Hammer and Sickle Walkthru: 1: Introduction 2: General hints and tips 3: Walkthrough stage by stage
2: General hints and tips. On the first time you play this game I cannot emphasize enough that you need to play through on the easy difficulty. It is even advisable to go through the custom game settings and bump all of the difficulty levels down to the lowest possible. You will still die frequently, just not as frustratingly as the sniper you didn't see across the map snipes you dead three times in a row. If you are a glutton for punishment you can try the hard level after you have beaten it and know what to do and have a feel for how the ai responds in combat. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME THE FIRST TIME THROUGH ON ANY THING EXCEPT WITH THE SAVE ANYWHERE OPTION ON. The only reward is extra points at the end of the game, and otherwise does not affect anything except your frustration level. Also, turn on the easiest healing option. The skill based selection is just exasperating and doesn't offer much reward for choosing it. Also, save the game just before completing an objective or talking to a quest important character or the radio to report the end of a mission. Label this save and do not erase it. You will often find a need to backtrack as there are several spots in the game that if you do not act promptly or make the right decision you will be stuck with the "bad" ending. Find a good weapon and stick with it. Towards the end you will find some extremely powerful weapons, but until then stick with the basic equipment you find early in the game. You find perfectly adequate sniper rifles and sub machine guns early, and you should keep them with the weapon familiarity bonus feature, which rewards you with extra accuracy for keeping the same weapon. Find a weapon with a high durability, a low weight, a low as possible action point use amount and then good range and damage. Keep this weapon and resist the temptation to change every time you see a new one. One critical shot in the head with the extra accuracy from a familiar weapon is more than worth the few extra damage points from that fancy new fire hose you found. (This excludes the MG42, the best machine gun in the game and a must buy as soon as you find it.) Don't overload your characters. Even being a few % points overloaded will drastically lower your AP points in combat. You can even overload yourself to the point that you will be unable to act. You don't need a lot of money in this game (About 15000 is more than enough to get everything you need) Don't feel obligated to lug everything you can to the shop, as many times you will be ambushed on the way. It really sucks to beat a tough combat, only to walk into another laden like a donkey and be unable to act for the first turn. Sometimes you must overload your machine gunner or point man with body armor, but a 150% should be the absolute max that you should have. Your characters will complain and let you know right away when they think they are carrying too much. Listen to them. Use Machine Guns. These weapons have the highest penetration values of any weapon other than explosives. You can use one character (a scout) to spot the enemy, and then use your machine gunner under cover to shoot right through walls, bushes, trees and even houses to reach your target. A couple bullets from a MG are usually more than enough to put down several opponents. It's quite satisfying, try it some time. The heavy mg bullets don't deflect like the smaller rifle and especially smg bullets do. Don't be afraid of grenades either. There are a large amount to choose from and they provide good area effect damage, can blow down walls and even floors to provide new entry points and snipe opportunities. They also can go over cover that would stop a bullet. Choose any character you want, but the game provides you with a soldier that is a better medic than your character even as a surgeon will ever be and a good engineer early in the game. You also get a good grenadier midway. You don't get a good sniper unless you screw up though, and you don't get a scout until very late. The scout makes for a much easier game experience, in my opinion, and the sniper for a very powerful one. The scout can hide and provide spotting for other units, who can blaze away without fear of being spotted (and shot at;p) and the sniper can pick away at approaching units well before they become dangerous. These two are my recommended choices. Don't be afraid to start combat even in non-hostile situations. All this does is put you into an ap based style for fighting and movement. It doesn't affect npc reactions to you but as some of the scenarios are time based and have enemy reinforcements after a set time, using the combat mode gives you unlimited time to decide tactics, pick up weapons and heal your characters. Whenever you want to peruse a new weapon, or examine a new map, press the start combat button to give yourself some breathing room. Use cover! Enemy characters will go around rather than blow up cover, and will often miss you even in mediocre protection. Crouch behind walls; hide behind buildings and doors, run back into the woods even. He that chickens out and runs away lives to chicken out another day. Also, leave yourself some AP points after a turn. Interrupts can turn the tide of a tough battle and give you a free pot shot at an unsuspecting enemy. Also, do not leave yourself wide open just to get off one more shot at a baddie. You'll just get shot to doll ribbons. Machine gun running; normally characters can't run with a machine gun unless they have the Rambo perk. To get around this hold z and click the walk to button. Then hold z and double click where you want to go. It doesn't always work, but some times you can get your machine gunner to run instead of walk. Hit escape to stop his action if he starts to walk to the desired location and try again.
