Uncharted Drakes Fortune notes

Wants to do a 13mb upgrade before I can start playing. Still only takes 3 minutes or so.
spinning gold coin and we're in.
Lets play on hard, I am a masochist.
Chapter 1
I watch as Nathan dredges up what is supposed to be the coffin of Sir Francis Drake, buried at sea of the coast of Panama.
Nathan is being filmed opeing the casket which turns out to be empty, inside he finds a book.
The lady starts arguing about being used by Nathan to fund the expedition when pirates turn up to kill them both.
Pirate boats circle the ship and board us in twos. R1 aims and L1 shoots.
We fight the fairly easy to kill pirates until a mounted machine gun on the boat makes life hard and the boat starts to smoke and burst into flames. At this point a plane flys over and close to the pirate ship capsising it. Nathan and Elena jump into the water and the boat explodes.
The pilot is named Sully and is Nathan's friend.
Back at civilisation Elena is trying to get funding for another expedition while Sully and Nathan discuss the book. Apparently Drake found the lost city of gold and the diary tells Nathan where to go. Sully tells him to ditch Elena as the less people that know of this the better. The two of them Drive off in their boat and leave her behind.
Chapter 2
Second level starts in a jungle, Sully is present with Nathan.
X jumps, usual analogue sticks for movement and camera.
R1 and L1 for shoot and aim.
square punches.
We walk through the jungle until we get to the GPS co-ordinates of the city and there is nothing but jungle. Sully is getting angry and Nathan tells him to cool off and help him look around. Through a gap in some rocks and we find some aincient ruins.
This is thee first of a very Tomb Raider style puzzle. We can climb up on rocks and jump and grab on to ledges, scurrying around much like Lara Croft or the Prince of Persia. Basically there is a wooden area on the ground we have to break into, climbing around the ruins gets us to a rock which by pressing Triangle at pushes it over into the wood and caving it in to make a passage further into the ruins.
deep down underground we find a cavern with spanish helmets suggesting that the place has already been looted. Sully gets aggressive and confesses to huge debts.
We have to shoot an exploding barrel to knock down a pillar to progress. Then we have to do a two man job to open a door, Sully has to hold a chain that pulls open the door while Nathan goes through and finds a pushable object to wedge in the door so that Sully can follow.
We have to consult Drakes diary for the next puzzle.
Sully uses his lighter to light a fire which feeds lamps hanging from the ceiling. There is a pile of wood blocking the door. Sully tells us to shoot the lamp which brings down some sparks and ignites the wood which fast burns away from the door opening it.
The next chambers shows us how Nathan can clamber around on rock outcroppings on thee walls. Some fall out as he holds them. He can also slither up and down vines.
Gunpowder barrels blow away rock blocking the ladder so that Sully can follow.
Another lamp system opens doors to a long corridor with a puzzle room at the end. Inside drakes diary is the order of four symbols which can be found in the room.
The four symbols must be pushed in sequence to open a hole in the middle of the rooms floor, clambering down the sides of the hole we find a room with a push switch, this fills the central area with water for us to dive down into.
Inside the new area we find out first treasure and a way to clamber back up to the area above, we come out in the room next to Sully. Shooting barrels lets him back in to join us. Another two man chain open a door onto a rather rickety looking wooden scaffolded area.
You have to run through the collapsing scaffolds with almost inverted controls.
A cut scene shows evidence of a huge golden idol, which the spanish have pinched.
The spanish dragged it out on logs which have made huge tracks. Nathan wants to follow them.
The tracks lead out to the back wall of the temple which has been blown open. Outside in the jungle we find a german U boat stuck on the top of a waterfall.
Chapter 3 A Surprising find
Sully thinks that this is kind of kinky, whatever that means, I think he's scared. Nathan has to Tomb Raider his way into the boat.
New game mechanic here is swinging on vines, you have to give yourself momentum by swinging back and forth to reach ledges etc.
Clambering around the vines we get on top of the u boat and find a treasure. They are little glowing specks which when picked up inform you that they are a gold statute etc.
We can get inside the u boat here.
Rapdid button presing and stick wiggling inside to open doors.
Nathan finds a nazi corpse which has rather old looking gold coins.
We wander through the tightly camera controlled u boat until we reach the captains quarters where we find the the Germans were after the treasure also. They have a map which seems to be helpful to Nathan.
Sully's radio goes dead.
Nathan accidently sets off a torpedo and swimms quickly out of the torpedo hatch.
Gabriel Roman and some mercenaries are waiting with Sully, This seems to be the man to whom Sully owes a whole lot of money. Nathan is forced to give Roman the map to appease him, however he shoots Sully anyway. At that moment as a distraction the torpedo explodes and sets off the rest blowing the u boat apart. Nathan takes his moment to run for it.
We meet up with Elena who has been following us. Nathan tells her about Sully and gets her gun.
Now we are into the game proper. Cover mechanic is used for real. We have to go back through the temple we came in through, only this time it's infested with mercenaries.
We can pick up the dead mercs weapons which gives us machine guns.
A fun romp through the tunnels with some good gunplat leads us back out of the temple and a gunfight in the first area where we find elena's jeep.

Nathan tells elena to remember Uk2642 which is the co-ordinates of the new location of the idol.
We see them next flying to the small Island at the co-ordinates. As they approach they are shot down by anti aircraft fire and have to jump using parachutes.
Nathan and Elena are separated.
nathan awakes hanging from a statue and we are into the level given away as a demo.
Notice some texture load in here.
We have to shoot padlock from gates to progress.
Graphics are very lush, Nathan gets his clothes wet and slowly dries off when out of the water
We come to some logs which must be balanced across using the sixaxis, which is annoying.
More gunfights here as the mercs show up.
I find some grenades sitting on a crate.
I come the first big set piece fight in somme ruins. There is a large l shaped area with rocks overlooking it and lots of bad guys. About 10 bad guys come in waves in this area and you then have to Tomb Raider your way out of the area. Things do no let up as there is another two staged area shoot out with similar puzzling to get to the next area.
There is a secret here which takes you off the beaten path to find.
Through another small ruin with another load of mercenaries.
We come to a large waterfall section, looks like more straight platform puzzling.
we bypass the broken bridge by clambering around the rocks and get to the middle of the crumbled bridge where we are attacked from the waterfall above by two mercenaries.
We have to traverse more platforms then a jeep turns up and keeps us pinned down hanging from the rocks. Of course this is a computer game and the baddies have thought it wise to carry an exploding barrel on their jeep?? Shooting the barrel blows the jeep, knocks it down near you into the falls and makes the platform leap possible. Of course as you jump off it falls into the waterfall with a cinematic crash. You then leap up the rest of the waterfall.
We find the wreckage of our crashed plane and so have the mercs who are crawling all over it.
Another wide open area shoot out with lots of cover. We climb into the plane and recover the map which I didn't even know we had lost. While in the plane Nathan sees elena in the distance still tangled up in her parachute. Before we leave this area there is another flood of mercenaries from each end of the ruins. why waste a good shoot out area eh?
We go through a door opened by explosion and up a hill in time to see one of the mercs get hit with a spring trap, which looks decidedly low tech and native like. We have also been sing some kind of native decorations in the recent areas. Looks like the mercs aren't going to be the only enemies.
Elena seems to be tangled at the top of a spanish looking castle type structure.
We do some platforming and then encounter more mercs.
There seems to be something weird going on, there are some nasty rumbling noises and the mercs are getting speard by the primitve traps all over the place. I am expecting a wild animal to appear.
It doesn't, must just be sound effects. The traps are triggered by trip wires which are fairly obvious but still need to be jumped and avoided.
We come to the castle at last and Nathan says you have to be kidding, no this is a game mate you are going to have to climb up the side of the damn thing.
We have to weave in and out of the building following a rather obviouss trail of handholds on the side of the castle.
Inside we find the micro machine gun pistol and more mercs. Maybe it's just me but hitting a merc seems to make them go into an "i'm hit animation and bullets shot into them while they are doing it don't seem to have any effect. For instance using the machine gun you can pepper them with about 20 bullets and they go down, however if you take your time with the pistol and wait for the stumbling around "i''m hit animation to stop they only take three chest shots.
Inside the castle the mercs turn up and we have a shoot out with them above me on the ramparts of the castle.
An emplaced gun is introduced, the old accurate shooting of the user is the way to take them down.
We explore the castle some more after a another large shootout and find Elena's parachute, but no Elena with it. Nathan wire glides from the tower and sees Elena using her camera. Nathan tries to get one of the guards to open the gates using the radio but his spanish is poor and they realise it's him. Yes they open the gates, but only to let in about six guards. We have a shoot out in the same area as before only this time we are above and the enemies below. Through the now open gate we find a long corridor with rooms coming off it, above a drainage/sewer type water feature.
We have to make our way along avoiding the emplaced gun at the end. Strangely enough the gunner has a bulletproof head here. Since you have move along until you find a grenade launcher which blows him up and knocks some wall down for you to get up beside him.
In the next chamber we have to fight three waves of enemies and some high placed sharpshooters and then find our way up to the scaffolds above the water and out of the room. A chain winds up the cullis gate to get out.
In the next room we have a puzzle. We have to climb up the walls od the box like room and open some floodgates. As the water rises handholds become accessible.
Chapter 6 Unlocking the past
Wow chapter 6 I thought I was still on chapter 3 time is flashing past here.
Nathan finds a tower which is marked on his Drake map. There must be something important in it.
We have to fight our way up to the tower and then use a gate release near it. There seems to be no way to climb into the tower from the base of it. We must find another way in.
I go down to where the gate opened as this is obviously being signposted as the way to go.
Drakes journal is flagged and shows us something about a symbol like a key.
There is some Tomb raidering to do here. The hint button which is L2 shows us a rope up high in the courtyard, we must have to find our way up to it. The puzzling is actually a little different from Tomb raider it has taken the fun parts, i.e. the clambering around like an acrobat that most people would never be able to pull off and the working out where to go. What they have done to improve things though is put most of the handholds fairly obvious so you don't spend hours working them out. Also the view becomes fixed at times making it easier to see where to go and so streamlining the experience. This sequence does have one unintuitive moment where a rock crumbles and it takes a few deaths to realise that you have to wait a few seconds on the crumbling rock before jumping for the tower. Also a little bit of quicktime here when you dodge a falling rock.
In the tower we find a set of keys.
Back to the door and the keys unlock it.
Oh and what do we find through the door which a key has been waiting centuries to unlock? Mercenaries that's what? this doors really ruin the pacing a bit, why did Nathan go through all that trouble to find a hidden key when the baddies can get in to where he was going without it. Is Nathan a bit slow and retarded that he didn't see the hole blown in the wall or however the mercs got in to the secret place of the castle.
