Without the aid of the sniper, a new world of hurt beckons!

(7:15) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. Without the powerful sniper, tackling the covies in a spiral path megabattle tends to be much harder. Using the new save featured in the previous two movies, but eliminating the sniper each time, I station myself at the path base and try to handle a strong covie attack with just the four standard Marines. It's basically a survival challenge, and some very hectic action ensues! Three different weapon combos are used.

Released September 8th 2025, gameplay recorded September 1st-2nd 2025.

00:02 (Sniper montage) I thought it would be nice to include a short montage of the sniper in action, to build the narrative. Getting decent clips was actually quite hard because he moves around so much.

00:42 (Survival challenge with pistol & launcher) Quickly eliminating the sniper was actually quite easy in this save, as he initially moves clear of the other guys. A Banshee blast stuns him, making it easier for me to then splatter him in a tragic accident.

In regard to releasing the blocked mob, I deliberately blast an Elite standing behind two Ghosts, a configuration I mentioned in my commentary for the previous movie. That way the Ghosts get blown well apart, creating a big hole and leading to a very strong Elite charge. I was doing this for all my survival challenge plays, to make things consistently tough.

As for the ensuing struggle, it doesn't quite pan out! But at least my final plasma throw tags a Jackal, who then heads skyward. That's some consolation isn't it?

02:19 (Another try) It took plenty of tries to get a victory, but here's one featuring a very nice explosion on the path early on ("Clear!").

I'm on the lookout for the squad-wrecking camo Elite as ever, and he shows up at 2:47. Never gets to use his sword though. After being badly hurt by a Grunt's plasma grenade, he's finished by my rocket.

Around 3:10 I'm in trouble, and mess up with an annoyingly bad rocket, just when I wanted to decimate a cluster of covies on the path, including a red Elite. But I manage to get through it, and I finish with a rocket carefully placed between two Jackals.

03:46 (Plasma combo - even harder) Surviving with plasma weapons was even harder. I was killed again and again, such as seen here where I'm finished off by a Grunt's needle. And very happy he is too!

04:09 (Another try) After a lot of tries, I finally achieved this victory. Around 5:17 I get into trouble and fail to connect with two swipes at a red Elite on the ice. Quickly going down to my last health bar and with shield bleeping, I'm expecting to die. But the Elite gets splattered by a Ghost (I think that's what happened), and I stage a recovery against a plague of Grunts, plus a Jackal who got stuck.

05:58 (Sniper rifle & pistol) Using a sniper rifle and pistol was the easiest challenge, due to the power of the rifle. But of course, that's contingent on being able to take down a good number of Elites (and preferably other covies too) before they get close enough to be a problem. I do a fair job of that here, though it could've been better.

Things get a bit dangerous around 6:36 with the arrival of the camo guy plus a red Elite. However, my frag not only kills some Grunts and a Jackal, but also hurts the camo guy and detonates plasmas on the path. The camo guy goes flying and so do his grenades, which then detonate in mid-air, killing the red Elite. Nice!

A little later at 6:51 I catch a glimpse of a yellow-shielded Jackal heading behind a rock, seemingly heading for the Marines. But anticipating his course, I line up a zoomed sniper shot and take him down when he comes into view. I was pleased with that!

At the end, two Marines have survived. It's not often I managed to save any.

Closing remarks For this challenge I could easily have modified the set-up by killing the sniper then getting a new checkpoint. That way I wouldn't have to kill him each time. But since killing him only took a few seconds, I preferred to just stick with the set-up as it was.

Fighting without the sniper in this situation (with such a concentrated Elite charge) is really too hard, on Heroic. Indeed, were it not for the help of a sniper, I'd likely be doing most of my spiral path megabattling on Normal, the difficulty level I settled on for the tower zone megabattle, fighting solo.

Okay, that's my spell of spiral path megabattling over for now, though I certainly plan to return for more in a while. It's been a lot of fun, and the ten movies have now doubled my movie count for the battle - which really needed more. These last three movies have been released in quick succession (three movies in three days) as I'm so keen to get my next one released, which I've been working on for the last few days, and which relates to another topic entirely. Don't miss it!

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