3: Walkthrough Insertion: This is a very tough and frustrating level and indeed has driven off more than one person who started the game. The first level is probably one of the toughest levels of the whole game. Suck it up. The game does the opposite of most games and gets easier instead of harder as you progress. The border guard commander tells you that he will distract the US border guards so that you can clip the wire and run across. Immediately go into stealth mode and stay near the bottom edge of the map. As warned, even the soviet troops will shoot at you, and in your early weak state you can only take one or two shots before dying. After the tank rushes the border clip the wire and crawl or crouch in stealth mode towards the exit. If you hear your character say that he's been spotted go into combat mode and run for your life to the exit. You are probably dead anyways, but it's worth a try. If you use the scout character, choose see in the dark and hide in the dark perks. This makes this level much easier. Otherwise, get prepared to probably load a couple times, as the border guards will see you without you seeing them and kill you with one or two shots. It often takes several loads to beat this tough and unfair level, one that should have been toned down in player testing. Just before you get to the exit equip any grenades that you have and a dagger if you have one, you will be dropped into a combat on the next level and if you already have them equipped it will give you a few extra action points for combat. There is really nothing else to do on this level. Perhaps a lucky soldier on the easiest setting could defeat the border guards, but your character is so weak to start that it would be unlikely at best. A very good scout without scruples could probably sneak into the soviet side guard house to loot the two lockers there, but it would be very difficult to do. Just sneak through is all you need to do.
Firing Squad: (The stages don't actually have names; I'm just naming them as I see appropriate). In this stage you walk upon your contact being shot by firing squad. There goes a chance for a clandestine meeting. Next they bring out a woman dressed in bloody fatigues and shoot her as well. Your timing sucks, as this is where you walk out, almost directly behind them. (It sure would have been nice to have been about five minutes earlier). You are pitted against five armed guards and your only advantage is that their backs are to you and you have the advantage with the first round. Relax; this is the last cattle pen combat with few options that you will have to fight. There are basically only two ways to win this fight. Your character is too poor of a shot to get a critical on all of them, and even if you had a SMG it is unlikely that you could kill more than two or three of them on the first round. If you have a surgeon character you can take a shot of Benzedrine and this will give you about 200+ action points, enough to get them with melee attacks if you are lucky. However, your best bet is to use grenades. You equipped them in the mission just before like I asked didn't you? Now you will have them ready to use without the cost of AP. Crouch to get the best accuracy with grenades and throw one at the leftmost soldier in the group of three on the right. You should have one more grenade. Throw this one at Captain Treadwell if your last one did not stun him, and if it did throw it at the soldier at the far left. This will stun all of them for usually several rounds. Run up and grab any weapon that they dropped and pot them away at extreme close range or finish them off with melee attacks. If both your grenades miss you might as well start over, as you are dead. After you beat them immediately run and grab the woman that was shot and carry her into the first room on the right of the house in front of you. There is a surgeon there that will tell you what has been happening. Don't be a cheap skate; pay to have him heal the woman. She will join you the next day, and is probably the best character in the whole game. She is a good sniper and a great medic (better than your character even as a surgeon will be for a long time). You would be dumb to pass her up as she will cost you only 150 a week. As soon as you do this, run across to the house across the street. Resist the temptation to pick up the rifles your enemies dropped, only pick up the pistol the captain dropped. When you get to the other side a citizen will call out to you. If you left all the rifles the citizen will form a defense brigade that will help you in the upcoming combat. As your character is about as strong as baby milk you need all the help you can get. Run to the back of the garage. There is a tree there that is in between the house and the fence. Equip the pistol and go into hiding mode. If you are lucky three baddies will drop right into your lap, surprised, and give you one free round on them. If you stayed close to the tree they will be easy shots for the pistol you found. Shoot each one in the head and collect their weapons. Run up to the fence and help your comrades pot away at the enemies, using the fence and tree for cover. If there is a surprised look on the icon above your enemies head you can rush them without fear of being interrupted. Run back into the house if several of them congregate fire on you. Your civilian defense forces are quite good shots and are tough. They can almost defeat the sentinels without help, and after this fight they will never help again, so don't be afraid to let them carry their own weight. After you beat the sentinels (there are ten of them) go into loot mode and take what you want. The SMLE is a good rifle that you can outfit a scope on, making it good enough to carry you through the entire game. The Sten smg isn't bad either; scoop one of those up. Talk to Conrad and accept his mission (you don't have to do it, and you have to kill him if you outright refuse). He gives you a new location which is where his competition is, and he wants you to assassinate them. Go to sleep on the upstairs bed until morning and then go down and collect Elizabeth into your team. Go back upstairs to talk to command on the radio to get some experience points; do this after you have completed any major objective as you usually will get more. Congrats, you are now done with this very tough level.
