First off, I haven't checke General Close Combat Melee Tactics (complete guide)
01/29/03 1326 ?i@FFF% e? I've noticed that all attacks with the
exception of the plasma pistol knock the adversary forward, away from you. The
plasma pistol attack appears to clock them upside the head, and bounce them to
your left. Is the range greater for a melee attack with the SPNKR? Anyway...
ENEMY
Grunts -- three hits to the head, two from the side, or
one from behind.
Grunts can and will fire back during a melee attack if you don't keep
pounding them, or if you move away from them. But bearing down on them, and
raining hit after hit, usually keeps them reeling long enough to finish the
job.
Jackals -- two hits to the torso, or three to the shield,
or one from behind.
Jackals will return fire unless you stay on their exposed side during a
melee attack.
Elites
Blue -- Two hits to the head, or one hit to the
midsection from behind.
Blue elites hit the fastest, but do the least damage up close. You can
usually defeat one in hand to hand combat with only one hit to your
shields.
Red -- Four hits to the head, or one hit to the
midsection from behind.
Reds are the hardest to beat in hand to hand, but are slower than the
blues, and you can usually sidestep their punches. Once you hit them the
first time, they'll usually do that 'I'm quite unhappy with your
shenanigans!' groan, during which time you can stride around behind them
and bring them down.
Gold -- Five hits to the head, or one to the midsection
from behind.
These are the slowest of the Elites. Take a lesson from your
soldiers--when in close combat with them, duck when they swing that sword.
They'll miss. Well, they'll miss if they swing left to right. If they
swing down or pull an uppercut, you're skewered if you don't move quickly.
Also, they tend to dive at you with about a 1 second delay. You can avoid
them if you watch your timing.
Purple -- Frankly I don't know if my monitor was playing
tricks on me or not (I use a monitor with a crappy a/d converter for my
Halo'in most of the time). At any rate, it might have been a gold or a
red. Took about 5 hits.
Light Blue -- The invisible ones. These are a trip. I'm
not sure why, but they have crap for vertical vision. Get higher than its
head, and it will wander around below you. My favorite spot is just before
the hallway leading to the last room on AOTCC (wasn't that the starwars
movie also?), there's a raised doohickey in the middle of the room. If you
run past it, and into the corridor, then fire a shot or two, all of the
invisos will run at you. Scamper back down the hallway, run up the
slanting platform, and wait. In a few seconds, you'll see their swords
wandering around below you like dorsal fins on sharks. Just duck down, and
punch them. Two hits to the head and they'll drop. This room, when you do
this, takes on the eerie feeling of some kind of ceremonial death thing.
It's almost like they're saying, "In exchange for not opening the giant
can of whoop-ass on the rest of our forces, we will let you sucker-punch
our invisible elites."
Elites are also easy to sneak up on. Just watch their heads--that's how
you know where they're looking. If one is on patrol, you can easily walk
right behind him and to the side, then jump forward as he turns, and he'll
miss seeing you entirely. Then it's lights-out.
Hunters -- 7 - 12 to the head, 4 to 7 to the torso,
depending on the impact. These are the most interesting sparring partners.
If you walk backwards from in front of one that is charging, and if you
punch right when he does, you will deflect his punch. Do this enough, and
he'll drop. That's right, you can actually take down a Hunter head-on like
this. Otherwise, their spin speed is equal (slightly slower, actually) to
your running-in-circles speed. So if you let one past you, just hang around
behind him and punch the orange gunk. The more disgusting the sound you hear
when you hit, the worse the hit was to him. Again, I suggest the plasma
pistol, as it seems to do 'hook' damage, so if you're tight in, you can just
keep pace with his spin and score hits at the same time.
The Flood -- Melee works well on the little suckers,
especially if you have one at a time to hit. But this becomes rather futile
very quickly, especially with the larger flood, whose reach greatly
surpasses your own. I'm still compiling notes on these. Actually I'm
currently trying to see if I can create a strategy for beating the gold
elites every time, so it may be awhile before I finish my notes on the
flood. Anyone else have any luck with the flood and melee attacks?
The Sentinels --This is futile, EXCEPT for one case. If
you can hit the tiny control point on the rear, top, of the drone, you can
take it down with one hit. Otherwise, by the time you land your second hit,
it's all over you with that oversized laser pointer. I believe this is the
key to the Flood's ability to defeat them at all. The only times I've seen
the flood really quickly take down the floating bots was when one or two
would attack by jumping high, and behind the Sentinel before attacking with
a melee attack.
VEHICLES
Stationary guns -- For some reason, they won't
fire at you close up. But you can't hit them, either. However, you will move
the gun slightly with each hit. So if you're really bored, and have lots and
lots of time and no other baddies trying to sneak up behind, you can just
keep wailing on the turret until you knock them off a cliff. Or get them
stuck to the side of one, which is also quite funny.
Ghosts -- You *can* do this. You have to stay
near some object you can race around, but you can melee the driver. This
isn't easy, and will almost certainly end in an unpleasantly for you though.
All he has to do is strafe. I'm not sure about ducking here. I didn't have
any luck with it, but your ground forces buddies do it to avoid the ghosts,
so it might work for you.
