Just when they thought they'd be having a cosy flight back to safety, heh!

(6:11) Level 2 ('Halo') on Heroic. It crossed my mind that I could do a tutorial on this simple trick (not due to me) quite quickly, so I fired up the Xbox and got going. Reflecting my old article on the trick, the tutorial also includes advice on keeping survivors healthy, something you'd likely want to do if you're wanting anyone for later combat. Plus there are a few amusements along the way!

Released July 6th 2026, gameplay recorded July 4th-5th 2026.

00:02 (The trick) After finishing with the covies, I do the trick and subsequently pick up Johnson. Plus, just to make a nice ending, there's a good yell from the gunner when we shoot over a hill.

02:21 (Keeping survivors healthy) This isn't part of the trick as such, but if you have a reason to do the trick, you may very well want to keep your guys healthy (I'm mainly thinking of the Marines). So here's a demo of how to go about it. There's more detail in my article, but notice that after the first ship, I blitz the ships close up, prioritizing Elites. And throughout, I couple a plasma weapon with a pistol. Great combo.

Something amusing I noticed. Around 3:39 when I'm dealing with dropship 3, it initially looks like there were only two Grunts on the right side of the ship. But then as it rises, two more appear, falling through the open panel. Late droppers!

04:55 (Letting some guys past) Continuing on from that protection task, I demonstrate letting some guys exit down the ramp. This also shows a clear example of how survivors instantly stop when you move into a blocking position, something which hadn't featured in my earlier demo.

As becomes clear, I'm angling to get Johnson on the hog again. It's a little easier, as there are two fewer Marines around when I'm looking for him. One flew out, and one is at least briefly out of the way, due to having to run back after I got him out of the hog. Of course, I could've driven him away a bit first, so he'd have to run further.

As a bonus to all this, I got some good close-up footage of Johnson delivering his "Alright ladies…" evac lines. Another bonus is the Warthog stunting at the end. So I'm definitely glad I decided to include this extra coverage of the trick. And just to point out, Johnson has full health as desired.

Aussie gunner this time, unlike the earlier one.

Closing remarks Pleased with how this turned out! As for why I thought of doing this movie, I've been occupied with the rockslide megabattle lately, and the trick has some relevance to that, something I alluded to in one of the captions. So I figured I might as well get a quick tutorial done.

Incidentally, there's some patchwork business going on in the movie. It seemingly comprises two edited-down demo plays, the second of which include dealing with all six covie dropships. However, within each of these apparent plays, clips from other plays (or partial plays, from certain checkpoints) were patched in for various reasons, such as doing a better or more entertaining job of showing something.

To mention one example, in the section on keeping survivors healthy, the clips for dealing with the first five ships were all from one play, but the clip for the final ship was from another. Those first five clips were actually from when I was doing a play for showing the basic blocking trick, part of which is seen in the movie's opening clip.

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