Special burn victims unit: Travel to the hideout on the map. You will come up to a fence and a thug standing guard behind it. You don't have to start this one violently unless you want to. Talk to the guard and he will tell you that you have to disarm if you want to see Sigmund. Put your guns out of active inventory and walk up to the left shed. Sigmund the Crispy is there (I love his accent). He offers you a job stealing some dynamite from a convoy. Agree and he will give you the services of Larry, an ex Hitler youth. Larry isn't a bad shot, but not as good as Elizabeth. He is the first engineer that you get however. The bandits have some nice loot, but if you attack them now or walk past the fence with weapons Larry turns against you, and you lose Sigmund as a source of income. Leave instead for the convoy; you only have five hours to spare.
Thugs R us: You are interrupted in a forest by Mr. Klaus, a local gangster and his men. He demands some vig moola if you are to operate in his territory. If you have a smart character you can talk him into helping you with the convoy. As he waits until several rounds of combat to help and wants the hefty price of $2000 to help he is not worth the hassle unless you want to cheat him out of the money. You can also give him the rest of your money if you want to avoid combat. The final result is to just show this small time hood what a couple of professionals think of ignorant bullies and just open up on him. You will get the first round of combat and it is more than enough for the three of you to stomp all of them. I really don't know why every npc acts so afraid of him. However you decide to finish your business with him next down to the cabin in the corner, there you will meet Forrester, the only character that will modify your weapons and that will sell you engineering tools. Do not waste your time trying to open the basement door, as it is unpickable for Larry or your character even as an engineer. You could blow it open, but as this usually detonates the propane tanks and destroys his house, Forrester gets understandably shooting mad if you do so. Forrester talks of a desperado that he is harboring, and there is a chest of weapons down there that belongs to the man. Don't try to steal them; you will get them for free a little later. Have some patience, as there is nothing else of value in the basement. Have Forrester put a scope on your SMLE and if nothing else get a silencer on one of your weapons (a silenced weapon is crucial for a scout). I would advise against sawing down any weapons. Basically all you get is a very powerful pistol that is not very accurate. Sawed off weapons do look cool though. Forrester will only work on one weapon at a time; he isn't cheap, and you only have five hours until the convoy leaves, so don't try to upgrade all your weapons now. You can go to the portapotty and read the smg manual you found at the house across the street from the firing squad to pass the time. Make sure that Larry has at least two and preferably three grenades and leave.
