If you've ever played through a game a few times because it's one of your favourites you might notice you can get through things quicker and quicker. However speedrunning gamers take this kind of familiarity to new heights with their careful planning and execution of rushing through a game to complete it in the minimum possible time.
At the weekend Quadrazid published a video on YouTube (via EuroGamer) showing off a spectacular speed feat in playing the seminal PC game Half-Life. The speedgaming collective, of which Quadrazid is a member, managed to shave a third off the world record for completing Half-Life on its 'Hard difficulty' setting. The game completion time was cut from the previous world record of 29 minutes and 41 seconds to 20 minutes and 41 seconds. The whole game video, entitled 'Half-Life 21', is embedded above for your enjoyment. Please be aware, if you have never played this old game before and it's on your to-do games list, then this video contains spoilers…
Four years of planning and practice
The world record time, as seen in the video, took "almost four years of painstaking planning, theory crafting and execution," we are told. "A lot of the improvement from the first estimation and the previous world record comes from the very hard work and countless hours put into perfecting each and every segment, no matter how short or trivial."
Quadrazid also listed the technical details of this record breaking Half-Life run. For instance the game featured a mod called Bunnymod Pro "to restore the gameplay to the way it was before the anti-bhop patch back in 2001". Also an enhanced HUD aided the speedrunning. The speedgamers used many scripts including "jump spam, duck spam, 180º turn for gauss boost and precise use-key actions". There are 317 segments in the game with 249 of them under five seconds in duration. The team has even published a spreadsheet on Google Docs showing the gameplay segments and timings.
This record breaking Half-Life speedrunning team includes Half-Life fans; quadrazid, CRASH FORT, coolkid, pineapple, YaLTeR, Spider-Waffle, FELip. Congrats to them all.