We have a big fight in the courtyard, an emplaced gun looks over proceedings and there is three waves of enemies. The magnum is introduced and its a good one shot kill pistol.
We open a gate with a chain and climb up into a corridor above the courtyard for another shootout.
We get to take a turn at shooting the emplaced gun. Down into a room we find some english old armour and a map on the wall talking about a tower. The writing is signed Drake. We come out and see the tower in the distance.
Every so often Nathan mutters on about Elena, either she is Lara Crofts talented sister or she is a captive of Roman who it seems is one step ahead of us all the time.
The stairs are out to the tower and we have to find a way to negotiate past them.
There is more puzzle platforming until we get into the tower. Inside we find a telescope and Nathan sees a building in the distance with sunken ships still visible in the harbour beside it.
Nathan sees Elena in the distance about to be shot at by mercs. We get to shoot at the mercs and as we do an explosion knocks us out.
Nathan wakes in a cell and is visited by Eddie Raja who is an old enemy of Nathan. He is a bit nuts and has a golden gun. Elena turns up and attaches a hook to the cell bars and pulls out the wall with a jeep.
We are now at an on rails shooting section which is actually quite fun if simplistic. We cann shoot grenades at the attacking jeeps and quad bikes as we hurtle through the jungle. Elena drives very well. There are some cut scene moments where the jeep hurtles across abyss's and skids perilously close to cliff edges. Eventually the jeep is snagged on the edge of a cliff and Eddie catches up. I don't know how many jeeps and bikes we blew up, for an island with no roads Eddie certainly had a fleet of vehicles.
Nathan backs the jeep off the edge of the cliff rather than give Eddie the map which was the only thing stopping Eddie shooting him on sight.
Apparently according to the save game we are 47% complete and 4 houurs and 25 minutes in.
Chapter 8 The drowned city.
we surface and swim to a ruined house facade and are straight into trouble above and behind us. Elena shoots at the baddies but I fear her shots are doing no harm.
We come to a lull in the Action and Elena shows us a view of the harbour we are going to on her camera. She tells us that all boats would have used it as a port in the olden days. So the treasure must have passed through the port.
Nathan doesn't want to go on, Elena does. Seems she's a bit mental. Either way Nathan has spied a boat at the port which could be used to head for the mainland. So it's off to the port on a handy jet ski which just happens to be sitting around. Oh yes the mercs came in on it, why is there only one then when there was about seven mercs. Pyramid display was it?
We get to ride the jet ski around, which is quite fun. You can shoot a grenade launcher to blow up mercs and expoding barrels that litter the way. Does seem a little short the ride but I suppose I complain when novelty game mechanics outstay their welcome, so I shouldn't complain when they turn up too briefly as well.
We get to the port. Elena tells us that the place freaks her out. why was it abandoned, what happened here?
Suddenly we want to get to a tower at the port? why? Not really feeling the story progression here. I thought Nathan was stealing the boat and getting the hell out?
We have to fight our way through some mercs to reach a switch that opens a gate to progress.
Chapter 9 To the tower
We have another little ride on the jet ski through similar stretches, what did I say about novelty game mechanics and welcomes, it's not worn it out yet, but just two more stretches and it will have. The gate we have to open here opens by shooting two weights from the top, which is handily told to us by the hint button, which is helpful because I would have spent ages working it out otherwise.
Anyway, Elena buggers off again and tells us to get to the tower, why? I just don't know.
More shooting and platform puzzling.
The a.i displays a new tactic here which can only be described as lurking, they don't announce their prescence as soon as you make a noise or they see you, they hide behind pillars until you walk too close and then let you have it. Which is sometimes effective, however it's only effective once as you can headshot them the next time with ease.
also grenade launcher dudes are getting more frequent as are the shotgun weilding types.
I am now inside the tunnel after the gunfight, and it's pretty runied with only the rubble of the inside staircase left.
We have to pull a switch which moves a chain to the right place.
At the top of the tower we glide down a rope to the inside of the building we wanted to enter. Now we can open the door and now I know why I needed to get to the top of the tower, to get into the door I didn't know I wanted to get into.
chapter 10 The customs house
Inside the rather nicely textured customs house Nathan finds shipping manifests, which show the gold statue of el dorado being checked in to the port. Only it's the last thing that ever was.
Elena asks Nathan about the Ring he wears around his neck. He tells her it's Francis drakes' with a date one day after he died and co-ordinates to the coffin found at the begining of the game.
We have a little shootout in the customs house and then find ourselves out where we were looking at from across the island. We can see the boat in the distance. Elena wants to stay where she is and let Nathan go get the boat. She is up to something and Nathan knows it. However he lets her stay. Why does Nathan bother to goo get the boat he knows he is going to have to go and rescue Elena.
We jump along the balconies on the front of the customs house being shot at as we go.
Chapter 11 Trapped
We enter a large hall and see a helicopter flying over through a hole in the roof.
The shootout in the hall is a lot of fun. An emplaced gun has to be taken down and it can then be used to get the rest. Two waves come in from either side of the room.
We open the gate using the chain switch and walk through a small hall where we can see the boat in the distance, as we get close a cut scene kicks in.
Nathan is just about to kill the boat guards when Elena comes up behind him and insists he watches what she has just shot on cam. The film shows Gabriel Roman was in the helicopter, he has Sully with him and Sully does not look like a prisoner.
Nathan wants to rescue him. Though he is aware he might not actually need rescuing, and if that is the case then he is going to kick his ass.
We carry on up some stairs to the end of the chapter.
Chapter 12 Heading upriver
End of second days play 61% done and nearly six hours playtime.
Now this looks like fun, unfortunately the pacing of what should be an enormously fun jet ski ride up a white water river is broken up by a large scattering of exploding barrels in the water and gunmen at the side of the river, you have to stop and shoot the barrels and the gunmen as you simply can't just ride on through or past the gunmen. Which means you have to forgo what looks like great fun jumping the jet ski off the waves to take it easy and shoot at the baddies. If they had separated these out a bit I would have been adding score for this section, as it is it only makes you aware of the fun to be had if they had only let you ride around on the jet ski a bit and play in the surf.
Oh and it's a bit glitchy, there are places at the side where the men stand shooting at you, There are glints that could be treasures and I rode up on one only to find my jet ski stuck and immobile, it was sliding slowly back to the water and nothing I could do would change it. I had to wait about five minutes while it slid back before I could go on.
The jet ski only just keeps the welcome/unwelcome ratio here. One more time and it's marked down.
Chapter 13 Sanctuary?
We come to the jetty for the monastery which looks great, lush waterwalls and detailed ruins and vegetation.
We come across one of the mercs impaled on thee same traps we found earlier. looks like the natives have been at work again. The trap includes parts taken from our plane so these are not old booby traps left from centuries ago. There are footprints nearby that suggest the trap makers are present still. Nathan warns Elena to be careful.
Mercs with laser sight guns appear.
If the laser sight is on you for more than a second or two it's instant death.
We pick up the desert gun which is similar to the magnum with it's one shot kills.
We have also been getting the m4 rifle since Roman's men have turned up.
We hear some guards talking about Sully being put to work on the east side of the building in the library. We are entering the monastery proper now.
Elena has a bad feeling about this place.
There is a fun shoot out in the courtyard and then some more platform puzzling
We have to climb through the next chamber of the monastery and blow up some barrels to let Elena through.
Elena holds a gate while we brace it open into another large area.
The courtyard is huge, a large tree in the middle, Snipers in the windows above. We are given the dragon sniper rifle which is great for taking out the snipers and mercs crawling around in the ruins.
We are near the library but nathan wants to sneak in rather than go in all guns blazing.
We have to find a way into the library, which isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. We simply climb so stairs. I was thinking that this was going to be a huge clamber around half the courtyard. We get inside and find Sully being guarded by Roman's men He is being coerced after all. We have a rather fun gunfight from the balcony above until all the soldiers are down and we get to speak to Sully. Seems that the Drake diary took the bullet for him and he managed to convince Roman that he was needed to find the treasure. He has been misdirecting Roman ever since. Sully tells Nathan that the treasure is in the monastery and all they need to do is find the correct symbol of a heart crossed by keys to locate it.
Sully tells us that the library holds the key and that there is something about the statues above the bookcases. The statues are named after four disciples of jesus and there is a picture in Drakes diary that shows we have to do something with them at certain points on the compass.
The diary shows the four statues pointing to certain points of the compass. we have to climb up on the statues and turn them to the right directions as shown by a compass on the floor. Once done right a wall opens up leading to a secret passage.
Inside is another small room with two switches to turn and the fireplace opens up.
Sully and Elena wait in the room where it's safe. As there will probably be clambering to be done and it's conspicuous that the a.i. helpers vanish when there is clambering to be done.
Chapter 14 Going underground
A little clambering and then the mercs turn up, what the hell is with this, we have to unravel secrets held for hundreds of years that only we can unravel thanks to our super Drake diary. Then when we do we find that the stupid mercs who need our help to progress are waiting for us in the inner sanctums of these supposed secrets.
We have a shoot out in two rectangular areas, one of them a rather ornate ruined church.
There are two bells near the altar. Shooting them both makes them ring a tone that opens a secret door.
Nathan points out the obvious fact of how the hell are they going to get 500lbs of solid gold statue out of this underground labyrinth anyway.
Yet another secret door with puzzle solved by the mercs before us.
We fight a few mercs in tunnels and a cut scene shows us Eddie Navarro and Roman having a chat.
Roman is firing eddie and his mercs for incompetence. Eddie is pissed off and I expected a shooting match, however eddie does seem to have some brains and backs off. He leaves cursing Seems it's not just Nathan that has been making life hard and it seems the natives have been taking their toll on Eddies men as well.
Navarro who is Roman's spanish henchman has his competence questioned also and is reminded by Roman that Sully has no motivation to really help them as when the treasure is found he knows they will kill him. Nathan hears all this from below.
Chapter 15 On the trail of the treasure.
There is a large chunk of platform puzzling then a small shootout. We find ourselves above the courtyard where we first entered the monastery.
Nathan tells Sully via radio that he is going in circles here. Sully tells him that he and Elena have been reading books in the secret room and they have found references to a secret room in the top of the tower. So that is our next destination.
We are going into new areas above the previous areas here which is kind of like reusing previous areas but not, if you see what I mean.
We progress back through to above the church and Nathan sees the heart shaped symbol above the church in a stained glass window.
There are two large keys to either side of the window, hanging from them opens the window.
The window only leads to a small room with a window. Out the window Nathan can see the room where Navarro and Roman were talking earlier. Nathan asks Sully to provide a distraction.
Nathan also says he will have to sneak past the guard, another novelty game mechanic coming in this late in the game? No it's not, or at least it doesn't matter if you don't sneak past them. We enter the room where we saw Roman earlier and Sully and Elena are there having came through the underground route we cleared of mercs earlier.
