Teleglitch: Die More Edition (2013)

Full disclosure, I cheated to finish the game, after 10 hours of little to no progress I had enough and gave myself infinite ammo. Even so, I still struggled with the latter levels, when every enemy had a gun. I guess that means this is the hardest game I ever played.

I usually don’t shy away from hard experiences, but this one felt particularly unfulfilling. The game asks a lot from you but gives very little, it actively dislikes that you are playing it.

Combat is dangerous, fast-paced and unavoidable, weapons are inaccurate, and enemies are many and move in erratic patterns. All of this is adds up to a big waste of bullets and health, stuff that you are going to get back anytime soon.

During the first couple of levels, you can try and kill everything with the environment or the somehow inaccurate??? melee attack, but it’s a very slow process that can backfire at any minute, leading you back to the start of the game, leading you to the same process again. The game would have benefited from some sort of stealth or hiding mechanic.

Making your job harder is the camera, which moves and zooms on its own, distracting in the middle of a fight (you can only disable the zoom, and is on by default)

On more of a personal note, the game calls itself a roguelike, but it is barely randomized. You will always find the same enemies and items in the same level, the only thing that changes is the layout of the map. Maybe the devs pivoted into a roguelike late in development? Either way, it doesn’t seem well implemented.

Good things: Aesthetics; it can have some good moments of tension on the rare occasion when the game isn't drilling you into dust

Conclusion: Don't, unless you enjoy torture and don't have any other torture-like games to play