The Journey Begins

It recently came to my attention that I’m probably the only Xbox-owner in the world who hasn’t finished Halo.  At the time I felt kinda left out, but that was okay, because a friend was letting me play Halo2 on his bearbox the next day.  So, after playing 7 hours of co-operative multiplayer in Halo2, I walked away thinking to myself “Self, the Halo universe is a pretty cool place.”  A few days later, when I could see the world in something other than a split-screen, I decided that maybe I wanted to play the first Halo.  Since the Xbox version is waaaay overpriced for a three year old game, I ended up procuring a less-than-legal copy of Halo for the PC (one of these days I might bear my box, but sadly that day is not today).

Yesterday I sat down to play for a bit, and found myself yearning for a forum where I could discuss my experiences with it in such a way as to not be interrupted.  Not so much a “forum” as a “soapbox”, and not so much “discuss” as “ramble on and on”, but here we go.  So this is the plan: in this series “The Halo Chronicles” I’ll be relating my experiences and impressions thus far in the game.  My intention is to finish it before Halo2 launches… and also to update this column after every session. We’ll see if I can do either.

For anybody else out there who hasn’t played Halo, this column will likely be filled with spoilers and other undesirables.  You have been warned.

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:

Well, nothing really, I just installed the game and patched to the latest version.

What Happened This Time:

Opening cutscene between Keyes and Cortana is intriguing, but a little light on the information.  Who are the Covenant?  What was the Battle of Reach?  Why did we have to make a blind jump?  There is also talk of fighters engaging a Covenant recon frigate (I think) that wasn’t apparent from the external shots of the Pillar of Autumn approaching the Halo.  I know why they didn’t show a Covenant vessel, but it still would have been cool to see.  Speaking of the Autumn though, can I say I’ve had enough of the science-fiction clichés?  It’s almost universal that human ships are big grey rectangles with bulky engines on the back while the older and more technologically advanced alien races have ships that are elegant, sometimes delicate, almost organic looking with no visible weapons or engines.  It’s enough already, we get it, the humans are an upstart race trying to play with the big boys.  Can we see something else now?

Anyways, they thaw the chief, and I finally get control of something.  Going through the “diagnostics” was actually kind of helpful, as they let me try out both orientations for mouselook (I chose normal), and explained the energy shield (which I didn’t know when I started playing Halo2).

I thought it was a nice touch how you encounter your first few aliens while unarmed.  Also watching valiant human soldiers getting slaughtered goes a long way toward showing you just how dangerous these Covenant types really are.  This section also serves as a sort of tutorial as you have to use your flashlight, crouch and jump.  The game tells you how to perform these actions, the subtle beauty of it however is that you are in no danger during these moments, so you have the time to look for the left-control key for example.

One small beef: there was a doorway I had to get through before I could reach the bridge, and there is an NPC (or Honda as we call them) standing right in the middle, blocking my path, all the while telling me how important it is that I get to the bridge as fast as I can.  And without a gun, I couldn’t even shoot him to get him out of the way.

Bridge cutscene.  I think it’s very cool how the chief slots Cortana into his own suit.  And seeing as how she provides a bit of running commentary as you play, I think it’s a clever hook by bungie to provide a little narrative where there otherwise wouldn’t be any.  Similar in spirit to the e-mails and voice-logs you pick up in System Shock2 (not to mention the scientist trapped in the lab giving you directions), except she is live, making comments as events happen.  Still, very effective.  I especially liked one point where I’m being shot at by some baddies and Cortana tells me to “keep you head down, there’s two of us in here now”.  Needing to keep Cortana away from the enemy provides a bit of a reason why we’re fighting, unlike some games I can think of.

As I battle my way off of the Autumn, the game is once again teaching me how to play.  From grenades and melee attacks to showing me (quite on the nose in fact) that there are more than on path through the battles.  One of the better in-game tutorials I’ve seen.  At no point on the ship do I encounter an ammo crisis, but I think that this is probably the last time I’ll be so comfortably equipped.

After crash landing on the halo (which I’m surprised none of the characters have displayed much curiosity about yet), I follow Cortana’s directions, and get shot in the back by some flying Covenant ship.  I managed to take out both flying things easily with my machine gun, and a few encounters with enemy foot-soldiers as well.  Each time going back to the crashed pod for more ammo.  Maybe my feeling of impending ammo crisis was false.

Continuing up the hill I come across a single bad dude in purple armour who must have had some serious shields because it took me forever to kill his ass (had to stick a plasma grenade to him).  Anyways, I killed him, and decided to look around a bit.  That’s when I fell off a cliff to my untimely (not to mention undignified) death. D’Oh!

When I found out my last checkpoint was right after the crash, before killing the purple guy, I decided it call it a night.
Save.  Quit.

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
The game began.  Master Chief receives Cortana, and a mission to keep her safe.  I fought my way off the doomed Pillar of Autumn before the captain took it down.  On the planet’s surface I shot down some planes, took out a few groups of aliens, and died an embarrassing death.

What Happened This Time:
Funny, this scene feels somehow familiar. I take out the little planes again using the pistol this time, which might have been a little easier than using the rifle.

Killed the party of garden gnomes and the purple guy on the bridge again, then went back for some ammo.
Next, I continued up the hill to where I encountered purple-boy from vol. 1, only he wasn’t there.  Much easier blue guy in his place this time.  I would have made it through but some jackhole little garden gnome guy stuck a grenade to my chest.  Is there a way to get those things off?

Tried it again… again, no purple guy.  I kill the group and go back for ammo again. This time the stock is almost depleted, so I know I won’t be able to come back here.

I journey back beyond the remains of the non-purple guy and find the point of no return I was anticipating, in the form of a cliff and a few boulders.  Now I probably can return here, but I don€™t think it€™ll be worth the effort.

Down in the valley I see this lame-ass pseudo-futuristic cityscape (little do I realise that it’s much much smaller.  Am somewhat disappointed in fact).  Hey look, humans.  And apparently I’m the cavalry, which is cool.  Cortana informs me of incoming Covenant, so I decide to be a good guy and help these pathetically non-Mjolnir-armoured guys fight them off.  A bunch of garden gnome guys, easy to kill, except for the red ones.  I thought the red-shirted guys always died first.  Also a couple of blue guys and some cowardly jackal looking guys hiding behind shields.  As I’m learning that grenades are the best way to get rid of the cowardly jackals (doesn’t quite have the same ring as “cowardly lion” does it?) the Covenant ship touches down again, and I find myself caught in a crossfire between a blue guy, a purple guy and some gnomes.  I remind myself not to do that again as I respawn.

Every time I use up a couple of hundred rounds in my assault rifle, I come across the dead body of one of those soldiers I’m trying to protect.  I try not to ponder just how badly I’m doing my job as I loot his corpse for some ammo.  At this point bullets are not as common as on the Autumn, but still no real ammo crisis in sight.  If ammo ever does become scarce, I could always switch to Covenant weaponry, but for some reason I’m loathe to ponder that possibility.  This is ironic considering how I played my entire Halo2 session with a Covenant Plasma Rifle in my left hand.  Hell, my “mixed machine gun medley” is what defines me as a Halo2 player.  I don’t consider this a spoiler as everybody reading this knows just enough about Halo2 to know that you can “dual wield” the smaller weapons.

I also notice that almost every bad guy I kill drops two plasma grenades… maybe they’re so plentiful because they’re sooooo much less effective than the thermal detonators in battlefront.  It’s cool how they stick to people, though I have a hard time landing them.

After dispatching several drops worth of aliens, a “pelican” plane swoops overhead carrying a jeep that Cortana calls a warthog, even though I think it looks more like a big cat… like a puma.  At Cortana’s request the pilot drops off the warthog.  She seems to recognize Cortana by voice even though she only identified us as Fire Team Charlie.  How I got designated the third team when everybody else is dead is a little beyond me.  Also, I don’t really see how a guy and a disembodied AI can qualify as a “fire team”.

Anyways, I hop in the jeep, and out of nowhere this soldier jumps in to take the gunnery position even though I swear all the humans in the valley were dead.  Did he jump out of the plane when they dropped the jeep?  Now that I have a wingman, I feel a little more like a fire team.  Plus, we have this bad-ass jeep, so that’s pretty cool.

I take a few seconds to learn the driving controls and explore a little. naturally I drive right off a cliff.  Note to self, stop exploring. as I watch the warthog approach the floor of the chasm, I envision myself typing “And so I fall to my undignified death.  Again.”  But no!  Somehow we survive the fall.  The jeep’s upside down, and my gunner made some pretty traditional video-game-death-sounds, but he’s okay.  He didn’t even lose a health bar.  Heh, “health bar” makes me think of those powerbar dietary supplements… I wonder what kind of person eats that crap.  They’ve been on the market for years, so somebody must be buying them.  I flip the jeep, and we’re off.

As I enter the clearly man-made cave, Cortana tells me the blindingly obvious, that it isn’t a natural formation.  Gee, what gave it away?  Was it the Euclidean corners?  The perfectly flat floor?  Or maybe the engraving on the wall?  I think I’m going to start calling her Counsellor Troi from now on.  Crap, that’s my second Star Trek reference in one page, how embarrassing.  Next, in a completely useless voice-over, Counsellor Cortana tells me something about the Covenant broadcasting sensitive data over non-encrypted channels.  God, we get it, they underestimate us.  Which is really not hard to do considering all the dead humans I’ve run into up to this point in the game.

Driving through the tunnels, I find controlling the jeep with the mouse/keyboard combination to be quite easy, but I’m annoyed by how little light the jeep’s headlights actually give off.  Maybe they need more fluid (there, just got the number of Red-Vs-Blue refs to match the number of Star Trek ones).  Actually, that’s my problem with most things in this game: range.  The headlights, flashlight, rifle, jeep-gun, etc don’t go nearly as far as I’d like them to.  I have a guy in my sights, and shoot, but nothing happens.  Did I miss?  Did the bullet fall to earth because of the concave nature of the ground on halo?  I’m just annoyed by it, and it comes up more than I’d like.

Eventually I come up to a large open area with bad guys on both sides of the road.  At first I try running the bad guys over with my jeep, but that has no effect. And you want to know what else has no effect?  My gunner.  He can’t seem to kill anything, and I’m getting shot in the driver’s seat.  Pissed off, I do the smart thing and jump out of the jeep to engage the enemy face-to-face.  My gunner, on the other hand, DOESN’T do the smart thing, which would be to stay in the jeep and cover me with that big, albeit useless, gun.  Oh no, he jumps out too, and promptly gets his ass killed.  Which is kind of fortuitous because when I finished killing all those aliens, I needed the 180 rounds he was carrying.  I find the controls to extend the bridge (Star Wars reference, it was feeling left out), and proceed to drive into daylight again.

This is where my carpal tunnel syndrome decides that I’ve played enough for one night.  Save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when Master Chief kills some aliens. Cortana states the obvious. and I die in an embarrassing fashion.

