Help! My lifeboat's infested with Grunts!

(6:53) Level 2 ('Halo') on Heroic. Relating to the previous movie, here's an explosive follow-up involving covies in the nearby lifeboat - for which I've also written a new article.

Released October 26th 2018, gameplay recorded October 21st-25th 2018.

00:02 (Lifeboat invasion) Just a short teaser opening to make an impression.

00:21 (Getting the Grunts in) I was using the set-up seen created in BCM313. Getting the four Grunts in took about seven minutes but I've boiled it down to about 30 seconds here. I checkpointed before starting on each Grunt, and just before insertion. The last Grunt got splattered twice, which cost me about 50 seconds, but otherwise things went fine. I gave the first guy a wheel tap after getting him onto the platform (shown), but didn't bother with the other three.

Incidentally, I also moved an AR out of the vicinity of the lifeboat, so it wouldn't keep showing up on my HUD. Actually I wish I'd moved the spare pistol out of the way too. In the later fun I kept getting ammo pick-up messages on the HUD.

00:55 (Initial entry) Bumping inside took about twenty minutes (I later got better at it), which was a lot of tries, but at least it gave me plenty of entertaining failures for the movie. I've just shown four here, including one of the many times I got bumped through the ground. Once inside, I had a bit of a look-around, but I've edited out about 17 seconds during which I was shooting at lifeboat surfaces. Eventually I do some Grunt slaying - with fatal consequences! Too many needles perhaps?

Note: it's very dark inside, which is why I got into the habit of switching on my flashlight immediately after bailing from the hog.

02:05 (Some tagging) For some of my play, I first deposited the Marines near the lifeboat and then got a new checkpoint. In these two plays from such a checkpoint, I do some Grunt tagging. I get a vote of approval from the Marines the first time, but they're probably less happy about how the double tag turned out.

02:36 (In the cockpit) Sometimes you end up in the cockpit (or at least, the viewpoint is in the cockpit), as seen here. I wonder if anyone's got in here before. When I throw a plasma at the final Grunt, it appears to bounce off the pilot's seat. Bad idea!

03:07 (More tagging) When throwing my second plasma here, I'm aiming for the nearer of the middle Grunts, but the Grunt next to me jumps up at just the wrong moment and intercepts it. After the first bang I run for the exit but the blast gets me, then a chain reaction sends me flying across the structure.

03:22 (Not fully inside) In this play I pop back out of the lifeboat when trying to move. I guess I wasn't properly inside. I then shoot the Grunts through the windscreen. Bullets strangely go through! Not plasma or needles though.

03:57 (Above the dashboard) Getting above the dashboard like this was very unusual, compared to ending up in the foot-space. It only happened to me a couple of times, and this was the first. When I try to move, I end up in the foot-space. Initially the camera lets me glitchily see outside the lifeboat, but then when I try to move again, I get deeper inside.

During this clip the outside dropship departs, because I looked in its approximate direction for long enough - a phenomenon I mentioned in my article about the inactive covies. I've used this as a dividing line in the movie, insofar as the rest of the movie was done with the dropship absent (no humming).

04:39 (Elites in too) Eventually I checked to see if Elites would go into the lifeboat - and yes they do. That gave me an idea. I got all six covies in, with the Elites first, then (after checkpointing for potential retries) killed the Elites to get five plasmas, setting up a nasty explosive situation for the Grunts.

Initially I tried sniping the Elites from the opening, but it was hard to be sure of when they were dropping plasmas (the Grunts were obscuring the view), so I switched to the front instead. Took a few tries before I got both Elites to drop plasmas. If you're wondering why I didn't kill the Elites before adding the Grunts, that was because of the covie vanishing issue. I wouldn't have had much time to get the Grunts in.

05:17 (Chain reaction fun) Finally then, here are nine plays of that situation, starting with the actual first play. In some plays I'm at a relatively safe distance, in others I get up close.

06:14 This clip in which I bump through, tag a Grunt and then make a sneaky escape by boarding the hog, took a lot of effort. It's the last thing I worked on. I already knew it was possible to board a hog from within a lifeboat, and here was an ideal opportunity to put that to good use for comedic effect. However, you need the hog to be close enough of course. Initially I spent a lot of time using my usual vigorous method of bumping inside, and just hoping the hog would settle close enough (the odds are against it). But eventually I focused on this softer approach in which the hog ends up sliding gently against you. That way, it's a lot more likely that you'll be able to reboard (my first cockpit clip featured a soft entry too, and the driver prompt was subsequently available). I got a handful of clips with that method, and liked this one best.

Closing remarks This wasn't the first time I got Grunts into the lifeboat and bumped inside. I'd tried it out on October 18th with a different save, and considered including a clip of Grunts inside as part of BCM313, where I was showing some things you can do by moving covies around. But I decided the topic was worth a whole other movie - which you've now got! Turned out nicely I think. See also my article.

In regard to bumping inside, you might like to check through my successes frame by frame, to see what happens. Sometimes you get a brief view of MC inside, through the glass.

Incidentally, I've also now realised that you can get Marines into a lifeboat. So maybe I'll do a movie on that too sometime.

© 2004-2020 by Rockslider