Halo : Combat Evolved - Mission 3 "The Truth and Reconciliation"

This mission is a mix of a sniper, stealth and infiltration. The plot is straight forward: search and rescue. Captain Keys has been captured by the Covenant and you have to use the gravity lift to get inside the Covenant cruiser, find the captain, free him from the brig , and escape. This is also the first mission where we see a Covenant ship from the inside - and the violet, bluish round organic design is in perfect complementary contrast to the edgy feel of the UNSC ships. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

On the ground

You start out with a group of marines. If you're lucky they might even survive till you get to the cannion just before the grav lift. However, since the Covenant will bring in reinforcements in that cannion - which will include heavy elites - they're unlikely to survive till you get to the bottom of the gravity lift. If you play this right you can save some sniper ammo which gives you a significant edge when onboard the cruiser. This is also the only mission where you start out with more ammo for the sniper rifle, 68 rounds to be exact, than at any other time in the game. But be careful. If you waste your ammo you will only be abled to pick up so much as the regular limit of 42 allows.

The first part of this mission - the fight on the ground to the grav lift - can be tricky because you have to decide on the fly when to take point, fall back, go stealth or guns blazing - and to be honest, most of the time the discission is not up to you, but you have to act when your marines get themselves into trouble - which then also rains down hell on you.

In the first cannion sneak up to the right to take out as many of the Covenant. As soon as you open fire they will engage too so take out elites and grunts manning the stationary guns first. Then, to save sniper ammo, go in with your battle rifle and take out the rest. Fall back to the ridge as soon as you killed all the enemy in the cannion before the reinforcements led by elites get in from the far end. Take them out with the sniper rifle because your marines will have a hard time because of all the obstacles. The elites are very good in making quick leeps to the side and in this area that almost always means they have rocks as cover. Even though your marines outnumber the elite, they will have a hard time because they can't flank them.

I also like to take point here, advance to the stationary gun right before the passage to the next bit of the level, and use that to take out all the Covenant coming down that path. Still, the elites will spawn before you can reach that turret so take them out before they kill half your squat. Advance slowly on the path, stop to trigger the checkpoint before you are on the top of the hill again because if you die you will spawn right in the line of sight of the patroling Covenant. The patroling Covenant and the grunt manning the gun turret are easy enough, but that elite hiding in the right corner of the rock formation can be a real pain in the ass. On Legendary, if he doesn't kill you he will cause you serious damage which just sucks. Even if you loose a lot of health on this sucker, try not to pick up the med kit at this point, but wait till you killed all the enemies spawning after you get over that hill and killed all those coming into that cannion over the ridge from the next cannion.

I love the next cannion because it has multiple options and those have multiple event chains triggered. It's also nice because it's a more open area than the previous cannions. You can take out the patroling elite and some grunt and jackels without causing much commotion among the Covenant. You can go up a path close to where you come in to this cannion or go further ahead and follow the cliff edge around the length of the cannion. Once you chose either you trigger more Covenant and most importantly the gunners will take you into cross fire. The grunts, even though there's quite a few of them, should not be a problem, but watch out for the jackels. I like to choose the second path because that gives you a clear shot at two elite - the only two in the area. If you were to choose the first route you rist being ambushed and flanked by those two because while you fight you won't be abled to keep track of them and they can come in from at least two directions - around or over the hill - both giving them a very good shot at you because the first route takes you right into a pit with no cover. If you haven't taken care of the jackels by then, they and the elites will finish you off pretty quickly in that pit - which is why I like to use a little trick to take out a lot of them without triggering their alarm and attack mode.

When you get into this cannion there's a big bolder right under a ridge with a stationary turret on it. Take out the grunt on that turret, climb on the rock and jump repeatedly and use you sniper rifle to take out as many of the jackels and grunts. It takes some skill to aim at the moving enemies during that second you're able to see over the ridge, but if you take out enough grunts and jackels this gives you a significant edge later on. Before you finish the last enemies in this area, make sure you are not in the spot where the dropship lands, that is where the second advance route takes you.

