You know, for the first time since I started this game, I'm feeling good about things. I actually have some sort of plan; I mostly understand the central concepts by now. Only took me three hours to get there. But what about energy, you might ask? Well, that's...actually not as hard as I thought. A green-tube thing, one of the starting items, functions as one of the power sources. The one activated with the F1 button, F2 is the infinite but slow one. I guess this means F3&F4 are cameras rather than anything to do with power. F9, the interrogate button, when you have the 3rd icon on the code/weapon selection selected, works with some scenery objects to drain power. The problem with that is its somewhat hard to tell which objects you can drain and which ones you can't. Obvious power sources seem to not actually work with this. The only time I got some indication of something happening is with random orbs near the entrance.
Further, there's nothing in my only available path that I can siphon power from. Nor are there any sidepaths with energy sources. Fighting enemies down there isn't impossible but doesn't seem to offer any rewards, at least anything I can use yet. Several items still mystify me. At least there's a save room there, because this game enjoys throwing as much garbage at you as humanly possible. Why they chose to have a saveroom in the area with the most enemies so far is old hat at this point. At the elevator, the pathway, no side paths, leads to another elevator. Curiously, as I change floors on this elevator I notice three of the purple hourglasses in-between doors. I'm not sure the purpose of this, assuming there is a purpose. Everything has had a reason so far...its not a good reason, but its a reason.
I die again, this time to a turret in a weird area. This marks the first time I've had reason to use the save game system. Its simple and painless, far more than it is actually getting to it. I wonder if there's a method to defeating the turret or if I have to avoid it via tricks. The code I've seen as the elevator goes up doesn't do anything in the elevator, nor does it do anything outside of it. The area has two pits, one in the walkway square, the other outside of it. I decide to test my theory that there's something in the square. Failing that, I can try taking out the turret; There's also something on the walkway, though I need to take out the turret for that I think.
This leads into the game's most brilliant scheme and its most aggravating. There's one door, a dead end with a power core at the end. Huh, I think, before walking into a hidden pit. I am completely surrounded, and after regenerating health, I discover this is an inescapable situation. There's no way out. This is a problem. The elevator leads here and to a locked save room. I don't like where this is headed. I do have another option, but I'm not sure I want to do that. Return to the central floor. Its obvious now that I can't do anything here, at all. Nor can I do anything in the lower floors at all. Back to the top I guess.
From up here there's a new problem. Some of the robots camp outside elevators. It doesn't seem they can enter elevators, thankfully. This is something that's happened before, but never on this scale. This is a pain because every path away from the save room I'm now in is already a long, tedious journey. This almost puts the final nail in the coffin, because upon re-exploring the rightmost door from the central area, I discover why I finished exploring there. It was empty except for locked doors. I don't have the code.
I decide to take one final choice, jumping the bridge I can't create. You jump vertically by holding down the F10 key, but you do a horizontal leap by holding down enter, while in motion, otherwise you look up and down. After a few attempts, all resulting in me falling, thanks to the game's broken graphical engine, I notice something unusual down here. A sort of cone tower. Its a turret, but its guarding something, a hallway. Through several turrets and wheel bots, I find...locked doors and enemy despawn points. The area had another door, where does that lead? Back to the same area I've been to. Well, I must admit I'm defeated. I'm sure there's some way forward from here, but I don't see how I'm going to find it.
This is really an overwhelming problem with this game. I finally figured out most of the controls, and explored as far as I could. Only to discover there's still nothing I can do. Perhaps with the realization of the horizontal leap I could finish the game, but the problem with that thought is I don't really want to spend more time dodging robots only to find it didn't work. There is nothing that be worth all the effort at this point.
This Session: 45 minutes
Final Time: 3 hours 45 minutes
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