Slope fun at the light-bridge area
Posted December 29th 2006
As you enter the light-bridge area, there's a raised sloping surface off to the right past the two Jackals. You can quite easily jump up onto it from the Warthog's bonnet. Crouch as you go over the lip, to get an extra bit of clearance. Once up, you can enjoy various bits of fun (preferably leave any Marines behind).
Attacking enemies below
For starters, it makes a novel position for attacking enemies below if you haven't killed them already. Grenades and a needler are lots of fun here. If you want cover from enemy fire, go right to the top where things level out.
You can even get the Grunts on the other side of the road, peeking over at you with their beady eyes. Try a pistol or some long-range tagging.
If you move along the top towards where Elites guard the passage to the bridge control, you can kill the Elites from your high vantage point, sneaking shots or grenades down through the opening.
Fun in the crevice
You can jump across the ramp into the narrow sloping 'crevice', and move around within if you crouch. At the bottom you can have fun sneaking shots or grenades down onto enemies that hang around near the passage ramp. A spot of tagging perhaps? Sometimes an Elite may fire at you from near the bridge control though, so watch out. If one does fire from up there, a nice stream of needles should sort him out.
Within the crevice you may also like to play around with a needler, watching needles ricochet up and down off the parallel surfaces. See how many bounces you can get. I think this must be one of the best places in the game for bouncing needles around.
Across to the bridge control
If you go right through the crevice, you're now on the far sloping surface (which you could have reached more directly by jumping up on this side of course). From there you can potentially reach the bridge control and activate it. You should get a checkpoint if the cutscene runs; but it seems that you can always prevent the cutscene by activating the bridge while there's a grenade or some needles or plasma or bullets in the air (e.g. lob a grenade then activate).
Incidentally, whilst you're at the control panel, check out the pretty red ring impact effect with an assault rifle if you've never seen it before. Something else to note: the glass on the floor is shatterable, and if you shatter it while standing on it you'll fall down a short way.
After activating the bridge control like that, I quite like to toy with the Elites, who've usually gone down the ramp out of sight. You can attract them back up with a shot and dispatch them as desired. It's a nice bit of table-turning: usually it would be you coming up the ramp to tackle the nasty Elites, but this time it'll be the Elites coming up to tackle the big bad cyborg. If you've got a needler, you can send long streams down towards the corner. In the narrow passage the Elites have little opportunity of dodging, heh heh! Grenades are fun too. Or if you like, you can stealthily approach the corner and tag Elites where they stand, down the ramp.
It's also possible to activate the bridge and get away without having killed any covies at all - a nice little challenge. However, once you're clear, you really ought to about-turn and slaughter every living thing, don't you think? It only seems right.
More jumps
If you've just gone through the crevice, turn around and look back at it. At the right there's a bit of surface you can jump up onto. From there you can move down onto a quite steep surface then jump up onto a tall block. Possibly you can have a bit of fun attacking enemies from these new vantage points (though you'll be rather vulnerable).