The only thing worse than Jackals.

First Recon

Among First Person Shooters, it doesn’t get much more difficult than Halo 2 Legendary. Twenty years later and the game still finds ways to surprise and infuriate its players. Halo’s Legendary Difficulty has always been a little mean. Halo 2, however, is interactive malice. Most Legendary playthroughs end in Cairo Station’s first Pelican Hangar, but an equally nasty surprise lies in wait on Halo 2’s second mission, Outskirts.

Perched on New Mombasa’s rooftops, Jackal Snipers are bastards, and are easily the most polarizing portion of Legendary Halo 2. Legendary Jackal Snipers have tremendous accuracy, a tall black coffee’s worth of reaction time, and utterly infest the Human Campaign. As the bodies pile up, Jackal Snipers start feeling like a sick joke: Petty revenge for Halo 2’s death crunch. Turn the wrong corner, and be graciously perforated by the deadliest sharpshooters in Bungie history.

There’s a serene irony to fighting Jackal Snipers: A matter-of-factness that comes with their disposal. Halo 2 Legendary is largely a struggle. Jackal Snipers by contrast, are surgical; Professional.

All told, Halo 2 has nearly 120 Jackal Snipers, far too many to effectively memorize. Their positions and demeanor are randomized for good measure. By far, Halo 2’s most infamous encounter is “Outskirts’ Sniper Alley:” a sixty foot L-Shaped tube with no cover, a patrolling garrison of enemy infantry, and eleven tweaked out marksmen lining its walls. A lesser man would take the long way around…

Vidmasters make do.

Vidmaster Forever: “Overload”

The Challenge: Five back-to-back suicide runs through Halo 2’s Jackal Sniper alley.

The Method: Load up Outskirts on Legendary and survive Sniper Alley. A run ends when you enter Hotel Zanzibar and teamkill any of the Marines inside. This adds a subtle time limit to each attempt. Dally in the alley, and the Elite Ultra Squad outside the hotel will erase your exit. Once you’ve entered the sniper encounter, “rooftopping” is explicitly discouraged. True Vidboys keep their boots on the ground. With every successful run including your first, enable a Skull. That’s five runs; Five Difficulty Modifiers.

The Rub: Skulls are additive– And once you’ve dropped in, the only way out is inside Hotel Zanzibar. Nobody quits. Non-Scoring Skulls with the exception of IWHBYD and Skulls that don’t affect the alley in a meaningful way, like the Master Chief Collection’s Jacked or Swarm are banned. Good luck.

Brainpan

Having completed Overload, I can say Outskirts’ Sniper Alley is largely misunderstood. It’s a memorizer, sure– Certainly impossible your first time through. But it’s a genuinely fun encounter once you’ve dealt with the squatters. Unfortunately, most players will never get to that juicy flow state.

Sniper Alley is easily skipped. In fact, the entire level is. As a byproduct of its rushed development, Halo 2 barely makes an effort to keep you inside its maps. You can leave Outskirts’ crash site, walk to the Warthog, then floor it all the way to Metropolis.

Overload is high strategy brought into Halo 2. Like Sniper Alley itself, this challenge demands a plan. Enable Skulls without proper foresight, and risk putting yourself in an unwinnable stalemate as modifiers riff off each other in unique ways. Remember, the only way out is through. The five Skull quota ensures later runs are guaranteed to take you out of your comfort zone. No freebies. Be grateful I didn’t go with my gut and make it seven. (Although you’re encouraged to run the gauntlet forever. )

I think the beauty behind Bungie’s Original Vidmaster Challenges wasn’t their awesome reward, but how creatively they recontextualized a single player shooter most people didn’t have a reason to revisit. Anyone can turn on all of Halo’s Skulls and throw themselves into an unplayable mess, but there’s an elegance to Vidmaster I didn’t quite appreciate when I first took the oath thirteen years ago.

It’s not about sadistic difficulty, impossible odds, or dogmatic rules. I want a puzzle I can solve– And I suppose that’s exactly what I’ve wrought with “Overload.” So how’d I do?

Last Recon

A typical run starts with me grenade jumping to the rooftops, skipping Outskirts’ introductory plaza fight entirely, and grave robbing a sniper rifle. Now this does mean I miss out on a few early Jackal Snipers, but it’s all honest from here out. The plaza is practically an “autoscroller” anyway.

Sergeant Johnson and his squad teleport through the plaza’s exit door, and I actually miss a few object spawn triggers for the upcoming alley. If you follow my route and skip the opening fight, you’ll have to clear the snipers with less cover.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast– But navigating Sniper Alley is still a crawl… And not in the way you’d think. In all my attempts, Jackal accuracy was the only consistent element. The Stealth Elites, Grunt Squads, and Drones littering the alley were exceedingly random.

Whether or not my gaggle of Marines helped any was a coinflip too. I’d experimented early on with giving them dropped Beam Rifles, but the firing sound had already driven me crazy. I’d hear the report of the rifle and panic I was about to be executed, only to turn and see Private First Class Goofball shooting a corpse.

Some runs I could contest all eleven snipers with ease and rush the hotel. This was especially true the first few attempts. Every shot risks alerting more sentries, so I’d take some duels in a full sprint. I wouldn’t recommend it. Other runs I was forced to fumigate the entire alley before I could start counter sniping. The last few Jackals are dug in like ticks, and missed shots mean death. You will pray for good checkpoints.

The Thunderstorm (Field Promotions For Everybody!), Mythic (Double Enemy Health), and Anger Skulls made things even harder. Ultra Elites take six sniper headshots to bring down with Mythic enabled. Couple that with Thunderstorm, and every Elite in the alley becomes an Ultra… By the third run of the night, I’d already used a pile of Plasma Pistols to decapitate the Covenant Command. Under Mythic, Ultras don’t even lose their shield when you hit them with an overcharge shot.

In three hours of attempts, I tapped out at eleven Skulls. In a tossup between enabling Assassins (Invisible Enemies), Iron (No Checkpoints), or Blind (No HUD), I went with Iron. That’d be my crush depth.

I’m happy with Overload. It’s impractical, tedious, and a little mean– But finally clearing that fifth run made me feel a way I hadn’t in years: Pure gamer catharsis. That’s why we stay the path and keep the faith.

Vidmaster today, tomorrow, forever. See you next time!