In the tomb the diary is prompted and shows us seven symbols.
The symbols are around the room and they must be turned to face the way they are presented in the diary.
A secret room opens Nathan and elena go through but the door slams shut almost on Sully. Nathan and Elena have only one option but to go on. As if they would do anything else.
Chapter 16 The treasure vault
we find a huge area of stairs and walkways above a river. There are panels on the ground with roman numerals on them. Thankfully the game has remembered not to put the goons down here this time.
The roman numerals don't mean much, since I missed the prompt for the journal and now it won't let me see what is in my pocket.
This is really starting to get like Tomb raider now. Lots of switches and a huge puzzle room. No clear objective and trial and error jumping around. The earlier fixed camera and helping hand has vanished.
Oh and there are swinging lit lamps that look like they will knock you off the platforms now.
I stumble around killing myself around twenty times until i am finally allowed to look at the diary, and it needn't have bothered. The message only tells me that there are roman numerals on the corner of the map. two four and seven. maybe they are the markers I have to follow to progress.
Following the markers gets Nathan to jump around all over the chamber and make a lift break, a water wheel move etc which eventually slides some bars up on a window into the next room.
Nathan keeps catching glimpses of figures jumping around in the shadows high above.
Again in the next room a breaking elevator undoes the door for Elena to walk through. Problems is with that logic how did Sully and Elena get through the catacombs which had some clambering sections.
Eddie it seems has not decided to bow out gracefully, looks like he has decided to ditch Roman and look for the treasure on his own. He blows his way into the cavern we puzzled our way into and sets his henchmen on us.
Cue some great shootouts in the caverns.
Nathan finds the skeleton of Drake in a room, looks like he died without ever finding the treasure. Nathan looks like his hero just slapped him in the face.
chapter 17 the heart of the vault
We give elena a punt up to a ladder out of the room, she is about to lower a rope down to us when Eddie and one of his henchmen back into the room, they look really scared. Eddie asks Nathan if he has seen the creatures and we have, but only fleetingly, looks like Eddie has met them up close. Eddies Henchman is grabbed by something big and muscled which drags him over the edge. Eddie and Nathan stand back to back in the centre of the room and the creatures come in. They are bigger than men, dressed in very little rags and build like a bodybuilder.
They attack in groups of about three and come up from holes in the ground. Eddie fights well to assist you, however he is too cocky and gets himself dragged off down the hole with our last glimpse of him being bitten on the neck.
Nathan is left on his own. Eventually Elena gets the rope down to us and we climb out. A quick chase scene where we run down a tunnel shooting back at the chasing monsters and we find outselves passing through a metal door which we shut behind us.
Nathan and Elena find themselves in a nazi bunker. There are U boats in a harbour down below. Looks like the nazi connection from earlier is going to come back. seems they have found the idol and it's in the bunker somewhere. Nathan is sent off on a misssion to get power back to an elevator to the surface.
Chapter 18 The Bunker
We have to clamber over some pipes to get into the bunker proper.
The monsters are inside the bunker as well.
The bunker is a maze of straight very similar corridors, I find the generator room by accident, but it's not obvious what to do in it.
I find a set of generators with a crankshaft sticking out of one of them. Turning it starts a claxon and opens a door, the monsters pour into the room.
We have to kill them all and then run to the switch in the room that just opened and pull it. This opens another door and another wave of monsters. The final switch opens another door and we can escape the generator through this door. In the next room a cut scene shows that the Germans found the idol and it turned them into the monsters. It seems that the gold is cursed and it makes those who possess it "as demons". Drake sunk the ships and drowned the city himself to prevent the monsters leaving the island. Looks like the Nazi's were also victims of the resident demons of the island, cursed by the gold of El Dorado.
The monsters kindly wait until we have found all the story exposition before attacking again.
We go through some more bunker corridors before reaching another control room. It's opposite the one the we left Elena in, unfortunately Roman and Navarro have turned up. They have Elena and surprisingly still want the golden idol. I presume they don't know that it's cursed.
Roman goes off with Elena and essentially tells not to interfere any further or she will be shot.
As Roman has been speaking to us his soldiers have been sneaking up behind us. I fight them on the stairs into the room and see that the monsters are hassling the soldiers as well as me.
Progressing through the bunker fighting both demons and soldiers we make our way around the u boat harbour and up a ladder to the surface.
Chapter 20 Race to the Rescue
We come out into the city or is it monastery, I don't know any more.
Sully is being shot at and we come to his aid. Nathan tells him that the statue destroyed the whole colony. Sully finds this hard to swallow. Nathan tells him that they have to get to the church. Did I miss a memo. I thought the idol was in the nazi bunker and that we were going to rescue Elena.
Inside the church which is the same church as earlier we have another fight, this time the snipers above us on the platforms turn the air red with their laser sight beams.
This is a hard fight.
Two waves from either side of the church. Nathan tells Sully that there should be a passage under the altar.
They move the altar and find the passage.
Chapter 21 Gold and bones
Running through some tombs we eventually come to the chamber where el dorado is kept. It does look impressive. Roman and Navarro are already there however. Roman is urged by Navarro to open El dorado and it turns out to be a coffin. There is a corpse or mummy inside. The dust from the mummy moves and Roman breaths it in, he starts to change into one of the demons, before he does he yells at Navarro and dives for his throat, Navarro shoots him through the head. Seems that Roman was being used as well as everyone else.
Navarro tells us that has loftier pursuits than mere treasure. He then tells us he has a buyer, so no he doesn't really. The henchmen put a cargo net around the idol and lift it from the room by helicopter. Navarro is about to leave with elena and we get control back.
We have to run down the steps to the place where the idol was then up another flight of stairs and jump and grab onto the ascending idol. All the time hassled by monsters and mercs.
The helicopter gunner tries to shoot us off the idol, but Elena kicks him out, as he falls he shoots the pilot. Navarro tries to keep the helicopter in the air but only succeeds in crashing it into the ship. Navarro gets out, Elena lies unconscious possibly dead and Nathan is out for blood.
Chapter 22 Showdown.
We start pinned down by Navarro and three mercs. Once the three mercs are down then Navarro runs for it.
We rinse and repeat this three times until we are up on the helicopter deck with Navarro alone.
We end up unarmed and Navarro has a shotgun, we have to time our dodges around cover too get to him and punch him. There is a two button quicktime segement each time we do this and then he is down. Nathan goes to Elena and sees that she is alive, She screams at him to watch out as Navarro is getting up. Nathan sees his foot is in a loop of the rope between the creashed helicopter and the idol. Nathan pushes the helicopter over the edge and as it goes so does Navarro. Idol and Navarro go to a watery grave.
Sully turns up with the small boat from earlier full of treasure and they all sail off into the sunset.
Elena is sad that her camera got lost and Nathan promises her another story to shoot.
Credits Roll
The trophies seem very achievement based. There are two notifications each time you get one. from the old system the game had before trophies came out and the new system based notifications. The game ones give you scores very like achievements
When you look at the screen they all add up to 1000 like achievement points
So If this was an xbox 360 game I would have scored 420 out of 1000 achievement points. Not bad.
Played on hard took 10 hours and 46 minutes.

Call of Duty : World at War notes

I choose hardened, might come back to veteran but not trying it first playthrough.
A montage of newsreel footage shows us the build up to war and the attack on pearl harbour.
A squad has been captured on Makin atol and a rescue mission is being mounted.
The controls are exactly the same as previous call of duties.
Mission 1 Semper fi
We see our hero who is a prisoner of the japanese being questioned. We witness another prisoner being tortured and having his throat cut in front of us and we are about to be killed when the resuce team arrive and kill the japanese troops. We are given a gun and join in with the resuce team assaulting the base.
We fight through the camp we were rescued from and out into the jungle.
Japanese solidiers jump out in ambush, they run screaming like nutters at you.
We now have to regroup with second squad.
We attack a small outpost, there is a searchlight user we have to take out, I presume the searchlight makes it easier for the ai to kill our a.i squad.
we make our way along a small stream where suddenly there is a flash and we are blinded and ambushed.
Taking out the ambushers we come to another camp. The commander asks us to use out knife to open a fuel drum on the back of a truck, which is then sent flaming into the camp to explode.
Inside the camp we are told to plant charges in the munitions store and then leg it to the boat, as we are just about to the boat an explosion knocks us over and we are dragged the rest of the way by another soldier, we can shoot with our pistol while we are downed. The soldiers all get away on the boats and we watch as the camp is blown sky high.

Little resistance Mission 2
We move to a landing on a beach. There are an awful lot of troops moving in on the beach and an awful lot of incoming fire. Planes fly overhead bombing the beach and also being shot down by strong anti-aircraft fire. Our landing craft is grounded on coral and while there is a little crisis as to what to do next the problem is solved by a japanese shell landing right next to the boat. I am flung into the water and hauled out by the commander. We have the radio and can call in airstrikes. When you press right on the d-pad a yellow flahing targeting cursor appears and when you press fire the airstrike is targetted on that spot.
Our first objective is to call in a rocket strike on the tree line.
Then we have to push through the Japanese defenses.
Which is fairly hard pushing past machine guns nests and crazy charging japanese banzi attackers.
We then come to a japanese bunker.
Which we flank the defenders using a handy tunnel and then get inside the bunker.
Once we get to the top of the bunker there is a mortar pit and two japanese tanks to deal with, all three being easily taken out with rocket strikes.
We have to re-group with the squad, as we do so a japanese solider bursts in and kills Commander Miller. If I am supposed to have identifed with this guy then they have another thought coming, I care as much for his death as I do the last japanese soldier I killed. The school of storytelling suggest that people have time with a character to invest in them before their death means anything in a narrative. Seems like Treyarch never learned that lesson.
Peleliu airfield
Hard landing Mission 3
Japanese anti-aircraft guns are making it hard for our planes, now we have a beachhead we are to go on foot to the airfield and destroy the anti-aircraft guns.
We work our way through a river area where we are ambushed by japanese soldiers.
Then onto a machine gun bunker where we are introduced to the flamethrower, which we have to use to torch the inside of the bunker. This blows up the stored munitions which blows a hole in the bunker for us to progress.
We go through a big open area taking out many enemies until we get to storm a large building.
Then we are through onto the airfield where we have to locate a bazooka and take out three tanks.
Now we are assaulting the anti-aircraft bunker.
Once we take out all the japanese at the bunker we are told of reinforcements coming to take it back.
We have to hold out until our air support can help us out now that there is no danger of aa fire.
We can use the aa guns on the ground but you are left as a sitting duck.
Tanks arrive and you take a pounding, however managing to stay alive for an allocated period of time sees bombers come in and pound the japanese into pulp.
