As if the descent wasn't already dangerous enough, now you want me to go for speed? Ok then!

(5:30) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. Following on from the last movie, I step things up by going for speed. Two descents here; both anticlockwise, which I think I prefer. The second one uses the column at the end, which is riskier but faster. Reminder: This is PAL Xbox. I don't know if you can survive all the drops on NTSC/PC. Update: I now have an article covering this topic.

Released Jun 9th 2017, gameplay recorded June 7th-8th 2017.

00:02 (Run 1, in 1:48) This relatively early run was done about four hours after the descent seen in the previous movie. For these speed descents I got into the habit of rocketing the Banshee down in a quicker and easier way, without using a tag. Of course, the Banshee business is irrelevant to the speed descent, but I wanted to include launches for fun.

00:24 I decided to do stationary starts for these runs. The time starts as soon as I start moving (I look at the footage and see when motion is first perceptible).

01:08 Bit of a hold-up here when I hit the wall, although at least I don't overturn. Hitting the wall was a bit of a hazard on these runs. Maybe I'll be able to modify my technique to try and mitigate against that in future.

01:25 Wall trouble on another platform drop! This time I'm ejected. Lost a few seconds, obviously.

01:47 Yet more wall trouble, but I get lucky and land on the final platform without overturning. After that, I'm able to quickly gain my bearings and do an alcove drop (fortunately I was pretty much in just the spot I needed to be), and finish off. Time 1:48, rounded to the nearest second. I count the end of the run being when I can first detect the sound of the Ghost hitting the ground.

02:51 After dismounting, it takes about 30 seconds until I find the Banshee. It's taken a lot longer on other occasions, and sometimes I gave up! Anyway, I get a nice ride. Apart from dying, that is.

03:11 (Run 2, in 1:39) After doing quite a few run attempts using an alcove drop at the end, I remembered about the column, which had slipped my mind because in the last movie I focused on the alcove route at the end (being more concerned with minimzing risk). Using the column is typically going to be faster, so I switched to using it.

03:15 When I drop from the LZ, I get a fairly ideal bounce off the wall, ending up backing away and rotating to head for the next drop. I'm already up by over two seconds, thanks to that.

03:26 I flow into the top platform drop very nicely, landing ideally for the alcove drop which follows.

04:18 I've already scraped the wall on a few earlier platform drops, but here I go a touch too far. As I recall, I wasn't ejected. I saw that the Ghost was going over, so I bailed in order to be able to right it faster (or that was the idea anyway).

04:34 I go too deep on the final platform drop and hit the wall, getting ejected. But luckily the Ghost stays on the platform, so the run continues. I quickly identify the front of the platform, and move the Ghost rightwards to try and get more central before heading off to hit the column. Actually I go rather too far right, but I hit it anyway. Phew! After landing, my time is 1:39.

05:11 Another nice return trip! This time I don't get ejected, although I was expecting to. Maybe I didn't quite have the Banshee vertical?

Closing remarks I can definitely go faster than that second run - because I already did. I beat it by two seconds, but the trouble was, it took me ages to find the Banshee (more than a minute and a half), and then my speedy ascent got cut short by hitting the middle ring; so I didn't want to use that play. It didn't matter anyway, because I know I can go even faster, and plan to do another movie sometime, showing a few such runs. In particular, I want to get a fast run in which I don't have any serious hold-ups, like getting ejected. In the meanwhile I've settled for these two runs as an opening salvo, so to speak.

© 2004-2020 by Rockslider