They've had some Banshee treatment - now it's time for a Ghost!

(6:52) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Legendary. Back in BCM135 I had fun attacking three Wraiths with a Banshee. This time I give them some Ghost treatment, culminating in two speedy toastings via tricky and dangerous close circling to try and maximize friendly fire, which makes all the difference. The final play is the fastest I managed after a lot of effort. 39 seconds, from boarding the Ghost to when the final Wraith is destroyed (time rounded up). The preceding play was 43 seconds, my previous best.

Released August 14th 2015, gameplay recorded August 10th-12th 2015.

00:02 (Play 1) This first play is a general introduction, with no particular strategy other than to move around quite a bit and keep up a decent barrage. I'm using the same save as for the Banshee attacking (it was seen created in BCM80), and it features a handy Ghost whose pilot got sniped. That's the one I use throughout the movie. There's always a danger of getting blasted before being able to board and get clear, and on this play I indeed take a blast, but it only hurts my shield.

In this play I like the bit around 1:03 where I go up the Shade hill and bombard the Ghosts from above, while evading some pretty nasty fire. You might also notice that the Shade gunner has dropped a plasma grenade, which gets detonated. Good job I was clear of that! When I back off down the hill, a shot sails over, skimming the ground. It was pretty dangerous being up there. As I accelerate to drive off the hill, I see another shot coming in. I thought I might very well be toast there, but luckily it misses. The play also includes two friendly fire incidents.

02:00 (Play 2 - Closer and faster) Now I step up the pace a bit, focusing on closer work which naturally tends to speed things along. There's quite a bit of friendly fire at the start of my work here, when close to the Ghosts. More later too, and in fact the first two Wraiths get destroyed by it. Nice!

Incidentally, at the start I blasted the Shade just for fun. For the movie I was trying to make each of my flights to the Ghost a bit different, for the sake of variation.

03:11 (Play 3 - Distant bombardment) In this play I focus on distant bombardment with relatively little movement. Well, enough to avoid the incoming shots at least! Right after I board the Ghost I get blasted into a somersault, which was highly unusual. There's quite a nice ending where I charge the final Wraith and do a stunt off it. The charge was a bit risky of course, but I was pretty sure the Wraith was on the verge of exploding.

05:09 (Play 4 - Extra fast via close circling) Back in play 2 you saw some friendly fire when I was moving around the Wraiths quite close. Here I use a close circling tactic to really try and maximize friendly fire while maintaining a bombardment of my own, in a bid to destroy the Wraiths as fast as possible. You might think it looks pretty easy, but it's not. It's a tricky job, taxing both mentally and physically (my left thumb is still recovering from the joystick work). Misjudge things slightly and you can easily get blasted - as I did, countless times.

This play was very fast, and was my best for quite a while. 43 seconds, from boarding the Ghost (specifically, the moment the boarding prompt vanishes) to when the Wraiths are all destroyed (with time rounded up to the nearest second). I came within a whisker of disaster twice, but each time I was just far enough from the blast to escape with shield damage only. One of the Wraiths gets blown up by friendly fire.

06:05 (Play 5 - Even faster!) Originally I was going to end the movie with my 43-second record which had taken so much effort to achieve. But when it comes to going for records I'm a bit of a sucker for punishment, so I decided to see if I could go even faster - and eventually I pulled off this 39-second job.

At the start of this play the Ghosts were in a very awkward configuration, making it hard for me to squeeze past the hill, and also pretty much forcing me to pass around the outside of the small rock, rather than inside (which is preferable). I was already thinking "This isn't looking good", but I stuck with it anyway and the Ghost configuration improved. At around 6:28 you can see that the Wraiths get very close together. I think that caused the overall damage of each friendly blast to get multiplied, because more Ghosts were within the blast radius - potentially including the firer. I'm pretty sure that's what led to such a fast time. I couldn't beat it despite even more hours of trying, including a lot of anti-clockwise plays.

Closing remarks I hadn't done much Ghost play with my three Wraiths before, so I wasn't sure how the movie would turn out, but I'm definitely pleased with the result and I also think this has got to be one of my noisiest movies. The business with the close circling took up by far the most time and made for an absorbing challenge, though quite a taxing one. There's a follow-up movie coming up in a few days time and it's a bit of a corker if I do say so myself - so watch out!

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