Halo: Combat Evolved - Mission 2

The beginning of this mission, the first and second cannion, are the hardest bit. Taking down one of the banshees so the other one takes flight, fairly easy. Just use your pistol for distance and switch two the battle rifle when your clip's empty and the banshee gets closer, joker if the banshee gets stuck in a tree or smashes into the cannion wall. I like cross the bridge and attack the grunts and elites from the other side of the abyss. At least the grunts are easy to take out, the elites are the tricky bit. If you get lucky, a well placed grenade makes the elite duck-jump off the cliff, double jackpot if it was the red and not the blue elite. If both elites survived, especially if you're playing on Legendary like me, things get tough because at this point, with all the grunts killed, they like to hide behind trees or that rock right next to their side of the bridge.

At some point you'll have to make a bold attack across the bridge. If you have grenades left use them to drive the elites into hiding away from the bridge, otherwise it's very likely they'll kill you before you can even make it to the other side. Once you managed to take them out you might want to stack up ammo and health before advancing further up the hill because the next checkpoint only comes when you reach the next cannion. At this point I like to pick up a needler because it's very effective against elites and keep the pistol for ranged attacks on the grunts further up.

The second cannion is the first one where you have to defend other survivors from the Pillar of Autumn until evac arrives. It's also the toughest position to defend because unlike the other cannions to come, Covenant dropships will come in from three directions, plus, you don't have the warthog yet and those technicians in their jumpsuits and their pistols aren't helping much. This is also where you'll meet Srg. Johnson again. Heck, you might even manage to keep him alive, but don't count on it. 

Plus, you'll get plenty more chances to get him killed throughout the game. Also notice, that although in a group of randomly chosen soldier character models you might get two caucasian soldiers with the same faces, but there will always be only one Srg. Johnson. The reward of defending this first defence is really getting the warthog and keeping at least one or two soldiers alive so you have someone to man your vehicle's gun turret.

I love the next bit where you go under ground and must activate the light bridge to cross the casm. The music, the dialogue and the Forrunner structures are just perfect and a nice foreshadowing of things to come. In fact, I'd say this bit and the structures in the Silent Cartographer mission are my favorit Forerunner structures in Halo 1.


We learn that most of the crew made it off the Pillar of Autumn and is on the surface and we will spend the next couple of missions trying to reunite the crew and rally a resistence against the Covenant ground forces. The whole campaign itself is quite straight forward, but the beautiful dialogues are what bring it to live. Back in the day Halo accomplished what even more recent sci-fi shooter aspire to and that is to deliver a believable mature space opera which feels more like starship troopers, but with a lighter tone like Star Wars (especially when it come to the design of the various Covenant races).

Even though the ball physics of the warthog can have a will of their own sometimes I'd still take that over any other vehicle in a shooter anyday. Take Half-Life (one and two and both of the episodes together). If you're a rookie you will bump into every minute obstacle along the way. It really takes time to master a vehicle in Half-Life and not in a good way because it mostly requires you to memorize every turn and spawn point, be it in the hover craft behing chased by the choper, be it car in Half-Life 2 or the even the car in Episode Two (even though this is by far the best Half-Life vehicle in terms of maneouverability).

Anyway, the way back to the surface leads you to a nonlinear bit of the mission. Basically you have three cannions left to rescue survivors and it is you choice in which order you visit them. The order you pick also alters how Covenant spawn between the cannions and where they come from. I've tried different orders, but the way I usually do it is to go to the one to your right first, because it is the easiest at this point, plus, you'll get a sniper rifle which comes in handy especially for the cannion where the pelican picks you up in the end.

The holographic displazs are my favorit of all the Forerunner stuff. That simple uv animation is very subtle, and the color scheme gives a nice touch to the world, both distinct from the UNSC and the Covenant tech and architecture.

 So the first cannion on the right is pretty much easy-peasy. The marines are hiding behind this rock formation and they also have some snipers, so occasionally they manage to take out the odd Covenant - mostly grunts because they're the slowest and don't have shields like the jackels or elites.

Now that you have to do you can just drive between the three sites where Covenant dropships come in, maybe run over some in the process and basically try to give your gunner a steady target. If you're playing on Legendary it's likely the marine riding shotgun won't make it through the entire battle, but once it's over you can pick up one of the survivors to replace him.

Then I ususally follow the other passage (not the one you came in). On the way to the second cannion you have to cross a river coming down from a waterfall - the particle  effects and the water is just great, even if it doesn't have the realistic Halo 3 reflection yet.

The ocean in the environment model of the level, though, has a nice reflection of the gas giant, sky, and the ring. For the second and third cannion I like to get of the warthog so the Covenant don't spot it accidentally, then sneak up on the ridge of the cannion entrances, and take out most of the Covenant around the cannion. Might take some patience, but hugely increases the survival chances of your marines. Don't worry about ammo, cause the wounded marine on top of the hill has a sniper rifle.

Once you check out the nav point on the hillside a Covenant dropship will come in. Since it brings in three elites, two of them red, plus a few grunts I like to just go GTA on them with the warthog. Unless you bump into trees there's not much of a risk in that strategy. Two down, one to go.

For the last cannion there's an empty lifeboat (nice supply of ammo). Again using the same covert strategy as before I take out as many of the Covenant with the sniper rifle, take the warthog to drive from one of the two cannion entrances to the other, and finish of the rest.

If you're lucky, you can take out almost all of them. All you have to do is kill whatever Covenant remain on the surface, then the marines hiding underneath the structure will make a run for the top. Go down an take out the Covenants hunting your marines. The dropship arrives and we learn Captain Keys is being held on the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation.