Mission Four: Operation Ricochet

Edinburgh, Scotland - June 10th, 7:30 PM

Well, the endless droves of terrorists have apparently spawned a little offshoot, as another small army of your foes managed to escape the Parliament building and made it all the way to Scotland University, where they're holed up inside some empty buildings with their hostages. It's up to you to rescue them; your mission will start with another Weber sniping mission.

University Exterior

As Weber, you're going to have to protect your squad from the sniper fire that'll be coming from all around the interior of the university parking lot, which is apparently completely enclosed and is, of course, the perfect spot for a small squad of counterterrorist agents to be ambushed on all sides. The decision to insert from here was tactically inept, but hey - you get a chance to shoot at people!

Look for one RPG on this little balcony.

Anyway, the two biggest threats here are the RPG troopers. There are two of them here, with one on the top of the left building and one on the balcony in the right corner. They'll each come at different times, of course, but if you don't manage to pop them before they unload on your team, your squad will take some pretty grievous injuries. You may want to save after killing the first, then reload if you don't manage to shoot the second, as he's tough to hit due to his distance.

East Wing

When you reach the inside of the building, you'll have command of a full squad again, so use them to open the door nearby and head into the library. After you finish off the enemies that come at you initially, you can move forward and up the stairs to explore a bit. There are more enemies in a few of the corner rooms here, so use your heartbeat sensor to check for signals before opening doors all willy-nilly. A real fun aspect of the upstairs battle in the library is the way that enemies can magically appear behind you even though you've cleared out the entire area, and it's a real blast to have to restart due to the game being incredibly cheap. Enjoy!

The first Intel briefcase is in one of the two rooms on the far side of the library, near the exit on the ground floor. When you've cleared out the library, keep moving on into the locker areas. You'll come to a staircase; head upstairs and clear out the upper rooms before returning down below and doing the same down there. The sightlines are generally better from the upper doors, and you'll be able to easily fire down on any terrorists on the bottom. Your goal is theoretically to search for hostages; what you really have to do is kill everything that moves on both levels before you're cleared to move on. When you do so, you'll be ordered to move to the basement and cut power to the building.

Although the black square that emits the laser tripwire is always visible, the beam itself can only be seen via thermal vision.

To reach the basement, enter the room with the scaffolding and find the door there. The second door you come to is wired to blow; you'll have to sneak up to it and disarm the tripwire if you don't want to instantly die when you head through. To do so, check the door with your infrared scope, then sneak slowly towards the doors and point your reticule at the emitter portion of the laser, where it comes out from the door jam. When you get close enough, you'll get a context-sensitive option to disarm it, so go ahead and take it out before proceeding through.

The second Intel Briefcase is located in the small computer room that you first enter just after entering the boiler room, where there's a dead hostage. Move on from there until you reach the power switch; after you flip it, the lights will dim, and you'll have to make it back to the tripwire door to move on to the west wing. Without the lights, though, it'll be dark, and what's worse, the enemy will set up a little ambush for you near the gas canister. One of these, at least, will likely blow, making it difficult for you to see; use your heat vision and scope to at least get a bit of definition on the enemies before shooting at them. Your teammates have much better vision here than you do, so you may also want to send them ahead to pop a few caps.

West Wing

Move up the stairs and back into the locker area to reach an auditorium, which is where your path branches from the one you took before. After killing the enemies in the theater, leave through the top exits to find the third Intel Briefcase.

Chucking grenades towards the far end of the library will help you take out the enemies without exposing yourself to fire.

The next library you reach will have been barricaded by the terrorists, as you learn when you enter. Rather than exposing yourself to fire, switch your weapon to single-shot mode and start sniping away at the enemies from the doorway. Some of these guys, especially the ones on the ground floor, are quite accurate with their weapons, so you may want to bring in your team to set up behind one of the doorways to provide some cover fire for you while you snipe away at the machinegunners. You can also duck beneath some of the bookcases to line up a grenade throw if you want to try and take out the gunners indirectly.

When you've cleared out the enemies, head down to the far end of the library, and the barricade should automatically detonate. Move into the halls beyond, checking the two doors in the first corridor, and eventually you'll come to the cafeteria, where the fourth Intel Briefcase is lying on a table. After you get past the principal's office, you should start picking up a large number of responses to your heartbeat scanner. Start out by entering through the first door on your left, where the last Intel Briefcase is being held.

There are two entrances to the hostage room; one near the briefcase, and one in the other hallway. The hallway door is tripwired, so be sure to disarm it if you plan on using it. Since this is obviously the end of the mission, you can set up your team to perform a flash+clear on one door while you go through the other. The room is darkened, so be sure to go through with your nightvision on.