If I'm getting beaten on one side of the level, I should try the other side. The first time I try this I've shocked by one of these. Not the exact image, because I wasn't fast enough to catch that. I also forgot to make a new character. I go for the 1st armor, since hopefully that will mean I won't automatically die this time.
Curiously, the game's showing its design worse than the original game. See, there it was fairly consistent in a level where enemies would spawn. Here, I can get killed by something, then return, only to see nothing where my killer once was. Then in my travels I discover I can pretty much bypass some areas because of this and the AI's braindead nature.
So after a couple trips around, I figure that the way to get past this floor is to update my card, then return to the elevator. Came to that conclusion last time, but this time I put it into action. When I return, I have to wait for the elevator. Its a cool effect. The elevator interface is somehow both simple and confusing. It works like the computer interface, you walk near it, activate it, put in the card, then mess around. I find myself on the 4th floor, at which point a tapping starts happening. This scared me, quite effectively. Horror things in non-horror titles tend to work better than the other way around.
The tapping came from one of the mutant cyborgs the game's plot centers around. They take 2 shots to kill, and around 4 punches. What is of note is that they don't screw around. They will rip you apart if they get the chance to.
My energy is still depleting rapidly, but I've found that using a drink seems to counteract that. I'm unsure if I've messed something up or not, the game is most unhelpful when it comes to actually saying things to the player. I like some ambiguity, sometimes even bordering on recondite, but come on, even I know to tell the player basic facts, like how to reload or regain stats.
The monsters aren't kicking my butt, but their presence combined with the game's obtuseness is putting me in a bad spot. I was using the drink items to regain stamina, and that worked...for a little while. Then they just showed up in a picture in the center of the screen and refused to do anything. On the other hand, I know how to reload my gun, just use it in the menu, it'll pop up, hit it again, and you'll recharge it at the cost of some power. This saves my bacon, because the monsters are smart enough to open doors.
Still, I close this session unsure of how I'm going to advance from this point. Its clear that the stamina items I can just throw away when they're useless, but the one I started with and the one I found ran out of juice in a relatively short period of time. I don't have any health items and its clear that I'll need them. Even if I learn something new each time, its not really fun restarting the game, but at least I know what I can do at this point.
This Session: 50 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
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