Convoy: Your character will send Larry or Elizabeth to the house on the left and keep the other to help him. Either way, as soon as the opening scene closes, run your two characters to the middle of the map in a clearing in the forest (you might have to restart to tweak the exact position). This sets you up to get free shots at about four soldiers on the first round. Don't fret; they are Thor agents, not British troops as your main character first thinks they are. If Elizabeth is in the house on the left use her to comfortably snipe the enemies around the first jeep. Just make sure to leave enough action points to interrupt any soldiers that come charging around the Jeep. If Larry is in the house though, he is too poor of a shot to kill all of the soldiers around the jeep without getting shot up. Quietly mine the window you are at and the door to the left with grenades (you did give Larry several grenades didn't you?). Run through the next door to the left, close it behind you and mine it as well. Stay outside the explosion radius of the grenade and fire off a shot into the wall. The enemies around the jeep will come into the house to investigate. By the time they set off the grenade on the second room they will probably be dazed and have dropped their weapon as well, easy meat for Larry's pistol. One time I had critically injured the last of them, and they tried to run out the entrance door to the house that I had just mined. Kaboom! The enemy went flying, much to my satisfaction. Alternatively, you could have made a deal with Klaus and let him soften things up for you, otherwise just use cover, try not to attack more than two enemies at a time and finish off the opposition. Be careful not to overload your troops, you are going right into another combat as soon as you finish this level. You can always come back later to get the weapons you left behind. Don't forget to get the uniforms and I.D. that are left.
Checkpoint: By now you see how dastardly the enemy is. They are dressing up in soviet uniforms to attack U.S. checkpoints. Keel tham awl!! One is hiding in the little bathroom/bunker structure to the top. If you beat the convoy you shouldn't have much trouble with them. After you beat them run into the guardhouse (watch out for booby traps) to talk to the drunk in there. He will tell you what happened. Gather up as much weapons as you can carry as you will be able to sell them now to either Conrad or Sigmund. Do this in combat time, as reinforcements are coming from the US, and they will quite happily shoot it out with you. This is counterproductive. Just run to the edge of the map and leave.
Decision Time: Now you have to decide who you want to give the dynamite to. Conrad just annoyed me, and you really don't need him anymore, so I took the truck to Sigmund. You could be sneaky and have Larry take a nap, go and bump off Sigmund and collect the reward from Conrad, but I never tried this. Whoever you choose sell off all the unwanted goods, returning to the Convoy level to pick up everything that you were unable to last time. When you are ready, go and talk to command on the radio to get orders for Z-berg.
Z-berg: Before you go to Z-berg outfit all your troops in allied uniforms. If you send anyone there in soviet or civilian clothes the local police will arrest you. You can bribe your way out once, but the next time they take all your money, weapons and possessions and throw you in jail. If there is a way out, I could not figure it out. Starting a fight with your comrades will alert the guards and they will come into the cell area, but they are too smart to actually come inside the cell. You can also fight it out with them, but after you finish off all the police the occupation forces rush in to duke it out with you. Save yourself some grief and put on allied uniforms. Z-berg is the biggest town in the game, but the only thing you can do at this time is talk to the bartender, who is in the basement of the first building on the left. He tells you of a suspicious English man upstairs that leaves every night on some secretive business. If you try to go into his house during the day he calls the police on you for trespassing, yet if you try to go in at night you find that the doors are too difficult for Larry to pick the locks on. Don't be stupid and try to machine gun or blow the doors down, the police look down upon such behavior. You need a master engineer and lock picker. You need Fidel. Leave Z-berg and go back to the Convoy area. There you will see allied troops arresting a bearded man with a Spanish accent. They blame him for blowing the convoy up. You learn that he is being taken to the allied prison. Get ready for a jail break.
Prison: If you really want to be devious, go back to whoever you chose to be your weapon supplier and buy a bunch of cheap weapons. Drop one in front of each cell, you will see why in just a few minutes. Go to the back of the prison near where you started and clip the wire fence there before you do anything. Go upstairs to the second block level and look for Fidel, who is dressed in black and is in the cell on the upper right corner as you come up the stairs. Ignore the safe; there is nothing worth duking it out with the guards over. Position one behind the guard in front of his cell, and another behind the guard near the stairs. Take your main character and give him a lock pick and position him directly in front of the cell. If you have a couple shots of Benzedrine now would be a good time to get them out. Have your two characters behind the guards take a shot of Benzedrine and knock the two stationary guards out as soon as the patrolling guard is on the other side of the cell block from you. Pick the lock on the cell and get ready for a scrap. You don't have to fight all of the guards. When you opened the cell it short circuited all the other cells and freed all of the other prisoners. If you dropped weapons in front of their cells, they are ready to make life miserable for the guards. Have your main character get out a shot of Benzedrine and talk to Fidel. If your main character's medicine level is too low to use Benzedrine, you might have to have Elizabeth administer it to you and jockey positions around. You don't have to use the drug; it just makes this level easier. After talking to Fidel administer a shot of Benzedrine to both of you and haul booty for the edge of the level where you started from. Run down the stairs out the back door and through the wire you cut earlier. You finish the level and Fidel leaves you for Forrester's. Meet him back there, he will have outfitted himself with the weapons he had down in the basement. Buy an advanced lock pick, put him in an allied soldiers outfit, and head back to Z-berg.