Mission 4 Vendetta Stalingrad Russia
At the start of the mission we find ourself lying down as if injured with dead and dying men all around. German tanks are rolling by and soldiers are shooting the injured where they lie. We narrowly escape the same fate. One of the bodies gets up and starts crawling towards us. It is Sgt Reznov. He is a sniper and tells us he is hunting a german officer. He urges us to follow and then gets us to snipe a bunch of germans in the street while bombers pass overhead to mask the gunshots. We then have to follow him into a burning pub.
Where we have to take out an enemy sniper in a window across the street.
Then we make our way through the buildings until a german patrol passes in the street. A dog sniffs us out and alerts them, we then have to run through the building with flamesthrowers being squirted into almost every window. We run and crawl through the flames, with little interluded where burning timer traps your character. We jump from the window and see gemans about to kill us as we lie on the ground in a heap, however we are saved by Russian troops.
We are now to help the squad by providing covering sniper fire. We basically snipe from the rooftop while the squad attack, shooting flame troops and machine gun nests for them.
We come to an area where we have a clear shot at the general that Reznov is seeking. He abandons the squad and we have to take the shot. Killing the general unleashes hell on us and we have to run through the building as it basically explodes and fills with troops at the same time. Jumping into a river we end the mission.
Mission 5 Their land their blood / Russia
Reznov again saves Dimitri's hide at the hand of germans in a house and urges us to follow him. We are following a tank convoy down to a river where we have to break through the german defenses.
we reach a farm and have to take out five german tanks. We then ride one of our own tanks to a german camp where we have to clear it out. We have to storm the camp and take out sniper towers and tanks. Then we have to eliminiate fleeing germans in a truck to end the mission.

Mission 6 Burn em out White Beach Peleliu
We have to take japanese mortar pits in their trenches.
Our primary weapon here is a flamethrower.
We have to storm three mortar pits one after the other. This is a simple mission on paper, however, in the game it's a hard one.
You have to watch out foor japanese soldiers hiding in trees and in little foxholes, they also charge like loons and use grenades in little tunnels where there is barely room to stand up. This really does show how much blood can be spilt over a few metres of land. A very good mission and this level alone shows how much the game differs in feel to previous call of duties set in world war 2. Maybe it's the flamethrower which is such a good weapon. Maybe it's having to kill the buggers over and over but you start relishing setting the annoying soldiers alight.
Mission 7 Peleliu island
We are riding on tanks again and are ambushed.
Mission objective is to clear out anti tank positions. The ambush is a good one, we are passing through a natural track and are attacked from all sides. We push up into their camp and make slow and strady progress through it decimating the japanese.
Next objective is to regroup with your squad and then follow them.
They lead us to a flame tank which we follow up a hill torching the japanese positions.
Next objective is to enter a cave which is full of Japanese soldiers and leads to artilley that is attacking our naval fleet. Clearing out the soldiers at the guns sees victory.
Mention must be made of how nice the graphics look on this level. Obligatory jungle crysis clone level but it is very well done.
Mission 8 Blood and Iron Seelow heights Germany
We are driving in a tank now, halo esque driving controls. We have to destroy atrillery posts, a radio tower and then rejoin the main russian army.
Around five tanks have to be destroyed before the next checkpoint.

Mission 9 Berlin
We watch as Berlin is pounded by rockets mounted on trucks and then alongside tanks and many soldiers advance into the german defenses.
Entering a building we are told to take out machine gun nests and panzershreks so the tanks can advance. Once done we run through buildings encountering no resistance until we are blocked by a wall. A tank comes and simply drives through the wall.
We come to an asylum, which is heavily defended.
Fighting past the heavy defences we now have to clear the asylum. Which is great fun, close combat in a maze like building.
We come out onto a long street and find a convoy of tanks to advance with,
The mission ends as we are chasing retreating germans down the street.
Mission 10 Eviction Berlin.
We are moving through the streets of Berlin rooting out the remnants of the fractured and disarrayed German army.
We are moving from room to room in more close quarters combat, some of the environments are stunningly rendered, a scene on a rooftop where you can see Berlin being torn apart all around is amazing.
We come out of the buildings back into a large street, where we are again advancing alongside tanks.
At the end of the street a rocket attack forces us to take shelter in the metro. We now are fighting along the station at either side of the tracks in the underground.
We work our way along the hard fought tunnels until a barricade and a door. We fight Germans while someone works on getting the door open, however a huge wave caused by an explosion comes and hits everyone, ending the mission. Not sure if we survived or not.
Mission 11
We are a gunner on a large bomber
We encounter a convoy of japanese ships and take several passes destroying them and their escorts. You can switch between turrets, however, only when the game tells you too. This keeps you looking in the roughly the right direction for the action.
Once the convoy is destroyed you get a distress signal telling you the the main American fleet is under attack. When you get there things look bleak with many ships sinking or on fire. There are soldiers in the water and your bomber ditches in the water and you have to pick up soliders swimming to you. Japanese boats try and kill you and them before they reach you. Once you have picked up enough survivors you have to destroy as many Japanese Zero planes as you can.
The mission ends as reinforcements arrive.
Mission 12 Blowtorch and corkscrew, Okinawa
We are assaulting Wana ridge, which is a heavily defended Japanese structure.
The enviroments again are impressive with long grass everywhere.
There is a hard fought fight up a hill to the base.
Now there are three bunkers we have to throw satchel charges into. which is a lot easier said than done, as each are well defended by soldiers in high positions.
We now have to locate a main bunker entrance.
Inside the bunker we take our flamethrower to many a Japanese soldier.
Up through the bunker to the mortar emplacement and the end of the mission.
Mission 13 Breaking point Shuri castle Okinawa Japan
We start with almost no ammo since we have been unable to resupply since the last mission. A planne has bombed Shuri castle and also dropped some supplies, as we advance to get the supplies we are ambushed by foxhole hidden Japanese.
We have to go through the tunnels and kill any soldiers we find.
Then we are on an all out fight for the entrace to the castle.
Inside the castle the fighting is intense.
We fight part of the way into the castle and are then told that we have to take out four mortar crews.
There is a new ability here, we can pick up unused mortar shells and tapping them on the ground arm them and throw them, they make pretty powerful grenades.
We make our way through more of the palace, then undergorund to some more tunnels.
We fight through the tunnels and now have to secure a supply drop in the main courtyard.
We have to hold out in the courtyard until we get the chance to send in an airstirke, we have to destroy two buildings with airstrikes and that is that, castle taken, and the end of the Japanese storyline.
Mission 14 Heart of the Reich Berlin
We are back at the russians, they have survived the flooding in the metro by the skin of their teeth, and are now attacking the main German HQ, The Reichstag.
WE have to work through some buildings until we reach the huge square the building is on.
There are four guns that must be blown up by placing charges on them.
Blowing up two of them gets you a checkpoint.
And the other two another checkpoint.
Then we are funnelled into a killzone by the Germans, however there is no option and we take the doors to the Reichstag at terrible cost.
Mission 15 Downfall The Reichstag Berlin
We start storming the Reichstag through opulent ruined corridors. There is little resistance until we come to a huge hall with two huge spiral staircases up to the next level. Fighting through this we come into the huge hall of the parliment. We have to provide sniper fire for the troops on the huge floor below. Then we have to take out German snipers on the opposite balcony.
We then progress onto the parliment floor itself like a huge church or cinema with lots of rows of seat facing a stage/podium. The Germans have the stage and are defending it well, with lots of flamethrower troops. Eventually I work around flanking them and get up onto the stage. We progress through a door and up some stairs.
We come out onto the south balcony and clear it.
Then we go up to the roof of the reichstag and fight our way through the remaining Germans and out onto the balcony. We watch a cut scene of our character Dimitri placing the flag even though he is mortally wounded by a German soldier on the roof of the reichstag and taking down the swastika.
Game over finished.
Final cut scene showing the atom bomb being dropped to end the war.
Quite disappointed to notice that I started on hardended and after the third level someone I went back to regular difficulty. I thought it was a little easy at times. It also did this once with the co-op game set up by my friend on his xbox. Possibly an adaptive difficulty thing, or a bug.
Unlocks Nazi zombie mode for multiplayer.
I got 225 points for playing on regular for the most part. Took about 10-15 hours.

I have also played through all the single player levels with a friend, which makes things easier and is a lot of fun. When one player is killed the other has a chance to revive them, only when both are downed do you have to go back to the last checkpoint.

Haze Notes

Mention must be made of the 8 minute install of 5gb and 66mb patch download before you can play the game.
The waiting for you to press x at the bit where it tells you not to switch off the console while it's saving is annoying, as is the message that the game can't connect to demonware every time it starts, which takes about 20 seconds to come up. If we wanted to play online, then maybe we would choose that option. Otherwise you are just wasting time when people want to play.
You know that rule of ergonomic interface design that suggests putting the most used option on the most used button for speed and ease. Well when you want to start the single player game where you left off they ignore this at a crucial moment, sure pressing x for the most part will get you back to where you left off, but at the last second they make you have to move a menu slider, when it could so easily have been perfect, never mind.

Choose hard difficulty.
It's 2023 and for Shane carpenter this is a world that needs making right.
We meet up with our squad who are generic grunts. Some mention of a dictator who skins people for fun. We see our squad all get a hit of something at once as if it's dosing time for the lab rats.
We get control and we are on a hovering aircraft carrier base ship.
The first objective is to meet your squad who have wandered a little way long the deck.
You watch a cut scene, in engine, where a few planes fly overhead. There seems to be something good about this as the soldiers are all cheering. A rocket zeros in and shoots down one of the planes which is not so good. A tannoy voice says that our current mission is scrubbed and we have to go to the crash site.
We see the sargeant stopping a soldier coming on the mission who has not been taking his meds.
A long ride to the crash site is filled with banter from the squad, mostly to show they are assholes it seems.
There is a short tutorial on nectar and how to administer it, you basically hold L2 as a bar creeps up on the left lower corner of the screen. This allows you to see enemies as glowing bright light sources, essentially lights them up like christmas trees. Which is just as well as they are well camouflaged otherwise.
Clicking the right stick zooms in, and clicking the left crouches.
R1 shoots, R2 grenades
Circle changes weapons
X jumps
R2 melee attacks
Triangle reloads
You have a very halo like health bar that creeps back up when you are not under fire on the right lower corner of the screen.
We find out that the planes were filled with nectar, and the commanders seem very keen to get it back.
When land we are in a jungle environment, which looks ok but I have seen a lot better.
Combat seems a bit stilted at first. I find it hard to kill the enemies, they seem to take an awful lot of damage before falling.
We progress through a glade and then down a narrow path. We come out into a large cliff area and see bombers blowing the area up ahead apart.
We descend down the cliff side and engage more enemy soldiers.
We find a rebel camp which had been bombed to hell.
