Ship to ship Warthog pinball now? This is getting rediculous!

(6:34) Level 2 ('Halo') on Heroic. Not content with just catapulting my Warthog off a dropship, I'm now trying get a follow-up bounce off a departing Pelican! Check out the results from my hours of effort.

Released November 27th 2019, gameplay recorded November 24th-26th 2019.

00:02 (Setting up) After parking my hog, I watch the Pelican to wait for it to start rising, then I run to board the hog and get the checkpoint. Actually it would'be been better to delay an extra four or five seconds before boarding (so I didn't need to wait in the hog for so long before accelerating), but this was still ok. It was my first time trying a Pelican collision set-up, so I wasn't too sure about how quickly to board.

00:34 This clip and the next three show some of my relatively early failures as I tried to hone my launching to intercept the Pelican via good timing and a bit of catapulting luck (because you can't control it very exactly). Here I'm quite a way off but at least in the right ballpark.

00:55 Very close to the Pelican's side.

01:10 The hog was just slightly late here; almost hit the tail.

01:24 The hog goes over the Pelican, just a whisker high. Tantalising!

01:43 (Rear top hit) I had a few weak glancing bounces before this, and also one stronger downwards bounce, but this was my first nice bounce, obtained after about 20 minutes of trying.

02:02 Although I got better at getting near the Pelican, there were still many times when the catapult was completely wrong. Partly for variation and comedy, I've included a few such clips in the movie, and here's one. A rather nasty impact against the base of the tower!

02:13 Another spot of rough catapulting by the dropship. Most uncooperative!

02:29 (Wing skim) A skimming hit across the top of the Pelican's left wing. In my approach to the covie ship, notice that I gave the hog a gentle right spin to hit with the hog's left side. That's a technique I was sometimes using in the latter stages of my play. See the clip third from last for another example.

02:45 (Front side hit) A good hard hit against the front side of the ship, sending the hog downwards.

03:00 A near thing as the hog goes past the Pelican's nose. At the end there's a good view of Johnson spinning in the air, which is part of why I included this clip.

03:14 (Top hit) The hog hits the top of the Pelican and pretty much has its lateral speed cancelled. After hitting the ground, only Johnson survives.

03:32 (Front top hit) Very nice bounce off the cockpit roof, quite late along the Pelican's path. It's already turning and heading down. To intercept the Pelican this late, I'd delayed my launch by a few seconds compared to normal. That was only something I got into towards the end of my playing.

03:47 (Nose hit) Bounced hard off the nose, we're all dead even before the hog hits the ground. At the end, our three bodies make a nice tight grouping as we head down to the sea.

03:59 A narrow miss, but as a consolation we get a late bounce off the dropship.

04:17 (Nose hit) Another firm nose hit, this one sends us out over the cliff.

04:31 (Nose hit) Bouncing down hard off the front right nacelle, we're killed almost instantly - which I assume was because of the speed generated.

04:42 A dramatic low trajectory.

04:55 (Top hit) A late hit off the top, and we're near the Pelican for an extended period, and at the end a crewman sounds "We're all gonna die!" With a slightly different bounce, we might well have got a second hit.

05:12 (Skim hit) This one's only a skimming hit, but it deflects the hog upwards, extending the trajectory nicely.

05:28 A comedy clip in which I get zapped as I try to right the hog.

05:45 (Rear side hit) The hog hits just below the right tail fin and bounces up through it, getting good height.

06:02 (Front side hit) Hard hit off the side of the nose.

06:15 (Top hit) An excellent late bounce off the top, to finish. This is actually the last hit I got, and then I finished my play. It came after quite a long period of having no luck, but I kept plugging away.

Closing remarks I think I had the idea for bouncing off the Pelican back on November 12th. At any rate, on that day I did a quick test to see if it would be viable, and it clearly was. Having now tackled the theme (which I launched right into after releasing the last movie), I'd say things turned out rather nicely. Getting hits certainly took perseverance, but it wasn't as tough as I thought it might be. Quite a lot of the hits I got were relatively weak glances, sometimes barely deflecting the hog much, but in the movie I've concentrated on the more meaty hits, though there are a couple of nice skims too.

In regard to movie structure, the launch clips aren't in chronological order but the first four are from relatively early in my playing and they came before the fifth, my first nice hit. After that start to the sequence, I've basically just put together choice clips in an order which makes for decent variation.

In creating the set-up I used a base save from earlier, which had Johnson and an aussie handy (a pairing previously featured in BCM388). As mentioned in my article, I later improved my set-up via two accidental micro-modifcations, which saved me having to wait around so long before hitting the pedal. My article also mentions how I was timing the latter by using the tower's beam.

I deliberately didn't involve any bailing in my play, because I suspect I can make another whole movie focusing on that. Could be interesting. We'll see!

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