Passive hillside enemies
Posted July 9th 2006
In the hillside survivor area, an enemy dropship eventually brings in some reinforcements. But you can arrange for them to be strangely passive, just standing around, letting you get up close and have some fun with them. Here's how.
Armed with a sniper rifle, drive to the high right entrance of the hillside area and snipe most or all enemies. Then snipe any survivors you can see in the distance (there are 4 on Easy and Normal, otherwise 3). If you've got any passengers, they often say "Nice shot!", which seems a bit wrong somehow! Leaving any passengers behind, drive to the hilltop. As long as there are fewer than 7 enemies left, a dropship will be triggered shortly. If there are any Marines left, wait until you hear the ship, then kill them within the next 15 seconds or so. Specifically, they need to be dead by the time the ship is about to start its final descent (sinking down vertically after hovering motionless).
You can drive straight to the landing zone to see the reinforcements jump down if you want, but don't draw fire from the ship else that can stop the enemies turning out passive. On Easy or Normal you can expect 2 Elites and 5 Grunts. On Heroic it's 2 Elites and 4 Grunts. On Legendary it's 3 Elites and 3 Grunts. Sorry, no Jackals.
Having fun with them
The passive enemies basically just stand around. Obviously, there's a flaw in the programming somewhere; they don't seem to know what they're there for. They recoil and cry out if you shoot them or bop them on the nose (hee hee!), but they don't appear to see you, and Marines don't appear to see them. It's a novel chance to get up close for a good look. The Grunts are pretty cute, looking around and occasionally jumping up and down as if to keep the circulation going in those little legs. Here are some other things to do.
How about a spot of Grunt launching? See if you can pistol shoot them when they're up in the air. Even better, try to launch a Grunt so he goes up and down against a cliff, and see how many blood splashes you can decorate the cliff with by shooting him (a noble sport previously seen in Danger! More falling Grunts).
By very gently nudging enemies, you can move them. This lets you arrange them into a formation. E.g. how about five little Grunts in a row? Aw, cute. And you can then put a sniper round through their collective skulls, or perhaps do some sort of formation launching. You can intermittently get checkpoints at the nearby entrance so that if you accidentally squash anyone, you can revert without having lost too much work.
Another bit of cuteness: you can drive the Warthog to where dismounting Grunts will land on it. You can end up with one standing on the front and one on the back, for example. Can't take 'em for a ride though; they'll slide off.
If you're at the landing zone as the ship comes down, you can whack Grunts dead before they hit the ground. It's possible to kill two in quick succession. You can also enjoy watching out for Grunts doing a cute somersault dismount.
If you left one of the original enemies alive, you can amuse yourself by using a passive enemy as a shield while the enemy fires on you. For this I recommend leaving a needler Grunt alive. He'll keep hitting your passive shield and making excuses like "It wasn't me". Crouch to use a Grunt as a shield.
Other methods
The method I gave for getting passive enemies here isn't the only one; it's just the one I find most convenient. I did some investigation to try to fathom exactly what's needed to make the reinforcements passive. Apart from the case in which you snipe all survivors dead before going up to the hill, it seems to me that all you need is the following. There must be at least one survivor still alive here when the dropship is triggered, but none by the time it's about to start its final descent (which starts about 15 seconds after triggering); and also, you should avoid drawing fire from the ship before it starts its final descent.
So for example, you could instead do things as follows. Drive alone to the hilltop and maybe kill a few survivors, but not all. Then snipe enemies until the dropship is triggered, namely when the enemy count falls below 7. Then finish off the survivors before the ship starts its final descent.
Incidentally, the dropship can't be triggered at all until you've approached the hilltop. You need to have done that, and the enemy count must have dropped below 7.
Passive Jackals?
I'd been thinking I might be able to get some passive Jackals by varying the method a bit. Here's why. If you're near the tunnel entrance when the dropship is triggered, existing enemies seem to vanish and the mix of dropship reinforcements seems to differ from what it would normally be, and can include Jackals. However, I tried various things but still wasn't able to get passive Jackals. If anyone finds a way, I'll be happy to hear about it.