Nectar disruption flashes up on the screen quickly and the colour vanishes from the landscape.
We meet up with the commander again and he tells us to move on, there is some mention of something screaming, which I didn't hear, and the commander tells us it was just an animal.
Now we come to the crash site and more enemy soldiers.
Clearing out the crash site we are ordered to check on the pilots condition.
He is lying on his back near the cockpit, we ask if he is ok and he ask us if we can see him.
He sounds like he is dying but does not appear visibly injured.
He starts rambling about being a boxer before he signed up and dies. The enemy start a counter attack and start coming in from either side and dropping in on lines from helicopters.
Finishing off all the attackers sees us being extracted by vtol.
Again a ride in the vtol is full of fun and comedy. The squad are even more hyper and brain dead. Our character asks the commander about the pilot and is told that he didn't see him.
As we return to the flying carrier there is some damage, the commanders tells us it looks like someone has been throwing grenades on the deck.
Mission 2
We are on our way to another mission riding in the vtol when a message comes in the Skin Coat has been located, all available troops are sent to attack his position. We land and see skin coat getting away on a vehicle.
We fight a few rearguard soldiers and then are told to get into our buggy.
The controls are fairly basic steer left and right and accelerate / decelerate with R1 and R2. There is a boost with X.
We drive out of a quarry and then down to a copper plant. There is some resistance at the gates. We have to open the gates, we are told to follow a wire, but don't have to the switch is in a hut and is fairly obvious.
We drive past some more soldiers and the ai doing the shooting from the turret is a bad shot.
Then we have to drive through an area which has been mined, basically full tilt along narrow dirt tracks with explosions going off all around us.
we follow this track for a while and it is interrupted with soldiers which we can either stop and fight or just drive on past. We come to an area where we are ambushed in a barn like building and have to get out to pull a lever to open a gate.
when we reach to copper plant we find the commander arrving just as we do. He runs over an enemy soldier and is rather rude to him.
We now have to storm the plant and locate skin coat.
We walk into the plant and the commander seems to know where he is going, he tells us he was here a few weeks ago but only found empty hands. Which seems to be his name for civilians.
He tells us that empty hands are only a step away from picking up a gun. Looks like he shot them all.
We walk into a room and the weird glitching starts up, this time in the black and white we can see that there are piles of corpses lying around everywhere. The administering sound kicks in and the bodies vanish. Looks like the nectar prevents us from seeing the world as it really is.
The enemies turn up and we start fighting through the copper plant.
There is a large area with an upper and lower floor, the upper floor consists of about four rooms with a long connecting corridor, we basically have to clear out the whole floor before we find the lever to open a door and get the checkpoint. I was saying if I find myself back about forty enemies again after dying I am switching this off. Not a good selling point this early in the game.
So shit checkpoints a few times so far.
We fight our way from the level to the control room to find another level and we open a door back near where we came in.
Going back through the level there are more soldiers to kill. So add backtracking to the sins.
When you get to the new door, you go through a corridor and into a large area with three enemies then down some stairs, the stairs are mined and are blowing, so you have to run. At the bottom of the stairs you come across a firefight, as you join it you are overloaded with nectar. This sees you unable to control your view for a few seconds then unable to control your firing. The mantel troopers also lose their coherence and look like enemies. This calms down a bit after a while, but it seems I have shot my squad in the chaos.
We come across flamethrower wielding enemies.
When I kill one we can pick up the flamethrower and use it. It seems ok, you have to shake the sixaxis to put out the flames when you are on fire.
The shaking seems a bit unreliable though.
The flamethrower has a set range, by pitting you against the enemy with the same weapon you basically have to set each other on fire to progress, which is just silly.
A large two floor area with many enemies has only one checkpoint, I am sensing a theme here.
We come out onto the roof of the copper plant and find a vtol in trouble from aa guns.
We have to take out the aa.
We are running around catwalks in a huge smelting pot area, where shooting a laptop seems to disable the guns.
We now have to follow the pots to skin coat.
there are more and more nectar disturbances which make the screen blurry black and white and remove your ability to use the sights. Damn annoying in other words.
We follow the pots to a point where we have to pull a lever to re-direct them, then move on into some tunnels.
We see skin coat getting onto a moving platform.
We have to go along to the other end underneath it and use a lever to bring it back. Then we climb up onto it and use it to go where skin coat went. Enemies attack all the time we are using it.
We get into the next room and find skin coat.
He seems a normal enough old man. He gives us a speech essentially saying that he is a victim of propaganda and never committed any of the atrocities Mantel has credited him with.
He asks us if we are on the right side in this war. Duvall comes in with his goons and grabs skin coat. He bundles him into an elevator and we take the adjacent one. We have too watch as Duvall cuts off one of skin coats fingers quoting and eye for and eye.
We get back to the vtol and Duvall is about to cut off both of skin coats hands. Our character pulls a gun Skin coat siezes the moment and kicks Duvall over. There is a struggle, some fire inside the cabin and the vtol starts to lurch and goes down hard.
Mission 3
We awake to find the vtol burned out and no sign of the others. We are alone, the computer voice of our suit is damaged and goes offline. We start hearing voices and seeing things.
We can hear comm chatter which suggests that we are now being hunted by Mantel as a code Haze.
A rebel appears and we follow him to safety from the hunting Mantell troops.
We go down into a tunnel system and follow some more before collapsing and being carried to a village. We withdraw from Nectar and skin coat helps us, or Merino which is his real name.
Merino takes us on a walk through his village until we get to a church. Duvall burst out and spouts his usual apes and carnivore crap. He gets away in a car and we are left with the other two goons. We are taught how to steal a weapon. We simply go up to the enemy and melee them, then press square to grab their gun, we have to do this two both goons. Merino gives as another speech. Which suggests that Mantell sent in the troops to prevent ethnic cleansing, which is a lie. He asks carpenter who now thinks of himself as a traitor to join his side. Which we do. As we can clearly see that everything at Mantell is a lie held together by a drug.
Our first mission with the rebels is to investigate a signal coming from the beach.
We take a helicopter ride to a camp and then take a quad bike to the beach.
Once on the beach we come to a blockade. Mantell troops land by vtol.
we have to get to their mortar and use it to blow up the blockade.
We are told about playing dead, since nectar hides the horrors of war from Mantell troops then they don't see the dead. WHich means that if we play dead then they can't see us.
We are told about scavenging ammo from dead troops and also making nectar grenades out of grenades and nectar administrators from dead Mantell troops.
We are shown how nectar grenades make the mantell troops attack each other.
I notice that the tutorials are unskippable and the checkpoints huge, so you end up seeing them loads of times which gets irritating.
We come to a gate and have to enter an old castle type structure to find the lever to open the gate.
Once through the gate we encounter a minefield. The mines must be approached until they trigger and then backed away from as they explode.
We have to continue to the beached container ship. Mantel vtols drop mantell buggies which pursue us across the beach. As we get to the container ship though they break off. As if they suddenly can't see us anymore. Which suggests there is something here that Mantell is hiding even from it's own.
We enter deeper into the ship and find Teir, who we met at the start, possibly he was the one that Duvall wouldn't let come with us because he hadn't been taking enough nectar. He shows us a container full of bodies, which apparently are the ones that nectar has killed stone dead. He is unsure if nectar will kill all the soldiers taking it. He tells us that Mantell are only here because they are trying to sieze control of the area as it's the only place that the plant nectar is extracted from grows. They want to control the supply totally to prevent them having to share pofits with anyone. It's all about the porfit margin. Tier is sniped as he talks.
We now have to escape the ship which is filling with Mantel troops.
We have to go an extremely convouluted route to escape the ship, especially obvious since it only took less than a minute to get into it. We basically cover every inch of the ship and escape from a hole in the prow. We have to go to a hotel across the beach for extraction, which seems silly since the beach is nice and flat for a helicopter to land on.
Mention must be made of tripod guns that are found in this area.
We make our way through the cave and out onto the beach, where we have some wide open area fun with mantel troopers coming in by dropship.
We get to the bottom of the hill leading up to the hotel and a dropship attacks us. we have to run up to the hotel, where we fight some troops in the pool area. We enter the lobby of the hotel and are told to go to another part of the hotel for pick up.
There are some better spaced checkpoints here, which is all the more dismaying when another doozy pops up sending you all the way back out of the hotel if you are killed inside it.
Once you find you way out of the hotel lobby you have to make your way to the roof of the apartment building. Which is essentially a spiral staircase of corridors with apartments leading off, once or twice you have to detour through blown apart apartments to avoid debris blocking the way. Once onto the roof the dropship and troops make things fun, shit checkpoint here again.
When you get to the desired spot Merino comes and picks you up in his helicopter, why he couldn't have done this earlier I'll never know. Oh yes there is no real story beyond the premise and they are trying to pad out the levels.
Mission 4
In the helicopter there is more mumbling about mantell trooper atrocities and the dropship has to be taken out with a chain gun.
We are about to go to the observatory, which seems to be important for some reason. The radio tells us that the village is under attack and we go back to save it.
We have an on rails shooting section similar to GRAW. Then we land and have to destroy some artillery which is pounding the village.
The three guns are close to each other and once the defending troops are downed it's an easy matter to shoot up the innards of the guns and blow them up. We have to make our way back to the village now.
Inside the village we have to fight some troops until we make our way to a square where a tank is making life hard.
This tank is taking a hell of a pounding to kill. Odd since when we were driving it earlier in the game machine gun fire could wreck it in seconds.
The rocket launcher took some finding, but even it needs a few hits. Well about 8 hits later it finally dies, if that was their idea of a boss battle.
We now have to rendevous with Merino at the church, again.
More fighting through the cookie cutter village.
What is the point of the playing dead feature. Sure the nectar thing is clever, in that it's using the drugs ability to prevent the men from seeing the atrocities of war against them. But when you use it the troopers just stand around where you were and do nothing, so when you stand back up again you are in just as much dire straights as before. Why can't you shoot from the floor and at least have an advantage.
I eventually realise that the way to Merino is less complicated than I thought and I don't have to muck about with close quarters combat with the shotgun troops infesting the housing. Merino tells us that they have to hold the courtyard in front of the church and gives us some mines to plant at the doors into the courtyard. There is also an emplaced gun.
We hold back the troops until the helicopter arrives and as it comes in to pick us up our old pal Duvall turns up in a dropship and blows up our helicopter. We now have to take out Duvall.
A few rockets and some shooting with the fixed gun bring down duvall pretty easily, well compared to the darn tank earlier.
Now with no easy way up to to observatory we have to walk. We follow Merino to a missile launcher. A pretty big missile launcher, looks like a nuke. Something is wrong with it's axle and it will have to move slowly.
We are to escort it to a place where we can use it to assault the mantel carrier.
Only thing is if we go to far ahead we are told to go back and stay with the missile.
