Rapid Scarab destruction
Posted December 8th 2007
If you whizz straight out as soon as you board a Hornet, you can quickly get around the back of a Scarab, blast the back off and shatter the core to put it into meltdown before it's had time to start moving around much. You can potentially blitz the next one too. On Easy I managed to have both destroyed within 36 seconds of the first one touching down. However, by using a sneaky method that allows you to start off from behind them, you can do the job even faster; see the Combat fun section of my Citadel Hornet trick article (your Hornet will need to have been obtained with that trick).
Disappearance glitch
If you send a Scarab into meltdown quickly enough after it lands, something very weird happens. It disappears, then a replacement model showing massive damage is whizzed into position to complete the meltdown phase that culminates in an explosion. On Easy it's quite easy to produce this glitch with the first Scarab. If you work quickly enough you can progress to the second and see the glitch occur with that one too.
What the heck is going on there? I'm guessing that normally the game creates a 'damage model' early on after the Scarab lands, but there's some sort of preparation phase to get it ready enough to take over from the original. When the Scarab goes into meltdown, normally the original would blink out and the replacement blink in simultaneously so you don't notice any obvious replacement effect; it just looks like the Scarab has suffered massive damage. But when meltdown starts sooner than the game planned for, the preparation phase for the replacement isn't completed yet, so the game has to shortcut things. The original blinks out as usual, but the replacement has to be hastily morphed into the right position and posture. That's all just my theory though.
The glitch is quite fascinating to watch on a saved film. Slow motion is particularly useful, obtained by applying just the lightest pressure to the right trigger. I watched it with the first scarab and could see the replacement rise out of the ground near the Citadel. Initially it seemed to be upside down, as only a few legs were visible sticking up out of the ground; but it rotated upright as it went. Meanwhile, four Brutes on the original were for some reason propelled at high velocity towards the general area of where the replacement was appearing. Two collided with a Ghost and were killed, the impact also tossing the Ghost up in the air a bit. The other two bounced off the ground then off a cliffside to fly up and away, quite possibly into orbit at the speed they were going. When the replacement shot up into position it struck the two Ghosts, sending the pilots flying over the first tower. Nasty shock for the little fellas!