The Halo Chronicles - Volume 3

Okay, short update this time, didn’t have a lot of time to play today.  Also, it turns out somebody’s reading this thing, so, hey Apache, what’s up man?

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
I retrace my steps a bit, make fun of Cortana a bit, and favour the crowd with a few ever-so-slightly-obscure pop-culture references.  I also get a jeep. WOOT!

What Happened This Time:
I load up my save as Master Chief is exiting the tunnels, turn a few corners, and am greeted with the sight of another lame-ass pseudo-futuristic building sending pulses of green light into the sky.  At Cortana’s suggestion, I check the hills behind the building.  Hey look, marines.  They seem happy to see me, but for some reason none are willing to hop into the jeep with me.

Jumping out of the currently useless jeep, I see a poor dead guy leaning against a rock with a sniper rifle lying by his side.  I toss my kmart gun and pick it up. Probably should have tossed the magnum instead of the kmart gun, but I find the magnum’s 2x zoom valuable.  Of course, with a sniper rifle, who needs the lousy 2x? Anyways, I look around a bit and find a few Covenants down by the building, and try my hand at sniping.  Now, that’s effective.

After I kill all the bad guys, a drop ship comes to pick up the marines and the pilot tells Cortana about another group of survivors around the corner from here.  I wish Cortana had asked them to leave a marine behind because there’s nobody left to man the gun in my jeep.  Fuckers.  Since I have a very limited supply of bullets for my sniper rifle, I drop it and pick up my assault rifle again.  Hop back in the jeep, and drive to the opening between regions.  I see a few bad guys in the distance, so I go back for the sniper rifle and pick them off from afar.  Then I go back for my kmart gun because there’s even less in the sniper rifle’s clip now.  I also scrounge around for kmart ammo and pistol ammo, don’t want to leave before being fully loaded, at least not while there are dead marines around.

I follow the handy nav. marker until I find an empty landing pod and some marines being harassed by a few bad guys.  This time I have a little more luck with the whole hit-and-run aspect of driving, and the baddies are dead before they know what hit them.  I couldn’t take the jeep where I wanted, so I left it in a field and set out on foot.

Covenant dropship swings by and drops more people.  As I turn around to teach these bastards a lesson, the ship starts unloading on me with it’s cannons.  What is this shit? You mean a blue guy, a purple guy and 6-8 garden gnomes aren’t enough to handle me and six cowering marines, so the ship has to open up on me as well?  Covenant ship keeps coming back and dropping more people.  I get killed a lot.  Fucking plasma grenades are starting to piss me off.  Not only are they killing me on a semi-regular basis, but the dead aliens aren’t dropping any more.  I’m having a bit of a grenade shortage, but before it can escalate into a full blown crisis, I usually get cut down.

But do you want to know what I’m starting to hate far more than the gnome’s and their god-forsaken grenades?  That’s right, the cowardly jackals and their plasma pistols.  They charge that puppy up, and it takes out my shield in one hit.  One.  Bloody.  Hit.  Damn it!

I make it up to the top where the marines are holding fort, and try to defend with them.  Either I die, or they all die.  I think I might be missing something.

I figure, I take the jeep up there, pick up a gunner and have at them.  I do just that, and we head back down to wreak a little havoc.  Until I flip the jeep on one of those lousy rocks that is.  Gunner II and I are swarmed by blues, purples and gnomes. It’s a shame really, because this gunner wasn’t nearly as retarded as my last one.  Respawn.

I have a hard time not flipping the jeep on my way back up to pick up a friend, so it takes me a few tries, but I get up there again.  This time not only do I pick up a gunner, but a sniper hops in shotgun.  Alright, eat it alien scum!  That sniper in the front seat is invaluable, and we make very short work of the baddies.  Probably also because there are quite a few less of them this time.  I notice that when you do the right thing in this game, you make it through, but if you make a bad choice, they spawn so many enemies that you’ll never stand a chance.  I guess they really really want me to have a gunner for the next section.  Cortana radios another pelican (or possibly the same one) which promptly touches down and picks up all the marines who are not currently in my jeep, completely reinforcing what I just said a few sentences ago.

To be honest, I spent a lot of time in this scene, probably because of where I parked the jeep when I first got out.  You see, there’s a big open space near the fallen pod where the dropship lands to off-load it’s horde of aliens.  I parked right in the middle of it.  I had to wait for the ship to leave, run in hurling grenades and letting fly with the kmart gun to clear a path to my ride, then I have to drive away while avoiding fire from all sides.  Of course, half of them are already heading up the rocky path to take out my buddies, so I’m being shot at the entire way up, and struggling through the rocks the whole time.  This is not the most fun I’ve had with this game.  I understand all the design elements, and why Bungie built the level this way, I just think it’s kind of cheap.  Oh well, I’m through it now, and much like in Sega’s Shinobi for PS2, I feel a sense of accomplishment for having prevailed against such odds.  That’s a quality that I feel is lacking in a lot of XBox offerings, so it makes me happy to feel this way in Halo.

Anyhow, at this point I look at my watch and realize I have an appointment at the blood donor clinic in half an hour.  Save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when I make up even more silly names for shit that I don’t know the proper names of.

The Halo Chronicles - Volume 4

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
I learned where NOT to park the jeep, learned how to use the sniper rifle, and saved a bunch of marines from certain doom.

What Happened This Time:
Things get rolling again as a pelican picks up the survivors.  My gunner and sniper stay on the jeep with me.  It’d be shame to break up such a winning combination.

After scrounging for ammo, I find a nice little pass to drive through to the next section, where I’m lead to believe there are more survivors.  Upon entering this new area Cortana informs me that Covenant forces have secured the Autumn’s crash site, and captured the Captain and entire command crew.  Well crap.  She tells me to hurry up and find the survivors.  Demanding little bitch, isn’t she?

I see a Covenant dropship hovering in the air, with some gnomes milling about beneath it, all on other side of the river though.  The aliens don’t seem to like crossing water much.  I’m a thorough guy, so I go around killing all the alien scum I can find, and exposing a serious weakness in the game’s AI as I do it.  My jeep is on a little hill, three bad guys on the ground, looking around and scratching their balls, well within range of the jeep-gun and the sniper’s rifle.  My guys won’t open up on them, it’s like they don’t see them. and it’s obvious they don’t see me, or my jeep, or hear it’s engine running or anything like that.  Once I descend to their level, the shooting starts.  Weak.

Again, running around killing anything I can find, I see a square “cave” in the mountain across the way.  Now it may be the same “cave” I came out of earlier, or it may not, but before I can do anything foolish I remember that I’m not supposed to go exploring.  Instead, I follow Counsellor Cortana’s handy nav. marker and probably save the lives of both my wingmen.

Through yet another mountain pass I see another one of those lame-ass pseudo-futuristic cityscapes in the distance, and the handy nav. marker is telling me to go there… ’cause it’s not like I’ve rescued marines from these places before or anything.  And then the Counsellor pipes up with: “Maybe they took cover in that structure, let’s check it out.”  Because we know how well worked for the first group of marines I “rescued”.

Patrolling through the cityscape, I’m finding it much easier to run people over than I did before, which is A Good Thing^tm because half the time Gunner McRetard is facing the wrong way.

We kill a whole bunch of aliens, and I’m thankful that sniper guy’s rifle never runs out of ammo.  I reach an outbuilding with a few dudes in and around it, but my wingmen can’t seem to hit them, so I park with my back to a wall to minimize the damage my wingmen will take after I abandon them, and hop out to engage the enemy.  Oh look, a dead marine.  Hey, a tunnel, this can’t be good.  I walk down the blood stained tunnel and come up against the back of a little boy blue.  Being the smart guy that I am, I try to pistol-whip him into submission.  I hit the grenade button instead of the melee attack button by mistake, and all hell breaks loose.  Sticking the grenade to his back wakes little boy blue up, and he turns around and pistol whips me a couple of times as I’m backing away.  I don’t want to get caught by the splash damage of that grenade.  His melee attacks seem to take out my shield, and the splash damage takes me down to one bar of health.  On the plus side, it kills little boy blue and his lackeys, giving me enough time to let my shields recharge.

I continue downstairs, and come across some humans losing a firefight with some cowardly jackals and a few garden gnomes.  Packing my trusty kmart gun and a few plasma grenades, I make short work of the aliens without losing a single friendly.  I must be getting better at this game.

I make it back to the surface on the other side of the tower, and find dead marines and some equipment strewn around.  Ah, a health pack, thank god, because that incessant heartbeat was driving me crazy.  Not quite “‘Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more!  I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! here, here! –It is the beating of his hideous heart!’” crazy, but just about.  Two points to anyone who knows that that’s more than just a Simpson’s reference.

Anyways, the rescued marines help me take out the two little boy blues and the remaining gnomes while Cortana calls in an evac.  That was nice of her.  Cortana then relays some intel about where the Covenant are holding Captain Keyes… on a ship she disabled when she was still running the Autumn.  Which reminds me of a moderately huge plot hole.  Back on the Autumn, during the bridge cutscene where the Chief takes possession of Cortana, she tells the captain that she disabled four Covenant capital ships all by herself.  So if she can do all that with one measly Pillar of Autumn, then how the hell are we losing this war???  Seriously.  Was the Autumn the most powerfully armed ship in the fleet?  Is Cortana just that damned good?  What the fuck is going on here people?

Not wanting to be wasteful, I bring the jeep around to the landing zone thinking that the war effort is going so poorly that we’ll have need of it later.  I jump out of the jeep, and into the pelican, and it takes off.  Leaving behind not only my jeep, but sniper guy and Gunner McRetard as well. (ummm, oops? –Bungie)

Cutscene.

So my next objective is to help a squad of marines board the Truth and Reconciliation and rescue the captain.  Geez, laying on the religious overtones a little much?

It’s night time now, and I’ve been issued a sniper rifle instead of the magnum.  That’s okay though, because I didn’t use the magnum all that much (and a sniper rifle would do the job just as well when I did use it).  And I still have my trusty kmart gun, so I can’t complain really.  Except that they took away my plasma grenades.  Fuckers.  This whole night vision thing is pretty cool, and it washes out more or less correctly when a light source is in your eye-line.  This is implemented quite a bit better than a few other games I’ve played in recent years.

I take out several bad guys before one of them gets a chance to return fire, and again, a hole in the AI.  I’m picking these saps off one at a time, and the report of my rifle is thunderously loud, but none of my targets spring into action, or raise an alarm or anything.  Grrr.  I would have liked to see some mayhem down there as the aliens tried to figure out what the hell was going on, and who the fuck was shooting at them.  Anyways, some garden gnome in a gun turret far far away from me gets a few shots off before I can kill him, and that brings the marines running in to help mop up.  Cool thing, getting shot causes me to switch from zoomed in to normal views automatically.  Again, nice touch, ’cause it just makes sense that way.  In battlefront, you stay zoomed in until you die, or get grenaded and, well, it’s kind of retarded.

