- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I've beaten them all on all difficulties as well.
Some pointers:
1. The Pistol is your best friend. It's great for killing grunts in one shot. Remember that when a lone jackal first sees you, he'll stop and point at you and put his shield to the side; this is the best time to ventilate his skull. Take similar advantage of hunters' orange spots.
2. Related to point 1, the pistol is actually the gun I use on all the flood levels, paired with the shotgun. You can kill the explosive ones with two shots and most larger flood with 3. Use the shotgun when they get close and melee the little balloon-like ones.
3. Grenades are perhaps even more useful than the pistol. In any level that has lots of grunts and elites, use plasma grenades all the time, because they are so plentiful in these levels. Aside from a well timed smack, nothing kills an elite more efficiently than a plasma grenade stuck on him when he is not moving.
4. Remember that you don't always have to fight everything. From the two betrayals on, many of your enemies also hate each other. Walk into a new area to get them to fight each other, then hide for awhile while they duke it out. Related to this is the fact that in the two betrayals you can avoid a lot of combats (especially the final run for a banshee) just by hopping in a ghost and strafing a lot.
5. Never reload during combat if it can be avoided. Switch your weapons. (Unless you have the shotgun, one thing that many people don't seem to know is that you can fire while reloading the shotgun. However, if you wait until you spend all of your shotgun ammo, you will have to wait while the master chielf reloads all 12 shells. So always reload the shotgun. In the library shooting flood and reloading afterwards becomes a reflex.)
6. And one last real basic thing: wait for your shields to recharge. You can't kill anyone if you are dead. Most indoor levels give you plenty of cover to crouch behind; take advantage of it. You can control the pace of things in most situations. The parts where you can't are the only really difficult parts of the game.