Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/End Of The Line

Prerequisites

 * Mission: Los Desperados

Walkthrough
You need a good SMG (e.g, SMG), a good assault rifle (e.g., M4), and a good melee weapon (chainsaw) or heavy weapon (minigun) for this mission.

You might also consider completing some of the side missions as they have some very useful benefits:
 * The Ambulance Mission because it gives you maximum max health (although by now you should be at that level already)
 * The Vigilante Mission because it multiplies your armor effectiveness by 150%
 * The Firefigher Mission because it makes you fireproof
 * Dating Katie Zhan will allow you to be wasted without losing money or weapons.

Pick up Sweet who has information about Smoke's location. Drive to the marker and watch the cutscene. Get the bike and approach the SWAT tank. You can bunny hop behind the SWAT line or turn around right after you get on the bike, and come at the tank from behind. Jump in and reverse quickly to the bottom of the street and back up to Smoke's hideout. Smash through the wall and run over the guards until you get to the yellow marker. You can run over the guards in front of the building if you want; they will just spawn again.

That pink building you see on the left as you approach the crack palace is a strip club. Make a note to treat youself to a lap dance when you're done with this mission.

From this point in you are basically in a series of shooty levels where you have to shoot all opposition you encounter. This will probably be pretty easy by this stage in the game as you will have done it several times before such as the Saint Mark's Bistro level. Hold down the left trigger, and flick the right trigger to succesively aim at a new target once you've wasted the previous one.

At the start of each level you will probably encounter a booth with a heart or a flak jacket. These pickups usually occur just before a large room full of enemies that have to be cleared. The smart thing to do is clear the room first and then head back to pick up the heart or flak jacket.

Security level
Systematically work through the level killing anything. In the main room you need to trigger the SWAT team to arrive before you can progress, use the crates as you enter for cover. You may shoot the doors before entering to open them, this will give you a chance to kill enemies who are close to you behind the door. There's another SWAT tank here but it won't fit through the doors.

Note that if an enemy is using a pillar as cover you can shoot and kill them but they cannot actually die until they finish their "hiding" animation and step from behind the pillar. If a enemy has a black triangle don't keep blazing at them, they will die in their own sweet time.

Drug Lab
Systematically destroy everyone use the pillars in the main room as cover and take out the shooters on the gallery before heading to the back of the room and up onto the gallery. As you move along the gallery some more gang members will spawn below you and through the double doors at the end of the gallery. Use explosive barrels here to save effort and bullets if you can.

Be careful with shooting too close to the chain link fence around the balcony. If you can aim but not shoot, you are too close; get back and it should work fine.

Ballas Lounge
A pretty tedious shooting workout as most of the enemies cannot hit anything that is not next to them. If you keep your distance you probably will not even need the body armour and health pickup in the stripper rooms towards the end of the level.

Confrontation with Smoke
This is stupidly easy if you have the Chainsaw but it's not even that bad with other weapons.

If you have the Chainsaw wait for the cutscene to finish and then rush over to Smoke and Chainsaw his two bodyguards. This will give Smoke the chance to say some dialogue that needs to be said before you can kill him. Then rush up the stairs towards him and hit him with the chainsaw. When you knock him down move the chainsaw so it is still hitting him and he will run out of health in a second or two.

The minigun doesn't have an automatic aim, which for this task is an advantage. You can cut down Smoke at the knees before he even gets up the stairs.

If you aren't able to kill him right away Smoke will essentially run around the room in clockwise circles. Body armour is in one of the alcoves, a few health pickups in the other. Gang members will constantly spawn but as long as you keep your distance it shouldn't be hard to shoot them before they do any damage to you. Probably the best place to target Smoke is from the balcony as he is visible from there most of the time without seemingly being able to hit you back with any accuracy. When the lights go out use the night vision goggles and keep shooting.

Once you kill Smoke, you will see a cutscene with he and Tenpenny. Should you fail the mission after this point, you will start at the beginning of this cutscene, not at the very beginning.

