In the videogame I've been playing, an old isometric turn based combat-world management and tactical mission based game, X-com-terror from the deep, featuring squad-based combat divers. Land mission, and a RARE enemy race, basically a giant, mutated nautilus with a biological sonic cannon implant of some sort thats crafty, sneaky and one tough son of a bitch to take down, while being pretty slow, its smart enough to conserve its time and as such act with far faster reactions than its stats viewed via software decompilation and code-diving would suggest. And I'm playing the game on its 'genius' difficulty setting. The thing is armored to the anal sphincter, tough as nails and the weapon-organ it has is powerful enough to level the tank I brought along for fire support in one or two hits, might survive one shot, severely damaged and badly impaired functionally, but two shots is enough to leave it as steaming, smoking scrap metal. And I've only ever seen one of the things miss once. And I've been playing the game since '92, when it came out.
And the critter, a xarquid, they are so rare, in game that they might either only be seen once or twice before the very final mission, beyond when its possible to research them, or never, ever make an appearance before then, although there are always, apparently, 2-3 of them present at the final fight, some few details of which are preset. I've just spent three days and 3-4 nights setting up an ambush, having the troops get in position then suddenly cutting through the walls with heavy sonic weaponry, before sending my best team of heavies in there with thermal shock prods to freeze the thing, alive. Because one can research both living, and dead enemy. Interrogating live ones, and autopsy on corpses. Took every man I'd brought along, bar two that got torn to pieces by sniper fire earlier on, and the ones responsible for disintegrating the walls and blowing out the 3rd floor balcony above the xarquid in order for the rest to grab the tazers and jump off the roof right behind it, and with a second fireteam blowing the walls in and rushing it from the side, whilst the critter in question was kept under repeated fire from the tank's heavy cannon so the troops could hit it over, and over, and over again with the stunners (point blank range only), going toe to...err I'd say toe, but they don't have any, only a shell, a bunch of tentacles, and a stream of withering energy weapon bolts. Astonishingly, due to my, if I say so myself, fucking brilliantly coordinated assault and the tank repeatedly pelting the creature right between the eyes with armor-piercing shell fire I managed to get the thing put down. I could have killed it, infinitely more easily, by such means as dropping a heavy demolition HE charge right under it or on top of it (preferably both given how much of a menace they are if they ever appear in game at all, but I decided no, I'm going hunting on safari, and this time its coming back alive, even if I need throw away the lives of some of the team and have it level the tank. Everyone not killed in the earlier drone strikes by the enemy did however survive, although one of them did take a hit in the head, and need immediate patching up to stabilize them before returning to base (after, however, having him leap off the roof of the cruise ship the fuckers were holding the human civilian hostages on
Saved some >20 hostages they had taken, killed almost everything else on sight, bar a 2-3 live captures, and calamari-features over here. Didn't have to do the latter, but given they are rare enough not to see them at a point they can be interrogated, although Iv'e never completed it yet. Not since 1992 and it first coming out. Damn difficult game, even on the lowest difficulty setting. But someone said to me on a forum that I'd never do it and would have no choice but to go for the kill. Lol, that forum poster pretty much made it that I HAD to take it down alive. The ornery autie in me wasn't having none of that bollocks:D