Return to Z-berg. Wait until night to sneak into the Englishman's house. You could do it during the day in combat mode, but you might as well wait until he is gone. Give Fidel the advanced lock picks and have him pick the front door to the house, and then the Englishman's quarters. Have Fidel remove the booby traps from the safe and the chest in the bedroom and then lock pick them open. You learn of a terrorist plot and find a bunch of passes and allied uniforms inside. You also find a picture that you do not understand. You really don't need the passes to win the game, but if you want to you can take the passes to Conrad's mother, (Upstairs of Conrad's house). She will tell you about Gunter, who can make you some allied passes. Gunter is by some bookshelves outside of the house of the corrupt Englishman. You only need three passes, as you already have one from the convoy, but you might as well get all four. Take the picture to Forrester, who will identify it for you as the water scoops at Wenzburg. He will advise you to take the train there, as it will save you lots of time. You must do this immediately. If you try to go anywhere else other than Z-berg and get on the train to Wenzburg you will be too late to stop the terrorist attack on the pumps. This leads the allied forces into believing the soviets are behind the attacks and causes WW3. This leads to a level where Elizabeth leaves and you get a couple of soviet soldiers to help you hold a bridge against US troops which once beaten results in the ending of atomic warfare. You can tell that this game was Russian made, as I think the final is a little overly optimistic as to how the Russians would have done against the allies without atomic weapons themselves. Interesting, but you want the good ending, don't you? Talk to the head engineer of the rail road and to go to Wenzburg. He is a jerk and charges you $600 to go. You could be cheap and try to intimidate him in to letting you on for free, but if you fail you have no choice but to hoof it. Don't worry; he gets his just rewards later in the game. Bring your passes and make sure that everyone is in allied uniforms.
Wenzburg: If you were cheap and did not want to buy the passes you would be well advised to go into combat mode as soon as you enter town. If you stay in regular mode a patrol of US troops comes up and asks you for your papers. Your character can bluff his way out if he has a high intelligence but you need not bother. Just go into combat mode and use action points to get to where you are going. The guards will never be able to catch up to you to pester for passes. This is another large map, but there is only three points of interest for you. In the mega large building in front of you there is a weapons locker that holds the only heavy body armor that I have found in the game. Put it on Fidel unless your character is stronger than him. The heavy body armor is just that...heavy. It will put a weak character over the weight limit just by itself. A large safe holds some allied uniforms (Clothing must be expensive, as it is never for sale). Just pick the lock on both, right under the noses of the guards there. They notice your uniforms and think that you belong. The last thing to do is go to the blue shaded area to the left of this large map. Assemble your squad there and prepare for combat.
