Level 12: Archive

Make it to the last working cargo elevator
The first room of the archive introduces you to a new threat, the appropriately-named Spectre. These fellows resemble Locusts in outward appearance, except for the fact that they’ve come down with a mild case of invisibility. In harsh light, you’ll probably be able to spot them due to their Predator-like shimmering effect, but it’s generally easier to activate your CryVision goggles and track them by their heat signatures. If you feel a little underpowered for close-range fighting, don’t hesitate to use your rockets or the AG36’s grenade launcher to even the odds a bit.

After fighting off three of them, you’ll come into a room where scientists and mercs are skirmishing with a few Spectres. Kill the remnants of the fight and trade in one of your weapons for a Jackhammer, if you don’t already possess one. Shoot out the blue panels in the nearby...thing, and drop down. You’re likely to take damage if you just jump down and hope for the best; try to slide along the sides of the interior of the machine to avoid this. At the bottom, hit your night vision and take care of the two Spectres.

The rest of the doors here are locked, thus trapping you in a dead end...or so it seems. If you look at the water in the center of the room, you’ll notice that there’s a hole in the grating that’s been covered up by a wooden plank and a couple of metal barrels. Push the junk out of the way and float down.

In what appears to be a bit of Half-Life homagery, you’re going to have to swim through the passageway here until you come up next to what appears to be a reactor. Kill the Tridgen in the room and flip the switch on the wall to unlock the doors, then head back through the hallway to the room you just swam away from. Head through the door marked "Level 3" and take the lift down.

You’ll emerge into another firefight between Tridgens and mercs. Wait for the dust to settle, then suit up with whatever armor the mercs left behind.

The expansive room nearby hosts a dozen or so security mercs. As per usual, these fellows are packing helmets, rendering them less vulnerable to headshots. As such, you’ll probably want to make a loud noise near the hallways before the room and lure as many of them back to you as possible before Jackhammering them in the head. Your mileage may vary, but it can definitely help to weed out some of the multitudes before progressing into the room itself.

Your nightvision will let you spot the mercs hiding amongst the shipping containers here.

When you do move on, though, you’ll want to scout with your binoculars. You should spot a couple of soldiers on the catwalks towards the rear of the room. If you dropped your sniper rifle for the Jackhammer earlier on, you won’t be able to get a clean headshot off, but you can still use your AG36’s scope to pummel them with bullets from afar. They probably won’t move, or even fire back, since they’re so far away. Take them down before moving among the crates in the center of the room; the last thing you need is something distracting you from the soldiers among the shadowy boxes. If you’re intent on making an impression, you can fire off a rocket at these soldiers; one of them carries a rocket launcher of his own, so you likely won’t be missing any ammo afterwards.

The soldier along the rear of the room, besides possessing the rocket launcher, also drops a keycard when you kill him. Grab it and head through the nearby door to come face-to-face with a few more Spectres. The cargo elevator here is sadly nonfunctional, but it does contain a sniper rifle that will be useful in a few moments.

When you come out into the open, lie prone before the first little opening into the canyon beyond and start sniping away at any individuals that you can spot; there should be quite a few targets. Since you just passed a save point, feel free to go a little crazy and get a feel for what type of enemies are where; there are at least two mercenary snipers in this area, as well as a rocket launcher foe on top of the water tank way down at the other end of the area. As soon as you’re spotted, a cargo chopper will come in with a few troops. You can’t destroy it, but you may be able to get its mercenaries with a rocket as they rappel down to your location.