Turning the corner and following the cliff, it took me four shots to kill a cowardly jackal, and he wasn’t even hiding behind his shield.  That’s just not cool.  But I made up for it by getting a totally lucky headshot on his buddy who was hiding behind a bush.  Still, five rounds for two guys?  Not good.  ‘Cause who the hell knows when I’m going to find a dead human sniper whose corpse I can loot?  Well, I still have 46 rounds left, so an ammo crisis should be a long way off.

Continuing into a clearing, I keep picking off Covenants from a distance.  It’s pretty easy when I kill the guy who’s just standing there, and then his buddy runs up to “just stand” in the exact same place, and I get two headshots without having to move.  I end up getting caught in a crossfire between little boy blue and a couple of needler-wielding gnomes.  My shields are down, and as I’m backing up to let them recharge and at the same time trying to equip my kmart gun, the marines rush in to finish them off for me, which was nice of them.  It was also nice of one of them to die and leave me some kmart ammo and a health pack (especially since I was down to one bar again, and couldn’t bear any more of the heartbeats).  Pity that guy wasn’t carrying a sniper rifle as well.  I hope I don’t need these guys for anything later, because I’m probably going to lose a couple more of them before I find the captain.

I seem to be down to three marines, even though I only left one body behind.  Maybe the others didn’t read volume1 and went exploring.  It probably doesn’t help that they keep running ahead of me, despite the fact that I’m the genetically enhanced super soldier.  Cortana informs me of Covenants up ahead, and the marines decide to let me go first.  It’s kinda funny watching the three of them all try to turn around and get behind me at the same time like stooges.  If they survive long enough, I’m going to start calling them Curly, Larry and Moe.

My radar is showing Covenants in improbable places, so I start checking the hills above me, and get an easy kill on a little boy blue.  I keep close to the rock face because I just know that some jackhole in a turret is going to take pot shots at me if I give them half the chance.

I take out a few more aliens, and Cortana tells the stooges it’s clear to advance.  Apparently they’re Fire Team Charlie now.  Have I been demoted?  ‘Cause that’s just not fair after all the guys I saved earlier in the day.  Anyways, a firefight ensues, and just as the last of the Covenants keels over dead, Cortana says that dropships are inbound.  Persistant little buggers aren’t they?

A drop ship descends, so I switch to my kmart gun for some down-and-dirty fighting.  A whole slew of bad guys (because half a slew is just never enough) emerge from the ship, and suddenly the stooges are right there in the thick of it.  I might have grenaded Larry by mistake.  Anyways, we mop up the aliens, and I snipe a couple of extra gnomes across the way.  Looking around, I see all three stooges are present and accounted for.  Then who the hell dropped those 39 kmart bullets I just picked up?

Checkpoint. Save. Quit.

Tune in next time when I try to rescue captain Keyes, AND keep at least two of Curly, Larry and Moe alive to see it.

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
I rounded up all the remaining survivors and began an offensive of my own.  I also had fun playing with the night vision, and quoted Poe just to prove what kind of a geek I really am.

What Happened This Time:
I reload into the night with the stooges close by.  I walk forward, I swear, three paces and a whole pile Covenants stream out of gap in the rock wall.  For some reason I’m having no success with the rifle, and by the time I equip my kmart gun all three stooges are dead.  I mop up the remaining aliens, and loot my compatriot’s corpses for some ammo.  Sniper rifle is running dangerously low on bullets, but all these guys were carrying was kmart ammo.  Come on Bungie, show me a little love here.

Making my way through that same gap in the rock wall, I use the last five rounds in my sniper rifle to eliminate a little boy blue and four gnomes, and then use my kmart gun to get past the rest of the bad guys in the area.  Without the sniper, I have a lot of trouble taking out the gnome in the turret, but I manage it without losing any health.

As I’m looking around for a decent weapon to pick up, in exchange for my spent sniper, Cortana pipes up about an incoming dropship.  There are many, many bad guys dropped off.  Fucking clown dropship or something.  I have a little difficulty here because there is no defensible position so I hop into the nearest turret and just start wailing on them with the largely ineffective energy blasts.  I find myself in quite a few crossfire situations because I can’t see the cowardly jackals flanking me in the dark.  They take out my shields a few times with that accursed charge-up shot, and I lose all but one bar of health before I clear the lot.  By now my kmart gun is less than half full, my rifle is empty, and I have a total of three grenades, so I go back to where the stooges fell to reload, but they’re gone.  I am not happy about this.

Resignedly, I head back to the gravity lift which is still my objective, and pick up my first covenant weapon of the game, a needler.  As I approach the lift, two giant big blue spiky guys beam down and kill me a few times.  These guys are seriously not cool.  I mean their mortar shot is largely ineffective, but my weapon’s can’t penetrate their armour.  Neither can grenades for that matter.  So we’re at a standstill you’d think, until they start throwing the body around, and then, by extension, throwing my body around.  These guys would have done well on the ’74 Flyers.  So much for picking up a needler.

On my third pass, I’m trying to keep away from both spiky’s, and end up circling to the far side of the lift where I find a health pack and some ammo (for both weapons, curiously enough).  I think I might have a fighting chance now, but I’m wrong.

After respawning again and running straight for the health pack, I find out quite by accident (I was trying to jump over a body check) that spiky’s only die when shot (a lot) in the back.  I use this information to kill them both, and then listen as Cortana requests reinforcements.  Cortana then tells me that she can track the captain, but he’s likely in brig.  I don’t find that information very helpful because I’m not familiar with the layout of covenant battleships.  And I’m betting Cortana isn’t either.

The pelican swings by and drops off five more stooges.  I christen the last two Shemp and Curly-Joe.  Now they’re calling themselves “the cavalry”.  Man, why do I keep getting demoted? Is this a commentary on all the marines I’ve failed to save? ‘Cause seriously, it’s not my fault they suck.  I think I’m doing pretty well in the plus-minus column anyway.

New chapter: Into the Belly of the Beast.

We materialize in a room full of odd shapes that really can only function as reload cover.  Cortana gets a fix on the captain, and curiously detects no defences.  The stooges remark on said lack of defences, which tells us all that they are about to die gruesome deaths in the next cutscene.

As predicted, a door opens and an invisible guy with a fancy sword cuts down Shemp.  I kill him easily, and the surviving stooges get a chance to gripe about Cortana’s report before all the other doors open and the room floods with gnomes and little boy blues.  A big firefight ensues, and I lose Moe and Curly.  For some reason, none of the three dead stooges was carrying a single bullet.  No wonder they died so easily.

I follow Larry and Curly-Joe down a ramp to a dead end.  Cortana suggests we leave them there and find a way to open door.  I figure if I leave them cowering in the dark, they might live a little longer.

I return to the hub and take another path, this one leading up (note: stooges were going down… going in the opposite direction is only way to open the door.  Second law of gaming in action there).  Hey look, bad guys, I must be going the right way (coincidentally, the third law of gaming in action).  I kill both cowardly jackals and continue up the ramp.  There is a small open area at the top of the ramp, with a superfluous column in the centre clearly put there to provide cover in a firefight.  There are a few gnomes and a little boy blue hiding up there, so I kill them and find myself in the midst of a serious ammo crisis.  I open the door to find two cowardly jackals, and grenade them to save bullets.  Pulling out the sniper rifle I pick off little boy blue and a gnome at end of hall as Cortana tells me the stooges are behind a door in the lower half of this room.  More rifle fire kills the bad guys down below before I go looking for door controls.

Before I jump downstairs I notice little boy blue was hiding down there behind even more of that conspicuous cover.  I snipe him, and jump down.  Even before I hit the ground I’m hearing the growl of another little boy blue down there as I get shot in the back.  Turning to take him out, I get shot in the right side.  There were two of those fuckers hiding down there.  As I run and gun, at least one more blue and a bunch of gnomes enter the room through all those unlocked doors… unlike the one with my friends behind it.  Unlimited enemies kill me in a hurry.

Trying again, I jump down to the lower level at a point close to the stooge-door.  I open it and the marines rush in at much the same rate as the enemies do, just in smaller numbers.  They die fairly quickly, but one of them drops me 524 much needed rounds of ammunition.  Many, many bad guys proceed to hand me my ass.

I figure out that the trick is to rush in and kill the bad guys before they pass through their doorway, and then go through before it closes again.  I actually wait until both stooges have died before I proceed, as I only had 16 rounds in my kmart gun, and 12 in the rifle.

Once I enter these halls, the handy nav marker goes away.  Does that mean I’m in the brig already?

Navigating the tunnels, I play it conservatively with the kmart gun, using pilfered grenades, which are plentiful, and the occasional snipe to get by.  I’m getting better at sticking grenades to bodies, but am annoyed even more when they bounce off the cowardly jackal’s shield.  Eventually I come to a door, it opens by itself, and Cortana starts talking to Echo419 again.  I don’t go through the open door, but snipe the aliens inside while Cortana tells echo to fly into the shuttle bay.  Looks like I’m about to get a few more ammo mules.

I’m not being nearly as cautious with my kmart gun now, and that makes the ensuing firefight much easier.  The new stooges even take out a little boy blue on their own, which is impressive.  And then all of a sudden a bunch of bad guys up in the balcony kill three of the stooges.  Oh well, I needed to reload anyways.  Only 8 total rounds left in the rifle though, going to have to pitch it soon.  Hopefully somebody drops a magnum at that point.

There’s a big firefight as Cortana searches for an override code for the door.  I pick up an “overshield”, which is way cool, and inexplicably 19 sniper rounds.  After we mop up a whole heap of bad guys, including at least one purple guy, the side door opens.  But before I can praise Cortana, I see two spikys standing there waiting for me.  I pull out the rifle and try to headshot them or something.  Completely ineffective.  Looking closer, I notice an area of non-blue-armour at the midsection.  I take a shot there, and he’s down.  Nice.  Before I can do the same to his life-partner, that one’s springing into action.  He quickly takes out my remaining two stooges while I hunt for the weak point with my rifle.  I get him, but not before he hip checks me once and nearly takes my shields all the way down.  These guys suck.  They wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t always come in pairs, I guess.  Although I haven’t had to deal with both members of the pair at the same time either time I’ve faced them.  I guess that’s what makes this the “normal” difficulty setting.

Cortana opens a door, and suggests “everyone” (meaning her and I, it seems) go through now and that “I can’t guarantee it won’t lock again when it closes.” which means I should pick up as much ammo as I can before proceeding through the point-of-no-return.

Going through the door triggers another checkpoint.  Save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when I toy with the lives of even more innocent marines, and maybe I’ll rescue the captain.  Maybe.

The Halo Chronicles - Volume 6

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
I learned joy of getting thrown around by blue spiky bastards, bitched about an ammo crisis, and led many good marines to their unfortunate deaths.

What Happened This Time:
I reload into a dark purple corridor, fully loaded.  Man it’s dark in here.  I turn up the gamma in the settings screen, rather than upping the brightness of the monitor like I should, and proceed.

