Time to get in log guy's face. And he's not gonna like it!

(8:30) Level 6 ('Guilty Spark 343') on Easy. As highlighted in BCM261, the yeti Flood don't show themselves for long and they do like to keep their distance. But with a bit of ingenuity you can get closer to some of them than you probably ever thought! In this movie I get up close and personal with log guy - and I really don't think he's happy about it. Saw some novel behaviour too; watch out for a surprise!

Released December 7th 2017, gameplay recorded December 2nd-6th 2017.

00:02 (Being sneaky) Entering log guy's trigger zone on the far side not only gives you a clear view of the spawning (closer than seen in BCM261), it also gives you the best chance of closing in if you drop him. This opening clip is a quick demo of the potential. Along the way, there was a nice view of the departing Pelican, and you might also notice that I tagged the Jackal on the log. I was aiming the grenade close, but wasn't actually going for a tag.

00:57 (Where to stand) I found an easy way of describing where to stand. The line I highlight is roughly parallel to the edge of trigger zone, and is very close, so you just need to step back a little. When I fire on him though, he doesn't drop. Based on my experience so far, it looks like the situation may be as follows. Each time he spawns or reanimates, he's randomly made either fragile (droppable with a single shot, on Easy), or undroppable; and the chance of fragility is about 40%.

01:23 (Setting up for replaying) Here's a quick demo of setting things up for replaying - which is of course the thing to do. I get the shotty (only available on Easy) and start jumping to delay the checkpoint due after the explosion. At various later phases I use enemy threat to maintain the delay. In the earlier demo I made a tricky jump up a steep slope, but doing that is a bit risky when trying to keep a checkpoint delayed (you might get the checkpoint inadvertently), so instead I take a longer route. I also make a point of triggering various yeti Flood (four in fact), just to get them out of the way - mainly so I won't have their yellow tracker dots being any distraction later on. I throw a frag for the final bit of delaying, so I can do my final prep easily. In particular, I want to be aiming very close to where he's going to appear.

That throw wasn't ideal actually, because the frag landed on top of the level and thus went off quite soon. Probably would've been better to make a good high throw before getting to the grass blades near the rock. I still would've had enough time to finish my prep.

02:06 (1-drop approach) Three plays illustrate a 1-drop approach, in which you simply drop him then run to close in. On the first I drop him immediately but in the second and third I delay the drop a little, which gives a bit more time to get close. Twice I get a second drop and end up very close to him on the log.

02:52 (Tag and remote explosion) Another 1-drop approach, but this time I tag him. The bang goes off at the death spot he's transported to, which I then visit, to show you where it is. As you can see, he's transported quite a way!

03:21 (Tag drop) This counts as a 1-drop approach, but instead of using gunfire I tag him. Blasts don't shunt him at all, even when he's down, but they can drop him (he needs to be fragile though).

03:39 (2-drop approach) After a while I developed this 2-drop approach, which is good for getting closer. The second drop (if you're lucky enough that he does drop a second time) is done late, when you're well advanced and can only just still see him. That way, you have more time for getting close. These are two nice examples. A caption says "Need luck; drops are random", but that's a rough way of saying it. It would be more accurate to say that droppability is random (see earlier explanation).

04:15 (Tag version) This tag version of the 2-drop approach is good because the fuse delay gives you a bit more time to get close. Hard throw though. I missed plenty, doing plays for the movie. It helps if his arm is sticking out - which doesn't always happen.

04:31 I eventually hit on the idea of doing a grenade jump to get up slightly faster. Probably doesn't save more than a second, but every little helps.

04:47 In this example I open with a tree blast, for variety. When a plasma settles on the tree like this, it tends to go off instantly. I mess up the attempted tag though; I hear a bang early, from which I conclude that I hit the tree. I still get close to him though; and I picked up an AR on the way!

05:09 I made a lot of attempts to block him, but he's quite a slippery fellow. This is a typical example - another featuring a grenade jump.

05:25 Again I'm going for the tag version. Seeing that my throw is missing, I pause to throw again, but I don't get much further. I get a nasty shock when I die in an explosion. Apparently that first plasma stuck to me! Didn't notice.

05:37 (Down a long time) Ok, back to basics now, after all that tricky tagging business. Here's a rather interesting play. He stays down so long that for a moment I was wondering if I'd somehow broken him! But did you notice the gurgle while he's down. I suspect what happened here is that he'd just switched to being active and was about to get up, but my shot 'dropped' him again.

06:04 (Log guy climbs over) When the movie was pretty near done, I made further attempts to crowd him at the tip of the log, but still never managed to block him. In this amusing example he clambers over my head!

06:26 (Falling) Now here's a surprise. He can actually fall off! It's rare but here are four examples. In two of them I drop him repeatedly. I suspect that each drop makes his position wander a little, in which case multiple drops could help cause a fall. However, in the other two examples he's only dropped once.

07:57 (Triple tag) A comedy ending now. This triple tag has got to leave a mark, surely! But when I go up to inspect the damage, he's still intact (albeit dead). Well, at least my shotty can fix that.

Closing remarks When I started on this movie, the main reason I used Easy was for the sake of having a shotgun, as I thought it would be fun to use. But when I got more familiar with attacking the guy, I realized that the shotty was also downright useful. When you reach the place where you're swivelling or turning right to get a view of him, it's often the case that you want to shoot fast to bring him down before he gets any further. The shotty is better than the pistol for doing that, because of the spread.

If he doesn't drop on the first hit, there's never any point firing further to try and drop him, because he won't go down. But it took me a while to notice this, and consequently there's a bit of pointless extra firing in a few of the clips.

In a couple of the clips I picked up an AR near the log, though it needed reloading. Really I should've thought about weapon provision beforehand. The thing to do would be to have a loaded AR in a handy place, easy to pick up when desired; and likewise a plasma pistol. These are refinements I only thought of later.

For a long while I was fighting to try and keep this movie under the 8-minute mark, but eventually I let it go on a bit longer, there was so much to show and I had so much good footage. In later movies I'll cover the topics of getting close to swamp guy and Shade guy, using the same basic idea as seen here.

Still haven't got a yeti Flood article done yet. Looks like that may get delayed a while, until I've put out more movies. My movies are currently lagging behind my exploits, and I'm struggling to keep up!

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