Okay, I do have a mission to complete after all, so let's make this snappy!

(6:51) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Legendary. This time I'm doing the sleeping Grunts room battle as a speed challenge. With various weapon combos, how fast can I wipe out the covies? Let's see! Times are rounded to the nearest second.

Released June 12th 2024, gameplay recorded June 7th-8th 2024.

00:02 (Plasma combo, 77 seconds) After dealing with the second Elite, the Grunts take my health down to only one bar, so I'm in a pretty dicey state. However, I press on and things go okay until right at the end. Namely, I do a messy job with the final two Grunts. When I initially zap the upper one, I fail to finish him off (I thought my burst of fire was going to be enough), so I have to subsequently return my aim to him - and then I miss as well! That all cost me a few seconds. Still, 77 seconds wasn't bad.

01:34 (Plasma combo, 63 seconds) This time though, I go 14 seconds faster, aided by the fact that the two Elites come my way early on and are quite swiftly dealt with (although, I could've saved time by not bothering with the plasma balls).

Heading down a tunnel around 2:19, I hear a Grunt in the inner area who evidently got missed. So at the end of the play I have to get him. Turns out, he was stuck at at the front of the hump. I have a line of fire though, and promptly zap him through a narrow gap to get my best time so far with plasma weapons (and in fact, my best time with any weaponry).

02:42 (AR, 73 seconds) After tagging the early red Elite, I slightly misjudge the distance and take blast damage from the bang, but fortunately I'm soon recovered. Health loss only comes when I venture into the inner area. A blue Elite appears and I have to quickly back out. There were simply too many Grunts around, and they helped wipe a large chunk of my health. I manage to retrieve the situation though, and as I exit the area, there's an excellent bit of Grunt clearance with a frag around 3:28, a tactic also seen in most of my other plays here.

04:06 (AR, 66 seconds) Here's my fastest AR time though, only a few seconds off my plasma combo time. When I reach the inner area around 4:25 there are still no Elites in sight, but I throw a plasma towards the outer corner of the hump on the likelihood that one of the Elites is stuck there. Turns out I was right; and in fact, there's the barest glimpse of his head in the footage.

As for the other Elite, a blue comes running at me and I annoyingly miss an almost point-blank tag throw. But at least I get him with the next, and soon I'm on my way. Incidentally, the blast from that tag deflected the frag I'd thrown past him (hoping to get some Grunts), so that wasn't very helpful.

At the end I leave a plasma to take care of the perched Grunt while I run into the tunnel to use the AR on a straggler I knew I'd left. Could've taken too much time to get him earlier, so I left him for later. Incidentally, it's the perched Grunt who dies last, about a third of a second after the straggler. I could tell his moment of death from the audio. That extra fraction of a second is what bumped my time up to 66 seconds.

05:17 (Pistol & launcher with no grenades, 67 seconds) After two plays for each of those main two weapon sets, the movie had room for one more play so I thought I'd try a pistol and rocket launcher, with the additional limitation of zero grenade use, which was mainly to encourage more rocket play and make for some variation from the earlier plays.

Naturally, the launcher comes in pretty handy against the Elites, but I also do some good Grunt clearance with it, giving me a respectable time of 67 seconds. I didn't do much playing with this weapon combo though, and actually I think this was the only full play I recorded. I was satisfied with it for the movie.

06:38 (More later?) I tacked this short clip on to mention that I may well do some more speed plays later. Might be able to beat some of those times; and then there are other weapon sets or limitations to try of course. The clip is from one of my earlier slower AR speed plays.

Closing remarks Originally I was going to have a snappy AR speed play as the final play in BCM496, but the speed playing experience was so rich that I decided I really ought to devote a whole movie to the topic. So that's what I've done, and the 66-second AR play I was going to use in that other movie is now here instead (and to finish that movie I went with a sniping play).

Incidentally, after all these speed plays (from June 8th, quite a speedy day) I went around the room to check that I hadn't missed anyone. It's worth doing just in case, especially as there could be a Grunt who got stuck somewhere and isn't making much noise.

One other thing. For all my speed playing I was making sure I got the full 30 Grunts, rather than just 29 due to a bad spawn. I wanted the maximum challenge.

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