Inside raised Elite housings
Posted October 8th 2006
After your first descent in a lift, you find yourself in a room whose inner chamber features a raised housing in the middle. There's a similar housing further on in the level with an Elite inside, but we'll talk about that one later. This first 'Elite housing' is empty, and you can get into it quite easily with a grenade jump as follows.
Getting inside the first Elite housing
Entering the inner chamber, go around the back of the housing. Outside the housing's high doorway there's a tall pillar with an anvil-shaped head. Stand on the narrow ledge at the back of the room as high as you can get, and do a grenade jump to get up onto the pillar. It can't be too hard because I actually managed it first time. I stood to one side of my jumping spot, dropped a plasma grenade there, moved back to the spot, and jumped a moment later, getting boosted by the blast shortly after I left. Once on the pillar, you can jump into the housing and have a look around.
I always wondered what was in these things, and now I know. Not much. But hey, it's a novelty being up there after all this time. I should've put my mind to getting up ages ago, but it always looked so high! Other cyborgs will already have been up there I'm sure.
…and having a bit of fun
There are some enemies in the room to begin with, and this gives you an extra challenge. See if you can get up while they're still around. That should be easy enough. If you can manage that, you can then enjoy taking novel pot-shots at them from your new vantage point. Fun!
Getting inside the second Elite housing
Much later in the level, namely after your one-and-only lift ascent, you reach a room with another of these housings, and this one has a nasty big fellow inside, not to mention a gold Elite down below, and sundry other forms of alien scum milling around the place. This time I was unable to get up by grenade jumping, though I expect it's possible if you persevere or if you're some sort of grenade jumping expert. It was easy enough to grenade jump up onto a pillar at the side, but that always left my health in tatters, and there's a second (and awkward-looking) grenade jump needed to get the rest of the way up. I gave up on that after a while, and had an idea. How about using a Banshee?
It's actually fairly easy to get a Banshee into the room. Fly one up to the first of the twin bridges, then gradually squeeze it along the passage leading back to the room (you have to briefly dismount at doors to get them to open). Fiddly, but it doesn't take long. Once inside, you can drop yourself off on the high pillar outside the housing's 'front door' (the side you'd normally be approaching first) or alternatively, on top of the housing itself (woo-hoo!), from where you can then jump down onto the pillar. Once on the pillar, you can jump inside.
…and having a bit of fun
First time I got inside via Banshee, the enemies hadn't spawned yet. To have better fun, leave the Banshee in the room ready for use, then backtrack along the level until you trigger enemies. At that point you can resume normal play and head back to your Banshee. The challenge now, as before, is to try to get into the housing (or on top of it) while still leaving lots of enemies intact, so you can shoot at them from a novel vantage point. That seems quite manageable on Heroic or lower, and you can have some pretty fine fun with a rocket launcher up there! You did remember to bring a rocket launcher didn't you?
One extra thing I was trying to manage was to get inside the housing while its occupant was still inside, and maybe have a spot of fisticuffs or something. However, he always seemed determined to leap out (I'm not sure exactly what triggers it), so I never managed it. He got squashed plenty of times, trying to leap out while my Banshee was hovering near his high doorway. If anyone finds a method of getting in while he's still there, I'll be happy to hear of it.