It was the 10 dudes in full armor in under 60 seconds optional assassination mission. Normally I’d go and arkham asylum these guys, but unlike most tussles I can’t grab them or “spank the X button” them to death. And there are 10, not 5 like most street fights. I figured next up would be throwing knives, but at 2 a kill (assuming you hit with each, which never happens) you never get the posse down before you have to wade in. Let alone in 60 fucking seconds.
So I go back to numbnutz at my villa and make sure I understand how evades work until I’m pulling them off consistently. The problem ends up being the left trigger lock-on mode shifts between targets with frustrating unpredictability. Against a heavy hitter mob like this I can’t finish anyone off, since it won’t let me stay selected on 1 specific enemy if he’s got 3 others nearby.
So this is where the Mr. Miagi shit kicked in. I tried to get those mercenary dudes to raise hell with me. That worked better than I hoped, though they couldn’t do even a single diamonds worth of damage to them. What they did do though was get their backs exposed to me, which plugged in the insta-kils, limited only by waiting for the animation to end. 3 killed by throwing knives, 2 killed from the jump assassinate, stab stab stab. I start losing to the timer. Smoke grenades, which if I understand their application are a game changer, finish it off.
What impressed me was how wax-on/wax-off it was. The game started getting rough and I was right there along with it. There wasn’t much of a ramp in difficulty, but when it did spike, I had the tools. It’s rare I’d replay a section of a game as many times as I played this one…I was fully immersed.