Today's game is Control. I went through the ashtray maze today. I had wanted to get a portrait of Jesse with the headphones and everything on, but i had a friend asking about the game and was focused on getting a small clip of this segment to show to him to convince him to try it. I had missed my window. From what i hear you can replay it in the AWE DLC so i'll settle for it there.
I've been stopping and taking in the Hotline calls this playthrough too. One thing i noticed was Trench is awfully close to Max Payne. And i don't just mean that in the way they share a VA/Actor. I mean it literally. Wife is gone (either dead like Max or Gone like Alex Casey), similar tone and habits, wielded a gun, works for a government agency of some sort (NYPD for Max and FBC for Trench).
spoiler
As far as i remember, it was implied Alan Wake had a little bit to do with the events of control. I wonder if Trench is a result of that and it was another one of his attempts. It's interesting to me because it kind of mirrors how he's following in the footsteps of Alex Casey in Cauldron Lake. Only in Control it's Jesse following Trench's Echoes.
Something else i missed in my first playthrough were some of the control points that are way out of the way were made by Ahti. I was in a hurry and missed that they were all made out of Cleaning Supplies which i thought was a cool detail.
Anyways, i was a bit short on time and went through the Ashtray maze today. That's where i left off. I want to actually finish this tomorrow and start the DLCs too. So that will hopefully be tomorrow.
You should be able to just fast travel back to the maze entrance, and you'll be given the choice to either skip the maze and go straight to Dimensional Research, or replay it. AWE has those two arcade machines, but IIRC it's just boss replays and a mob survival challenge.