Turning a corner, I kill a surprised garden gnome.  Continuing up a hill, I turn again, and find two surprised gnomes.  I grenade them, but it only kills one, the other having run up the hall.  He comes back down with little boy blue, so I let loose a grenade again and shoot the apparently-grenade-proof-gnome.

After killing a few more bad guys, I hear a strange alien language (that sounds pretty much like every other strange alien language in every sci-fi show, ever) shouting in the distance, scared, I continue up the hill.  I see a needler glowing in the distance (did I mention how dark it is today?), and shoot there, I think a gnome dies.  I look right and shoot at some other guy.  That not-so-dead gnome sticks a grenade to me.  Next time I’ll make sure he’s dead before moving on.

Try again.  This time I kill that pesky gnome, but his buddy sticks a grenade to me.  How is it that I can’t stick grenades to elites, but anybody can stick one to me?

Try again.  This time I get all up in little boy blue’s face, and accidentally stick a grenade to his chest when I try to pistol whip him.  The irony is not lost on me as the splash damage kills Master Chief.  D’Oh!  I have got to find a way to learn the difference between those two controls.

Try again.  This time, I get through all of them, and come up against an invisible guy.  No shit, an honest to God invisible guy.  Don’t ask how I spotted him.  I correctly pistol whip him, and then shoot his ass.  I’m not particularly fond of invisible guys.  Next, I come up against two cowardly jackals, and Cortana tells me I need back up.  Is this because I just died three times?  ‘Cause I don’t need your pity, bitch.  She calls “faux hammer”? for support.

Moving into a big room…  looks like the upstairs part of the shuttle bay from volume5.  While I’m taking out a cowardly jackal, I’m getting shot at from the side.  Nobody on my radar, and I can’t see anybody there either, but I’m still taking hits.  Must be invisible guy again.  Doesn’t matter, he takes me down to one bar of health before I can get back through the door to safety.  Now I’m a smart guy, so I know that this invisible guy should show up on my night-vision scope to some degree or another.  I just don’t know if Bungie was smart enough to do it that way.  So I walk just close enough to the door to open it, equip my rifle and zoom in one time while hitting Q to enable night vision.  I scan a bit, don’t see him.  I up the magnification to 8x, and there he is, far away, and just an outline, but I see him.  And then I snipe his ass for good measure.  I’m going to have to write this one down for future use.

I follow the handy nav marker to the gate controls, and see bad guys coming up from behind.  I kill them all, but by this point, I’ve used up half the ammo in my kmart gun.  I’m grateful that I’m about to get a squad of stooges to replenish my supply.  Maybe one of them will carry a health kit, because I’m down to the bloody heartbeats again.

And again, the fucking stooges are the cavalry.  I’m not liking this new lower status.  Five stooges in total offload.  We head to the opposite end of the room to look for an exit that’ll take us somewhere, and the door opens by itself.  I’m thinking “uh-oh, invisible guy,” and I move very cautiously.  That’s when I see a gnome standing on the other side of the door.  So he opened it, which is good, because that means there probably isn’t an invisible guy.  There’s also a cowardly jackal there, so I lob a grenade at him.  It lands between his feet, and he just stands there, staring at it, dumbfounded.  At least the gnome had the common sense to get the fuck out of the way.  He does this by charging me, believe it or not, and shooting his needler.  I’m mistakenly watching the grenade to see if it kills the jackal, and trusting the stooges to kill the gnome.  Which they do, but not before he takes half my shields down.  And of course there was another gnome who ran from my grenade towards me, and he grenades me before the stooges take him down.  Sadly, his grenade takes me down as well.  It was funny to hear the stooges comment on being screwed now that I was dead.

Respawn.  This time, it’s not a gnome who opens the door, but a red guy.  I’m assuming the red guys are bigger badasses than the purple guys, but he goes down easily, so maybe I’m wrong.  Once he’s down, the usual assortment of bad guys come down the ramp and out the door, but these stooges are the best yet, and we’re through in no time.

These new stooges are aggressive too.  Charging into battle, and not getting killed.  And I’m so having an ammo crisis because they won’t fucking die.  I’m going to have to kill Shemp myself if this keeps up.  We keep going, killing gnomes and jackals all the way until we encounter another red guy.  I toss him a grenade as he shoots, but doesn’t kill, Moe.  The grenade kills red, and I’m amazed at how many bad guys I’ve killed without losing a single stooge.

Stooge trash talk at this point includes an Hispanic voice asking “Hey, you need some more ammo?” and I’m like hell yeah, but the fucker won’t give me any.

We run into a bunch of aliens, and I snipe a few, because there is no other way to kill the cowardly jackals from a distance.  Fucking idiot stooges (now there’s redundancy for you) keep walking into my line of fire.  I manage not to kill any friendlies, despite their efforts to the contrary.  After I snipe the last of the bad guys, Hispanic stooge pipes up again with “hey quit hogging them all,” and honestly, I’d let him have all the kills he wanted if it wasn’t going to get me killed.  Plus, it’d save my limited ammo.  But all Hispanic stooge is willing to do is bitch, not kill.

Somebody in that firefight killed a stooge, Curly-Joe I think - it’s hard to keep them straight in the dark.  So I run up to his body, and there’s no god-damned bullets!  What the hell, I have 59 rounds in the clip, period, and he’s not dropping anything?  I hit Q to engage my flashlight, as my anger seethes, and I see Curly-Joe’s gun lying on the ground nowhere near his body.  I think “hmmm, must have been grenaded,” as I pick up his 424 rounds.  Didn’t even have the common decency to top me up all the way, but I’ll take it.

We continue to the door, when I notice three dots on my radar in the direction from which we just came.  I toss a grenade at the bad guys in the door, and turn around.  This where my framerate absolutely tanks.  I see a red gnome, and try to shoot him.  Aiming is impossible with the framerate in the toilet like this, so I decide maybe grenades would be better.  Just as I decide this, I notice little boy blue coming up behind the gnome.  I plant the grenade at his feet, and immediately after the gnome sticks one to me.  I see blue explode, and wait the agonizing second and a half until I fly through the air in slow motion.  Anybody who wants to give me a copy of Halo for the Xbox, or a new Radeon9600 or something, send me a message.  Seriously, drop me a line.

This time through the first firefight, we kill all the bad guys, but none of the stooges die, and what’s worse, I used up even more sniper ammo this time.  But now I’m ready for the fight that just killed me, so I keep the rifle handy.  I move forward at a funny pace, trying to confuse the stooges, and leave them behind me to pick up the flankers.  I grenade the gnomes and jackals, and snipe little boy blue.  The framerate stays where it belongs, and I’m grateful.  This is the lot of them through the door, so I turn around to help the stooges.  I look, and see one of them toss a grenade at that little boy blue, which confuses him enough to make him jump off the ledge to his certain death three levels below.  Not as good as Stormtroopers jumping off of Cloud City in battlefront, but still pretty funny.

Moving on, we enter a hall, and one of the stooges inquires “what was that?” and I just know that heralds the coming of another invisible guy.  I walk slowly, try to keep the stooges close at hand.  No invisible guy fails to appear, so I follow the red dots on my radar instead.  They lead me to two dead marines in lieu of enemies, and I pick up a much needed health pack, and 520 rounds for my kmart gun.  15 bullets for the rifle too.  They seem to want to limit my rifle stock to 24 rounds (plus 4 in the clip) despite the fact that I started this chapter with 60.

I open the door to chaos.  Well, not at first anyway.  The first thing I see is a sleeping gnome in the distance.  Seriously, he was asleep.  So I sniped him, and then his buddy.  And that’s when chaos stepped in.  I see a gold guy come down the stairs with a fancy spork, and at least two blues, not to mention a pile of gnomes.  Two grenades, and an entire clip from the kmart gun cuts their numbers down considerably, including the gold guy.  Amazingly, I saw a grenade coming my way, and was able to jump over it, and not die.  Will wonders never cease?

I enter the room after reloading again from the corpses, and mop up the few remaining gnomes/blues/jackals.  Once inside, a handy nav marker shows up, and I assume that’s supposed to denote the captain.  Which is when Cortana, reprising her role as Counsellor Troi tells me that she has a fix on the captain’s location.

I follow the handy nav marker out a door, and the distance gauge shows him to be one meter above my position.  One fucking meter, and I can’t find any stairs.  Not only that, but the stooges decided to stay in the control room rather than follow me.  Now normally this would tell me that I’m going the wrong way, but there doesn’t seem to be another way to go, so I say “to hell with them,” and move on.  I travel through hallway after hallway, merrily killing aliens as I go.  I come up to this one hall that has two cowardly jackals patrolling.  They’re far enough away that they can’t see me, so I pull out the rifle and line up my shot.  I pull the trigger, and they both fall dead.  That was SO cool.  I’m going to be trying that little trick every chance I get.

I come up to a room, and I see another golden boy in the distance.  I really only see him because of his fancy spork, but that’s enough.  Pulling out my rifle again, I take him down with two shots, and then finish the clip on garden gnomes who, for once, reacted to the death of their leader.  Using the kmart gun, I finish off the remaining gnomes, and then I start taking a LOT of damage.  My shields are down by the time I reach the door, and safety, so I decide to try my sniping trick on the invisible guy again.  This time there are two invisible guys (two!), and it takes me four shots to kill them both, but I still consider it a job well done.

Opening the cell doors triggers a cutscene.  Cortana and the captain talk about what they know about halo.  How it’s a weapon of unimaginable power.  How the captain thinks the Covenant will use it to finish off humanity.  He then orders Cortana and I to locate the halo’s control room.  Fair enough.

Cortana tells me we should head back to the shuttle bay, I just hope she means the top floor, and not the bottom, ’cause that’s a long way down.  It’s cool though, because I have a squad of marines waiting for me between here and there.  I assume I have to safeguard the captain’s life, so I’m going to have to be careful.  It doesn’t help that the captain doesn’t look all that different from the other three guys I rescued.  Guess I’ll have to keep them all safe.  As soon as Cortana shuts up, the main door opens with enemies streaming in.  Two invisible guys take out one of the rescued men (not the captain apparently), but we, and by “we” I mean me and my rifle, take them out.  And their backup soon followed them to Covenant Hell.

We battle our way back to where I left the stooges, and the only people in that room are two fancy sporks just floating in the air.  Taking out my rifle, I finish off the invisible guys, and try not to wonder what terrible fate befell by treasured aggressive-stooges.  As I scrounge around for whatever ammo the stooges may have dropped, Cortana radios “faux hammer” - gotta love that name - for evac.  They reply that they’ve been engaged, and that we’re screwed.  One of the rescued men comments on this, and gets a chewing out from the captain.  He suggests that if I can steal a Covenant dropship, he can pilot it.  Cortana remembers where one is, and a handy nav marker immediately pops up.

