Rejoined landing battle
Posted January 28th 2007
Try this. As soon as you hit the beach, run off to the left and fight your way into the security substation to open the door to the main facility. On emerging, get an overshield if you want, then jump down to the beach and get the newly arrived rocket launcher and Warthog. Now return to the landing zone to rejoin the battle, which seems to've remained frozen since you left. You can approach the battle from either side.
Usually most of the Marines will still be alive, though on Legendary they won't be for long unless you get right into the fray. Give the Covenant a nasty surprise with the rocket launcher or get a Marine onto the chain-gun, or whatever. Basically, you've got the opportunity for fighting the landing battle in novel ways. The most obvious thing to do is to just drive up behind the Marines and leap out to rejoin them, blasting your way through the battle with the launcher.
If it's just the chain-gun you want though, there's no need to go to the security substation at all; you can just get the first Warthog you come across.
Clockwise joyride
If you drive clockwise around the island so that you eventually approach from behind the enemy, you'll pass a dropship near some Jackals on the grass outside the main facility. As you speed on, the dropship catches up and overtakes, which all makes quite a spectacle. You can also enjoy seeing how many covies you can splat on the front bumper along the way, including Jackals at the drop-off point. It's a great drive.
Arriving clockwise
As you arrive clockwise at the battle area, it triggers the Pelican to come in with a Warthog. Marines will potentially run to man it and give any remaining covies a hard time. If you remain behind the enemy here, you'll notice that the Marines will try to run through the earlier enemies to reach you, which often leaves some of those enemies alive to deal with at the end.
Approaching from behind the Covenant, you may be able to use the launcher to take out the reinforcement Elites and Jackals that hide behind the structure. If you stay distant to begin with, they won't even know you're there, and you can have a bit of long-distance mischief. Here's another idea though. Instead of blasting them straight away, you could let them enter battle with the Marines (if the bozos manage to battle through that far), then sneak up behind to give them the rocket treatment from closer up.
However, you could always instead just drive past the reinforcements to rejoin the Marines, who could probably do with your help pronto. The reinforcements won't even notice you if you take a wide berth down near the sea.
Rockets from distance
Rather than supporting the Marines, you could just let them die, then send in rockets from distance, preferably from so far off that the enemy doesn't realise you're there (e.g. from well out in the water). You can send patrolling Grunts flying through the air, and let the reinforcement Elites have it in the face. Ah, happy times. To get the most out of this idea, I suggest wiping out all the Marines as soon as you land on the beach so you end up with the maximum number of enemies to kill.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to fellow cyborg Jim Huang who put me onto this theme with an email in February 2006, that suggested running off to bring along a Warthog. I've tried to enhance the idea a bit by adding a rocket launcher into the proceedings - something which enhances almost any situation, wouldn't you agree?