Ride with the covies, in regal style!

(7:33) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. There's something rather amusing you can do with the two dropship Ghosts, if you reposition them in advance. Check it out, and see my associated new article, which expands on a much briefer piece from 2005.

Released November 26th 2024, gameplay recorded November 20th-23rd 2024.

00:02 (Setting up) For the set-up work here I was using a grabbed Banshee, but that's just an option. I reposition the dropship Ghosts (using the corner Ghosts for some travelling), placing the rear Ghost slightly further back than the front one, so I'd be reminded which was which. Then I fly back and resume normal play.

After grabbing the rocket launcher, which I want for some fun, I get back to near the Ghosts and save a checkpoint. I didn't dally with covies along the way, but you could. Actually, I skipped the Pelican area spawn trigger entirely, flying over it; an unimportant detail not shown.

01:32 (Seeing the Ghosts moved) Just to show it, here are the Ghosts getting moved to the ship when it's triggered. As you can see, it didn't matter than my Banshee blast overturned them; they went anyway. It wouldn't even matter if they were flying through the air at the time.

02:09 (First teleport, front Ghost) For this first teleport example I use the front Ghost, and basically just pan the camera around to get some different views. Notice how the plasma fire from my Ghost got abruptly cut off when I teleported (there was an associated blip). A carried Ghost can't fire until dropped. Towards the end of the descent I had my trigger finger down; so you can see when firing finally starts up.

02:56 (Looking at covies, front Ghost) Again using the front Ghost, I get views of the two Jackals riding up front. Both blue, on this occasion. After the drop, I show a bit more battling than last time, making good use of the rocket launcher. My second rocket is a bit off-target though. I tried to blast that Ghost into the air like the first).

03:56 (Looking at covies, rear Ghost) This time I use the rear Ghost. Facing backwards as I head for the trigger line, I almost get ejected, but it's okay, and on arrival at the ship I get a view from the front (the same direction I'd been facing). I then get views of the Elites at the back, and also the adjacent Grunts.

04:58 (Jackal spawning, front Ghost) Back to the front Ghost again, I teleport while looking sideways in order to see a Jackal spawning. If you check it frame by frame, you'll see that he initially has his arms out, then drops into position.

05:25 (Tagging the other Ghost) After tagging the other Ghost, the plasma goes off at the moment of arrival at the ship, resulting in a delayed deep boom. I like how a Grunt says "What was that?" right after the bang. That matched up to the situation well and made for a bit of comedy. But I expect the Grunt was actually reacting to my presence, not the bang.

05:41 (Tagging my Ghost) Now here are three clips where my own Ghost is tagged; and notice how neither the Ghost nor myself takes damage from the explosion at the ship. In the first I get a Grunt to do the work. But that took a bit of patience and I didn't work with that method for long. I moved to the idea of bouncing a plasma off the ceiling, as seen in the next clip. For this I'd created a modified set-up in which that Ghost had already been positioned and the corner covies were dead. Then it was just a matter of learning a suitable aim for the throw. But another option, simpler of course, was to just tag the Ghost directly from nearby, as seen in the final clip. In both of these last two clips there's a delayed deep boom, as the plasma goes off at the moment of arrival.

06:15 (Tagging myself; just hurt) From here on it's all about getting myself tagged. In these two clips the plasma takes a while to go off after I teleport, and I don't get killed, just hurt.

06:41 (Tagging myself; killed fast) In the first of these two clips, the plasma goes off on arrival and I'm killed. In the second, detonation comes 1 frame later and again I'm killed. These were the usual outcomes for such prompt detonations. Quite a difference from the previous two clips!

06:58 (Tagging myself weakened; killed) In these final five clips I was using a pair of Jackals to damage me before teleporting, though I was actually already two health bars down. In my damaged state I'm killed by the tag even though the plasma takes a while to go off. I went for a montage here. These were five of the best deaths I got, over the course of many tries. I was using a modified set-up for that, enabling me to do the tries efficiently.

Closing remarks There's more to come on this topic, so stay tuned! By the way, you may've noticed that the red Elite in the corner kept trying to run off (e.g. at 2:18). The reason is, he was going for the inner corner Ghost which I'd left in the dropship area. During my work on the movie, there were many times when he boarded up and started attacking me as I fought the dropship guys.

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