It’s a pretty easy path to the marker, made even easier by my sniping skills.  I release the ship, and the captain offers to drive.  I call “shotgun” purely out of habit.  Just as we’re about to leave, two spiky bastards run in, and the captain just rams them with the ship.  I’m happy I rescued him already.

Chapter.  Save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when I visit the Silent Cartographer, and try to keep the power to destroy the human race out of the hands of our enemies.

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
I had darkness and framerate issues.  I also rescued captain Keyes and was charged with finding the halo’s control room.

What Happened Now:
I reload on a beach.  There are lots of stooges around, and even more bad guys.  I’d say it’s like that scene in Saving Private Ryan, only with aliens, but I’ve never seen that movie, so I really can’t say that.  I just use the pistol for most of this scene, and waste a lot of ammo for the limited body count I achieve.  It’s fun to watch a stooge try to shake off a plasma grenade.  Stupid guy runs toward me, like I have the magic plasma-grenade-removing-tool from Starfrit or something.  Had he read the first six chapters, he’d know that that’s just not the case, and furthermore he’d know to run towards the bad guys.  I take his bullets anyway.

Once the beach is cleared, a warthog is dropped off, and by the time I get there, I already have a gunner and a passenger (sadly not a sniper this time.  Is there a way to kick him out and put a sniper in there?).  Cortana tells me we have to find a map room.  Okay, Cortana, I figured that one out on my own when I saw the chapter title was “The Silent Cartographer”.

I fire up the jeep, and drive around the corner of this strangely star-shaped island.  On the other side there are cowardly jackals patrolling just off the beach.  I run one over, and then wait for gunner guy to shoot him because apparently the shield protects him from cars as well as bullets.  There’s also this guy on top of a few rocks, and my wingmen can’t seem to hit him at all, so I jump out to take care of him.  Gunner guy is still randomly shooting up there, so I need to be careful.  I don’t want to be the victim of friendly fire, especially after the number of friendly hits I’ve handed out.

We kill a few more aliens, and gunner guy — who, I’m happy to report, is Hispanic-stooge.  I’m glad he survived — comments on something strange.  I look over my shoulder, and there’s a Covenant dropship behind us.  I go back to that beach in France to help all those marines I’d left there defend against these new bad guys, but the dropship disappeared without dropping anybody.  Guess I scared them off.

Backtracking a bit, and turning another corner, I come to a fork in the road.  The left fork leads up to a building built into the side of the cliff and the right fork to another beach.  I go left, and Cortana points the building out to me, as if I can’t see it in the distance, except I’m almost at the door by the time she finishes telling me that she thinks the cartographer is inside.  I drive in fast, kill a bunch of gnomes and watch the jeep explode.  Either I hit a land mine or somebody stuck a grenade to my car.  You just don’t fuck with another man’s car, man.  Somebody’s going to have to teach these Covenant’s a lesson.

Second time around I take the right fork, and Cortana’s statements make a bit more sense.  After mopping up the three guys on the beach, I pick up the overshield they were guarding and head back to the cliff-face-building.  Finally exploring pays off in this game.  We kill everybody on the cliff, and I look for ways to take the jeep inside.

I manage to squeeze the jeep through the door, and we use it to take out a few more guards.  Cortana says she’s deduced that the cartographer is on the lowest level of the building.  Why is it always on the top/bottom floor.  When I’m an evil supervillain, if I ever have something important to hide, I’ll hide it on the middle floor of my base, and that way anybody who finds it will think it’s not important and keep going.

I travel down a few levels, and find a little boy blue and a bunch of garden gnomes standing in front of a door that’s clearly too small for the jeep to go through.  Cortana tells me not to let them lock the door, and while we kill the bad guys as fast as we possibly could, they lock the door anyway.  Cortana says that she’s underestimated the enemies knowledge of halo’s systems, which is hard to reconcile since as far a we know, they’ve been here for centuries.  She calls the captain to report on our little problem, and he tells us to find another way while he does something else, and that he’ll be out of contact for a while… he’s probably going to end up captured again.  Seriously, so far this guy’s more trouble than he’s worth.  Everybody else in the game checks in, so I don’t forget they’re helping out, and Cortana tells me to find the door override.  Not quite sure what to do, I hop out of the jeep, which was a completely useless move, so I jump back in, and burn a u-trail.  Driving back to the surface is a real test of my driving skills, and only once do I crash into a wall making that you-fucked-up-the-warthog sound.  Now, seriously, what’s with all these starry patterns on the walls in here?  Okay, fine, it’s stellar cartography, instead of the old fashioned kind, but still, why is the security checkpoint all covered in stars?  Is it to make this place look all cool and future-y?  ‘Cause I’m a genetically engineered super-soldier.  You don’t get much more cool and future-y than that.

Back on the surface, I look for something that looks important.  Continuing down to the beach, I hear, rather than see, someone shooting an energy weapon at me.  Turns out it’s just the crappy ocean sounds.  I drive a ways, and come up against a wrecked warthog and some dead bodies.  Oddly, Cortana doesn’t remark on this, but instead on the path that leads into the centre of the island.  I look toward said path, and see it swarming with aliens.  I look back on the dead warthog, and have second thoughts about going up there.  I do anyway.  We drive up to the fallen trees that I’ve decided to make the battle front, and my wingmen start shooting.  They’re doing well, but don’t kill the cowardly jackal in time to prevent him from taking down my overshield, and regular shield with a charge-up shot.  I hate those guys.  Driving around the roadblocks to finish off the opposition I see a funny shaped rock in the middle of the path.  Guess I won’t be taking the jeep any farther.  I just hope it’s still here when I get back.  Abandoning both my ride and my wingmen, I set out on foot.

I walk up the path and around a corner.  I see the back of a red garden gnome.  I try to pistol whip him, but this time hit the grenade-toggle button G instead of melee attack F.  Oh well, I shoot his ass instead, as a little boy blue charges at me and a few more gnomes let loose with their needlers.  Those things piss me off with the heat-seeking aspect.  Why don’t I have any cool weapons that do shit like that?  Anyways, I try to stick a grenade to little boy blue as he charges.  He’s pretty close when I hit the right-mouse-button, but it misses him for some reason, and blows up in a corner, hurting nobody.  I turn another corner, and there’s another group waiting for me.  I try the grenade trick again, but again miss little boy blue.  I do manage to kill a gnome with the splash damage however.  I kill this lot and head back down to the beach to reload and pick up a health pack.

Continuing up the mountain trail I come to a clearing with what looks like dead marines on the ground.  Peering at the building through the bushes I spot some blue armour down there.  I equip the magnum for a closer look.  It’s a spiky bastard.  Now I know these dudes travel in pairs, so I scan the area and find the second spiky bastard, and he’s walking away from me!  I take a shot or two at his exposed lower back and he’s history.  His little buddy on the other hand wants none of that and keeps his shield pointed at me the entire time.  I rush in to the overshield icon he’s guarding and pick it up, thinking I’d need it, but as I pick it up, he rushes right past me, and all I have to do is turn around and shoot him in the back (like a coward).  That was easy.

There must be something huge here.  Two overshields, two health packs and ammo for both my weapons.  Not to mention guarded by two spiky bastards.  I’m not looking forward to whatever comes next.

I walk forward a bit, and am barraged by charged up plasma pistols.  So much for my overshield.  At least five cowardly jackals were hiding in the trees.  I make short work of them, and end up using up one of my health packs and the other overshield.  That seems wasteful to me.  Hopefully half this stuff was stashed here to help me fight those two spiky bastards.

I can’t seem to do anything with/to the giant cement mushroom the spiky bastards were guarding, so I decide to follow the path.  Past the bodies of all those jackals, the path opens up into another clearing.  I see little boy blue and a double handful of garden gnomes in the distance.  Pulling out the magnum I drop them all, and move carefully hoping that I’ll see the inevitable cowardly jackals before they see me.  I do, but I don’t get a clear shot.  We trade fire for a few seconds, and I manage to kill them both.  Thankfully those last few dead bodies still have pistol ammo.

I leave this conspicuously-designed-for-a-firefight clearing, and follow the path downwards.  I come across some more “man-made” structures and a bunch of gnomes.  After killing all of them I look around a bit.  It’s a long way down to the beach below, and almost certain death should I decide to go exploring.

What the fuck?  Three overshields?  Do I have this thing set to Easy or something?  Something really bad must be coming up, and soon.

Going downstairs I find a strangely laid out room with lots of cover.  Whoa, two more spiky bastards.  I’m not sure what I was expecting to find, but I thought it’d be more than that.  Using the magnum, I take them both down while only getting body-checked once.  The magnum almost completely takes the challenge out of these guys.  For the record, I’m not complaining.  Hell, I still have some of my overshield left.  Killing them triggers a checkpoint.

Save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when I try to find the silent cartographer, and maybe Cortana will say something useful.

The Halo Chronicles - Volume 8

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
My search for halo’s control room lead me to the Silent Cartographer’s strangely shaped island full of conspicuous cover.  And aliens.  Lots of aliens.

What Happened Now:
I walk forward into a fancy light show, and Cortana instructs me to disable the security system.  I hit the panel, and Cortana tells me that the doors are now open, and that I should find the map room.  While she’s talking, the camera shows a golden boy with a glowing spork come through one of the doors I just opened.  I wonder how long he was waiting for me to do that?

Ignoring my own advice, I explore a little bit.  There is conspicuous cover everywhere.  What kind of crazy-ass alien race designs their floor plans with firefights in mind?

Heading back to the exit, I get a mayday call from an allied dropship.  He’s going down, and while Cortana volunteers me to help them out, I bump into an invisible guy.  I actually kill him pretty easily, but his friend takes down my shield before I can draw a bead on him.  The shield takes forever to recharge, and this guy moves fast, so my health is on it’s way down.  I’m down to one bar as I head up the ramp to daylight.  I hope that health pack is still sitting there near the giant cement mushroom.

After picking up an overshield, I head back towards the mushroom and it’s supplies.  Cortana tells me the stricken dropship was carrying my “heavy weapons”, and by that I can only assume she meant Sheila.  She suggests I comb the beach to see what I can find.  I’m pretty sure the only way to the beach is where I left the warthog, so I don’t alter my course.  Just as I enter the mushroom’s clearing, I see a Covenant dropship taking off.  Man, I hope it just unloaded gnomes.

No such luck it seems, five cowardly jackals instead.  Pulling out my trusty pistol, I zoom in and take what looks just like a perfect headshot at the first one, except it doesn’t kill him.  In response, he throws back a charge-up shot and takes out my shields (overshield and all).  You’d think he’d be all nice and send me an attack just as ineffective as the one I sent him, but no, he’s just not cooperating today.  I think I’ll kick his ass for that.  I play a little back and forth with my pistol, and kill the first two.  I toss out a grenade at the other three and equip my kmart gun.  After they’re all dead, I go back and teabag that first guy for being such a dick.  I pick up that health pack to help quell the heartbeats, and reload, then head back down the trail to the beach.

