More colour shifting shenanigans from the harlequin Grunt. This time he's going all orange!

(5:53) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Legendary. This third installment on the harlequin Grunt (see BCM192) concerns the orange state I eventually realized he can acquire if you needle him when he's red. Sergeant Johnson nobly assists in the scientific research - mainly by dying a lot. Actually I'm not sure he was very happy about that.

Released August 12th 2016, gameplay recorded August 2nd-11th 2016.

00:02 (Intro) This clip just shows a bit of blasting with the red state, giving me time to set the scene. Namely, I was initially never seeing an orange state, and consequently thought it might be impossible.

00:20 (Orange state for the first time) However, soon after I started checking out the effects of needle bangs with the red state, I saw the Grunt go orange. Here's the actual event. So, orange wasn't impossible after all! After consolidating with a checkpoint, I soon found that a blast would always restore the red. Weird! A tag separated the bodies as usual.

01:15 (Later investigation) There's now a sequence of four clips showing further examples of colour-changing with the Grunt initially red, using controlled individual needle bangs - which Johnson isn't very good at keeping clear of! In this first clip it takes seven bangs before I get orange. If you step through one frame at a time for that bang, you'll see that the red Grunt lags a frame behind the orange Grunt in terms of animation pose. That often seems to be the situation in regard to needle bangs (you'll see it in other clips too), though I haven't made a close study yet.

01:47 In this clip the Grunt isn't entirely red as there's a small orange patch on top, but that's not important. You often get transient orange patches with the red state, something covered in the previous movie. Here I get orange on my first needle bang, though there are a few small red patches. The next bang produces red, demonstrating that a needle bang can change orange to red. Then a few bangs later I get orange again.

02:34 This clip was recorded last among the movie's footage. It's an addition I made after deciding it would be nice to have a close low view while needling. I get orange after three bangs. The Grunt was initially super-merged, unlike in the previous two clips.

02:50 Again I'm starting with the super-merged state. I get orange after four bangs and it persists until I run out of needles, but a blast restores red as ever. The clip illustrates how the super-merged state appears to be resilient against needle bangs like these (i.e. going off when the Grunt is static, not in mid-air), regardless of sometimes transitioning into orange. Also it illustrates how orange can be quite persistent.

03:47 (A trip to finish) I felt the need for something to add more variety to the movie, and hit on the idea of taking the Grunt on a trip back through the level (in contrast to the direction used in BCM193), and then I'd do some colour changing. When I fire my first stream of needles at the Grunt, there's no bang. That happens sometimes and I think it's because the needles are getting significantly split between the two Grunts, with neither of them getting enough for a bang. Poor old Johnson gets killed again - not from a needle bang this time, but from a Wraith blast. He's not too bright about keeping clear of explosions eh?

Closing remarks In my written commentary for BCM193 I mentioned that the orange state could be the subject of a whole other movie. Obviously that's turned out to be the case. There's scope for exploring the state further, getting into more detail, but this will do as an introduction, sketching out the situation as it currently appears. I'm glad to've got it done.

I have further movies in mind for the harlequin Grunt, so keep watching! Also I expect to write an article, and that's likely to have more detail than in the movies, where I keep captions short.

In regard to the ongoing YouTube problem I mentioned in the closing remarks for BCM193, I now think YouTube may've changed how it provides 480p, in a way which my admittedly old browser can't handle. Hopefully other people are seeing 480p though, which is the main thing.

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