We start to cross the bridge and a dropship mines it. We have to clear the mines by setting them off basically. Shooting a mine doesn't set it off but walking near it does?
The drop ship also shoots at you from above. Soldiers hide behind cover spots on the bridge.
The missile carrier waits for us to get rid of most of the mines then just starts moving with a few still in the way without warning?
We now have to rocket the dropship to proceed.
I can't belive this, i fell off the bridge andd didn't die, swam under it and up behind the enemy. By the time i get there all the a.i. fighters on both sides have vanished. I have to destroy a dropship pod which is just sitting there undefended to progress.
We now have to blow up the road bridge to prevent Mantel troops chasing us.
It is common to throw a grenade round a corner and have it explode, then when you go round that corner to find some troops standing facing a wall doing nothing, a grenade has just exploded nearby and they have not been activated by it's explosion, you walking into their radius on the other hand sends them running at you shooting.
We have to go into the towers that support the bridge and then into the gantries under it. Where we have to push big glowing blue buttons to arm the bombs which are already planted.
Two buttons later we are told to run and get back to Merino. He tells us that we have to go to the observatory. Merino tells us that his hand hurts.
we now have to advance up the mountain path and are given a vehicle, the rebel truck.
This is actually quite fun, lots of tanks and soldiers behind barricades and driving through proper race track like levels. We come to a heavily mined trap with a garrison of mantel troops, breaking through gets us a mantel buggy to ride. We drive along steep cliff edged drops with a mortar gunning for us. There is a jump with a bridge and again we see the no fun design at work. I fumble the jump and land half on the edge. Not even the boost can get the buggy off the edge, effectively sticking it to the bridge, requiring suicide to get any more progress.
Getting past the bridge leads us up into a village where mantel has an ambush planned.
Through the ambush we reach the crest of the mountain and get out of the vehicles and enter a mining tunnel system.
The mining tunnel is a pain in the ass, you basically have about fifteen mounted guns to fight, no checkpoints, so you really get to examine what a poor design they have here as you repeat the same boring section many times after getting gunned down by the rapid firing machine guns that seem to have poor hit detection. I swear my gun sight was on them when i emptied that clip guv.
Once you find a ladder you come out of the mine and can see the observatory in the distance.
There is a visitors centre!! We have to proceed through it. Heavy mantel troops at the doors.
The visitor centre has a large cylindrical room with balconies around the inside. There is a large globe like metal sculpture in the middle of the cylinder.
We have to fight our way to the bottom of the cylinder only to find that we have to go all the way back up to find fusebox you shoot to open the doors at the bottom.
we now have to go up a hill avoiding sniper fire from the cable car station which will get us over to the observatory.
Inside the cable car station we have to fight our way up three stories then out onto gantries where a drop ship is making things hard by breaking the gantry to the cable car.
I run at the drop ship the first time and it rockets me, second time i hide back in the tower and look about for a clue to the strategy, while i am doing this Merino talks to us and Shane tells him that he will shoot over the radar tower to make a bridge. While I start working out how to do this the drophip is shooting at me and it does it for me. Vanishing at the same time. All I now have to do is walk along the gantry and across the new bridge.
The cable car crossing is interrupted by a dropship putting some soldiers on your roof and then another cable car filled with troops passing by.
As we get across to the next station there is a fight going on with our troops and mantel troops. We find a quad bike outside the station. Our objective is to get to the observatory.
The observatory is heavily guarded, eventually i find my way in and we find a huge machine which it seems is something to do with the nectar supply?
There are two circut boxes to shoot which then opens a panel revealing four switches, press these and the distribution control for all mantel troops stops working, and none of them get nectar.
We are told to get out for extraction, we must stop aa guns so the helicopter can get in.
As we leave we see mantel troops coming to terms with their actions under nectar and shooting themselves.
When we get outside we have to disable the aa guns, which are manned by the mantel elite troops who were not under the influence of nectar.
There are around five anti aircraft guns around the observatory and we have to go up to each heavily defended gun and kill the operator.
The helicopter arrives and we get in, there is a short ride and we meet up with Merino in a clearing.
He gives a speech to rouse the rabble for the final assault.
We are now going to attack the mantel landcarrier, which I thought previously was a flying platform, but it's like an aircraft carrier that travels on land. we are now riding in a vehicle firing a chaingun. We have to shoot off four rocket turrets, then four valves on the undeside of the carrier at each side, the back doors then fall open. We then drive up inside the carrier and get out of the vehicle.
We are trying to disable the defences so that Marino can fire the rocket we got into position earlier.
Inside the land carrier there are two stairs to take at either side, both seem to lead to dead ends. Many troops are around, but they seem much less able to fight than earlier.
I can't work out where to go next???
I eventually need a walkthrough to find it, the only place i didn't look, so two three dead ends and one with a door, not the best. I make my way to the control room and open the hangar door. there is a tank but we can just run past it pressing a switch to get into the next area. A dropship makes life hard, but there is a rocket launcher nearby which makes short work of it.
We progress further along the carrier, Merino tells us to watch out for special forces.
We come to a room with four servers that must be hacked to turn off the defense grid. We have to defend our hacker while he works.
Special forces attack while he does.
This is a bugger to complete, the spec ops troops are accurate and fast. Special mention must go to the stupidity of the ally a.i. who do their best to get into your line of fire, especially when I use rockets, killing me and them at the same time.
Eventually I manage to kill all the guards, using the play dead feature, which I thought was only meant to work on the nectared up troops.
We have to fight our way to an elevator control and then we use the elevator to get up on the deck.
On the deck we have two drop ships to destroy, there are two handy rocket launching entrenched guns to use.
Once done we get told to stop the carrier moving so that Merino's missile can hit it. We have to get to the movement control room and stop the driver.
When we reach the control room, by climbing a crashed dropship we find Duvall, who is as much of an asshole as usual. We have to kill him then get a cut scene of him taking an age to die and worrying what his mother will think of him.
Merino tells us that the missile is inbound.
We have to meet his helicopter on the deck, as it takes off the missile hits the carrier.
Merino tells us that he is going to use nectar to make his country a better place.
Shane expresses doubts and Merino starts spouting stuff about mantel just being animals.
Looks like someone read animal farm.
Wow that was as a below average first person shooter.
No trophies to even make it worthwhile playing.

Resistance 2 Notes

Put it in the ps3 it wants to update, ho hum, about 3 minutes. Then it wants to actually install the game, which surprsingly takes about 3 minutes.
choose difficult setting, i'm a masochist.
Story picks up right after resistance 1
with hale being picked up by the commandos. They inject him with a sedative.
Once they wake him up they say they are taking him to Iceland to an SRPA station. They say he is part of project Abraham and wonder how far along he is.
The chopper is attacked as it nears The station named Igloo and goes down.
Mission 1
We follow Blake as he tells us to follow him in finding a way into the besiged base. There is a huge chimera war machine stalking around making a mess of the base.
WE are shown how to use the magnum pistol, you shoot normally with R1 and then you can detonate the explosive bullets with R2.
We go into the next room after killing 2 chimera and find a rocket launcher, we are told to fire at the exhaust ports on the goliath which damages it.
We then sprint through the area to a sewer pipe where we find the bullseye.
Control is with analogue sticks, x is jump.
Tapping L2 crouches and L1 sights along your gun a la call of duty.
Square is reload.
We have a firefight with about seven chimera with the goliath above us, and then run into the detention area.
A few more firefights with chimera and then we meet floating exploding eye robots.
Blake seems to want a code from a doctor. Who seems reluctant to give it to him. He does and warns that containtment will come down. Blake inputs the code and a huge door opens, inside a large chimera is released and comes flying out, it knocks Blake over and grabs hale, it says.
"Can you hear them calling to us, it's beautiful. and then flies off. It looks like it was once a human but has now become a huge bloated monster.
Blake tells us that Daedalus has escaped.
We go on to try and fight the goliath.
Taking another shot at it under instruction from Blake.
we Follow Blake closely across the open ground and come to a bridge that is out and it's like a little platforming section.
We come through a little underground section and out under the goliath again at it's rear and have a final shot at it's exhaust and it blows. Two trophies earned, yay.
we run into a building and out the other side to a helicopter.
Mission 1 over
On the helicopter Blake tells us we are going to San francisco to join the sentinels.
2 years have passed.
We see hale awaking from an anaesthetic, he hears the doctors saying that the virus is multiplying exponentially and he might have 19 hours to live. The doctor, Malkovich says that Hale is different and anything might happen.
When Hale awakes properly, the Doctor tells him that he must come back for his inhibitor treatments.
Another soldier wants hale to come with him for active duty.
Mission 2
We seem to be in an underwater facilty. Which is being attacked, we see lots of troops, sentinels?
Blake tells us that he wants us to clear out the attacking chimera and sends us on our way. The glass window to the huge room comes under attack from something big and we have to vacate the room. Hale is left on his own.
We see a man in the water being attacked. Blakes tells us over the radio that there are furies in the water and we must stay out of it.
A little more platforming as we avoid the fury we can see swimming in the water.
We pick up the magnum and find it's a jolly fun weapon. Shoot once and then click R2 to blow up the chimera. even if you hit near it, the explosion will do some damage. We meet up with some soldiers, Hawthorne is named.
we move through the facilty fighting chimera soldiers and then get to the moonpool. we have to close two lock doors which the chimera are presumably using to get into the base.
I manage to find one and it's a simple switch objective. killing all the chimera and getting the second switch closes heavy doors over the moonpool. However we needn't have bothered as the a huge chimera smashes in the doors as soon as we close them. We flee the room and are left on our own again.
We make a long trek through a huge room filled with generators, which seems a waste are there are hardly any enemies in it. There are some more of those annoying flying things, which always seem to be slightly higher than you would expect them to be. We encounter a force fielded flying object. Blake tells us that it would be suicide to engage it and tries to guide us past it using the security cameras He tells us to stop and hide and then to move in a certain direction.
After this section we come to a square room with a square platform in the middle, water surrounds the middle and a fury swimming around, we have to wait until the fury is at the other side and swim to the middle and then do the same at the other end.
We meet up with the doctor who we have to escort to safety.
A fight along a cell block and then we encounter some soldiers fighting what they call a ravager, which is a bigger chimera with a large beam weapon gun.
We come back to the control room we were in earlier after fighting a load of chimera and a ravager again.
The professor tells us of a weapon which can defeat the kraken.
We enter a square room with a rectangular platform in the middle surrounded by water. The Kraken knocks the walls in a bit and pokes it's head in. You shoot it with the plasma cannon which it does not seem to like and it breathes out on you, which is deadly. You have to hide behind crates for a few shots at it's head and it then goes away. We follow Malikov to a lift and then come out into hell. We see San Fancisco being invaded by huge chimera ships, the city is burning.