I follow the path of destruction back down to where I left the jeep.  To my surprise, not only is the jeep still there, but my wingmen are still alive and ready to roll.  I was pretty sure I’d have a jeep, since I could always flip the wrecked one if mine was gone, but I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised that both Hispanic-stooge and the fellow riding shotgun stuck around.

I make a left onto the beach, and see the crashed pelican in the distance.  There are also two jackals on the beach, and a gnome on top of a strangely shaped hill.  We make short work of the jackals, and I hop out to climb the path up the hill.  Up top, I kill all three gnomes and admire the view of the ocean.  Suddenly I see a red dot on my radar, and equip my pistol to see if I can pick off whoever it is.  Turns out it’s a pair a jackals on the other side of the hill from where I parked the jeep.  The steep angle gives me a perfect shot over their shields.  As I kill one, the other hurls a grenade up to the top of the hill.  Holy shit, good arm.  He would have stuck me too had I been standing about a pace closer to the edge.  I wisely decide to head back down to my jeep and maybe run him over a few times.

It seems the downed dropship was only good for some ammo (okay, lots of ammo), a few health packs, and a rocket launcher.  Oh yeah, and another jeep.  Where the hell is my tank?  Can I trade in my two surplus jeeps for a tank?  Please?  Oh well, a rocket launcher is pretty cool in and of itself.  Unsure, I toss my kmart gun and pick up the rockets.  Who wants to bet this decision comes back to bite me in the ass?

Turning another corner, honestly this is the first island I’ve ever seen with hard corners, I find myself back at the beginning, in France.  Miraculously all the marines I’d left here are still alive.  Oh well, I had to come back this way eventually, but it seems like an awfully small island.

I actually drop off my warthog here, and walk back to the fallen pelican to pick up the third one.  I bring it back to France to pick up some new passengers, and head back to the map-room-entrance.  Or, at least, what I think is the map-room-entrance.

Making my way back to the entrance, I see two spiky bastards waiting for me, guarding the way in.  Now, earlier, Cortana had told me that she’d requested the heavy weapons — I’m assuming she meant the rocket launcher — because I’d be facing “hunters”.  I’m also assuming that these spiky bastards are the hunters, so I stash the jeep behind some cover, jump out, and equip the rocket launcher.  It takes me a few tries, but I manage to kill one of those spiky bastards with a rocket.  Not the one I was aiming for mind you, but his partner.  The one I was trying to hit kept dodging the rockets (seriously, dodging rockets.  What the hell? Moves pretty fast for a big guy), but somehow I was able to kill his buddy with just the splash damage.  I take out the first guy with a well placed pistol shot when his back is turned.  I’ll be heading inside next, and honestly, inside is no place to be wielding rockets, so I head back to the other side of the island and re-acquire my kmart gun.  Who wants to bet this decision comes back to bite me in the ass?  At least I know where it is if I need it again.

Returning to the entrance, I take the jeep inside again, even though I know it won’t fit through the security door.  Oh well, if it gets stuck, I’ve got two more.  I drive down to the now-open security door, more than half expecting to see golden boy from the cutscene, but there’s nobody there.  I walk through the door into uncharted territory.

This chapter is called “Shafted”, and as I’m wondering what sense to take that in, I trigger a cutscene.  The chief walks to the edge of a platform and kicks a pebble off.  It’s a long way down, but the pebble’s fall shows me other platforms I might be able to jump to.  And to be honest, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to do that.  One false move and I fall to my death (again).  I engage my flashlight, and very carefully, look for a way down.

I see a platform below me with a few red-blood (ie human blood) smeared health packs on it.  I decide to jump for it.  Master Chief, on the other hand, decides he doesn’t want to jump, and just walks off the edge.  And then splatters himself on another, lower, platform.  Let’s try that again.

I try this a few times, and come to the conclusion that you can’t reach that one platform, the one that isn’t certain death, from here.  Giving up I backtrack a bit, and come back to the security door.  I had thought it was a right-turn-hallway from the security door to the cutscene room, but it was actually a T-junction.  I make the left, and find myself in a room with a red guy, little boy blue and some garden gnomes.  A few grenades and my trusty kmart gun get me through and into the next room where more gnomes and two jackals are lying in wait.  After killing them I look around a bit, I see a ramp leading upwards, and a few doors with green lights on them.  Does the green light mean that they are unlocked?

The green doors are indeed unlocked it turns out, so I take the one leading down.  I come out in the room that I’d been trying to jump to, the one with the two health packs.  I catch a glimpse of a blue spiky bastard through an opening in the wall, and try to shoot his midsection while he’s stretching.  No effect.  Well, that’s not true, more like no positive effect.  Spiky bastard and 4-5 jackals spring into action.  I take out the jackals, but I just have no concept of a good place to take on the spiky bastard, and I still don’t know where his life-partner is.  Being all sneaky and Sam Fisher-like, I actually find a good line of sight at the spiky bastard.  I zoom in with my magnum and wait for him to turn around.  Once he’s out of the way, I start looking for his partner.

Being the last true hope of humanity, I’m really not interested in going toe-to-toe with this guy, especially now that I’ve pissed him off by killing his lover.  I find him standing over the body of his partner (seriously) with his back to a wall.  So much for doing this the easy way.  I engage him, and we trade shots for it bit.  When he’s down, I have no shields, and only two life bars remaining.  Good thing those two health packs are still there (and some handgun ammo to boot).

At this point things aren’t dramatic enough, so “faux hammer” calls in that she sees incoming dropships (ships.  Before we’ve only seen one at a time).  The other marines report that they’ll try to hold them off, and Cortana tells them to come inside, and play a defensive game, but it’s too late, they’ve already been engaged.  The marine on the line urges me to find the cartographer as fast as possible while they hold off the enemy.  Cortana sheds a digital tear and encourages him to “give’em hell,” but you can tell she thinks he’s already gone.  And then, just in case I’m the most self-centred genetically-engineered super-soldier in the universe, she tells me that it’ll be a lot easier to get out if we find the cartographer before the enemy reinforcements arrive.  God, Cortana, I’m not eight-years old any more.

Going down another level, I run into a handful of gnomes.  While I kill them, I hear what sounds like little boy blue giving orders, but he’s nowhere to be found.  Going down another level I find two of them.  Instead of sneaking up and pistol-whipping one of them in the back of the head for a quick kill, I try to headshot them with my magnum.  That’s when I realized headshots don’t really mean jack when they have energy shields.  I kill them both, and lose a little bit of health.  I debate going back for that last health pack as I hit save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when I continue my search for the Silent Cartographer, and try to add a fourth warthog to my collection.

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
I battled my way through the Silent Cartographer’s lair, and learned that three jeeps beats two spiky bastards any day.

What Happened Now:
I reload into a dark hallway.  I walk forward, and kill those two guys I killed last time.  I melee the first one in the back of the head, and it barely damages him at all.  I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be able to kill anybody with a melee attack to the back of the head.  Oh well, I kill them both and continue into the next room where there is a blue ring of light floating in the air and Cortana tells me that it is what I’ve been looking for.

I activate the Silent Cartographer.  Cutscene.  The ring animates, and Cortana interprets it.  She says she’s located the control centre, in a shrine.  I think “that’s an odd place to put a control centre… all sacrilegious and shit.”  And then Cortana remarks on how a shrine is an odd place for a control centre… I could have written this game in my sleep.

Once she has a fix on the location, she radios the captain… no response.  Faux hammer says the captain must be out of range, but you and I both know that he’s been captured again.  How this guy ever rose through the ranks to captain is entirely beyond me.  A message pops up that I should get the hell out of there, and I would have to agree, because I haven’t seen spork-boy since that last cutscene, and they didn’t show him to me for fun… at least I don’t think that’s why they showed him to me.

Trying to find my way back, I take the first ramp going up, and it leads to a dead end… with cowardly jackals shooting down at me from the balcony.  I don’t even bother with them, because I know they’re too scared to jump down after me.  Save my bullets for later.

The music gets all hard-rock guitar-riff-y, and I recognize it from the area I just cleared in Halo2 yesterday.

The next ramp I find goes down, and contrary to contemporary wisdom, I go down anyway.  oooh, and overshield.  Should help me dispatch spork-boy if I ever find him.  Oh, oops. this is the back entrance to the map room.  Oh well, I just wasted an entire minute of my life going in circles.  Good job Easymac.

I find the correct way up, and run into three cowardly jackals in the hall.  They take down half my overshield before I get rid of them.  So much for saving it for spork-boy.  Approaching the door to the next-floor-up, I see a red dot on my radar, right in front of me.  I equip my pistol, open the door, and headshot the jackal who hadn’t had time to hide behind his shield.  In the second it took me to do that his two buddies acted quickly and are now safely ensconced behind their shields, and I take a little more damage.  At this rate, I won’t even make it back to the ground floor in one piece, never mind saving my overshield.  I still know where to find health and ammo if I need it.

I enter the room, and play “gun tag” with a few gnomes and a little boy blue up on the mezzanine.  Little boy blue keeps dodging behind a pillar to let his shields recharge, so I get annoyed and try to find another ramp up.  Heading up the ramp, I find a few more cowardly jackals waiting for me.  Somehow I take them by surprise, and am able to take the long way around the mezzanine level of this room, over to where little boy blue is guarding the next ramp.  Wait, never mind.  it looks like I DID kill that blue guy… guess that means I’m still “It”.

There are two cowardly jackals hiding on the next staircase, again.  This is becoming a common theme.  I guess in a game with only four enemy types, you encounter the same scenario again and again.

I emerge from the staircase into the same room where I’d killed the two spiky bastards.  Three jackals come out of nowhere and take a few cheap shots at me.  Goodbye Mr. Overshield, it was nice knowing you.  I kill them, and while I’m letting my standard shield come back into full bloom, I notice what looks like a gnome and a little boy blue standing on the next ramp.  I decide to equip my magnum, and see what I can do with a little long-range shooting… with a pistol.  Whatever, I’ve given up trying to make sense of this game.

Using some retro play styles, I jump and shoot, killing all three gnomes, and doing some damage to little boy blue.  But again, he keeps hiding behind some cover until his shields recharge.  Now I’m a good deal smarter than he is, so while he’s hiding, I hurl a grenade up to where I think he should be standing.  The grenade starts smoking, as it’s apt to do, and he says, I swear, “crap!”.  Naturally the grenade does no damage, but does distract him long enough to let me jump up and lay into him with my kmart gun.  Thinking back, I probably should have tossed him a few frag grenades instead, they might have actually hurt him, but I honestly forget that I have them.

I go back around to where I remember there being ammo and health.  I fully reload my guns, and am grateful that the health pack is still there… this has been a little easy, so I’m anticipating taking some huge damage soon.  Going out the door I’d originally entered from, I come to another big staircase and - surprise - no jackals.  I totally didn’t see that coming.

