Recent reviews by Hex Machina

Remothered: Broken Porcelain contains, without hyperbole, one of the most obtusely designed gameplay segments I have ever experienced in a video game.

Now, most of the game's enemies attack by chasing you down until they can grab you and attempt to finish you off, but the game's second stalker, Mr. Ashmann, is different - Ashmann has a gun. This lets him continuously damage you and potentially even kill you as he closes in, forcing you to take cover or break line of sight as soon as he's on your trail.

The scene where you're introduced to Ashmann as an enemy begins by zooming in on a fire extinguisher in his office. Your character will exclaim something to the effect of "if I use that fire extinguisher, maybe I can stand a chance." This fire extinguisher can be used to spray Ashmann and stun him at close range, which is a decent enough way to get some breathing room if he gets in too close.

At this point of the game, your objective is given as "Defeat Mr. Ashmann." In the chase sequence immediately before this, the player is taught that defeating a stalker entails sneaking up on them and stabbing them with a one-use defense item, then running and hiding until the enemy's alert has lowered enough to do it again. The player has access to the entire map they've explored up to this point during their confrontation with Mr. Ashmann.

However, despite being able to scour the map for screwdrivers and spades to jam into Ashmann's back to your heart's content, doing the thing the game taught you to do in the chase immediately before this one won't work. Ashmann will never stay down, no matter how many times you ambush him, because the objective to "Defeat Mr. Ashmann" is a lie.

This is actually a scripted loss sequence, where continuing requires to to get caught by Ashmann after stunning him twice with the fire extinguisher. If he gets close enough to catch you BEFORE you've sprayed him twice, he'll just throw you to the side before continuing to shoot you to death. He'll still shoot at you as he approaches AFTER you've stunned him with the fire extinguisher, meaning that you're still at risk of being killed once you've failed in the specific way the game wants you to.

Only once you've stunned Ashmann twice and then allowed him to grab you without getting yourself riddled with gunfire will he pistol-whip you instead, allowing you to continue the game.

This is a sequence that drags itself out the longer you successfully engage the mechanics the game taught you to use to accomplish a false objective you just learned how to do the right way, and exists entirely to provide an unspoken tutorial on using the fire extinguisher.

This is the only time a fire extinguisher ever appears in the game.