Teleglitch: Die More Edition

I’m going to come out and say right off the bat that I never played Teleglitch in its original form. Like so many smaller games it flew past me and that’s a great shame; I reckon 2012 Johnny would’ve loved it. He had patience.

Last year Teleglitch dropped, offering procedurally generated roguelike horror with PlayStation 1 era visuals packed in with crushing difficulty, and now the Die More Edition has come along to punish you further. The name is a strong indicator of what you’re in for upon booting up this game.

The plot is refreshingly simplistic; an error in teleportation research has caused the research facility you work in to get all screwed up, as they’d say in the world of science. Rooms are shuffled around, cosmic anomalies sheet entire wings of the facility and, inevitably, the facility’s AI has gone banana-split mental and begun transforming the former inhabitants into blood-thirsty killing machines.

as the food stash runs out you’re forced back into the unforgiving outside world.

These killing machines will make up the bulk of the enemy as you take on the role of a researcher who’s barricaded himself into a single room with hopes of outlasting the threat. But as the food stash runs out you’re forced back into the unforgiving outside world. Teleglitch creates tension very well as you walk the narrow corridors of this facility never knowing when the next horde of monstrosities will jump round the corner to soak up all your ammunition. The only sounds you’ll hear are the rumbles of generators, the screeches of the monsters, and the sound of your own footsteps.

It’s an absorbing experience and it’s sure to draw you right in, but I found that once I’d been pulled out by death I didn’t have any real desire to jump back in. Upon death it felt like the connection I’d made with the game’s world had been snapped and all that was left to do was start over again, creeping through the world again as I had done before praying to all the Gods of ammunition and canned goods.

Teleglitch: Die More Edition is a game that’s all about forward thinking, skill, and most of all luck. You can knife and shoot your way through all the zombies, mutants, and killer robots you like but if the randomly generated world doesn’t gift you with the right things then you’ll eventually fall to the next big enemy. Or perhaps the over-simplified controls will have you dropping an explosive at your own feet when you’re trying to knife an enemy. I died from that a good number of times as you knife with left click, but if you’ve got explosives equipped pressing left click drops one where you’re standing. It’s quite a glaring flaw in my eyes given the controls are generally sharp and well thought out.

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I’m not ashamed to admit that I never made it very far into Teleglitch: Die More Edition. The game is so back-breakingly difficult that I found it nigh on impossible to even make it past level three for the vast majority of my efforts. It all culminated with me suddenly breaking through and reaching level five. Filled with determination and courage I powered forward only to be locked in a room with three giant, machine-gun laden mechs and a mass horde of zombies who promptly transformed me into lunch meat.

In Teleglitch this still kind of counts as a victory, though, as you unlock the ability to start from level three by reaching level five meaning my brutal death wasn’t a complete loss, although save files are deleted upon death. Starting at level three with equipment to match is pretty much the closest this game has to a proper save system.

Of course all of this is old news to the people who sank their teeth into Teleglitch when it came out in is original form. If you’re someone who played the original Teleglitch then there’s something here for you too, namely AI tweaks, new levels, extra lore to soak up, and most excitingly extra items and weapons. If you pre-ordered you even get an extra option in-game that allows you to start off with random gear, but unfortunately this is a feature I didn’t get to try out.