Saints Row 2

Heli Assault is one of the toughest activities in Saints Row 2. Not only that, the reward for it isn't much use. But, if you're going for the achievement, I hope this will help you get through it easily enough. This is a SOLO guide, as I did these missions solo, and therefore I cannot give tips for co-op play.

There are two different Heli Assault missions, and you have to complete Level 6 in both of them for this achievement. One of these missions is in the Trailer Park District, and one of them is outside the hospital in what I believe to be the Barrio District. The Trailer Park mission is against the Ronin and the Hospital mission is against the Brotherhood.

The plane you receive for these missions is a Tornado, and it is probably the best helicopter in the game. It's easy to fly and I recommend you practice a little with it in these missions - don't go in assuming you'll complete the mission immediately, as you won't. Understandably you'd get frustrated, so don't go in with that mindset. The Tornado helicopter is outfitted with a machine gun and rockets. The machine gun is borderline useless, I assure you. So, you're going to need to become very well accquainted with the rockets on your Tornado.

The first few levels of Heli Assault are a breeze. You simply follow over your homies' truck and blow up the cars as they attack. Once you get to around Level 4 or above, it gets harder. Enemies in cars will fire RPG at your homies, and at you. Also, there will be enemies in Tornado helicopters as well (note: Level 4 has an Oppressor or something). Enemies will take multiple rockets to take down your chopper. You will only need one if you dodge around the problem until you acquire lock-on.

Speaking of lock-on, make sure and use it. Firing a rocket before the reticule turns red will work occasionally, but generally speaking it'll simply make it harder for you due to the fact that you need to reload to fire again. So that's not a good idea. One rocket should deal with all your problems - enemy cars and choppers.

Fly reasonably low to the ground and keep an eye on your surroundings. If you fly too high the cars will disappear and shooting them with a rocket will become difficult to do. So, get down to a decent height, but make sure you can control the chopper at the height you choose. During one of the missions I did, I had to fly past a large sign (I'm not sure if these missions are randomly generated for different players or what) on a hotel. So, guess what? If you can't pass it, destroy it!

Keep an eye on your mini-map as well. This is another reason to fly low-ish. Enemy choppers fly quite high so you can make them easier to spot in this manner. See something approaching from above? Start pulling up as it's an enemy chopper and blowing it up is advisable. If you fly higher than it the chopper will become a target lower than you and your mini-map won't allow you to distinguish between a car and the plane. And that's a bad thing.

Make sure and stay close to your homies. Flying away to draw away the enemy plane works well and all, but the thing is: that plane aims for you more than it does for your homies. And, if you're having a dogfight with the other guy the enemy cars are having a free run at your homies' car. The car your homies drive is a Voyage, and it's one of the slowest, clunkiest cars in the game. You need to protect it to stand a chance at completion of this activity.

Try and work out something of a strategy for it as well. On the higher levels your homies have to make more stops, if you didn't notice this already. Try to get the first drop on Level 6 without a big drop in vehiclular health. On the final mission at the Hospital my fifth stop was when I received the "Your homies' car is badly damaged" warning. It was just before the final drop that I received the "Your homies' car is nearly destroyed" message, so that might give you a good idea of what to do.

Finally, I suggest you try to pilot the Tornado as well as possible. A gentle crash in Saints Row 2 can cause the plane to glitch up and stick to the walls, and that inflicts major damage to it. Also, if you crash hard enough you could destroy the rocket racks. And that is a guaranteed failed mission as the rockets are the best chance of success.