Man either that turret in the left corner or one on the other side of the cannion. But be careful because the turret on the left is very close to the landing zone of the dropship. Also, there's an invisibility pickup on the hilltop. I like to use that to advance on that narrow pathway to the cannion with the grav lift. Don't waste it during the battle in this cannion - it's not worth it because with all the fighting going on it's very likely you'll get shot just by accident which will reveal you or you will have to fire back which will also lift the cloak. But it comes in handy to sneak up on the elites hding around the corner of the narrow pathway, plant a sticky grenade, and put enough of a scare at them that you marines don't get butchered right away.

The cannion at the ground of the grav lift is tircky. First you have to take out the massive group of elites, grunts, and jackels protecting the entrance. Then there's two more, but al least smaller groups. One on the ground to the left of the grav lift, the other two the right in the ridge. Take on the second one first because that one has a blue elite. If you managed to kill all Covenant at the entrance the jackels in the first group will be so scared that they spend more time hiding behind their shields more than they spend on firing at you. Then take out all the grunts on the turrets surrounding the grav lift. Be careful, once all of them are dead you've triggered multiple waves of reinforcements coming down from the cruiser. Lucky for you they all use the grav lift so you know exactly where they will hit the ground. So get on one of theose turrets and just leave that finger on the fire button. be careful, the last of these waves has two hunters. Since you're a sitting duck in your turret, get on and off. Trust me, you need the fire power. Don't waste sniper ammo on any of the enemies in this area, they're not worth the bullets. In fact I like to use the turrets to take out all the grunts on the other turrets and that dropship coming in. Only take on the hunter on foot if you have been forced too far away from a turret or they blasted it off the cliff.

If at any point during the first half of this mission all the marines from your initial squat should be killed a pelican will bring in reinforcements. However, try to avoid this as much as possible. Your marines aren't very good at surviving anyway and you need the help against the hunters. When you've killed the hunters you will be able to use the grav lift. Wait for the pelican to drop in more marines, stack up on ammo, health etc from the pile near the grav lift, and then get on that crusier.

Onboard the cruiser

Now you are finally on the cruiser and can start looking for the ship's brig and Captain Keys. But first you have to get out of this hell hole of a room. This is one of the most insanely intense, frustrating, and repetitive bits of the entire game. This room has five entrances, four of which will be used by waves of enemies spawning randomly from any one of those four. After the first few waves groups of enemies will come in from multiple entrances simultaniously or at least you will have a hard time to finish one wave before the next one is spawned. And at the end you have to take on to hunters in melee combat. But worse than all of this, the bit that makes this part so insane are two cloaked elites with lightsabers. And we all know what lightsabers mean in Halo, that's right, instant kill.

On Legendary, it is very likely that those elites twill make short work of half your newly remanned squat while you just turned your back for the fraction of a second to take on thatgroup of grunts. Since the elites spawn randomly, everytime you die and go back to the last checkpoint you will not know through which door they're gonna come. So you keep spinning, you hear a door opening and before you've even figured out which of those four doors it is one elite has killed two or three of your marines.

If you have not killed both cloaked elites with lightsabers by the time the second grunt and jackel wave has spawned you are as good as dead. One moment you're still dodging sticky grenades flighing at you, trying to get a clear shot at those grunts hiding in the deadend passages behind the doors, and bam, one of those elites just snuck up on you and killed you with his lightsaber fast than you can say Star Wars. Oh and if your squat isn't already dead at this point, the elite that killed you will take out the last marines while you watch Masterchief falling to the ground. The fifth door opens only to unleash to hunters. You will have no choice but to engage in melee combat. Wait till they get close enough to strike a blow, dodge out of the way, and try to shoot them in the back because that is the most vulnerable part. The orange, fleshy body parts are easy enough to recognize. In that respect Halo did what Lost Planet would do later. After you defeated the hunters, the next door will be locked. If any of your marines survived you can listen to a bit of dialogue here.