Water Scoop and drains: You are dumped onto the ending scene of a battle. Hammer troops have killed the workers and the guards and are doing something odd to the water holding tanks with large unidentified canisters. There is no reason to hold back on these dupes. Blast them all, your characters are starting to get more powerful and should be starting to have less trouble in combat. The only problem area is in the plant itself. If you climb down the ladder you will likely be seen and shot off. If you go through the large roll down door you will be blasted as soon as you poke your head around the corner. Position one character over the ladder and then have another one go outside and throw a powerful grenade at the door. The enemy inside will be distracted by the explosion. Sneak down the ladder to blast the remaining opposition. Immediately go into combat mode and do not exit it. US reinforcements finally arrive and they see only you to blame. Don't stick around to mount your legal defense. The journal tells you to scoop up all evidence of soviet involvement (the hammer troops were planting Russian weapons, cigarettes and most notable, canisters of cyanide with Russian labeling). I never picked up the poison and was still able to get a favorable ending, use your own judgment. That darn poison is big and heavy and will weigh down your troops. In the basement of the water plant is a trench with a manhole in it. Gather your troops there. This brings you to the drains. This basically is a sewer system leading out of the plant and is your only exit. Crouch or walk, don't run and you should be able to take out the hammer troops guarding the exit without interrupts. If you brought some mine probes you can disarm and gather some of the mines that are down here, but you can either just walk around them or shoot them (there must have been a mine sale at Thugs R Us, as there are a bunch of them). The only difficult section is a guard post. You will recognize it by the chest in the corner. If your character walks around the concrete wall it you will likely be interrupted and shot for your pains. Take Fidel with his machinegun and use it to shoot through the wall at the enemies there or just whip some grenades around the corner. The chest is mined, and will blow if you hit it with blasts or bullets, so be careful if you can. There is some hammer uniforms inside, but I was unable to find a use for them. Not much stops you from the exit, so like exit this place dude.
Water scoop exit: You surprise a hammer soldier here. His name is Siegfried and if you are willing to jump through a couple hoops, he will make a valuable addition to your party. Your character knocks him out, all you have to do is pick up his body and carry him to the exit. Use combat time, as some very unhappy US troops are coming out of the drains right behind you. Carry him to the exit and leave for your home base. Siegfried is a grenadier and very strong. He is a good packhorse and a good recipient for the heavy body armor. He promises his loyalty to your party and as he points out, where can he go? He can't go back to the hammers without being shot and the allies would put him right in jail. His only hope is with you and he makes a valuable addition. Give him a chance. His hands were crippled by his treatment by my main character, but that soon heals. He tells you the location of the local hammer headquarters. I would advise you to buy whatever you want from Sigmund, Conrad or Forrester now, as you will not get another chance. I would advise to pick up a rocket launcher with some reloads now, any body armor, some dynamite and make sure that Fidel has some lock picks. You may have to go to Sigmund or Forrester before going to your home base, because once Siegfried tells you of the hammer headquarters, you have to go there immediately or they will abandon it.
Hammer sub headquarters. The hammer troops here are no tougher than any others that you have faced, but they use a deceptive wrinkle on you that they plan to use to start the war. Some of them have disguised as civilians and will creep up behind you. As soon as they are right behind you they will unload with their machine pistol, usually killing the character they followed. You can't just go blasting all of the civilians either, as some of them are innocent and give vital information after the combat. If you see a civilian following you too closely do not turn your back on them and do go in pairs or in groups of three. If you can catch one trying to attack you let them have it. They have a very nice machine pistol which is very light, reasonably accurate and with low action point cost. Shoot all of the hammer opposition and you will find that they have already started partially evacuating. Question the local citizens and you will find that they have not gone far. Head back to home base. The informative cut scene after leaving forecasts trouble. V-, a fellow H&S gamer I met on game spot says that if you give the hammers time to evacuate that you do not egg the hammer command into killing all your friends. I have not tried it yet.
