Halo 2 Master Chief Collection Par Times
The Arbiter/The Oracle
These two levels, the introduction to The Arbiter, are almost comically easy to do on a Score run. This is a combination infantry/airborne/Flood grouping of levels – hyper friendly to Score runs.
Simply make judicious use of the sword and the carbine during the infantry segments of The Arbiter, and make sure you take out everyone with the Banshee, then borrow a buddy Elite’s sword and jack a Sentinel beam off a dead Sentinel for the Flood. This Score run practically solves itself.
However, a Time run is far more difficult – the beginning of a trend for Halo 2. Divide these two missions into three sections; The Station, Airborne, and the entirety of The Oracle.
The Station: Ugh. This is one of the hardest sections of the entire game to get through. There are an inordinate amount of areas in the first part of this that require you to clear everyone out before continuing. As such, you simply must be brilliant with the carbine and sword.
Memorize where the enemies are and which doors are locked before you have to continue. When your sword runs out, switch to a combination that is useful for both Time and Score runs in the future; dual wield needlers. They can clear out a pack of enemies like no one’s business.
Utilize the active camouflage to skip past larger groups of enemies or get into a better position to kill a group of them.
Airborne: Ah, the easy part. You can ignore all the enemies in the level and just fly straight to the exit, though you will have to kill all the enemies at the final door. Bombard them from the air with the Banshee’s fuel rod cannon, then grab one of the fuel rod guns from the dead Grunts.
Oracle: Just…fucking ugh. There is no easy way to do this. No shortcut, no easy path past enemies, and a lot of areas dependent on you killing everything in order to proceed. Everything leading up to the boss fight is simply a game of keeping the Sentinel beam close and energy sword closer. And try and save a few hits of the sword for the Heretic Leader boss fight. The boss fight is perhaps the hardest part of the level, consistently.
There is no fast way to do it; simply hammer on one of the Heretic Leaders with the Sentinel beam until you can tell if he’s a hologram or not, and hammer on the Leader with the sword until he falls.
Once he’s dead, it’s on to….
