BCM579 - Spiral path megabattle, another three plays

Featuring an outrageous Ghost grab!

(7:23) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. Here are yet another three plays of the same spiral path megabattle save, this time including a spectacular Ghost grab at the blockade!

Released August 29th 2025, gameplay recorded August 23rd-26th 2025.

Commentary

00:02 (Play 1 - Path struggle) At the start of this play I deliberately get a bounce off the dropship to cause the Banshee to roll. Fun! As for the battle plan, it's basically to let the covies come down the spiral path a bit, then go up to meet them. This tends to make for quite a struggle. On this occasion I go with a plasma rifle and AR, a nice combo for this situation. I'm deliberately doing without rockets, to raise the challenge level.

Around 1:28 a blue Elite dives off the inner edge when I throw a plasma, and initially settles in the tree. I try to tag him but he fall down at just the right time to avoid it. No escape though, as I tag him after he settles on the ground. Another incident in the struggle is that I'm slow to get the cloaked Elite. He kills one Marine while my attention is briefly elsewhere (checking for possible covie presence down below), before I realise he's on the scene, and drill him with the AR.

Note: around 2:13 you can see that a Marine has failed to come up the path. Navigation trouble I think. Happens sometimes at that spot; I've seen it many times.

03:18 (Play 2 - Sniping holdout) Here we have a path top defence based around sniping. It's a lovely situation for the rifle, and you get some very striking views of the mob through the scope, as they head your way. It's a lot of fun to pick your targets. As you can see, I make use of occasional grenades too.

05:23 (Play 3 - Ghost grab) Using a flight pattern similar to the one at the start of the movie, but this time bailing just before impact, I get propelled over to the blockade and fire a mid-air rocket at the mob before promptly boarding a Ghost and making a getaway. Needless to say, pulling all this off took quite a few tries. This was actually the first time I managed it There were some earlier times when I got killed before I could get the Ghost clear; but here, I actually retain full health!

In the subsequent fight, essentially a path top defence, the Ghost eventually smokes up and I bail before it blows. Not a moment too soon. It actually went down to a single health bar just as I was bailing.

There's a nasty surprise just after that around 6:36 when a red Elite approaches from behind, having clumsily side-stepped off the cliff edge back around 6:04 (you can faintly see it, though I certainly didn't notice it at the time). But luckily I have a rocket loaded, and give it to him before he slaughters me.

Closing remarks That Ghost grab lead me to do some more Ghost play, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Stick around for the next movie to see a few examples!