- Having borrowed a copy from Martin, I have started playing this mysterious X-Files-inspired action game. People have complained about performance in this game, but apparently it was a good choice to wait for patches, the game runs perfectly fine on my PS4 Pro.
- I love the Hotline files. Trench and the Board are setting a very enjoyable spooky mood. By the way, The Board is a black inverted pyramid in the Astral Space. The weird Finnish janitor seems like a god-like figure. We'll see what he turns into.
- Fixing a power plant? Pretty cliche video game stuff.
- Central Research is getting more difficult, but it's a really cool environment.
- Black Rock Processing seems like it's in another dimension insde The Oldest House, a pretty fascinating idea.
- I defeated Salvador and learned to levitate. So cool.
- I found my brother, but he's not doing great, what with the levitating and speaking in tongues.
- The Bureau having recreated my home town and the garbage dump is very neat.
- The manifested visions of Ahti the Janitor reinforces my idea of him being a godlike entity. In the 'Restricted Area' of Maintenance, visions of Finnish nature is overlaid on a giant hall. In the end, he gives you his Walkman.
- Ahti's Walkman has a progressive metal song on it that guides Jesse through the Ashtray Maze, a place that constantly rearranges itself. It's cool how seamlessly the song waits for your progress in the maze, so the lyrics fit what you're doing. After dealing with the Hiss (the red-glowing alien intelligence that controls humans) attacking the Hedron (the blue-glowing alien intelligence that controls Jesse), end credits with Tricky's creepy track 'Vent' playing...
- Completed the game. No, wait - fake end credits! Then a looping dream sequence where the world gets slightly more weird for every iteration, and then a final battle sequence, where you reach The Projector. And then the real credits.
- I've been thinking how the combat in this game reminds me of DOOM. Combat usually takes place in relatively small arenas, where the enemies force you to move around a lot due to high damage attacks. You move very fast and is required to be shooting all the time. The enemies drop health, so you're forced to move to their position after killing them to recover health. It's a gameplay style that encourages movement and rewards putting yourself in the line of fire.
- The PS5 version is a free PS Plus game, but currently, you cannot transfer your savegame from the PS4 version to the PS5 version. So I would have to start over, which sucks. I would have liked to take a tour of the facilities in their new ray-traced graphics.
2020-01-04
Federal Bureau of Control2020-01-05
2020-01-08
2020-01-09
2020-01-12
2020-01-22
2021-02-02
