Some Stats:

1. Departure - 62m 5s, 460 kills,


2. Artifact - 75m 41s - 484 kills,


3. Catherine - 81m 16s - 557 kills,


4. Didact's Hand - 76m 27s - 546 kills,


5. Memento Mori - 71m 35s. 650 kills,


6. Scattered - 88m 5s - 565 kills,


7. Invasion - 78m 2s - 720 kills,


8. Expendable - 75m 26s - 480 kills,


9. Key - 92m 11s - 660 kills,


10. Exodus - 97m 14s - 507 kills,

Total: 798m 2s (13h 18m 2s) - 5,539 kills
Average: 15m 58s - 111 kills

Awards

• Longest Mission: 22:59 - 9:5-The Hammer (Waiting for cinematics, spammed watchers and crawlers, difficult Knight placements, retreating for ammo)


• Shortest Mission: 7:50 - 8:2-Majestic Rescue - (avoided several waves, all objectives available immediately)


• Most Kills in a Mission: 189 - 9:3-Science Mountain (Scorpion Tank on Apex rampage)


• Least Kills in a Mission: 13 - 8:2-Majestic Rescue (objectives first, avoided spawns, allies kills)


• Most used Primary Weapon: DMR (off-spawn. often infinite ammo/refills. Powerful, high zoom. Consistent damage.


• Most used Secondary Weapon: Plasma Pistol (off-spawn. Highly available in many missions. Good against Knights, Elites and Vehicles. Indispensable. Also, probably overpowered)


• Most Used Vehicle: Wraith (sometimes dropped, often stolen. Made several missions 'Race for the Wraith')


• Most Used Armour Ability: Regeneration Field (shield recharge feels a bit long and there are so many enemies you need to keep your defenses up).


• Best Map: Apex (good looking and multi-pathed map, paired with fun missions that have strong concepts)


• Worst map: The Gate (from Requiem - too many enemies, too small, cluttered layout with no good places to fall back to)


• Most Firefight-like mission: 4:5-Didact's Gift on Galileo Base (arcadey: infinite rocket/snipe, but still fun)


• Most Campaign-like mission: 10:5-One Last Time (no drop pods! Yay!!!)


• Most Obviously Broken mission: 5:1-Spartan Miller (don't kill enemies and let time run out!)


• Most "feels like filler" mission: 9:4-Out the Other (illogical set-up and literally undo everything you did on 9:2-In One Way)


• Last Completed Mission: 6:3-Need to Know on Warrens. It took me awhile to reacquaint myself with the Banshee. Plus there are tons of enemies at several points packed close together.


• Most Annoying Enemy: Crawlers of all types. But especially Binary Crawlers (fast and low, awkward to headshot.


• Most Recurring Map Design Flaw: Exiting a long corridor with little internal cover to a wider open area filled with enemies all in range of the corridor exit (Worst Offender: The Refuge)


• Most annoying vehicle: Super-Large Drop Pods (usually means the designer has run out of ideas and just wants to get more enemies in there quick)


• Strangest Exploit: On 4:3-Random Transport on Fortress, you are dropped right into a group of enemies at the start. This is terrible design so, to compensate you are given a few seconds of invincibility. I literally stand there getting pelted and take out 3 Beam Rifle Jackals and an FRG General Elite before moving to somewhere safer.


• Funnest Skill Perfected: Assassinating Sword Elites by running past their right side and spinning (even easier than jumping over their heads, and I can do it against camoed ones now quite easily.


• Controllers Broken: Slightly damaged one. Now has a tendency to look left at neutral, and I could swear it turns slower when looking right.

Thoughts:
I have say, when I started this journey more than 4 months ago, I wasn't sure it was even possible. I was almost certain there would be a mission here or there that would throw just one too many enemies at you, with just a little too much aggressiveness, with just too few ammo and options. Not so! Obviously player skill plays a huge part in it (he said, without self-aggrandizing at all), but most of the missions held up surprisingly well when going for no deaths. So I commend 343i for that success.

Generally this meant playing conservatively, from far away, and exploiting all the ammo dumps and quirks in the pathing of the AI. This was because generally speaking, the design didn't allow anything else. Very occasionally there were flashes of something much better: a fight skipped by aggressive running. Fights made easier by smart weapon management and good map knowledge. Creative positioning paying off.

A lot of what I experienced reinforced what I had already thought much earlier on, but I am now utterly convinced that the Plasma Pistol is totally overpowered and needs significant nerfing. Noob Combo rules the day 99% of the time. Honestly, it over shadows the Storm Rifle in both accuracy and power in normal shots, can overcharge for insta-shield break on ANY rank of enemy and EMPs vehicles. At the very least, the vehicle EMP feature needs splitting off into a separate weapon so you have to make a choice between being good against shielded enemies or vehicles (and not 'Noob Combo beats everything').

Considering it is only one of two weapons that has a secondary fire (the other being boltshot), I think it might even be an idea to split 'small, rapid-fire plasma-based weapon' and 'overcharged, tracking plasma bolts' into two weapons. This would allow covenant enemies to be differentiated more naturally into those who do/do not use the overcharge feature of the PP currently.

I think Halo needs to get back to more of that 'meaningful choice' that the two-weapon restriction is based on. The primary weapons (loadout) badly need rethinking too. The DMR is overpowered - and I know most people know this already in terms of PvP balance, but it's true a hundred times more for PvE.

They need better, more strongly defined trade-offs - disadvantages for their strengths. Of which the DMR basically had none. The missions on Sniper Alley particularly highlighted that, rather than using smart positioning, weapon management and combos, I was just standing way back and dumping ammo into the Elites. If it's going to be so available, with the accuracy and the zoom, the power needs to be way down: turn it into a headshot machine like the M6/SOCOM from Halo 3: ODST. Or if it's going to keep the power, then lower the availability and make it a temporary upgrade rifle that sits somewhere between the Snipers and a more available rifle like the BR.

I think there needs to be a mid-long range shield stripper that doesn't headshot. The Focus Rifle in Reach kinda filled this role, funnily enough. Kinda like a Plasma Rifle with a scope. So you can have the range against infantry, but again you need to combo it with something (a headshot machine) to conserve ammo and reduce kill-time. Then you ideally sacrifice close-range and against vehicles.

Strangely, with the Storm Rifle and Suppressor, when I very, very, infrequently used them, it was better to simply keep firing at the enemy with them than to switch to a headshot weapon. The weapon-switch was so long and you already had them suppressed with your fire to an extent, and Knights still had that face-mask to break through anyway. This is obviously a balance for multiplayer so people have three weapons they can effectively spray and pray with rather than one, but it is still lame. A Plasma Rifle, in ye-olde Halo, was best when comboed with a melee from extreme close range, for example.

Oh, btw, that 'slow down when getting shot' mechanic? Hate it. Hated it on day 1. Hate it even more now. It punishes you for trying to be aggressive, for being proactive, for trying to run away. It only promotes cover shooting. I don't like flinching either - it ruins my aim which is especially debilitating against the repeat-headshots you need against Knights.

Well, I have a list of improvements I'd like to see in a 'Season 2' that I'll post sometime. But generally: bigger budget, more time, follow Reach or ODST formula closer, less contrived, more professional characters, more campaign-like, more replayable, give players something to strive for. Probably focus on fewer, better missions - as you can see, it was taking me well over an hour for each episode as is. 343i shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people play it Solo, because I think it's actually best like that. In co-op the DMR spam is just more overpowering and hence the combat less satisfying.

I've still got more than half of the videos for these runs yet to make and post. So I'll be at it a while yet :P