshee, and on this grab I splatter the ejected pilot as I make my getaway. My first attempted Pelican boarding doesn't give me a very long ride at all though. I badly misjudge the dismount and quickly go off the edge.

00:47 This next boarding is slightly better, but I'm quickly in trouble with the bounciness and minimal traction. I just can't stop myself going off in time.

01:05 Ok then, this time I'll land further back where it looks flatter - on what I now call the 'vent strip'. That goes ok and for a while things feel fine, but then I wander off the strip, and when I try to get back, I get nudged away. It's not a big nudge, but I can't quite stop it, and eventually I take another trip to the snow.

01:37 I didn't need to include to include this clip but I wanted to show a bit more of the Banshee grabbing, and this is an entertaining failure. Tagging the pilot is generally a bad idea, as you can see!

01:53 This time the grab goes ok, though I damage the Banshee when I blast the Elite. Doesn't matter though. I transfer to the vent strip and things are looking good. After a while I lose my position and wander slightly, but I'm able to hold myself back from going off, and eventually I'm safe. First success!

02:52 (Later exploration begins) Now we move to more recent times, namely when I decided to make a movie on the subject. The original save I was using got overwritten when I elected to save the checkpoint I got for the oddly stuck Banshee of BCM178 (good decision, as that Banshee has provided a lot of fun), so I rustled up a new save to use and it turned out to be very nice. There are no Grunts by the Shades, and when one finally turns up, he just stands there harmlessly watching me for a while. In this first clip I shoot him, but later I stopped bothering. As for the Pelican riding, I was more confident by this time. The vent strip gives you a fairly easy ride, and this is just an example - which also shows the Banshee bouncing around amusingly. Eventually I drop down off the back.

03:56 (Dismount needs care) However, you do need quite a bit of care with the dismount, as these two clips illustrate. Each time, I land with too much horizontal speed and can't stop myself going off.

04:23 (Tail fin) I decided to investigate other places to stand, and for starters I try a tail fin. No trouble!

04:47 (Front fuselage) In view of earlier play, I'd been staying clear of the front fuselage, as it slopes down in potentially dangerous fashion. However, with my new confidence I gave it a go and found that actually it's not bad at all, as long as you avoid ever picking up much speed towards the nose. In this example I'm doing fine until eventually getting a little nudge in the back by the vent strip when the ship accelerates forward a little. That leads to disaster.

05:09 (Wing gap) Standing in a wing gap is interesting. You get jostled about and it's pretty scary. On this play I subsequently made it down though (not shown).

05:23 (Wing tip) Using a wing tip is another matter. Rather tricky! This sequence shows some of my failures before my eventual first proper success (I had two half-successes earlier, but on one I only got onto the wing quite late, and on the other I didn't really get far enough out onto the tip for my liking). On the second failure, I'm trying so hard to stay away from the front of the wing that I fall off the back instead! At the end of my successful ride, a Marine gets squashed by the sliding hog, part way through a comment about my height.

06:58 (Stunt boarding) After that Marine got squashed, I turned and watched the departing Pelican, and that could've made a decent ending for the movie, but I felt the need to have a bit more of a kick. Eventually I came up with the notion of boarding the Pelican in stunty ways, and that was ideal. Definitely made for a better ending, to show a clip of that.

Closing remarks I never could Shade-launch myself onto the Pelican like Ms. Man once did, and anyway I probably would've slipped straight off even if I'd hit the target, so it's nice to have an easier way of boarding at last.

This movie could easily have been twice as long, I had so much adventuring to cover. Originally I was going to include more of the Banshee grabbing, but I ended up cutting a lot of it to keep the movie length down. In retrospect that was probably for the best anyway. Besides which, by the end of my gameplay I'd made improvements to my grabbing technique anyway, so there was less point showing footage of my old grabbing.

If I'd thought of stunt boarding earlier, maybe the movie would've been longer, but I contented myself with just using that topic to provide a nice ending. I suspect I'll show more of it in another movie sometime.

The movie's clips are in chronological order except for the four after the 'new save' clip.

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