Our first objective is to get the guns at the edge of the bay back into order to fire on the incoming ships.
We make our way to the guns but they are overrun by chimera, we pull back and head through some of the base shooting up loads of chimera. The Auger weapon is introduced, which can shoot through cover. It is very useful.
We reach a helicopter and Extract Malikov. He says thay we need the inhibitor treatments or there is not much point in him leaving. Hale volunteers to go back for them.
Bigger chimera turn up, nasty big twenty foot tall things with rocket launchers.
There is a huge water filled area which we have to work out the best route through to avoid the furies in the water.
We make our way through the base to a fridge containing test tubes which must be the inhibitors that we need.
We are urged to hurry as a battleship is now going to fire on the enemy ships, and the base will likely be destroyed in the explosions. A vtol is sent to pick us up.
As it comes in to pick us up the kraken appears out of the water and attacks.
It rocks the platform we are on and uses tentcles with drills on the ends to attack us.
We have the plasma cannon which takes ages to charge up after firing.
It moves around the platform as you shoot it and then charges and tries to eat the platform and you.
Takes a few times around the block to kill, but it seems you have to shoot inside it's mouth as it chomps the platform the second time. I don't know but that is what I was doing when I killed it.
Mission 3
Orick california.
We are looking for Daedalus I presume.
our convoy is ambushed
We fight off the attackers but our trucks are wrecked and our numbers heavily depleted. We are told there is a creek we can follow to safety, however when we get into it we find lots of mutilated bodies. Looks like something nasty lives around here. We see a soldier ripped in half by a cross between the predator and wolverine. It vanishes as quickly as it appeared and we are in trouble.
Seems they are called chameleons, the graphics for the forest are particularly good here.
A shotgun blast can kill the chameleons as they charge you, but you have to be very quick.
We find a logging camp which has chimera pods growing, I destroy them all, there are little chimera bugs running around which are too small to attack us.
There are some flying robots guarding the bugs.
I pick up and use the marksman as I have no bullets left for the shotgun and bullseye.
I am surprised to find it fairly rapid firing and efficient.
There is a ship here for some reason and command wants us to try and find out why.
A bigger chimera comes running at me with a yellow personal shield, which is annoying, i use grenades on him and get lucky.
A goliath appears with some flyers to aid it, it doesn't need much aid. A handy rocket launcher lying around helps. Some puzzling to find the way out of the area through some railcars.
Then we encounter helfire turrets, which can only be diabled from the rear.
We have to sneak up behind it using cover and turn the thing off with a big green on/off switch.
A drone which I thought was chimeran before turns up to help us as a boatload of chimerans turn up. Without them it would have been a hard fight. The drone continues to help us.
we meet up with the rest of the sentinel squad at the chimeran ship, things aren't going well. They have more soldiers than we have bullets and our weapons are not making a dent on the outer hull.
We hatch a plan to fly a shuttle inside and plant demolition charges.
The squad storm a chimeran occupied warehouse and its actually great fun. I found a glitch though, i tried to hide from a ravager that I got a little to gung ho with and ended up in close quarters with no ammo. I ran and ended up backed in a corner and the thing couldn't get me, it was shooting at close range and I was hitting it with my melee and eventually killed it, it must have been a glitch as I should have been dead, the fire from it's gun must have been shooting out behind me rather than into me as I was too close to it. Anyway this section is great fun.
To end the warehouse section we have to storm a heavily guarded hellfire turret, flanking it using crates nearby.
We see a cut scene of the shuttle flying into the ship.
The ship reminds me a lot of Halo and seems at the start to consist of generic straight crossroaded grid corridors.
The invisible guys are back.
I wondered when those annyoing scorpions from the first game would turn up, here they are slithering out of a small corridor you have to crouch to get into.
The steel cleanliness of the chimera ship gives way to piles of the organic egg sacs.
The radio chatter from the squad who have split up to plant bombs in stategic places suggests that the chimera know we are inside, they either don't consider us a threat or are planning a trap.
We enter an area with glass and steel walkways, chimera attack from above and below. The marksman and the auger prove very useful. The auger is great for hiding in cover and simply shooting through the walls at the enemy.
we reach the bridge and Hale is able to tell the squad that the ships aree heading for Idaho. He plants his charge on the bridge and now it's time to leave.
We have some corridors with the invisible twitch kill nasties to deal with then a two minute sprint through the exploding ship as one of the charges has been blown early in a firefight and the whole ship is going up. We have to wait at a door and defend until it opens then through to the shuttle and out of the ship. A cut scene shows us being hit and the shuttle going down.
We crash in a suburban area and Hale is isolated from the group again.
There is a creepy invasion of the bodysnatchers vibe going on with the amount of pods increasing. I just know they are all going to start hatching soon.
They do, what comes out are tall gangly chimera with no weapons or armour. They run straight at you and try and hit you. They are killed with one shot from most guns, however, it's weight of numbers that is the killer.
We have to fight our way to a stuck squadmember then back through the area we have just covered and meet up with the squad. We then have more armed normal chimera to deal with. I find the deadlock gun, which is a heavy projectile weapon.
We fight through a diner and a supermarket.
The grenades are good, though it seems awfully easy to throw one and have it land at your own feet, with hilarious consequences.
We come through a hairdressers to a cinema which is loaded with hundreds of the spinners as I think they are called.
I enter a town square type area and there are three ravagers, and there does not seem to be any rocket launchers handy.
After a take agaes picking them off with Auger and Bullseye I find the bellock near the bandstand. Doh!
There has been talk of towers recently, I didn't know what they were meaning, but now we can see huge towers in the distance which resemble the post office tower in London.
We end up at a railway line and have to head down the tunnel which is full of spinners.
Out the other side we meet ravagers and normal chimera. Then back into the tunnels again.
We come to a flooded section of a factory type area, where we are attacked by scorpion chimera half submerged in the water.
We are told that if we don't get some inhibitors soon we will all start to turn.
We are now inside the tower and take an elevator up it. The towers seem to be defensive in nature.
Cappelli who has been following us aroound for a while is taken by a huge spider like chimera and we are on our own again.
On top of the tower we can see incoming chimera battleships approaching.
The big thing is a lizard/spider hybrid and it spits acid.
it lets loose scorpions and clambers around the tower like a gymnast.
After about three tries I manage to kill it. No special strategy, just hammer it and avoid.
Mission 4
We see the towers shooting down the chimera ships, quite and impressive scene.
Hale is told to go to a base for inhibitor treatment, he tells Blake that he is going after Malikov first. He argues and turns off hiss comm unit. He tells the men in his squad to leave now if they don't want to follow his mutiny.
Malikov is at genesis station in Bryce Canyon utah. So is a chimera ship however.
We have a little on rails shooting from our vtol to clear the hot landing zone.
we are in a desert area. lots of dust and perilous drops to avoid.
We fight the flying robots with chimera soldiers, to add to the mix the invisible predators turn up too.
We fight through the chimera and then encounter ravagers. We start to find scientist bodies, luckily none of them are Malikov.
Hale hears Daedalus talking to him. He tells most of the squad to stay and bottle the chimera in and he takes a side door tunnel into the base.
We find loads of scorpions inside the tunnels.
Then into the base, which seems to be chimeran. Malikov contacts us by radio and tell us the Deadalus is here and that we must reach the core first.
We are nearly at our flanking point with the chimera on the bridge that our sqaud are pinning down.
I find the wraith mini gun, which is fun, there are ravagers, chimera and flying larger robot drones on the bridge, once they are clear another set of enemies comes up in the lift.
We take the lift down and go further into the base.
We see something like a swarm of bees with lightning inside floating around in the distance.
Daedalus tells us through telepathy that we should turn back.
The swarm of angry bugs with the lightning arrives and it's deadly.
dodgy unskippable cut scene here. The swarm only needs us to run from it following a cable which shows our way to an elevator where we escape it.
We go on from the elevator and end up meeting the swarm again. It takes a minute to work out that it can't open the doors in the corridors with floorplate opening controls. We have to block it so it goes outside and comes in another door to get us and while it does so sneak past it to proceed.
We encounter daedalus and Malikov, a cosy combination. Daedalus tells us that Earth belonged to the chimera long before humans walked upright. He says that they are the evolution of man.
He talks about chimeran stars being in the sky again.
Hale collapses as daedalus is talking. When he wakes Malikov tells him that he has become susceptible and is overdue inhibitors.
Daedalus has gone after doing whatever it is he was about to do. Malikov tells us that we need to get out.
We see huge eggs, Malikov tells us that they are the oldest form of chimera, the purest. He talks of his experiments in russia. Looks like malikov is to blame for most of this.
Malikov tells us that he infused the pure chimera dna into two human subjects, Daedalus and Hale himself.
We encounter the swarm again. Malikov notices that it does not like electricity and there is a circular glowing area with a force field around it, we are able to get inside the safe area.
There is a bit of simple puzzling and hiding inside the circular force barriers while the swarm teases us. We fight a load of chimera in a rectangular area then Malikov tells us that we must go to another chimera tower that is inactive. He tells us that we should try one in chicago as it's suicide and Daedalus won't expect us to attack it. Sound plan, not.
The swarm turns up again and this time it has us trapped near the only elevator to the surface and escape. Malikov can control the generators from a control panel, we have to lure it inside one of the circles and malikov will turn it on, killing or trapping it.
We have to lure the swarm to a circle and standing inside it seems relucant to come in, if we taunt it by stepping outside it gets mad and attacks, if we can manage to get it into the centre without getting killed by it then Malikov turns on the generator. We then shoot it with the plasma cannon which seems to disrupt the electric bonds between the bug like elements which drop to the floor inanimate. Only for a few seconds however, the swarm soon is back up and after us, we have to repeat this three times before it dies.
Malikov then reveals that the towers are older than humanity and have been buried for millenia, they will fulfill a purpose that is obviously bad news for humanity. We must stop daedalus from reactivating them.
As if the swarm wasn't bad enough we go up in an elevator and a short walk to our landing zone, which is crawling with scorpions and two titans.
After taking them down we make it to the vtol.
Mission 5
Cappelli is angry that we have not gone for inhibitor treatment and there is none in chicago, he informs us that we are now a walking timebomb and he will pull the trigger on us when we turn.
Hale grabs him by the throat aggressivly and hurts him, putting him down.
They fly to chicago and malikov tells them they will have to go inside the tower to stop it working.
Cappelli gives us a look of pure hatred as we get off the vtol and Hale is looking ropey with yellowing eyes and almost bestial growls.
We find a splicer which shoots circular saw blades that bounce around causing lots of damage.
We go down a street and spinner come at us, about a hundred of them in waves of about 10 at a time. We then have to deal with two hellfire turrets. Our squad helper splits off and we have to diable the turrets on our side of the street creeping through the buildings, while he does the same on the other side. We have to snipe enemies at his side also from our flanking postion.
