Quick Look: Teleglitch

@muttersometaxicab: I'm not sure if you're fighting a losing battle or if you can change minds on this. But you spelled out my thoughts and critiques of the purist point of view very well, thanks for that.

I bought this game a month or so ago on Desura and it's awesome.

If you grew up with Doom and were terrified of it as a kid, you will love this game.

It reminds me of Doom when played on Nightmare (minus respawning enemies) with more limited ammo and resources. You never really feel safe. Later on you start encountering extremely tough enemies and they get larger and more dangerous as you progress.

After about a month I haven't made it past the 6th level, so it's pretty brutal. Has a ton of interesting craft-able weapons as well, including nail guns, triple nail guns, double assault rifles, plutonium firing rifles, anti tank rifles, double shotguns, etc.

I'm just gonna chip in again and share my opinion that calling a game like this a "roguelike" is misinformative. That's my problem with how Patrick sometimes labels games. I'm pretty sure that's exactly how he started out describing Spelunky, as well, and even though I advocate free use of that word to describe a set of mechanics, using the word of its own immediately gives me the wrong idea until I can see the game with my own eyes. This is not a roguelike, so that's not a good thing to call it. But if you just throw in another word that describes even more of the game than that term does, I'll be fine with it. Roguelike platformer, in the case of Spelunky. There, done, now I know what you're talking about.

There are other things I think are worth being picky about, as well. People claim that Skyrim is an RPG. Skyrim is totally not an RPG. At least I don't think it is. When I hear RPG, I want to be able to assume Dragon Age, at worst. Ultima or Baldur's Gate at best. Some people call the Zelda games RPGs as well, and I just don't know what to do about that other than shake my head in disdain. But in some respect, I can let an Elder Scrolls game slide. It does have the equipment and the leveling, at least...

In my opinion, though, roguelikes are so much more clear cut than that, and they have that strict definition for a good reason. Anyone who argues for using "roguelike" as an umbrella term for games like this is either just tired of watching people argue about pointless things, or they don't actually know what a roguelike is and should seek to gain more knowledge before they judge. A roguelike is a type of RPG. You can't argue against that. But if you rephrase it to explicitly remove the RPG part by substituting your own genre, you can easily use the phrase to get a message across without risking confusion.

For instance, let's presume I'm designing a game. Let's say I have a hard time describing the gameplay in short, so I try to compare it to the closest games I can think of (as one almost always does to describe anything). I tell you... that it's a turn-based cover-based shooter. Now, the last half of that statement is already a genre. You've got your Gears of Wars and Spec Ops: The Lines and what not. But the first part adds something to that, that removes the exclusivity of the genre itself and allows its characteristics to stand alone as a concept within a greater context, rather than the full picture. You're probably imagining some kind of tactical strategy game, perhaps played from a closer, more personal viewpoint. Maybe something like Full Spectrum Warrior but with time to think between actions. If that's what you thought, then my pitch worked well enough, and we arrived there by taking a well defined genre and adding another phrase to it to make sure it was interpreted descriptively instead of... definitely. Or something. I'm starting to struggle with the phrasing of these examples!

My point is that that's what people are trying to do with "roguelike". They just fail to express a disconnect with the genre to allow the mechanics to be used freely. My turn-based third person shooter really isn't that different from a roguelike platformer in that sense. They rely on words that traditionally define genres, but don't have to be genres, as long as we remember to substitute the implied "RPG" with something else. Spelunky is not a roguelike first. It is a platformer first. That's the key word. Remember the key word, and I'm sure we won't be having this semantic problem for long, when the roguelike die-hards realize it's not dragging the name through the mud. It's just using as a quick and easily identifiable descriptor of some key mechanics.

I HATE LOVE TELEPORTERS

Giant Ryan face is a terrifying thing to start a quick look on.

Note to Patrick, saying the word roguelike causes a needless firestorm in the comments and takes away from the game you're showing. Easy solution: don't say the word roguelike.

@sleepydoughnut: Eh, my bigger issue with this Quick Look was more with Jeff's insinuation that all hardcore roguelike fans are petulant, exclusionary assholes on the scale of the FGC or League of Legends. Still, loosely throwing around the term for a genre as the label for a game that merely takes some inspiration from that genre is also a problem.

I didn't take the time to read through the comments, but i assume you guys are all agreeing on how this game is SUCH a rogue-like....

Easy solution, commenters should stop complaining about such dumb things.

@b_philip: There isn't a hyphen in the word.

No, it isn't a roguelike either.

@bestusernameever: Agreed

I picked this up last week when I caught a story about it on RPS. It is really cool, and VERY hard. The later levels have more *large* groups of enemies, as well as just some very large enemies. Cool that they took a look at it. One of the reasons I like this site is they give it their best to cut into a wide range of things.

(Also... if you're on Desura... Project Zomboid is kinda neat...)

Easier solution- don't read comments.

You're right. Controlling the actions of hundreds of random people is much easier than a single person choosing to not use a word even if he knows it's inaccurate and provocative.

