Written by: Rik
Date posted: October 9, 2011
The Omaha Beach mission is perhaps the most famous set-piece of the game, based on the famously brutal Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, also featured during the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.
As a mission, it’s a toughie, putting the generally-accepted FPS conventions to one-side in favour of a genuinely unsettling re-creation of the Normandy landings themselves, which basically means you will die. A lot. And when you don’t, it’s probably because you got lucky.
This is a walkthrough, of sorts, so if you don’t want to know what happens, or receive vague advice about how to proceed, click the back button on your browser as quickly as your index finger can manage.
1: After a few seconds of calm, things start to get choppy. One of the other landing craft gets blown out of the water before you’ve even arrived. Your colleagues look and sound very scared indeed.
2: We made it this far – but we’re still in the water and there’s gunfire raining down on us. At this stage just be grateful you weren’t the guy at the front.
3: Right about now you start to wonder how the hell you’ll ever make it more than five yards, let alone all the way up the beach. While you’re having that thought, there’s the sight of your dying colleagues and the sound of the ones that are still alive panicking to take in, and then, before you know it, you’re dead yourself. And you never even got to five yards.
4: Reload and repeat a few times until you figure out a way to get to one of those big metal things (okay, you caught me: I have a degree in History) which will shield you from harm. Try to ignore all of the corpses and be thankful that there’s no blood in this game.
5: Keep moving forward while using these for cover.
6: Made it! But it appears that something vital has been left on the battlefield. “Powell [that’s you], go back down there and grab those bangalores!” You bloody get them.
7: Apparently, bangalores are a type of torpedo deployed via a long tube, and are primarily used to clear a path. Here’s our path being cleared.
8: We now have to run across a gap where two machine gunners are waiting to pick us off. These two chaps are going ahead of me. Sorry to say, I don’t like their chances.
9: Okay, so now he’s asking you to do the exact same thing that just got your two buddies killed. But, you don’t really have a choice. The best thing to do is run for a crater, and pick off the gunners with a sniper rifle, before legging it to a nearby trench.
10: Safety! Or not. This guy is dying, but takes his last few breaths to inform you there’s another machine gunner waiting for you around the corner. Buggeration.
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