We reach the end of the street and there is a water filled area. We have to sneak in the water using cover to get up to shoot at two chimera, one of the water creatures can be seen climbing out onto land in the distance. it climbs back in as we get close. We have a very long trail of cars and trains to negotiate without falling in the water, drones also harass us. We jump into an area and the train we jump from falls behind us, it must hit a water main as the water rises quickly in the area. This allows the furies in to get us. We must follow a winding trail of planks and girders up ever higher running and not falter to get out of the area. It is quite an obvious path however once you realise what you are doing.
We enter a building filled with spinners and dark corridors.
Then we come out into an open street where a pitched battle is going on. We join the humans fighting the chimera which include loads of the grunts and the tripod tanks which I remember being a pain in the last game. They seem a bit easier to kill this time around.
Ravagers come with shields which is a pain in the ass too.
Now we get shileded drones, which are very hard to kill. you have to wear their shields down and you can see them reconfiguring it on the fly which is quite cool.
Once the two drones are down and airstrike takes out the hellfire turrets that are keeping you pinned. You then face an area with four sentinels and chimera and drones. Which is hellishly hard. After you defeat the enemies you get your first glimpse of the big king kong style chimera. It knocks a building down and you jump through a window to escape the debris.
We go through a dark corridor and out into the next street. Here we have to climb up the side of the buildings using iron bridges and planks. Getting ever higher up.
We enter what looks like a department store and drones attack, there seems to be a new faster shooting variety here.
We come out onto a rooftop and meet some troops, they have a rocket launcher for us and we see the leviathan coming toawrds us, it picks Hale up and swings him around dropping us onto another rooftop.
We run into the building and play follow the corridor again running through an impressive chase through a building with the leviathan pawing at us through the walls. It picks us up again and we shoot it again with the rockets, making it angry again it throws us through a glass bridge section and into the chimera tower.
we make our way through a small section of chimera occupied tower and out onto a roof.
The leviathan is in the distance and the bomb filled skybridge is in front of us. We shoot the leviathan with a rocket and it comes towards us. When it's under the bridge the demo team try and blow it but the charges fail. They scream at us to shoot the bridge with a rocket and when we do it blows and falls on the leviathan, giving it a huge head injury. Shooting a rocket at the weak point on it's head kills it once and for all.
Mission 6
We see Malkovich come in by helicopter and try and disable the tower, he does so only to have it reactivate under his nose and lock him out. The only conclusion is that it is daedalus' doing. Malkovitch traces the commands to the iceland tower.
We see Hale going to iceland by Vtol. He is starting to have dark veins under his skin show up.
He is warned by Hawthorne I think that it might not be too late. He goes against advice and we see Hale being dropped off at the Iceland tower.
We have to place charges on anti-aircraft guns. We are fighting in a kind of castle fortress, grassy and flowr strewn land surrounds.
Usal Ravagers and soldier chimera guarding the first gun we fight our way too. Placing the charge we are told to go on to our next target. Descening into the base we are in familar corridors and industrial type locations.
There are hellfire turrets mounted like video cameras in the tunnels. Coming out of the tunnels we are assaulted by loads of flying drones and a spider robot in close quarters. Taking them out we get to place another charge on an aa gun.
we watch a cut scene as the bombs are blown.
Drones flood the room then we are under siege for a while from Ravagers and soldiers. They give us punishment for a time then unexplainedly retreat. We follow them out into a courtyard where we get some sniping practice with the fareye and there is another shielded drone.
Now inside some blast doors.
Where we find an awful lot of spinner pods. No signs of daedalus.
We are sieged by spinners as one of the squad tries to seal the doors.
Have noticed a glitch in the picking up of ammo. seems to be that sometimes you can't get ammo for a gun unless you drop it and carry two other guns then pick it up again, walking over it just doesn't seem to pick it up in certain areas. noticed this with the lark and the four spider bosses just before the leviathan and again in the seiged room after the aa guns blow.
The elevator eventually comes and the horde of spinners ends.
We go down into hell, the command team are telling us to abort as the tower is heavily guarded. Hale wants to press on.
we join the chaos around the base of the tower and it's a real open warzone. Once we get into the actual tower we are chased away by loads of scorpions and a boomer.
We go down a huge elevator into the bowels of the tower.
Daedalus appears out of nowhere and rips Hawthorne apart and vanishes just as quickly.
we progress further into the tower with loads of chimera of all types defending.
must comment on the exploding enemies we get here. They remind me of far cry. I hated them too. I hate exploding enemies. There were less potent examples in the chicago level too.
They just run straight at you and explode.
We are led along corridors and into a dead end then a whole load of chimera pile in behind me in ambush.
Along a few more generic corridors and we see another of the squad getting impaled by Daedalus.
Daedalus speaks to us telling us that we could have been so much more and resistance is futile etc and then he impales Hale. Hale passes out and everything is black.
Mission 7
Hale wakes up in a hospital and Malkovitch is with him. Hale looks like he has aged, or his skin is changing, he looks distincly unwell. Malkovitch tells him he has only about three hours left as a human before the chimera virus transforms him into something else.
Hale talks with Capelli who tells him that everything is lost, there is only one human stronghold left and it is cut off the people starving. He asks Hale if he is going to make his last hours count. Hale of course has no plans to go out without a fight.
We are in Cocodrie Louisiana.
Mission is to find a fission bomb.
You start at a huge swampland house. First you snipe the patrolling chimera then inside to clean them out of the house. Once the house is emptied a large amount of chimera arrive as reinforcements and siege the house with you in it. Took me a while to work out there is a third floor where you can bottleneck them coming up the stairs. Then a huge dinosaur like chimera arrives and stomps around outside the house shooting fireballs and some kind of web like crawling nasty stuff at you. The weblike expanding nasty stuff is one of the most impressive and innovative weapons fire effects I have seen in many a fps. Full marks for innovation here, pity it isn't used enough, well maybe I should wait a bit, it might get overused.
Once you blast the big guy with the lark and auger fire he falls into a previously inaccesible water gap and you can proceed.
Through a housing area and you come out into a battle where a squad is being pinned down by boomers.
It's cappelli and some grunts, we help him fight the boomers and many many soliders and proceed through houses across bridges and into a half sunk riverboat.
We climb up to the roof of the riverboat and take out the boomer on top.
Now cappelli's sqaud are in the clear. He informs us of a bomb they have found and a chimeran vehicle. Looks like we need a volunteer for a suicide mission to fly the bomb into the tower.
we get ambushed in the street and there is a big street fight which is great fun.
We then walk across the under girders of a bridge and up onto a road where we see one of the t-rex's in the distance coming towards us. Blake appears behind us and tells us to get off the road. He informs us of a staging area with a chimeran shuttle nearby.
We run through some swampland forest and into a sewer where the scorpions make an unwelcome return.
Nice water rippling effects as the men wade in the water. we enter a chimaran outpost.
We meet up with cappelli who has flown the bomb to a meeting place with us and put the bomb on an elevator to the shuttle pad. We take the elevator and are told to prepare for a big battle.
We have basically a long ramp with cover to ascend to the shuttle.
We see them loading the bomb onto the shuttle in cut scene and Hale collapses. Cappelli is about to shoot him, Blake orders him to stand down. Hale gets up again and says he is ok.
Mission 8
Chicxulub crater mexico.
we see the shuttle landing in the bay of a ship. Blake tells us we need to get the bomb near the reactor to ensure an even bigger bang.
Blake takes the bomb, cappelli and I are to provide a distraction and get to the control room to take down some cooling shields.
We have a big shootout in a hanger.
Leaving the hangar after killin everything we take a lift then have a long run through some fairly empty repetitive areas.
Then we come to some larger areas which are fairly cathederal like. More shootouts, mostly involving auger play.
Second dodgy checkpoint of the game here, which is good actually.
We get to the control room which is well guarded and Cappelli find he can't open the doors from the controls. The chimera have locked us out. No matter we can carry on and find a conduit hub which will allow us to open the doors manually.
We enter the engine rooms where we find really boiling hot water which is not good to fall into in lakes with catwalks above it.
We wander through the engine room a while and then locate the control and activate it.
As we do we hear Blakes team getting into trouble on the radio. Looks like the bomb is now in chimera hands. Hale asks Cappelli to guide him to the bomb, he is using the ship control room to locate us and other lifesigns inside the ship.
We have a fight on huge walkways around the outside of the ship, two titans turn up and make life hard.
We go back inside the ship to hangar areas again. Cappelli tells us that the chimera are going to chuck the bomb out of a disposal chute.
We see a titan carrying the bomb, it vanishes through a door and leaves the ravagers to mess with us. we also see Blakes corpse lying here.
I kill them and then you have to use a small walkway to get around the sealed doorway.
Once round you encounter Daedalus.
You have a set of three geodesic domes in which you have to hide while Daedalus tears them apart with you inside, you basically have to avoid his tentacles. In between each dome there is a few chimera and Daedalus hurls things at you. Once you reach the other side of the third dome there is a checkpoint and about six chimeran soliders to kill. You then enter a circular area.
Daedalus circles above you attacking with his tentacles while you have to shoot orbs on pylons, these pylons are attached by an electrical arc to a central pylon. When you shoot them the electricity earths through Dasdalus hurting him, you have to do this about five times and then Daedalus is dead.
You see a cut scene of Hale walking up to Daedalus and touching his face. As he does so a huge rush of energy transfers into him.
We now have to run through the ship escaping the four minute countdown.
We now have to ability to blow up chimera with a force telekinesis power.
We watch Hale and Cappelli escape the explosion.
They crash land and cappelli walks from the wreck to find Hale looking up at new stars in the sky. He turns and utters they same words we heard from daedalus so. Can you hear them calling etc.
Cappelli realises he has turned and pulls his gun. Hale does not resist. Cappelli tells him that it has been an honour to serve with him and shoots him in the head at point blank range.
The screen goes black we get a scorecard and then the credits.
The total time played indicator on the stats shows 12 hours.
On difficult mode which i presume now unlocks superhuman mode.
trophies gained is 14 out of 39
I try out cooperative mode.
I join a squad of about five others and we are in orick california
We have to storm a hill guarded by chimera
Then defend the hil as they try and retake it.
Next we have to enter an area gurded by around 15 hellfire turrets to disable
Then we strom a nest of spinners.
Introduced to elite primarks These are chimera which have much more health than usual.
Have to take out a few of them in a house then onto a titan out near a river bridge.
More and more titans.
Basically objectives come and go until you finish the mission.
There are three classes you can play in co-op
Soldier, medic and special ops. Each has certain equipment and skills and as you progress through the missions you accumulate xp and grey tech which can be spent on upgrading the weapons and armour of your character.