Battle talk
NOTE: I expect to expand this page in due course, and there's a lot to talk about. But at the moment, my movies are doing the talking as I continue to explore the battle possibilities.
Rendering issue
If you're playing the tower zone megabattle on the original Xbox as I am, you may well notice a rendering issue, whereby covies fail to get correctly rendered in accordance with being in light or shadow. It's an issue that initially manifests when you set about playing a save (if your save is prone to it), but which seems to eventually clear up after multiple plays or partial plays.
I first noticed this with a couple of set-ups I had, in which the mob was initially mostly in shadow. When the covies in shadow moved into the light, they were rendered inappropriately dark, potentially appearing almost like black silhouettes against the snow (see pic). That said, if you were to go near such a covie, his lighting would quickly correct over the course of a second or two.
At that time I was thinking of the trouble as being a 'darkness issue'. But I later noticed that just as covies who were initially in shadow were getting rendered too dark when leaving it, covies who were initially in the light were getting rendered too light when entering shadow. So the problem seems to be that the rendering isn't getting adjusted when covies cross into or out of shadow. Some experimenting suggests that this defect is arising somehow due to the strain the game is under, coping with the high enemy numbers.
Curiously though, it seems that after repeated plays or partial plays of your save, the game eventually gets its act together and renders covies correctly (for that particular save). How much playing might you have to do before things are okay? In my experience something on the order of ten minutes would be typical, but I've also had times when it's taken nearer twenty.
This rendering issue has been a problem for me in regard to movie making, because I don't want covies to be looking odd or unsightly in my footage; and covies looking silhouette-like out on the snow is certainly unsightly. For this reason I'd like to know a way of getting the rendering issue cleared up as fast as possible. Unfortunately however, I'm not aware of any method. Maybe there is none, and the clearing up process is essentially random. So that's where things stand at present. I don't know exactly why the issue occurs, nor am I sure why or how it eventually clears up, and nor do I know a way to speed it along. But I thought I'd mention the matter here, to at least warn that you might experience it.