So if you know me you know I love Halo 4 but I hate with seething fury one particular campaign mission: Reclaimer.
This is the mission with the Mammoth and the target designator and woefully bad scripting and nigh endless waves of wraiths and ghosts and wraiths and ghosts and more wraiths and yes, more ghosts. And wraiths. I've completed the level several times, but it was the succession of instakills and failed wraith boarding attempts in my last co-op legendary attempt that may have sworn some of my friends away from this game forever.
But anyway, I'm doing my solo legendary run of the campaign and find myself having to tackle this monstrosity next, on my own. OK, I can do this. Get through it once and never look back again.
And this time, ladies and gentlemen, my run is extraordinary. I easily wipe the floor of the first group of covenant positions with the mammoth's mounted rocket pods. Then grab a sniper to do some counter-sniping before arming a marine with a rocket launcher and jumping into a warthog to take out the first wraith and ghosts. With that down I can easily grab the target designator, aim it at the reinforcements above and blow them to kingdom come. Flawless.
Next up is the three generators. From the mammoth I use the rocket pods to take out ghosts and turrets, the sniper to down elite leaders on the field, and then move in with the battle rifle to take out the generators - one at a time - giving ample time for the mammoth to re-position itself between each takedown. Flawless.
Next comes the hard part with the seemingly endless waves of Wraiths and Ghosts, but this time I'm ready. I've barely dented my ammo supply, still have fully functional warthogs and rocket pods on the mammoth, and I take a moment to down one dropship with the mini-mac before bee-lining my way to the gauss hog waiting below.
I drive cautiously, staying out of the wraith's plasma turret range, taking potshots at the ghosts and wraiths alike, before doing my circuit around the back of the mammoth to replenish my shields. Allied troops grab the other warthog and I stay behind them so that they can take the brunt of the enemy aggro, while providing ample time for my gauss gunner to aim and destroy each vehicle in our path.
I start to feel the creeping joy of victory - this level - what I would normally classify as the worst in Halo history, with its neutered target designator, its invisible walls, its shallow but deadly streams, its weapon racks filled to the brim with assault rifles while the enemy fields waves of wraiths and ghosts - this level - was unfolding perfectly according to my plans, and what had seemed so mindless and razor's edge cheap/difficult on legendary was the same level I was just about to heroically ball-punch, solo legendary no less. Good times. And I figured it would only get better as I laid waste to the final ghost, which settled into a fireball next to the wreckage of all of the other covenant vehicles.
Checkpoint complete.
New Objective: Board enemy vessel.
Sweet, sweet victory.
So now all I have to do now is get on board the lich, which is parked right up... Uhh. Well its supposed to be parked right up- Where the hell is the lich? We ran, ran up to the top of the hill overlooking the scene of carnage, with a few fellow marines spread out around me, and the lich was not only not at the top of the hill like it was supposed to be, it was literally nowhere.
You've got to be kidding me.
Now I've spent the past half an hour trying to activate some elusive trigger event that would set the world aright. A slap to the game's face so it would remember that its actually supposed to keep going. But alas, reloading the previous checkpoint still puts me in the aftermath of the battle, with no lich anywhere. Saving out entirely and resuming is no different. I've tried suiciding off the cliff walls a bunch of times in the hopes the game would take mercy upon my plight and pick an earlier, functional checkpoint. My pleas were not answered.
I tried 343. I tried to find the joy in this level, and went over and above my normal thresholds of patience and tolerance. But I just can't win here, even when I win.
Fuck this mission, and may the gaming gods salmon-slap whoever designed it and whoever scripted it.