Fire Escape
Following the cutscene is the beginning of the most difficult section of this mission. It is timed and therefore demands more or less perfect execution. You should be able to get your armour and health back to maximum with pickups before making the trip back down through the building.

Just about every room has the same number of enemies in the same place.

The Drug Lab is where things get tricky. You need to pick up the fire extinguisher and shoot all the gang members on the lab floor through the grill. Unless you have completed the Firefighter mission, then you can just run right through. There does not seem to be any point in shooting gang members that are using fire extinguishers. Once you've cleared out the shooters remove the night goggles and use the fire extinguisher to move through the burning door and burning sections on the gallery. Unless you have completed the Firefighter mission, in which case you can just run right though. You do not need to use the fire extinguisher on the final fire on the gallery you should be able to duck around the left and get by without problems. Make your way through the drug lab floor and switch back to night googles to work through the Security levels. Don't make a big deal about the large room on this level and try to do it on the run. After the large room there is one more fire to tackle (which will again require the removal of the goggles). Did we mention that if you have completed the Firefighter mission you can just run right through the fire? You should then get to the yellow marker, here use a crouch roll to take out the three guards at the corner. Remove the goggles and run like mad for the exit. When you are close enough you should trigger the successful cutscene (CJ diving from the building).

Chase Tenpenny
You can relax a bit now, the hardest part is over but you will have to repeat it again if the next section is fluffed.

Tenpenny has jumped into a fire truck and Sweet is hanging from the ladder. Follow the truck without letting it get out of your radar view; otherwise you will fail the mission. The truck goes up through Las Colinas, down through Jefferson and Idlewood, along the track through Willowfield, down to the Ocean Docks, and finally to the East Beach.

Essentially you just have to follow the fire truck at a discrete distance: don't go mad and get too close, don't go to fast and spin or crash the car, don't let the truck get so far away that you lose them. You're not going to be able to take out the truck so don't worry about it. You also don't have to worry too much about the molotovs; they can hurt you slightly but not the car.

When the truck gets to the beach front the next section will begin.

Save Sweet
One of cops will climb out and start stomping on Sweet's hands. There is a grip bar but essentially this section is timed. If you have been following the fire truck at a reasonable distance you should be able to just slam on the accelerator and get the hood of the car near the back of the fire truck. The game seems pretty lenient about where you can be to save Sweet. Probably the worst mistake is to go too fast and overshoot the back of the fire truck. If in doubt try and ram the back of the truck. Once Sweet is on the hood of the car he takes over the driving.

Blast Tenpenny
This section is "gunning on rails" and essentially exactly like the Reuniting the Families mission you had in the original Los Santos missions.

Initially you need to shoot the cop who was stomping on Sweet and a second who gets out of the cab. You can then take out a few of the truck's tires before Sweet tells you it cannot be destroyed. At this point you just need to shoot as much as possible. Targets will include cop cars, Los Vamos bikers and Hermes cars, and rioters with molotovs.

Sweet will always warn you at the start of each wave and you simply need to shoot the threats as quickly as you can. For cars you should try to shoot the passenger (who will normally be shooting) followed by the engine. It can be fun to shoot the tires but seems to have not effect on the vehicle handling. For bikes shooting passenger followed by driver seems to be more effective although there may not be much individual damage modelling going on for these.

Rioters are slightly trickier as they are smaller targets. Just do your best and stay calm as the car seems to be fire-proof and therefore the rioters will only do a small bit of damage to the vehicle. The only rioters that should be dealt with ahead of time are those that appear when you come down under the overpass by the stadium.

As long as the car is reasonably intact the fire truck will get to Grove Street and Tenpenny will crash triggering the final cutscenes.

Congratulations on completing the final mission!

Rewards

 * Respect
 * Satisfaction

You can now focus on getting the rest of the game. See the 100% Completion Guide