He forgot about the hunter that came that jumped out from nowhere and murdered him last time, and made the exact same gruesome mistake right at the outset of this session. You'd think the graphic punishment for failure would have left a stronger impression, somehow.
In the 'mainframe' room (I don't have any recollection of what it is we're trying to do, as usual) we get another call from our authority figure who is trying to remotely shut us down. We have to crawl around inside the mainframe to get into tiny, claustrophobic rooms to pull out some fuse-like instruments.... at least I think that will get us what we want. Xian mutters: "Exactly where I want to be during a deadly necromorph crisis - crawling around in a cramped, dark tunnel." He also mutters: "Why does everything in this game have to sound like a monster."
When a dark slicer comes boiling out of the walls not two feet away from him, Xian throws one of the big panels at him, and that actually stunned him for long enough for Xian to pour some pulse rounds into him.
I've got to admit, even though I did some extensive crawling around in the ductwork earlier in the game, it's a pretty harrowing camera angle. We had to crawl back and forth between the two cramped rooms before we figured out that we had to replug the fuses in a different order, a la Star Trek relay chips. Once we achieved that, of course the path opened up and we saw at least one large slicer walking around outside the fuse room, and Xian decided 2 very important things: 1) this fuse room we were in was lovely and perhaps he could make a permanent home of it, and 2) the pie I had made earlier was getting cold, and someone probably needed to attend to it immediately. "What's so good about outside, anyway. It's perfectly delightful in here." (He also cried into his pie) Caution was hardly warranted, as it turned out - he didn't even take a sliver of damage from the two slicers that were meandering around outside. We had to punch out five separate circuits (destroying = forward progress, I guess), and that somehow angered the necromorphs greatly, who would come tearing around the corner with each break.
When those were dealt with, the security system finally shut down and we were relieved to finally get through the door. Naturally we should have suspected something was up - as soon as the door opened, a bloody corpse fell on us and, well, let's say he was displeased with the way it seemed like the corpse was grabbing him around the neck.
We actually had to start leaving ammunition behind! Good sign, or bad sign? There were plenty of fiends in the next room, and he managed it in the first go with a relatively minimal loss of health. After that, we finally made it to the solar array! We just hopped outside into a vast region of space that housed the massive solar array mirrors that collected solar energy. Two of them were out of alignment, so we reset them (there was a gigantic arm that flung mini homing bombs, but he turned out to be not a huge deal if you keep the jet pack strafing to max). Meanwhile, audio reports from Ellie weren't terribly encouraging - she advises us to ... hurry. Maybe she mentions it with a touch more urgency than that. It might help to explain why Isaac decides to hurl himself off the solar array tower towards the station many millions of miles below. Mini-game of dodging! Exciting! And blood-smeared, when Xian messed up. Great landing, Isaac! Gotta love this game's setpieces.
And, back to the trasport hub, where we get on a transport and get the hell out of dodge. HAHAHA, if you thought it was going to go that easily. No, of course the whole area blows up, gets de-oxygenated, and Isaac has to fight off an endless wave of increasingly dangerous baddies as Ellie tries to hack a door! What did you think was going to happen? It takes a couple of restarts, all of our health packs, and all of the ammo we just bought at a shop to get through that mess, and we're stranded back in the factory, where Ellie just spent her morning hacking her fellows to distinct pieces.
We spent some time hovering around the entrance to a blood-soaked room. Xian is not very keen on crossing bloody rooms. I was encouraging, but he decided enough was enough.