I know this dragged on for a considerable amount of time and all that, but these are some tips I came up with as I grinded through this activity. So, I'd like to imagine they helped you. If you have a tip you feel I should add to this guide, write a little comment below explaining it and I'll add it, as well as giving you credit for it. And if this helps you, please give it a positive vote / a nice comment. Or both ^_^

just follow the green marker on the van and take out any red markers (enemies). To engage with missles hold the cursor on or near the vehicle and you will get a targeting box, this will turn red after a couple of seconds, pull the LT to fire a homing missile. Personally, I found the cannons absolutely worthless, so stick with missiles. If you see an enemy helicopter, go after it immediately, they will mess you up!
Honestly, the hardest time I had with these missions is making sure I didn't hit any buildings or obstacles with the helo...if you do and you happen to flip upside down, you're pretty much done as the controls provide no way of flipping back over. So my recommendation is to stay high so you're out of the way, engage ground targets when you can (you really won't have to worry about your person's health till last level) and go after enemy copters right away.

Hope this helps!

Doing this in Co-Op makes this activity so much more easier. After failing to pass the 4th level of Heli Assault started in front of the hospital multiple times, I managed to make an almost entirely clean run in co-op with a partner, failing only ONCE in the combined 12 levels of this activity due to accidentally crashing into a building and having a nasty collision.

So why should you try to find a buddy and do it in co-op?
1- Works towards your

2- You only have to do half the work in co-op since one person pilots the chopper while the other takes care of the firing. At first, this doesn't sound like much but you'll come to realize it means EVERYTHING since you don't need to be twisting your camera view into weird positions for lock-ons and whatnot.
3- Your partner can alert you when there are incoming RPGs from gang members on the ground, and when an attack chopper is inbound. Very useful in the later levels.


So that's pretty much it, just fly as low as you want and simply don't crash in the first 3 levels for the two locations of Heli Assault. For levels 4-6, fly a bit higher and try not to hover too much to avoid RPGs from the ground. If there is an attack chopper, I found that a good tip for avoiding rockets was to strafe around so that the front of the attack chopper isn't facing you. At this point, your buddy (or yourself depending on if you're shooting or piloting) should have already sent a lock-on missile at it and the chances of you receiving any incoming missiles should be quite slim since you've been on the move the whole time and haven't gotten locked-on due to the fact that you are to the side of the attack chopper.

Good luck, slip-ups can happen, don't get too frustrated or rage at your coop partner, more time consuming than hard when you do it in co-op. Happy gaming ^^

General
The best tip on for me was NOT to wait for a lock on - fire in the rough direction and then guide the missile. If you wait

for lock on the cars do too much damage or they away and you have to catch up.
Also you need to learn where the enemy choppers come from. If something is on your level or above it's a chopper so kill it

first. Often you can get them before they fire a shot if you know where they come from and as long as the missile actually

fires (sometimes it seemed to jam for me).
Don't feel the need to kill all the cars. If they get stuck just leave them because by the time you kill them the van will

be in fresh trouble.
Sometimes when the mission starts the city will be in the middle of a massive storm so you won't be able to see shit. If it

does this, save and reload until the storm passes. This works for any mission where you need good visibility.
The only non level 6 part that threw me was in level 2 where the homies under attack kept dying even though they had loads of

health. I don't know if it was a glitch but it was because the rockets made cars explode, which killed them. Using the guns

(only time I did) did the trick.

Hospital:
Level 6 is really annoying because Pierce insists on driving everywhere UNDER a freeway of some sort (nice one dude, ask for

heli support then choose a route where you are almost always under a giant slab of stone).
Save some health at the start by killing the first 2 quickly (you'll be replaying enough to know exactly where they spawn).

Then fly down so that you are to the side of the oval freeway and can see inside - a guy with a rocket will spawn after about

10 seconds and you can get him before he fires. If you are lucky, the other 2 will be just coming round and will get hit too, if not then just pick them off.

Trailer Park:
The hardest part of level 6 on this one is simply not crashing into stuff when flying through the high rises, honestly I don't think there is any trick other than try, try, shout, curse and try again. It is MUCH easier than the hospital level 6 though because mostly Shaundi stays in the open.
The toughest attack chopper is the first one because he sometimes spawns really high up and rains death on you when you can't

even target him and if you go up there the cars get the van. If this happens just restart.