How to complete ‘Loose Ends’ on veteran

Updated October 2010

So, you’re making good progress on your veteran play-through of Modern Warfare 2.  It’s all going reasonably well until you hit ‘Loose Ends’ like a brick wall.  Whatever you try and do, you just can’t get through it.  I’m talking about the part where you’ve got to run to the LZ from Makarov’s safe house.  So I’m going to give a few tips so that the mission will should be as painless as possible, as I found all other content on the internet to be pretty much useless.

I restarted the mission three or four times, and was stuck on this mission for days.  So whilst I can’t call myself an expert, I’m pretty well-versed in this mission!  If you’ve got any tips for this mission or anything else you’d like to add, please share!  In the mean time, here’s my guide:

Make it to the safe house etc

This should be straightforward.  If you can’t make it to the safe house, then you probably shouldn’t be playing on veteran.  It does help to hang back a bit, and use the trees as cover.  Once you’re at the safe house, you’ll have to breach four rooms within the house.  Again, straightforward.

You’ll then have to connect the DSM to Makarov’s computer to retrieve the intel.  You’ll be prompted by Ghost to start the download, but ignore him for now, as you’ve got plenty of time to prepare.  If you were to start the DSM download immediately, you’d be unprepared for the swarm of enemy forces that will storm the safe house.

Instead, go downstairs and set up claymores at all the entrances.  They won’t kill many, but every little helps, right?  You can pick up additional claymores in the armoury within the house.  Make sure you grab yourself a decent sniper rifle in addition to your machine gun and then place yourself wherever you fancy after you’ve started the download.  Good places to shoot from are either on top of the stairs, or in the far room looking directly ahead to the front door.  From the latter position, you can kill enemies storming in the front door, from the side door, and those coming up the stairs.

Kill them all.

Run!  Or not…

After the download has finished, you’d be pretty tempted to grab the DSM and run to the LZ, right?  Well, whatever you do, don’t!  If you do, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a small army of enemies just wanting to rip you to shreds.  You’ll be pinned down from your front and from behind.  This is not a good situation to be in.  you could probably do this on a lower difficulty, but on veteran, you’ll die.

Instead: grab the DSM so enemies can’t shoot it up, then position yourself at the top of the stairs.  Kill everything that moves.  At some point, a checkpoint will be triggered.  Kill all remaining enemies in the house, then meet up with Ghost.  Stick to the left side, and you’ll see another array of solar panels with a gap in the fence.  Run for cover and regain your health.  Watch as all the remaining enemies run down the hill, right past you.  Kill anyone foolish enough to engage you.

When it’s all clear, head down the hill with Ghost to the LZ.  Another checkpoint will trigger and Ghost will mention mortar fire.  There are more enemies down below with machine guns and RPGs, but this time, there’s now no one behind you!  Now,instead of hanging back and killing everyone, you must push forward.  I found that if you do kill everyone, the game doesn’t like that and always kills you with ‘random’ mortar fire.

You need to run forward and sling a few grenades and flash bangs as you hug the left side.  With a bit of luck, enemies will be stunned, and you can make it near enough (about 40m) to the LZ for the cut scene to be triggered.  Mission complete.  I mention ‘luck’ as when you have to make it to the LZ, so much is out of your control that unnecessary and instant deaths feel really unfair.  It seems to be that it’s either Infinity Ward’s way, or the highway.  You will die a lot on this mission, but persevere, because the rest of the game is a cake walk.

One last thing, if you use this guide to attempt Loose Ends on veteran, afterwards let me know how it goes and whether this guide actually helped or not.  Much appreciated.

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