I have completed Teleglitch!

And if you don’t understand how awesome that is, you haven’t played that game (much). Also I have completed 140 (again) …. like 10 minutes ago:

• Teleglitch: Die More Edition
  

  58 hours playtime

  39 of 39 achievements

• 140
  

  12 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

Teleglitch: Well, what to say here. Teleglitch has been sitting for the longest time in my Completion Rate Downer list. I had 24 from 39 achievements and didnt think I would some day get more because …. you know …. the game is hard. I played the game for over 20 hours and I have seen at best Level 7 from 10. The game itself is a rogue-lite top-down low resolution shooter in a dystopian future where different factions are developing new ways to kill each other and you are a scientiest in one of those lovely research institutes …. which had recently some kind of accident - the Teleglitch incident. You wake up with a pistol and a knife and a lot of stuff which wants to kill you. Each level you have to search for the teleporter to progress. Ammo is scarce in a sense that if you don’t know what you do, you will run out …. fast. If you miss to much … again. The game starts easy enough: Level 1 - Mutants, can be killed with the knife, melee only, Level 2 - Larger Mutants and Zombies, horrible moving pattern but still easy, Level 3 - First armed enemies, if you don’t have an armor 3 shots will kill you, Level 4 - 20 armed enemies, the game starts separating the casual player from the dedicated, Level 5 - Roboter bosses; yea you are screwed. With Level 4 the game really becomes difficult and failing means you have to replay previous level again. While there are unlockable shortcuts you need to beat levels further down the line to get them. For the starting point in level 3 you have to have reached level 5. For Level 5 it must have been Level 7 and so on. This means in order to unlock a new starting point you need to get at least past four consecutive levels. Luckily, past Adelion manage to reach Level 7 like …. once. And so I could start in Level 5 which was my starting point for most of my runs as it gives you quite a good selection of items and let you craft - yes there is crafting - powerlegs (faster movement) and a teleporter (second chance in case of death).
And so I played, and tried and tried. And I reached Level 7 again …. and died. I tried and tried again and found out that level 8 has another boss …. and died. I wondered how much farther I could get. Achievement wise I would be happy with 4-5 more achievements and beating Level 7 gave me already one. Reching level 9 would unlocked the arena. Usually another easy one, plus the achievements for beating the Level 8 boss and completing Level 8. And then it finally clicked, I could reproduce my games. I tried again. I’ve beated Level 8 boss and died. I tried again and reached level 10 and I died again. I found out that the Level 7 starting point is shit and kept the Level 5 one. Then, I managed to get to the last boss in the game - literally a rotating wall of death - and died again. And then ….. I survived the Teleglitch incident, the first time. And I become greedy. Teleglitch - in an odd similarity to Toki Tori 2+ (see previous update) - is a game where knowledge is power. The more you know the easier it gets. The game can still screw you over by placing three welders, 2 scientists and a squid directly at the start of a new level. But, it becomes manageable, reproduceable. And I started to go for the harder achievements - Surviving without Teleporters (can be done by starting from level 9, still difficult), completing the game starting from Level 1 (takes about 3-4 hours) which is easier if you know what you are doing. And then I had accumulated three wins and only one achievement remained. Beating the last boss in 10 seconds which took me ….. another 20 hours and 10 runs to finally get this done. But yea, I have completed the game which I never thought i could do. But most of the game becomes manageable once you get past the knowledge lock. Also the later levels feel easier, there is some kind of difficulty spike from level 4-7.

140: Euphorized, I decided to tackle another old burden. The last mirror level from 140. I completed the game before by beating all three levels and the respective three mirror levels and then the developer meant it would be cool to update the game with a fourth one. I have a different opinion about that. As the mirror levels have to be beaten in one go, I wanted to skip this one as the fourth level has a weird rhythm. Ah, yes. 140 is a minimalistic platformer where you unlock new level elements accompanied with new rhythms and the deadly elements move with the music.
Playing the fourth level over and over again - first in normal mode to get practice, then mirror mode - I started to wonder why the game has so many good reviews. And I think it is because most people don’t play the mirror levels. Because in there, a horrible design flaw gets visible. The game expects you to move anti-rhythmic. So the platform you are standing on will become deadly with the next beat. This means you have to jump prior to it which means you can’t use the beat as indicator but have to anticipate it. And in Level 4 this gets to a point where the music becomes counter-inuitive for the movement and you have to rely a lot on visual cues to solve the sections. In addition, the game has a kind of difficulty where a mistake means death, not repeting a section because you fell down, no …. death, repeating the whole level. And it doesnt set you to the beginning of the level but to the selection hub. You have to waste 10 seconds to restart the level, have to watch three seconds falling down. EVERY TIME. I sweared a lot but I managed to find reproduceable solutions for most selections. I feared that I would need several restarts caused by death by boss. But luckily I’ve beated him the very first time in mirror mode (non-mirror mode it always took at least 3-5 tries). So yea, right now I’m happy to have this annoying one completed to. If the developer makes another update I’ll get angry ….

So, two old burdes are done. One down from the Completion Rate Downer AND Unfinished list. And one more completed from my Steamgift Wins. Now, I will lock into what to tackle next. Maybe the euphorisation is enough for another no-death achievement …… Deadlight.