Dodging six cannon-happy Hunters on Heroic? Whose crazy idea was this?

(6:04) Level 4 ('The Silent Cartographer') on Heroic. Back in BCM34 I showed some close combat against six Hunters on Normal, trying to avoid all swipes. Now four years later, I attempt some similar challenges but on Heroic. To be honest it was so hard that I hesitate to call it 'fun', but I eventually managed a few satisfying plays, despite taking a whack on one of them. The main two challenges here involve a plasma pistol and then an AR, but to add explosiveness and light relief I've thrown in a bit of rocket play and hog stunting.

Released July 1st 2015, gameplay recorded May 7th and June 25th 2015.

00:02 (Plasma pistol & melee) Here I'm allowing myself a plasma pistol and melee only; no grenades. Things go really well for a good long time, with no shield damage even, but at about 1:36 with five Hunters left, I take a whack due to being slightly too close to the guy I was looking at from the side. That was a pity, because otherwise I was on for a no-damage play, which would've been very unexpected. Still, only one whack wasn't bad. Having done much worse on most of my previous similar attempts over the course of probably a few hours in total, including some where I was also allowing use of a needler and plasma grenades, I was inclined to settle for this play. Besides which, I liked the ending, where I finish off the last guy with a plasma ball (which I thought was probably going to be enough to kill him). Incidentally, counting from after I disembarked, the Hunters fired 15 shots.

02:02 (Rockets - plus flying hog!) Time for some light relief with rockets. This play opens with a bit of hog stunting fun which I thought I was inventing - but actually I've just realized that I did that same plasma grenade trick at the start of BCM51! It's been so long since I watched that movie, I'd forgotten.

03:09 (Assault rifle) This time I allow myself AR fire only; no melee or grenades. Actually this is the challenge I focused on first, and this play is the only time I got through without being whacked. I can't remember how many hours of failing came before it, but suffice to say, I was glad to finally succeed. Having never got to the end earlier, I still wasn't sure if my ammo would even be enough to kill the six Hunters. I thought it might be tight, and accordingly tried to be fairly careful with my targeting. As it turned out on this play, I ran dry with my final burst. Close call! In retrospect quite a bit of ammo was wasted after all; so if I were to attempt this challenge again I'd try to be even more careful with my fire. The Hunters fired 22 shots on this play, compared with only 9 on my BCM34 play with an AR.

05:42 (Last laugh for the Hunters) Plenty of my attempts with a hog stunt and rockets ended in a rapid and nasty death, some of which were quite amusing, so I thought I'd use one to end on a note of comedy. In this play I get blasted by the nearest Hunter the moment I disembark. He enjoyed that a lot.

Closing remarks For doing this stuff I made use of a save I created long ago, back when I was first working on the massed Hunters business. Namely the save used for BCM42 and BCM51, except that here I used modifications of it, in which the passengers have been ditched. The Hunters are in the same area featured in my previous close combat movie BCM34 of course. It perhaps would've been nice to have them somewhere else to give the movie a different look, but I didn't want to have to create a whole new save at this point. However, in the main two challenges I made an effort to get the Hunters into the water more than seen in BCM34, as a way of making things look a bit different.

I worked on the AR challenge first, back in May. But a few days after finally succeeding (and taking a break from the strain), my attention got completely drawn into T&R, leading to the Grunt-Jackal spawning trick business. So it wasn't until just recently that I got back to the Hunters to complete a movie. After getting the plasma pistol play seen here, I eventually did a few more hours playing with a plasma pistol and managed a no-damage success, but it just wasn't as good to watch so I stuck with the older one, despite the whack.

© 2004-2020 by Rockslider