As a cyborg, I do like to drop in on the covies once in a while.

(7:20) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Normal. Here's my concluding batch of "other uses" of my reverse trough defence set-up. Four battles this time, with a dozen tags in all, and with a fairly spectacular final round! Incidentally, this movie brings my year's total to 82, which means that 2025 has been my most movie-makingest year to date!

Released December 31st 2025, gameplay recorded December 27th-30th 2025.

00:02 (Play 1 - Platform sandwich) I had the idea of getting the covies flooding along this inner walkway, but the way they behaved was different. There would always be some going around the outside. Well, never mind; that gave me an interesting sandwich dynamic to play with. Here I add some Banshee cover at the start, so I can better control things. I especially enjoyed the two rockets around 1:12, shutting up the 'noisy bunch' which had gathered near the rock. Took out four Elites there.

02:16 (Play 2 - Going deep) A nice battle in the vicinity of the door. For a while I'm somewhat pinned down behind a tree, but eventually I make things safe enough to get out and about again, and I seal the victory with two humiliating tags on blue Elites.

04:23 (Play 3 - Platform corner revisited) I used this platform corner at the start of the previous movie, but fancied revisiting it and using my original weapon combo of plasma rifle and rocket launcher.

Despite having rocket power this time, achieving victories was still very hard, which is why this battle plan is by far the one I did the most playing for. But here's an entertaining victory in which I have quite a run-around and go down to one health bar, and eventually finish with two nice tags. The Banshee gets displaced quite early on, and also bounced around thereafter, but continues to provide intermittent cover.

06:20 (Play 4 - Cyborg drop-in) Initially the movie was going to be a three battle affair. But in the event, that trio was giving a duration short enough that I wondered about adding a quick extra battle. The idea of dropping down on the covies came to mind, and after some experimenting, I settled on the idea of first causing some death and mayhem with three plasma grenades, then dropping down. There was a certain area of the cliff base I was going for, to cushion my fall.

In this particular play the drop timing is excellent, in the sense that I arrive just as the final plasma is going off, making for a spectacular scream-filled arrival. I also find myself face to face with a panicking Grunt, giving me the opportunity to tag him.

Thereafter it's a case of trying to make every rocket and grenade count (especially my first rocket) to reduce the enemy fire as quickly as possible, while also dodging around to try and avoid as much fire as I can. It's touch and go for a while when I'm on my last health bar, and in particular I thought the yellow-shielded Jackal who pops up around 6:53 might be about to kill me, but I make it.

I recorded several other good victories, including some that were faster, and some where I retained full health. But this one had the most spectacular arrival, as well as having good visceral action thereafter, so that's the one I selected for the movie. At a later date, maybe I should do a whole movie devoted to the drop-in business, so you can enjoy more plays.

Closing remarks As mentioned in the description, I've released 82 movies this year, a record high (my previous record was 72 in 2019). The high total was partly due to doing a lot of megabattle movies, which (aside from tutorials) can be made relatively quickly, even allowing for the fact that I typically do a lot of playing for them. Megabattle movies namely accounted for 43 of the 82, which is about 52%. Across the series as a whole, megabattle movies form around 30%.

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