I open the door and see a red gnome in the distance.  I equip my pistol and take a shot at him.  It takes four rounds to put him down.  Toughest damn gnome I’ve seen yet.  His worthless-brother-Ralf comes over to investigate and I get him in only two shots.  What did you expect from a worthless-brother-Ralf?  There are jackals on the mezzanine again, but I’m pretty sure I know where I am, so I don’t need to kill them.  Making a right, I come to an open door with five, count’em, five enemies behind it.  A few grenades and my trusty kmart gun get me through, but my shields go down once, and I have to hide behind a wall just like those guys I said bad things about earlier.  Remind me to be nicer to them in the future.

Continuing through this room, I come to a T-intersection that I’m pretty sure leads me back to my jeep.  I hear angry-alien-language being shouted nearby, and see shots from a human gun come whizzing out of the intersecting hall.  Have the aliens started picking up human guns?  ‘Cause that’s just not cool.  You don’t see me picking up alien guns do you?  Well, okay, there was that minute and a half where I held a needler in reserve, but I never fired it, and I didn’t pick it up again and after I died.  Moving cautiously towards the intersection, I come up against the back of spork-boy.  His shields are flashing, like he’s taking damage - you don’t think my stooges are shooting him do you?  ‘Cause that’d be awesome.  Anyway, I walk up to his back, and try to melee him in the head.  I mess it up this time, and he turns around and cuts me in half with his spork.  That was totally uncalled for.  Totally.  Next time I’ll try to stick a grenade to his ass instead.

I respawn, and the same thing is happening, he’s being shot at.  I toss a grenade at his back, and it’s like he sensed the movement of my arm or something, because he runs forward just quick enough to avoid getting stuck.  Following at a safe distance, I see him standing in front of my jeep, growling.  And the stooges are shooting at him.  That is awesome.  It takes me two full clips from the kmart gun, and another grenade to kill him, not to mention all the damage the stooges did.  For some reason, only the stooge sitting shotgun was shooting.  Gunner McRetard, as he’s prone to doing, was doing nothing.

I hop in the jeep, and it’s like a 7-point-turn to get the damned thing turned around.  I drive up the ramps, and as I reach the surface Cortana radios echo419 that we’re ready for pick up.  Echo agrees to come get us, and I turn around to notice a Covenant dropship parked just outside the front door.  There also seems to be an invisible guy running towards me, and since he’s invisible, the stooges aren’t doing a thing about him.  I hit E to engage him on foot.  However, the moment I step out of the jeep, the stooges start shooting at the, not one but, two invisible guys.  Even though the stooges are shooting too, it takes me almost an entire clip to take them both down.  And then one of the stooges goes and takes credit for my kill.  Fucker.  Like magic, once the two bad guys are dead, the Covenant drop ship flies away, and a pelican touches down in it’s place.

Jumping into the pelican triggers a cutscene.  Once again, we fly away leaving two helpful, if somewhat retarded soldiers and a perfectly useful jeep behind.  I could probably use those two guys in the next section you know?

Cortana relays coordinates to the pilot, and she sceptically informs Cortana that these coords are underground.  Cortana assures her that according to Covenant seismic scans, the halo has an extensive grid of tunnels, and besides, the enemy’d never expect an aerial insertion underground.  This is supposed to be funny.  We fly over the giant cement mushroom, and it turns out to be a landing bay.  We fly down a few levels to a landing where a handful of gnomes are patrolling.  The sight of the pelican scares the shit out of them, and I disembark as they’re running out the door.

As I take control again, the doors open, and two of the gnome re-emerge behind a little boy blue.  I kill them, but it eats a lot of ammo.  I’m doubtful that I’ll find dead marines down here to reload from.  Stranger things have happened in this game, but I’m not going to bet the farm on it.

Looking around, there are shields and gun turrets strategically placed on this landing pad to keep people from doing exactly what I just did.  Why didn’t those idiot gnomes actually try to, you know, stop me from getting off here?  You know what, who cares?  Two more gnomes come back out of the door, one at a time, so I pistol whip them.  Man these guys are weak.

Going through the door, my radar shows enemies in impossible places.  I’m not deterred though, and I keep going.  Opening another door, there’s a little boy blue walking away from me.  Two frag grenades take him out, and I wonder why the hell I’m throwing frags when I have four plasmas.  I hit G so this won’t happen again.  I make a right and follow the wall a bit.  I come across the usual mixed bag of aliens, and my grenades are having literally no effect… except for launching the dead bodies around… I guess that’s an effect.  My grenades are having no useful effect whatsoever, and I take a lot of damage.  By the time I kill them all, I’m down to half my health, and just under a hundred rounds in the kmart gun.  Ammo crisis, here I come.  I walk around, ignoring the guy in the centre, and open the next door.  A gnome runs out, nearly bumping into me, and he doesn’t say “excuse me”.  I pistol whip him for being so rude.  His buddy comes through the door a few seconds later, so I whip him too, just for being friends with the rude guy.

I open the door to… snow?  Cortana comments on the unusual weather patterns.  I know she’s doing this to try to illustrate just how far from humanity the halo-builders were, but it’s just a little lame.  I mean, come on, weather?  You guys can do better.

As I’m admiring the effect of the snow, a pelican swoops by, taking fire from a turret, and giving off a distress call.  They call themselves “Fire Team Zulu” and request assistance.  Cortana remarks that she didn’t think there were any other UNSC forces alive on this part of the halo.  I guess I should go bail them out.  At least try to score some lousy bullets.  I kill the gnome in the turret with my pistol, and run into two more of them milling about.  Once they’re down, I jump into the recently vacated turret to see if I can pick off anybody from afar.  The turret is absolutely useless.  It must have a range of no more than 20 metres.  I do manage to kill one jackal with it though. 

Walking forward, the glass part of the bridge shatters.  I wasn’t even walking on it, maybe the cold made it brittle.  anyways, there are enemies on the lower level, but to hell with them, they can stay there.

I continue across the bridge, carefully avoiding the glass parts.  I come across two cowardly jackals patrolling width-wise, and believe it or not, they’re both walking way from me.  I’m able to whip them both and save a few rounds.  I come to the end, and there’s a golden boy with a spork waiting for me.  My pistol just doesn’t pack enough of a punch, and he cuts me clean in half.  Fucker.

I respawn just a few meters away, and this time I’m smart enough to stick a grenade to golden boy.  He explodes before he gets a chance to slash me, and all is good.  Okay, well, not all.  Waiting for the grenade’s fuse to run out gives a gnome a chance to get into one of the turrets.  He takes a few shots at me, and manages to take another bar off my life gauge before I kill him.  Plus, I’m still having an ammo crisis.  This isn’t good.

I open the door to a hallway that looks exactly like the one on the other side of the bridge.  Okay, that makes a little sense.  Continuing through the hall, I come to a room, that looks an awful lot like the last big room I was in.  Is this what they mean when people say Halo was endlessly repetitive?  In this room there are quite a few gnomes, and, it turns out, an invisible guy.  I kill a lot of bad guys, but invisible guy is able to take my shield down.  Now I’m down to the bloody heartbeats.  God, how I hate the heartbeats.

And just like bungie reads The Halo Chronicles or something, I come across two dead stooges.  I manage to pick up a health pack, 480 kmart rounds (which didn’t top me up), 42 magnum rounds (which did top me up), and two frags.  Thank you, ammo crisis averted.

I take the next exit, thankfully all the hallways have little arrows on them telling which way to go.  I wonder why the hell the halo-builders would build it that way.  Did they know several millennia ago where I’d be going?  ‘Cause that’d be impressive.  Apparently, this hallway is a checkpoint.  Save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when I try to save Fire Team Zulu.  And maybe I’ll try to rescue the captain.  You know.  Again.

The Halo Chronicles - Volume 10

Previously on The Halo Chronicles:
I battled my way out of the Silent Cartographers Lair, and rode a pelican underground.  And I learned that it also snows underground.  Weird.

What Happened Now:
I reload in front of a door.  Going through it takes me into what turns out to be an elevator.  Activating the vator takes me a long way down.  I honestly thought it was going to go up, and it was just like one of those weird moments in a real elevator when it goes the wrong way and you get all disoriented for a second.

I open the door to a long hall full of k-rails.  About halfway down the hall, I see a little bit of sleeping gnome in between a few k-rails.  Pulling out my pistol, I zoom in and take him down.  Four of his little buddies start running around back and forth at the far end of the hall, and I take a few shots at them.  I miss a surprisingly large amount of the shots, and only kill three of them.  Equipping the kmart gun, I take a step forward, and I’m sure there’s going to be a guy waiting just inside the door for me.  Now which side?  I step forward and turn left, and there he is.  A red garden gnome with a needler.  I unload on him with my kmart gun, and it pushes him up the wall.  Thinking that if I put enough bullets into him to drive him halfway up the wall, that I must also have put enough bullets in him to kill him, I turn around to see if he has a partner on the right side.  There was nobody on the right, but lefty is, apparently, still alive.  I turn back to the left, and he’s standing there, halfway up the wall (kinda like Spiderman) shooting at me with his needler (not at all like Spiderman.  Spiderman would totally be on my side in this one.).  I ponder whether or not spidergnome should be considered a glitch in the engine as I shoot him again, and absently hope it sends him up to the ceiling instead of killing him.  I continue to the end of the hall, and stick a grenade to the last remaining gnome.

Looking about, I see a few enemies through a window.  I wonder if I can shoot through this futuristic space glass, or if the halo-builders were smart enough to use bullet-proof safety glass.  Switching to my pistol, I zoom in on a cowardly jackal through the window and fire.  The window thankfully shatters, and jackal guy staggers, almost as if my shot didn’t have as much energy as normal.  I shoot him a couple more times, and then the nearby panicking gnome for good measure.  I walk to the right, looking for an entrance into that room, other than the window I just smashed that is.  I come across a little boy blue who really should have reacted to the broken window at least, if not all the shooting, but he didn’t.  I toss a grenade his way, but he side steps it.  I toss a grenade to where he’s standing now, and it goes right through the five-hole.  We both start shooting, and the splash damage from the first grenade kills him.  And then the second one goes off and sends his body flying through the air.  That just never gets old for me.

There is this strange looking garbage chute in the corner, and as I’m checking it out, a party of cowardly jackals comes up and starts shooting at me.  I take them out, and start looking for more alien scum to eradicate before I start seriously considering spelunking the trash compactor.  I come across quite a few garden gnomes, and take my time pistol whipping them.  Eventually they’re all down, and I have a chance to look around.  Hey, those arrows on the floor are back.  You think I should follow them?

There seems to be some kind of invisible cover over the garbage chute entrances, and this time the futuristic space glass is bullet proof.  Oh well, I guess I will start following the arrows then.  Before we go any further, let me just say that this room was totally designed with firefights in mind, and it’s a real shame to waste it on such a minor skirmish.