You will have to unlock the door from the other side. Pick up the cloak and sneak through the corridors to the balcony atop the next room. Take out as many of the Covenant out from up there and proceed with caution in the hallways. I like to hang back here quite a bit. Use short firing bursts to increase the precision of your weapon. This way you can take out enemies from quite far away. Once you get to the bottom, run to the center of the room to trigger the next wave of enemies and head back to the hallway you came from. The Covenant will gather in front of that entrance and that makes it a lot easier to take them out. If your marines survived unlock the door. Otherwise just go ahead.

Apart from more hallways the next big area is the cruiser's hangar bay. It has two landing pads along with door hangar gates protected by shields. The pads are separated by a structure with the hangar door controls on top. It also give the elites up there an ideal vantage point. The pad where you come in has a maze of crates. They can be helpful, but don't stand in the center of them, especially when playing on Legendary, because the Covenant will just take you into cross fire. The other pad has a tank and only a few crates. There are two areas with dead UNSC soldiers and supplies in the hangar. One on the first landing pad in a corner of the separating structure, the other on the other landing pad behind the pillar in the middle. When playing on Legendary, you are probably low on ammo and health by now and even though it is very tempting, do not recharge right away. There are many more waves of Covenant to kill and there's a good chance the newly recharged health will just go to waste if you pick it up now. That's the only thing about the Halo 1 health system that is problematic. You either have almost full health or you loose health quite quickly when getting into crossfire, but if your health is actually, say, down to one bar you actually still have a better survival chance than with, say, medium health. This makes using med kits to recharge a bit useless sometimes. Whenever you know there are multiple waves of enemies and you are very low on health it's much wiser to just hang back, use cover, and not use a med kit. I have cleared many a rooms with only one bar left.
The hangar also has three levels of balconies interconnected by hallways and slopes. Basically you have to fight your way to the top and follow the hallways there until you get to a command center. This room might have been intended as the cruiser equivalent of a bridge and even though the holographic interfaces are kind of cool, overall the room is not very impressive. What makes it cool is that you will revisit it later on in the game. Watch out, there's a golden elite with lightsaber on the raised command platform. As soon as he sees you he will launch an attack and follow you trough the hallways. Since he starts out on the platform he can get to the rooms entrance in one jump so watch out for that.

After that it's pretty straight forward. Follow the hallways which if you keep left first take you to a group of holding cells where you can pick up some ammo and a med kit. The other cell block is where Captain Keys is. Watch out for the cloaked elites and the one with the lightsaber. Use the control interface to turn off the brig's force fields and watch a little cutscene of Captain Keys explaining that Halo has religious significance for the Covenant. From there in out the rest of the mission is straight forward. Fight your way back to the top level of the hangar bay where you will release the docking clamps of a Covenant dropship and use that to escape and make sure Captain Keys doesn't die. The only tricky bit here is when you get back to the command center. If you go through the door of the command center, where you get the checkpoint, Captain Keys and the other marines will be right behind you - and in front of you two cloaked elites with lightsabers. On Legendary, if you run in the room like this Captain Keys is as good as dead. Even if you fall back into the hallway you are basically sitting ducks while the Covenant storm down that slope. What you want to do is before Captain Keys lays out his escape plan stay as far away from the command room as possible - best if you stay near the corner of the long hallway with the multiple entrances to the command center. Don't bother using the adjacent hallway which you could use to go around the Covenant in the command center without actually being in the room. If you manage to take out the elites right in the beginning there is no need for this special kind of tactics here. Just make sure you take out the jackels and your marines with their needlers will make short work of the grunts.

And finally a little cutscene. Captain Keys, you and the marines get on the dropship and you squash two hunters before flying away - "Nice one, sir." I like Captain Keys voice. Next one up is one of my favorite missions, the Silent Cartographer which was also the original demo level, because it takes place on an island with an elaborate system of Forerunner structures underneath it which you get to explore, plus, you have alot of marines and much bigger fights with the Covenant and you get to drive around with a warthog.