Bashed Bandits: If you want to get the most powerful machinegun in the game, go to Sigmund's and Forrester's first. At Sigmund's, leave two characters in the forest clearing on the bottom left and two on the bottom right. Equip them with grenades and either a smg or a pistol. Send your main character in to investigate the compound. Sigmund has been killed by the hammer troops who will happily show you the power of a long volley by the MG42. The entire place is impressively shot to rags. Poor Larry is quite upset by the death of his foster father; give him revenge. Immediately go into combat time and run to help the team on the left. If you positioned them correctly they will be right on top two squads of hammer troops. Here you can learn why cops carry pistols, as someone with good accuracy can dispatch most of the villains with headshots in just one round. Grenades work well too, as they can stun for several rounds. After you have wiped them out hide in the tree line until the troop group in the upper left corner works their way down to you. You should be able to snipe them without much difficulty. Usually the named characters carry a neat or original weapon. One of them usually has a either the MG34 or the FG42. Either of these weapons is very powerful and you should take them now. Now leave for the sad scene at Forrester's
Forrester's: Like Sigmund, Forrester has suffered at the hands of hammer troops. Hide your troops in the tree line behind the cabin and use the outhouse and the bottom edge of the cabin for cover. Send Fidel in with a machine gun to inspect the damage. A machine gun motorcycle pulls up, immediately send Fidel through the basement door (you will have to pick the lock) and hide for cover half way down the basement stairs. You will now see why I asked you to do so. The MG car opens up and destroys the front of Forrester's house, and if you had been inside, you would be gone too. Hide in the tree line and pick off advancing troops, using one character to spot and having Fidel shoot volley fire through the walls at the troops he cannot see. Don't be afraid to retreat behind the cabin/outhouse if things get too hot. By now your characters should be getting fairly powerful and you shouldn't have much trouble winning. Oddly, Fidel doesn't bemoan Forrester's death; he either is a stoic or an ingrate. Take your pick of the weapons from your fallen enemies, now it is time to go home.
Havoc at Home: As soon as you enter you see one of your poor civilian defense dudes get tossed through a window by a SMG blast. The hammer forces have arrived and have killed everyone except for Henry, the doctor. You will be ambushed from either side of the road if you walk up it; enter either house one at a time and sneak around for a little house to house combat. Don't be afraid to keep your Machine gunner outside to shoot through the walls at spotted enemies. These houses looked like downtown Detroit before you arrived; demolishing them would just save construction crews money. As you approach the main house you see an explosion and an enemy scout running away. He has just destroyed your radio, and with it your only hope of contacting your base and warning them of hammer's plans. Buy what you need from Henry (the bullet extractor is nice, and a couple benzedrines); you won't be coming back. Gather everything you think you will want to keep; it is time for a new headquarters.
Z-burg part 3: Leave and go to the only place left to really go, the Convoy again. You will have another cut scene that has Siegfried telling you of another radio in an old Nazi base beneath the police station in Z-burg. You really have no choice but to go back. You can go nuts and blow a hole in the police station floor if you like, and sure enough there is a manhole in the hidden basement down there, but the police tend to look poorly upon having their headquarters dynamited. There is a quieter way. Go down into the sewers, you will find a wall that has a lot of rubble in front of it and looks bricked up and different from the rest of the sewer. Get everybody well out of harms way and toss either a powerful grenade or some dynamite at the wall. It will open up to reveal a small room with a skeleton in front of a vault door. There is a code lock there as well as a scrap of note paper near the skeleton. Your character will question Siegfried about it and he will act a little uncomfortable. He eventually will give you the code to the door lock. Enter, and you will find out why Siegfried was a little nervous. You find a hidden bunker with some good weapons, a working radio and a pay book that proves that Siegfried was a member of the SS, a notorious Nazi group during WW2. Your group gets quite worked up and clamor for his blood. You have the choice of killing him, but he has been quite useful so far and you need every hand you can get for the last battle. I advise forgiving him, especially since he gets on his knees and begs for his life. Don't repay cruelty with cruelty. Radio control; they tell you to go back to Wenzburg and meet up with the agent there alone. You automatically disengage from your group. Bring a couple of grenades if you chose the grenadier as your character, otherwise bring the rocket launcher. They might prove useful.
Wenzburg revisited: Ride the train again to Wenzburg, paying the gouging engineer for the ride. He'll be sorry soon. Go to the first house on the left, opening the window from the back of the house. Leave it open and talk to the man in black. This is Pavel, the first scout that will join your group. Tell him what is happening, he will leave to see what he finds out. When he returns, he notices something is wrong, you have been followed by hammer troops! These mooks start out by taking it out on anybody they see, including what I think is the gouging engineer from the train. You can just run to the back window and to the bottom of the map with Pavel to end this level, or you can fight for some exp. Points. Hehe, I bet I know by now what you choose. If you are a grenadier you might be able to wing a couple grenades out the window or front door at the truck full of hammer troops. Be careful, it is dangerous to poke your head into view. Failing that, you can just blast them with a rocket or two from the launcher you brought. The first time I successfully fought I positioned Pavel on the far left of the house and my character on the right. Pavel has a crappy little pistol but he is a great shot with it. Position him by the corner of the house and wait for hammer troops to get to the corner. With the silent run perk your scout can usually pop around the corner and kill them with headshots(as you might have figured out by now, pistols make up for their poor range and penetration by having a low ap cost). I also had fun once by mining the path I knew the hammer troops were going to take(You don't get a lot of chances to effectively use mines). Whatever you decide, just leave after killing the hammer soldiers. Otherwise you once again have to shoot it out with US reinforcements. Not productive, just scram.
