Yet more of the blocking business. I've really got it in for those Pelican guys!

(6:55) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. Just hours after releasing the previous tutorial on getting Pelican Marines blocked in doing the seven extra Marines trick, two more blocking ideas came to mind, namely for blocking with the hog. So I've speedily put together this sequel.

Released September 20th 2024, gameplay recorded September 18th-20th 2024.

00:02 (Setting up) After a brief bit of play to test whether my hog bouncing idea was viable, I got to work on this tutorial. The first step was to set things up with a handy delayed checkpoint near the hog-drop spot, and that's what you see here. One thing different from the set-up in the previous movie: after killing the Banshee pilot, I throw a high plasma as an initial checkpoint delaying method, rather than using jumping and Banshee fire. It's just an option.

00:48 (Hog bouncing, first three tries) Next you see what were my first three tries. My first bounce is poor as I wasn't quite tuned in to the appropriate Banshee position. Failure. The second bounce is fine and I find Sergeant Johnson blocked. He's not running, but he's twitching at least (there was also some intermittent running actually), and that seems to be good enough. The third try is a more clear-cut success, with two blocked runners.

01:51 (Further tries) From here on the bouncing clips are no longer chronological, but three are from that same initial 10-minute session of play. They show various successes and a few failures. I've included a five-clip sequence in which I'm out of the Banshee when the bounce occurs. That's really just for variety and to get different views of what goes on. Meanwhile the 2:02 clip shows something you may get occasionally: failure and early deactivation. This example was quite an extreme case, with such early deactivation. I haven't analysed deactivation dynamics fully, but in this case it looks like my proximity played a role, as three of the guys were visibly noticing me, and the fourth - Johnson - had delivered a noticing line.

04:05 (Hog driving) Four clips now, on a second idea I had, namely of simply driving the hog to try and get some blocking. The timing is very tight and it's not easy, but you see three of my successes here, the last of which I was rather pleased with as I managed to single out the rearmost runner (cut him from the herd, so to speak). The other clip is a comedy clip hinting at the difficulty of avoiding splattering anyone!

05:28 (Hog bouncing again) It's back to the bouncing option now for three last clips. The first shows the freakiest example of a blocked runner that I've yet seen. Johnson doesn't look blocked at all, but there he is, running on the spot! He also stars in the final clip, which just provides a closing bit of comedy. Once those two runners got free, I knew deactivation was going to follow, as Johnson wasn't making any effort at movement. As for the middle clip at 5:52, that was a late addition. A spot of novelty there, as I allow the Pelican to come down on me so I end up inside, seeing the Marines' exit from their perspective.

Closing remarks Enjoyed making this. The hog bouncing method really was good fun, giving me a load of amusing clips to chooe from.

In regard to hog driving idea, you might wonder how I didn't think of that earlier. It's rather an obvious idea after all. However, at the back of my mind had been the thought that there just wasn't enough time to make it viable; and maybe that was because of some past experience when messing around at this location (for whatever reason). It was only after checking that I found that there was enough time after all.

In my closing remarks on the last movie, I said that some 10-Marine fun with Stacker on a chain-gun was coming next. Well, due to the futher blocking ideas you got another tutorial instead. But hopefully Stacker will indeed now be coming next.

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