Where do you fall on Tales of Maj'eyal, specifically? I ask because I'm a huge fan of it, but can't for the life of me get into other, ASCII based roguelikes.

Edit: To clarify, it's not just TOME being tile-based, but also the streamlining of some mechanics, like potions being replaced with reusable runes/inscriptions.

@fiercedeity: I played roughly a million zillion hours of ToME thanks to Dave Snider.

It's fuckin' great. I've beaten it twice, both times Solipsists, and it has some of the most original and unique character classes in ANY recent RPG.

Still, I can see where you're coming from with other stuff being inaccessible. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has an interface that's even more streamlined than ToME's, and has a pretty good graphical presentation to boot. You should try it out.

Yeah, the game is a bit obtuse, and most roguelikes are really best enjoyed by joining a community on places like 4chan or Something Awful or Bay 12. (Reddit's subreddit for roguelikes is rather small and low-traffic, and I don't think the format helps for the advice-type stuff.) I know Roguelike General on /vg/ loves giving out advice to new players.

@MuttersomeTaxicab & @mdnthrvst - Thank you for the stimulating and civil conversation! Was a great, and unexpected, read to come across. Only played DoomRL, but really appreciate the type of game the massive roguelikes are even if I may never play one.

7:40 to 7:48 - Absolutely hilarious to hear Patrick say that as it probably never left.

Thanks for the kind words. I was absolutely amazed by how well DoomRL worked. Although at a certain point that game just got nigh on impossible. Still, it's up there in terms of ASCII RLs I'd point newcomers to, along with Frozen Depths and Brogue.

@mdnthrvst: Thanks for the tip, re: Cataclysm. Couldn't figure out why the window was so tiny.

This game looks cool as shit.

usually they are called roguelike-likes, I like roguelite though.

To be fair, from the official Teleglitch website:

"Teleglitch is a roguelike top-down shooter with pixel graphics."

Anyway, I picked this up today, and it is really fun. There are quite a few items to find and combine, and things get really intense a few levels in.

Eh, the developers can claim whatever they want about their game. My guess would be they simply aren't familiar with the whole roguelike-like division, which is exceedingly more apt for Teleglitch.

I sometimes wonder if the developers of Rogue give even a fraction of a shit about how people compare their games to Rogue.

This looks really fucking cool. I love the visual effect that appears every time the character fires its weapon.

I have to imagine that, if anything, they appreciate that people care enough about their game to use it as a reference point, and that it might get people to go back and check it out.

It's getting to the point that I cringe every time I hear the words, "pixelated style", "quirky platformer", or "minimalistic". Indies are way more overbearing than FPSes or anything like that nowadays. Game looks fine, but man, indie games are everywhere now.

Estonia is also the place doing this http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/13/estonia-maths-rebels

I think the GB crew should just start referring to all the games they QL as roguelikes. Just stoke that fire until it burns itself out.

New Super Mario Bros = roguelike

Tomb Raider = roguelike

Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue = Ohoho, you better believe roguelike.

@mdnthrvst: You might not be the right person to ask, but do you know of any games that are not roguelikes but are similar in their look (ASCII) and control to something like Nethack or Angband? I want something that isn't hard and doesn't have permadeath and is about exploring and grinding etc. Something to play around with occasionally next to all my other terminal clients. I've tried Angband (actually I think it was Quickband) and Nethack but since I'm not the kind of person that derives any extra enjoyment out of games that have any sort of challenge they never really stuck with me.

They've always been everywhere, they're just getting more exposure because more are being sold as actual products now. I don't think it takes an economist to figure why multi million dollar budget games are outnumbered by games from two man dev teams.

Shout out to Estonia!

So, why hasn't anyone been comparing this to Monaco: What's Yours is Mine. Obviously a different style of gameplay, but the graphics are similar; top-down, pixely, and the way they display 'point-of-view'/'fog-of-war'. Anyways this game looks awesome surprised I haven't heard about it before or that it is not on Steam yet.

I can't tell if the screen tearing is the game or the capture.

I really like the graphical look, the concept is interesting, and the item combining seems like it could be really clever, but like most roguelikes, I'm afraid the game loses me at permadeath.

This game has some hella' nice sound effects. lol

Coming back to this comment section, good lord, you people are the worst. Hardly anyone talks about this cool game, and instead everyone engages with mdnthrvst's pedantry over how no one respects roguelikes and the people who play them. Who cares, it's a dying freeware genre, and better games have stripped out the more interesting elements from roguelikes. Roguelikes are dead, long live roguelike-likes or whatever.

Also, Jesus Christ, Patrick, there's a knife. Having played the game, man, the mutants in the starting area are such a joke you should never waste so many bullets on them.

And Patrick just makes up what he thinks the story is, because while there is a teleportation incident, that's not where the enemies came from. The enemies were already in the facility, because the military company behind the facility has been doing all sorts of experiments creating zombies and Frankenstein's monster, basically. It says that clearly, in the very creature info logs that Patrick briefly shows in the video.