If you charted the current best time for speedruns of popular games over time I’m not sure you’d get an exponential decay but certainly there’d be something analogous to a half-life. In this case, the time for Half-Life has just decayed to 20 minutes and 41 seconds thanks to a monstrously feat of research, planning and bunny-hopping by a team of players. 317 segments, two-thirds of which are fewer than 5 seconds long.
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Remember about a year ago I mentioned a speedrun of VVVVVV, where someone beat the game in under 14 minutes? And compared that to the tool-assisted run of under 13 minutes? And then I said something almost prescient…
Barring a disruptive new glitch or strategy, that run is an indication of the theoretical fastest possible time that can be achieved, by a computer or a human.
Well…
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Everyone knows Bastion is a great game (and yes, has great music). Over at SDA a speedrunner called Vulajin has managed to finish the game in only 15 minutes and 9 seconds. Just… wow.
It’s funny to watch – so much content is skipped that the story falls apart and makes literally no sense.
VVVVVV is at once utterly charming and controller-snappingly difficult. Retro graphics, exquisitely responsive controls, a single gameplay mechanic and a pitch-perfect chiptune soundtrack come together to form one of my favourite games of all time. Certainly, my 3DS has been used for little else. Let’s talk completion and speed.
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Let’s start with a confession, shall we? Ladies and gentlemen, I am a save-scummer. Yes, I will shamelessly abuse save mechanics to achieve goals, to ghost a level, to make the best kill, to keep that health bar full or – depressingly frequently – just to beat the #£%&ing level at all.
Stealth games are my biggest failing here. Love a good stealth-em-up, me. Thief, Commandos, Deus Ex, Hitman, the whole slippery, shadowy lot of them. Even Dishonoured when the voice acting manages to not induce crippling boredom.
The problem is, I’m really just a bit crap at them. Commandos was an exception there, but when you consider that the player had total situational awareness and combine that with the slow, careful pace it was often more a logic puzzle than a combat game. Other than that, call me Captain Ineptitude. Skulker McDeadthief. Agent Clompenboots.
Hence save-scumming, the ancient and noble art of mashing the reload button until you make it another five pieces down the corridor and saving again. Save-scummers. You will know us by the trails of faded F5 and F9 keys.
But perhaps there is hope…