I Am A Monument To All Your Sins
To say that Bungie’s swan song in the Halo universe, Halo: Reach has by far the most challenging campaign of all of the Halo games is a gross understatement. To play the campaign on the highest difficulty setting, Legendary is for the most part, insane.
Checking my Bungie.net stats, I started playing the game on Legendary – Solo on September 22nd. Ironcially, seven days after the release of Halo: Reach (For those of you who don’t know, Bungie has a little thing about the number 7). 73 days later, as of yesterday, I completed Legendary.
Seventy-three days. Granted, I wasn’t knocking out 8 hours of gameplay a day. But still, the fact that I was able to bang out the campaign on normal in 7 days tells you something about Legendary. It takes a lot of time, patience, skill, and a whole lot of dying to make it through that monster.
And boy am I proud.
“But Will, why would you do this to yourself?” you may ask. Here’s why:
BLAM! 325 Points All In One Sitting!
That’s right! 325 points of gamerscore goodness all in one sitting! Finishing this game on Legendary all by yourself is worth a wholesome 150 points on its own with the “A Monument To All Your Sins” achievement. Add in the Legendary achievement, “Gods Must Be Strong” (that can be grabbed solo or with a partner in co-op) and you tack on an extra 125 points. And finally, for skipping over Heroic and heading into the insanity, you get the Heroic “Folks Need Heros…” achievement for another 50.
Two months of pure suck sure felt good after seeing that.
For those of you who are currently busting through this on your own, here’s a little list of rules I strongly recommend you remember while playing through Halo: Reach – Legendary Solo.
1) The DMR (Designated Marksman Rifle) is your friend.
2) There is never enough ammo for the DMR.
3) Do not waist your DMR ammo on Grunts and Jackyls. The pistol is your weapon of choice for taking them out at a distance.
4) In every level where there is a Brute Chieftain with a Gravity Hammer or Fuel Rod gun, there is a sniper rifle. Use that on them from as far away as possible.
5) Melee attacks only make Elites angry and you dead more quickly.
6) It’s perfectly ok to use your AI squadmates as fodder for Hunters while you sneak around behind them with a Rocket Launcher or Spartan Laser.
7) If there is a Rocket Launder, Spartan Laser, or Sniper Rifle lying on the ground, pick it up. This is an indication that you will soon need said weapon.
8 ) Armor lock is almost completely worthless in the Legendary Campaign. Enemies just wait for it to drop before they end you.
9) Don’t rush, and don’t jump into a firefight. This game is best accomplished slowly, steadily, and through a scope at a distance.
10) If you need to run back to the beginning of a map to get more ammo, do it. Don’t waist your time trying to push through with inefficient weapons that may be handy.
The interesting thing is that after playing Legendary, going back and playing it on Normal is laughably easy. Anyway, I hope my little top ten above helps anyone on the path to gaming greatness.
And to Bungie, thanks for the last ten years. It’s been awesome.
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