Cliffhanger

From the Call of Duty Wiki

Previous level
Team Player
Next level
No Russian
Cliffhanger
Game
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Character
Gary "Roach" Sanderson
Team
Task Force 141
Weapons
ACR with Red Dot Sight, suppressor and Heartbeat Sensor, USP .45
Enemy Weapons
(Attachments not listed) AUG HBAR, L86 LSW, FAMAS, SPAS-12, AK-47, P90, Vector
Place
Tian Shan Mountain Range, Kazakhstan
Date
Day 2, 2016
Objective
Locate and retrieve the ACS module from a crashed satellite.
Enemies
Ultranationalists

"Break's over, Roach. Let's go."

— Captain MacTavish

Cliffhanger is a campaign mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It features Captain "Soap" MacTavish and Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson of Task Force 141 on the cold mountains of Kazakhstan.

Walkthrough

The level begins as your character, Gary "Roach" Sanderson, and "Soap" MacTavish are on a ledge on the side of a mountain. After a MiG-29 flies overhead you and Soap start climbing a wall of ice with ice picks. There is a harrowing moment when a pair of MiG-29s fly overhead, nearly dislodging Soap from his position on the cliff. Once at the top you and Soap jump a small gap. You don't make it and nearly fall to your death when Soap grabs your hand at the last moment, saving your life. Soap brings you up, and you climb up the rest of the mountain. The two are then seen moving up to a fuel depot. They simultaneously take out enemy troops and move up to the fuel depot. You then infiltrate the airbase and proceed to the fuel depot, killing people as you go along at your discretion, as you can sneak by enemies using the cover of the blizzard and the usefulness of the heartbeat sensor. You will then plant C4 on the fuel depot and travel to the hanger that Soap is in to destroy a crashed satellite. If you do this without alerting or killing any guards you will receive the achievement/trophy "Ghost". When you and Soap go in the hanger, a guard walks by and Soap beats up and stabs the unfortunate guard in the neck with his knife. He tells you to go upstairs and get the ACS module. When you come back, you hear Major Petrov telling you to surrender or he will kill Soap, so you detonate the C4. There is a huge explosion and you and Soap fight out of the airbase and go down a hill where Soap takes out an oncoming enemy snowmobile with his ice picks. You and Soap then get on the snowmobiles and escape while shooting enemies, racing down a really steep hill and jumping across a gorge to get to the LZ where Kilo Six-One is waiting.

Enemy Intelligence

• Intel No. 4 is near the entrance of the base; to your right is a tower with a ladder and scaffold; watch out for the enemy patrol and climb the ladder to find the laptop.
• Intel No. 5 is easy to miss; just before regrouping with Soap, there is a building where welders can be seen working on a MiG through a window. Smash one of the windows and a laptop is on the other side.
• Intel No. 6 is very easy to miss, as it is found during the snowmobile chase. At the point where the path splits off to the left or right, head for the trees in the middle and veer right. Drive over the laptop to pick it up. 

In the final version of the level, Captain MacTavish was scheduled to be with you and you play as Roach

Trivia

• If you miss the first jump, the quote "Nobody makes the first jump" appears, a direct reference to Crew Expendable and a reference to a line in The Matrix.
• The scene with Roach being rescued by Soap pays homage to the game's prequel, in which Soap was rescued by his commander Captain Price before falling to his death, slipping out of a helicopter he leaped into in the level Crew Expendable.
• On the second climbing portion, if you look down as Roach reaches the top, you can see only his arms cast shadows.
• On Veteran difficulty, the player will need to hold down both the triggers (or just L1 in the PS3 version) to keep their hold after the first jump, as opposed to any other difficulty, where no buttons or triggers need to pressed or held down.
• Even if the player jumps before Soap, Soap will still save them from falling.
• Some weapons in this level feature the Arctic Camouflage on them due to the subzero scenery around them.
• The player is able to reload their Glock 18 on the snowmobile with one hand while driving away from enemies with the other.
• This level was the first level of the game revealed; played by Infinity Ward's Jason West back at E3 2009.
• Time Trial and Race are Special Ops missions are based off of this level, where the player must race on a snowmobile to a finish line.
• If Roach isn't close enough to Soap when he gets captured, Soap won't tell him to activate Plan B and he will be shot.
• If the player lets go of the ice picks after Captain MacTavish rescues the player, instead of the usual quote, the words "Hold on for dear life" appear on the screen.
• In the hangar next to the one with the ACS module in it, there are two blips on the Heartbeat Sensor. If the player looks through a small gap in the large hangar door, there is someone working on a jet inside and another person who is barely visible at the back of the hangar. Both of these people can be killed normally, but they will not react when wounded.
• When Soap tells the player to meet him, and the player gets seen on the way and leads them to the area where Soap is, he will comment, "Brought some friends with you?"
• If the player gets on the snowmobile and just so happens to hit Soap with it when driving off, the message "MacTavish was run over." is displayed.
• When the player is close to jumping over the giant gap at the end of the level, they will hear the music from the level Crew Expendable of the first Modern Warfare, when Soap was about to jump into the helicopter.
• In the hangar, after detonating the C4, the player can pick up a FAMAS rifle that has the same "white tape camouflage" as the FAMAS available in the Museum level.
• At the start of the level you can take out you ice picks before you start climbing by pressing the switch weapons button/key. You can use the ice picks to melee. However, you switch to your rifle before you encounter your first enemy.
• At the start of the level you can pass Soap on ice by just sliding pass him. He will knock you of the mountain when he starts climbing though.
• At the start of the level, if you jump off the cliff you will hear Roach scream.
• In the early development of the level, Captain Price was scheduled to be with you and you would play as Soap, not Roach.
• There is a small piece of ledge on the other side of the cliff in which you make the large jump on the snowmobile that at first will seem stable, but actually cause you to slowly slide off into the abyss.
• If you hit the breaks on the snowmobile hard just before the large jump, there is a possibility you will end up in a spot inches from the end of the cliff in which you cannot move.
• While driving the snowmobile down the large hill at the end, hitting Soap's snowmobile from behind will kill the player and send them flying.
• If the player is killed when driving up a large hill, the camera will still go over the jump.
• It´s possible to see a M1911 in Soap´s leg. It is most likely the same one that belonged to Captain Price in Call of Duty 4.

In the early development of the level, Captain Price was scheduled to be with you and you play as Soap, not Roach.

• Soap will begin the level with a M14 EBR, but when you meet him he will have an AK 47.
• In the intro for this level, Sheperd says that the Task Force is on a mission recovering the ACS. This means that there were more raids. Also, in the beginning of No Russian it shows the location of the raids. One was in a forest, another in a mine and another in a village.
• It is never revealed what the ACS is or what it does. It is implied to be a satellite or system that controls US coastal radar systems, and was either shot down or reentered orbit over hostile territory, hence the raids.
• Should the player decide to not shoot either of the two man Guard patrols after climbing up, Soap will do it for them, while chastising you for not helping out, with either "I take it I have to do everything?" (A possible reference to Call of Duty 4, where the player as Soap, had to do almost every major action). The second time, he is a bit more agitated and replies with "This would be a lot easier if you helped."
• Should the player instead kill both his/her assigned guard and Soap's, Soap will give his standard lines as though the player had taken them down together as normal.
• If you go ahead of Soap and shoot one of the enemies in the second pair, and damage but not kill the other, Soap will kill him and say "This is the reason we brought silencers."
• Soap seams to have a different thermals scope then the player uses.
• A heartbeat sensor is clearly seen on Soap's M14 before climbing,but it seems to disappear after climbing.

Video