Following the arrows through the hallway, I open a door to the outside again.  The snow is falling, and I see this one really big snow flake arcing through the sky on a parabolic trajectory.  I correctly call that one as being artillery, and run over to see if I can kill a tank with my kmart gun.  It actually only takes two grenades to take down the tank, which is just a little sad.  I’m thinking that making the tank my first priority might not have been the best idea, because it’s destruction brings about a little mayhem.  There are jackals all around taking cheap shots at me, as well as gnomes in turrets in the distance.  How is it that when I’m manning the turret, the energy blasts go nowhere, and when a garden gnome is in there, they easily traverse the entire canyon?  Cheap.  Anyways, there’s also a little boy blue in a speeder bike that is totally ripped off from Return of the Jedi.  I spend a few minutes trying to jack his bike before I die and realize that carjacking was a new feature they added for Halo2.  Have I mentioned that I don’t have a manual for this game yet?

Respawn.  Instead of going straight for the tank, I head left.  After killing the gnome-in-a-turret that was harassing who I believe to be fire team Zulu, I run over to where they are taking fire, and flip the crashed jeep.  Two stooges immediately hop in to join me, and we go out to wreak a little havoc.  We easily take out the blue guy on the bike, and then foolishly head over to the tank.  One shot from the tank flips the jeep and kills both of the stooges.  I manage to take out the tank with four grenades and a clip from my kmart gun.  I wonder how it got so much stronger since I died last as I flip the jeep and go back to look for more stooges.  Turns out there aren’t any left, and what’s more is that they left behind a rocket launcher and sniper rifle.  I probably should have used the rockets to take out the tank instead of getting my stooges killed, oh well, live and learn I guess.  Looking around a bit, I find a speeder bike sitting there unattended.  I get on the bike and zip about looking for people to run over.  I spot a few jackals, and a gnome, hiding behind a rock and some trees.  I spend a few seconds trying to run them over, but without the speed-boost, it’s ineffective.  I spend a few more minutes trying to locate the speed boost command, and that gives one of them enough time to stick a grenade to me.  D’Oh!

Honestly, this level really shouldn’t take three tries.  But it just goes to reinforce what I said a few updates back about doing the right thing or getting your ass handed to you.  Respawn.

Same as before, I take out the turret, and head over towards the jeep.  This time however, the jeep is still upright.  So why the hell are the stooges not joyriding around in it?  Seriously why can’t they drive the damned thing themselves?  ‘Cause that would make my job a whole hell of a lot easier.  Anyways, I pick up the rocket launcher and use it to take out the tank, another turret, and then little boy blue on his bike.  Incidentally, that last shot took out Curly with the splash damage.  I bet I’m going to end up paying for that later.

I turn around and toss down the empty rocket launcher and pick up the sniper.  I use it to pick off seven enemies before hopping into the jeep.  The instant I enter the drivers seat, both surviving stooges make a mad dash to join me.  Interestingly, the stooge who winds up sitting shotgun is carrying a Covenant plasma rifle, despite the fact that there are various human ordinances scattered throughout the battlefield.  I wish there was a way to make him pick up that sniper rifle.  But seriously, if he had enough time to pick up a Covenant weapon during that fight, why didn’t he grab the rocket launcher and take out that tank before I even got there?  Was he just waiting for me to do it?  ‘Cause that’s just lazy, and I expect more than that from a stooge.

We drive towards the other end of the cavern, and encounter some cowardly jackals.  the jeep gun takes care of them with ease.  At one point Gunner McRetard even shouts “Eat it” at a jackal, which amuses me to no end because I always say that whenever I have Brewguy in my crosshairs.  Stooge trash-talk is definitely getting more aggressive, as Gunner McRetard also says “Get up, so I can kill you again!” to one of the dead bodies, and that amuses me as well.

Manoeuvring on ice is difficult as I turn a corner and see a motionless UNSC tank in the distance, and some poor marines taking fire from a variety of enemies.  I rush into the fray, and Gunner McRetard easily takes out all of the aliens on foot.  However there are two blue guys in bikes making life difficult for the stooges, so I try my best to chase them down.  Those bikes are no match for the jeep gun, and we take them out, but not before they kill the stooge riding shotgun, take Gunner McRetard down to one bar of health, and take my shields down.  I jump out of the jeep, and survey the scene.  There is a lot of decent weaponry lying about, including another rocket launcher, but I don’t partake in any of it.  I head on over to the tank and take a seat.  Three marines jump onto the side walls, and one of them has a sniper rifle, which is awesome, but another one has a needler.  Seriously dude, there are better guns lying in the snow for you to take if you want one.  I’m not sure if the tank will handle better on the ice than the jeep or not, but come on, it’s a fucking tank man.

I travel forward a bit, getting a feel for the tanks controls, and come to a fork in the road.  Going right takes me into a curiously squared off cave, with light sticks providing illumination, and going left leads me down a rocky river bed.  Before I can decide which way to go, a gnome comes out of the cave and kills one of my stooges.  A gnome killed a stooge.  God these guys suck.  I use the cannon and handy machine gun to clear all the enemies from the cave, and then start taking hits from the river bed.  Looking that way, there are a few jackals and a little boy blue.  Due to the topography of the area, I just can’t seem to hit them with either of the tanks weapons.  Both shells and machine gun fire hit the ground well before they would reach the enemies I’m aiming for.  I end up killing them, but not before they kill needler stooge.  Attitude stooge and I go right, and enter the cave.

Coming out of the cave, I blow apart a turret in the distance, and then a bike comes right up in front of me, so I blow it away too.  Silly aliens, you don’t drive your bike right in front of a tank.  Upon entering daylight again, Cortana tells me that the Covenant placed their tanks to block the entrance to the tunnel.  First of all, it thought I just came out of the tunnel, and second, are they really going to turn this into a tank-on-tank fight?  ‘Cause that’s just a little bit out of character for this game.

I flank the tank, primarily because I enjoy rhyming, and take it out without taking any return fire.  There are turrets, bikes and cowardly jackals all over the place, so while I’m busy taking out as much as I can, I’m still taking fire.  I end up losing a few bars of health by the time I’ve taken down the little plane and all the enemies.  Attitude stooge with his sniper rifle is still doing alright, and I’m starting to think he just might be the infamous Sergeant Johnson.  Does that mean he can’t die?

Looking down the hill into the tunnel, I see a few bodies, but it’s too far away to make out what kind of bad guys they are, only that they aren’t human.  I launch a few shells down there and am rewarded with the sight of orange blood.  Easiest two spiky bastards I’ve killed so far.  Rolling down, I grind their corpses into the snow, and come up to a door.  The door does not want to open, and while I’m hesitant to try the cannon in such close quarters, Cortana hasn’t given me any instructions, so I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ll have to do.

Except, as I’m turning around, I see a control panel on the wall.  I jump out and hit the button.  After opening the doors, I get back into the tank, and drive back and forth through the zigzagging hallways.  I come to a very large open area with a bridge and many many bad guys.  I start shelling them with the cannon, and silently hope that the shells won’t collapse the bridge, even though I’m sure that kind of damage modelling isn’t present in this game.  My barrage kills quite a lot of enemies, and at some point, you can’t quite tell if you killed them at that distance, until the bodies fly off the bridge.  And that’s still funny.

I blast a few more turrets, and kill a few stray aliens, before I cross the bridge.  On the other side, I jump out momentarily to hit the door switch and we drive into another hallway.

Turning a few corners, I encounter a loading zone, and a new chapter “Rolling Thunder”.  I also run into a gnome and two little boy blues who were not riding their bikes.  I dispatch all three with a little help from the Sarge, and turn another corner.  I’m looking up at a ski hill, complete with moguls.  Sans snow however.  I’m thinking that despite the chapter title, Sheila just won’t make it up that hill with all those rocks.  There are two bikes that the game conspicuously didn’t make me destroy, so the Sarge and I should be okay, provided he can ride a bike… because we all know he can’t drive a jeep or a tank.  I try to take Sheila up the mountain.

To my surprise, there is a clear path up the mountain that I can navigate with ease in the tank.  Just before I reach the top, I see a Covenant drop ship landing, and as soon as I’m in range, it starts shooting at me.  Bad guys disembark from both sides, and two of them run straight for the bikes.  By the time I destroy both bikes and kill all the enemies, Sarge and I have both lost a little health, but it’s not too big of a problem.  I have to say, this tank with the right wingman make some of these fights really easy.

I’m in a roughly oval shaped canyon with a rock face jutting out of the centre.  I guess it’s more doughnut shaped than anything else.  I go right around the centre of the doughnut, and there’s a door in the rock face.  A fucking door.  In the rock.  For good measure I blow away a gun turret that’s sitting out there in the perfect place to piss me off had I gone left.  Just then the door in the rock opens, and a handful of enemies run out.  I blow them up and the door closes.  What do you want to bet I have to sneak in after the bad guys when the door opens next?  I continue around the doughnut, and see a Covenant tank in the distance.  I send a shell it’s way, and it goes right over the top of it.  The Covenant pilot sees the explosion behind him, and turns the tank around to investigate.  So I send another shell his way while his back is turned.  This one goes right under him, and again does no damage.  I think I’m going to have to fool with the mouse sensitivity at some point.  Anyways, I blow him away before he has a chance to fire on me, and then I blow away a speeder bike that came around the mountain too.  I’m very grateful that he tank never runs out of ammo.

I decide to go back and around the left side from the front.  The door in the left side of the rock opens, and I get to kill a few blue guys instead of the measly gnomes and jackals from the other side.  I have to say the Covenant deployed their forces here with some knowledge of battlefield tactics, it’s just too bad that two guys in a tank are so much better than several dozen guys with a tank, speeder bikes, turrets and higher ground.  Once again, how the hell are we losing this god-damned war?  I just don’t get it.

I head to the end of the doughnut cavern, beyond the burned out wreckage of the enemy tank, and to the opening into the next cavern.  Three spiky bastards come charging at me, and I blow apart the first one.  I know these guys always travel in pairs, so I have to keep an eye open for the fourth.  I’m keeping the other two guys entertained with the tank’s machine gun while the cannon reloads.  This, unfortunately, is not nearly enough gun to keep a spiky bastard happy, and one of them unloads his green cannon at us.  The Sergeant is down to two bars of health by the time I am able to blow away the last two.  I’m guessing he’s not indestructible after all… maybe he’s not Johnson, and just some stooge.  I wait for the cannon to reload before I turn the next corner because there just has to be a spiky bastard over there.  And there is.  I blow him up before he has a chance to turn around, and all sergeant stooge can do is exclaim “What the?”.

Moving ahead, we come to a clearing that appears to have a chasm in the middle.  There are many bad guys hiding behind rocks and things, not to mention a few turrets and vehicles on the other side.  But once again, we are too much for them, and the battle is over before it’s really even begun.

Checkpoint.  Save.  Quit.

Tune in next time when I ride around in my tank some more, and try to determine if attitude stooge really is the elusive Sergeant Johnson.