Airport Ambush: By now you are probably skittish about waiting too long to attack the airport that Pavel mentions. Don't worry, you have enough time to go back and get the rest of your troops, you will need them. Sneak a sniper to the top of the control tower and then sneak your troops into the lower building. You should have an interesting running gunfight here. Use the skills you have picked up so far, you should have no problem by now, as your characters are quite powerful. Defeat all of the troops here to collect the secret documents you have worked so hard for. Head back to headquarters to prepare for the final mission. On the way back you have a cut scene with Elizabeth. She reveals that she is a CIA spy, but that she is working for the good guys. She admits that corrupt CIA officers are part of the scheme but she requests that you trust her by giving her some of the papers to take back to her superiors and prove that terrorists are trying to incite war. If you don't give them to her she will attack you. Use your best judgment; I gave them to her and got the good ending. It might be possible to not give them to her and knock her out with the tranquilizer dart, but I never tried it. She leaves with a parting flirt, and the ending of the game hints that your character and she was an item. Hey, she might be about a 6 pack of beer from being beautiful, but she is talented and had to put up with being the only girl in your party. Let her live and go back to your team in Z-berg.
Final Hammer Headquarters: If you have killed all the hammer units at the first headquarters there will be none here. There are some good weapons and medical items in the bunker, but they are trapped. No problem for Fidel if you have a mine probe. Nothing else to see here folks, go to the mine entrance. Once in you will be spotted and a door will slam behind you. No way but forward. If you have a scout, join Pavel with silenced weapons and shoot out the lights in the mine. Then just sneak forward crouching in stealth mode and snipe at the various troops in the mine with silenced weapons. Around the first corner to the right you will see a hole on the left wall that you can crawl through. Crawl through with Pavel and your character if he is a scout and silently shoot your way to the room that overlooks the room the bomb is in. Push the buttons to open up the control grates and then have your grenadier (Siegfried is one) get as far away as possible and either lob grenades at the bomb until it is destroyed or shoot it with a rocket launcher. Work your way quietly to the ladder at the end of the mine, this level is done.
American Assault: This is the last enchilada and is a fairly tough battle. Not only are you outnumbered, but one of the Russian officers must be kept alive for you to report to at the end of the battle. By now you probably have your own style of combat, just remember that there are phony American troops at the top left and the far right of the map (looking as the Russian car is facing right). One thing that worked well for me was to take Pavel, outfit him with Benzedrine and a combat knife and send him running to flank the phonies from the bottom. With the silent run and always critical melee attack perks and almost 300 action points from the Benzedrine he was like a crack fiend. I was able to defeat 5 troops in one round with him and this setup. Don't get frustrated. Just try to protect the Russian officer by drawing fire on yourself instead of him. By now your guys should be so powerful that if you use cover correctly, as well as the buddy system, and take advantage of interrupts, you should be able to win easier than you did the very first combat. Talk to the Russian officer that you began the game with; he will recognize you. Congrats, you have just beaten a difficult and challenging game. Get ready for a long and rewarding ending that tells what happened to all of your surviving characters.
Thanks for reading my first walkthrough. If you have any questions or additions feel free to email me at spongebobsquareconan@msn.com. Please, no flames, but I do like constructive criticism. Thanks to V-, a fellow H&S gamer I met at game spot that enjoyed this game just as much as I did. He tried things a little differently than I did and had some helpful suggestions. I hope you enjoyed this rough around the edges but genuinely good and different game.
