Had another four or so wins under my belt within a few hours last night. The grenade throwing is getting better and the melee's are improving slightly, although it is annoying not winning some close up skirmishes. Oh an I'm also getting a lot more advantage out of the radar now I know the maps a bit better. That helps a lot with leading with grenades. It also helps with surprise "shotgun shell to the face, butt-o-gun in chin" maneuvers when enemies are coming around corners.

What I need is some kind of practice mode where I can just repeat that move endlessly until I nail it. The problem with campaign is that the little stupid things would die if you tickled them hard, and the 'monster' above that requires an overcharged plasma pistol round and half a magazine to fell. On top of that, the numbers in campaign out weigh any exercise you might gain from practice.

There must be some tactic for taking out a pair of guys in close combat... I suspect t has something to do with grenades and assassinations...

Sergeant Kijduse

Well I made Sergeant last night. I managed to do it in three games, luckily getting on the winning team in all my games gave me the mere three points needed to rank up. It's quite an important rank really, as it gives you a new pin and 15 Gamer Points for the UNSC Spartan Achievement. It's a little more up hill from this point though, as the next ranks are in increments of ten, right up to Gunnery Sergeant second class. Better get winning!

I had some more luck with melee attacks, going so far as executing the perfect shotgun round to the face before jamming the butt of the gun in the poor victims chin, all in one fluid motion. The video's up on my shared files. That was actually in a sniper match in Valhalla, which I've learned a lot about. The most important statistic being I died the least in the match. 8 kills with 4 deaths makes good reading but could have easily been improved with some better shooting. I probably engaged in rifle fire another six times where neither party died. I would have maybe gone in for a skirmish in the past, but out of those 6 times, I would have died four times and killed twice: 10 kills to 6 deaths and we would have lost.

Did some more campaign which wasn't that bad. There were some pretty cool parts but again the whole thing was let down by the ridiculous enemies, their voices and the stupidity of the marines. The story's only just got somewhere so I'm more interested in seeing where that's going than expecting any more epic battles, but I'm hoping I'll be surprised.

At this stage it's hard to determine whether to spend more time on campaign, as it's more like having to go see a film all your mates have seen. Then again it's always good to get a head start in the multi-player!

Kijduse for Sergeant Campaign

The official launch of the Kijduse for Sergeant Campaign started today with the enrollment of several new players. The hope is to achieve Sergeant status this evening and hopefully bring some other players up a few ranks as well.

I tried getting to Sergeant yesterday but the team I ended up on failed to win five times in a row, even though I did everything within my power to drag the team through to a win. I'm still lacking in the ability to accurately throw grenades which is becoming a problem. I also have a habit of running in to power sword attacks. I think I would be better suited to Slayer as the majority of my deaths were down to apposing numbers. Occasionally I managed to take care of up to three enemies single handedly but that's on the premise I had several grenades and a second weapon, preferably a shotgun. The other 90% of the time I had no backup and found my self on the receiving end of several plasma grenades affixed to my face.

If I can get the grenade throws down and maybe get in the habit of picking up a second weapon before attempting anything stupid, I could probably get half a dozen more kills. I also have to get in to the habit of backing off from melee attacks as I seem to be loosing them more than winning. And remember to keep jumping!