Mission Seven: Operation Leviathan

Calais, France - July 11th, 1:00 AM

Your first task as Weber here will be to clear the deck of enemies, and also save the hostages that are being used as human shields. This is pretty simple to do; just shoot the guys near them, and they'll run off back into the ship. Of more pressing concern is the RPG that'll appear on the upper deck; find this guy and pick him off before he blasts your copter with a grenade. You do die a pretty ragdoll death if you let him hit you, though. Your call.

After the team lands, you'll have to keep them covered while they move along the exterior of the ship, while also worrying to death about more RPG soldiers. Save every 20 kills or so. This mission is pretty difficult due to the fact that the helicopter continually moves while you're sniping, forcing you to adapt to the movement of the chopper itself while you aim. If it helps, you can make sarcastic comments to the pilot, like "Oh, no, that's fine - keep moving the chopper. I'm only trying to save the world here," or something like that, but it won't really help, since you'll really only be talking to the cold logician's mind of your console or PC's internal processing unit, and until Skynet comes on line, it won't be able to understand what you're saying, and even then, all it'll want is to kill you. It won't be personal, it'll just be one part of the inevitable tide of progress as the computer hive-mind becomes the dominant life-form on Earth.

Shooting while moving - what will they think of next?

Well, that was a digression. Anyway, shortly after the second RPG soldier goes down, your soliders will be inside the ship and ready to take over.

Bridge

The terrorists have taken over the bridge, and are keeping the captain alive in there, so you can't just go in blasting away; you'll have to do it all subtle-like. Well, no; you actually will have to go in there blasting away. We recommend opening one door by yourself, setting your team up on either side of it to fire in, then going through the other door and clearing out the rest of the soldiers you see there. After you clear the bridge, the captain will tell you to head for the engine room, so you'd best beat your feet. There are two paths from the bridge, but they both lead to the same dining room.

Use your squad to distract the terrorists, then move in yourself to furnish the killing blows.

There are plenty of enemies in the dining room, as you'll be able to see through the windows, so you'll probably want to hang back and lean in around one of the doorways before bothering to bring your squad in; they'll likely just get wounded if you move them in first. When you're through the dining area, you'll come to a long hallway with Shadow Watch arcade games in it. Obviously enough, if you want to keep people on a cruise ship entertained, you give them arcade versions of old, turn-based strategy X-Com clones. Down the hall from these arcade games is the first Intel Briefcase; pass the entrance to the shopping area to find it.

After passing through the curiously empty mall area, head down the steps to reach the lower level, where there's another bar. This one's for the poor people, we guess. The second Intel Briefcase is behind the bar here, so you'll have to find the door leading to that area to pick it up.

When you hit the next exterior area, be careful about firing down the little covered walkway; there's another hostage in your path that can easily get plunked if you fire too loosely. With him secure, you're just a couple of kills away from the car garage.

Engine Room

You've only got five minutes to get from the car garage to the engine room, so get going! The door leading down is at the end of the garage, so set your squad up where they'll be able to fire on both sides of the central divider, then start picking off soldiers yourself. The third Intel Briefcase is behind one of the cars on the left side of the area, so grab it before you head downstairs.

You don't have much time to waste here, so move quickly.

When you reach the top of the steps, you'll have to head down and enter what appears to be a small residential area. This place is crawling with enemies, so feel free to use a frag or two to clear them out before moving in. Shortly thereafter, you'll come to a door guarded by two terrorists; kill them and enter the engine room beyond. The first bomb is located here. Yeah, that's right, the first bomb. As soon as you disarm it, you'll learn about another one in the cargo room. Your timer will refresh to five minutes, so you'll have a new lease on life.

On the stairs down to the lower floor, find the fourth Intel Briefcase on the middle steps. The door immediately beneath that has a tripwire in front of it, however, so be very careful when approaching it. Perhaps even more obnoxious if the fact that you'll likely be able to spot an enemy pop into existence when you actually pass through the door; get ready for a mini-ambush when you do so.

Keep moving on, and your control will eventually tell you that the bomb is near your position. Be careful when moving into the next room, though, as there are walkways above you, with at least one enemy up there. Since you're close to the end of the mission, you may want to just send in your team to hide behind the first set of shelves; they should be able to cover the enemies while you head to the right and find the last Intel Briefcase behind one of the crates in the little alcove there. You'll be pretty damn close to the bomb at this point, and you should have plenty of time to track it down and disarm it.