It is true that you can be very creative in how you beat the game. But what's more important, you can be very creative how you even
play it. How often can you say that about a game?
The most obvious is the fact you need to verify a lot of people. This means you can a) capture them, clear a landing site, call in a transport helicopter, protect it and get a big reward, or b) blow the crap out of everything, kill your target, take a photo to verify him/her and get half the money. And yes, while you only get half the money, I killed about 50% of the people I even found when starting the last mission. By this time I had about 3,5 million in the bank, and a normal helicopter cost about 60k. (yes, helicopter. You can buy your own and have it delievered to wherever you are right now.)
But many missions does not include verifying a target at all, so it's not always "fetch and deliver". Let me take one great example.
I need to bring some guy to a factory so he can meet some weapon dealers. Sounds easy enough? Well, how about this: The deal is a set-up, that guys needs to escape really fast, and before you know it you'll face one tank, three helicopters and a bunch of soldiers (some with rockets). To make it even worse, that guy you drove need his own car, so you can't drive a tank. So, the question? How would you do this? We have several alternatives. (I have tried all of these, and they work).
1. Drive your car as close to the entrance to the house that guy is in, so you are ready when he leaves. Pick him up, drive like ...., uh, really fast and try to make it to his destination more or less in one piece.
2. Put the guy in the car, drive the car behind a house, leave the car with the guy still sitting in it, capture the tank and blow the crap out of everything before the soldiers with rockets blow up the tank. At this point, fight them off on foot to reduce their numbers, and then drive back to the destination.
3. (my favourite) Drive the guy to the factory, but don't drive into the yellow circle that will start the next part of the mission. Instead exit the car (but leave the guy inside it) and call in medi-drops, ammo drops and a APC or tank. Drive the guy into the yellow circle, and quickly park the car outside the combat zone where it won't get hit accidentally. Now run back to the tank, and wait. As soon as you see the other tank appearing, blow it up. Same with the helicopters. It can be tricky to take down the helicopters since you can't lock on to them, so I recommend you practice a bit first by driving a tank around aimlessly and blow the crap out of selected targets (eg. trees, trashcans, road signs etc). If you do it right, you can take down the tank and all three helicopters before the guy even leaves the house. So for the soldiers. These all came from a) already parked transport cars (it's a set-up, after all) or b) another house. Not a problem, just blow up the cars and the house. That guy you need to protect might take some damage, but he'll be fine. Even better, you have now blown the crap out of every enemy around, so you can drive back to the destination without a care in the world.
4. Do the same, but order a helicopter first. When this arrives, make sure the pilot leaves. (he'll be dead soon, but who cares?) Pick up the guy you need to find, fly him back to the destination as fast as you can and try to "almost crash" where you need him to go. I mean "almost crash" as in fly as fast as you can and drop to the ground as fast as you dare without damaging the helicopter too much.
5. Call in air-support and blow the crap out of everything in the entire base and hope "that" house will survive. After that all you need to worry about is outrunning a tank and some helicopters. The tank will even need to turn 180 degrees to go after you, so it's really just the helicopters you need to worry about. These can be taken down easily if you stop the car near some trees (so the helicopters usually miss) and shoot some anti-air rockets at them. It's tricky since you need to dodge the rocket from the tank, and the helicopters can easily hit the car when it stops. The trees usually cover it, but again it can be trickly.
And that's just five ways to beat this
optional mission. I'm sure I can come up with five more if I bothered. I haven't even mentioned highjacking the helicopters yet.
