LogFAQs > #946385726

After much too long away, I returned to Reach and took down that Covenant supercarrier. I kind of expected that mission to define the rest of the plot, but it actually just spans one mission. The initial stretch is really easy because you have the full Noble squad alongside you - I think you can just hide behind cover and let your pals do all the fighting for you. Once you arrive at the old research base and pick up the experimental warp drive, there's a section, where Noble 6 shows off the piloting skills that used to earn his paychecks. It took me by surprise a little, but it's actually a gameplay loop I'm more comfortable with since I spent a lot of time with Star Fox 64. You have a similar set of moves in Halo's spaceship level, including the evasive loop-de-loop and a dodge that looks a lot like the barrel roll. I actually did die quite a bit here. I found it hard to get away once I started taking fire and would often get focused down. The enemy fighter jets have regenerating shields that you have to whittle away with machine gun fire before you can blow them up with missiles, so like with Elites on foot it can be frustrating to have to retreat because an enemy receives covering fire after you've overloaded their shields and are about to make the kill.

The big plan is to secretly commander and enemy ship called a corvette, send it to the supercarrier as if it needed to refuel, with the warp drive on board, and then blow the whole thing up. The ship section is about taking out the corvette's engines and accompanying fighter craft, and it gets followed up by Nobles 5 and 6 heading onboard to wipe out the crew. There's nothing too tricky to deal with here - no hunters or energy swords, and no overwhelmingly huge Covenant groups. I mostly used a plasma rifle and the DMR, which is the faster, lower damage sniper rifle I was talking about earlier. I found it pretty good for taking down Elites, sometimes dropping their shields with the plasma rifle and then finishing them up with one or two headshots from the DMR, and the latter weapon's scope was also handy for shooting the hands off of the shield guys.

Once the boys take over the corvette, they activate its refueling sequence with themselves still aboard - they've lost the ride that was intended to bring them back. Noble 5 (aka Jorge) stays on board because the warp drive needs to be activated manually, but he pushes 6 off the ship so he can get back to Reach by surviving atmospheric re-entry in his power armor. See you in Valhalla, Jorge. We hardly knew ye.

The supercarrier is gone but the enemy are still warping in worrying numbers of reinforcements. After that there's a kind of cute sequence showing a slightly wounded Noble 6 stranded with no weapons out in the mountains. He joins a civilian rescue mission, Exodus, starting with only a salvaged pistol and a small number of rounds. But that will be a story for another day.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 9/129
Currently Playing: Halo: Reach