Halo 2 starter kit

Tip 3: Do the right thing

One of my favourite game types is One-Flag CTF (Capture the Flag), which pits two teams of players against each other, usually over four rounds of combat. One-Flag CTF switches the teams between attack and defence between rounds, with the offensive team charged with entering an enemy base, grabbing a flag and bringing it out of the base toward a capture spot, while the defensive team tries to stop them.

The key thing to remember about One-Flag CTF is that in most games, if you're running the flag out of the enemy base and you get killed, the flag isn't automatically returned to their base; in fact, it'll usually sit near where you were killed for 30 seconds before it returns. This mechanic essentially makes it difficult to get the flag out of an enemy base, but gradually easier to return it to yours when you start getting away from the enemy spawn points.

It's called teamwork, chaps
It's important to keep in mind that it's very, very rare for one player to grab the flag in a One-Flag CTF game, escape from the enemy base and return the flag to the capture point without dying. It's possible, especially if your team is well coordinated and can communicate, but in most situations, you're going to have to leapfrog the flag back to base with multiple teammates.

Since you can't fire weapons and are significantly slowed down while carrying a flag, your team's flag carriers are almost certainly going to be killed more than once, but the 30-second window should let you get back to the location where the flag dropped, then grab it again and run it back a little before dying again and repeating the process. Of course, in an ideal world you won't have to die at all, but your foes will see the flag on their heads-up display when it's dropped, and they'll usually swarm around it as soon as one of your flag carriers dies, so you're going to face stiff opposition when attempting to grab the flag again.

Refreshing the timer
Two things to remember, though. The first is that, even if you're armed to the teeth, your primary goal when heading toward a dropped flag is to get to it and pick it up, even if you die immediately afterwards. Each time you pick it up, you'll refresh the 30-second timer on the flag, giving the rest of your team more time to find weapons and make their own assaults on its position. By all means, fire away at the enemy as you approach the flag (grenades are especially helpful here, since they'll usually be fairly close to the flag position), but don't engage in pointless firefights that sap your shields if you can help it. Just get to the flag, pick it up, run towards your base until you die, respawn, and repeat. Every time you grab it and refresh the timer, you'll drastically increase the chance that your team will eventually pull off a capture.

Don't be too sneaky
Secondly, try your best to pick the most obvious route back to your base, preferably one that's as open as possible, by which I mean easy to access and see. For instance, on the Headlong map, you can either try to escape with the flag through the upper platforms and corridors that ring the central area, or you can grab the flag, drop down to the bottom of the enemy base, then start running out into the large central no-man's-land that's usually the centre of the action. Yes, you stand a better chance of being killed when you cross the no-man's-land, because there's always someone around that'll spot you, but that's actually not such a bad thing, as your teammates will have a much easier time finding the flag and getting to it when you die. If you die up in the small corridors above the enemy base, they'll be able to quickly guard the flag and will have an easier time defending it.

The overarching theme here is one of sacrifice: the prevailing attitude in a lot of Halo 2 online matches is lone-wolf behaviour, where everyone wants to try and do everything by themselves (especially since your rank isn't likely to go up if you are killed a lot). Sometimes, though, biting the bullet and purposefully heading into the zone where you're most likely to be killed can be precisely the thing that enables your team to achieve success, even if it's someone else's name on the leaderboard at the end of the round.

This same, gradual progression of the objective can sometimes work in regular CTF, although the flag is often set to touch-return, meaning that the enemy can just walk over it to return it to their base. It's also sometimes applicable in Assault mode, but in Assault, you'll be going toward the enemy base rather than away from it, meaning that you're unlikely to get back to your bomb if you die near the plant point.

Additional editing by Michael Parsons