14 DAY TRIAL // Lately, it's simply not enough to complete a game, establishing that you're better than two-thirds of the gaming world, apparently made out of people who can't be bothered to finish all their games, but you also have to do it fast.
The popularity of speedruns has been steadily increasing, with developers keeping them in mind while producing their creations. Traditionally, speedruns where the go-to way to assert your alpha-ness among unworthy scrubs at arcades, but there soon came a time when unconventional games became a succulent offering to the speedrunning demon.
The original Half-Life is one of the most famous examples of this, as the story usually required some 15 to 20 hours to complete, with gamers managing to finish it in under an hour for years.
Blitzing through its content at nauseating speeds has apparently become a thing, and the new world record has been set by a player who managed to finish the game in just 20 minutes, which is 9 whole minutes faster than the previous world record, which was staggering by itself.
The speedrun looks like a pixelated rollercoaster ride, and the nimble athlete has been preparing for it since 2010, painstakingly planning his approach and looking for new routes to utilize in order to get around Black Mesa as fast as possible.
The original target was set to around 27 minutes, which would net the team the title of record holder, but through the development of new techniques, it managed to achieve the ungodly 20:41 time, shaving a full nine minutes off the previous record.
"This run has truly been an endurance test for everyone involved, and we're extremely happy to finally be able to share it with you," said YouTuber quadrazid, uploader of the speedrun video.
The speedrun is made of several segments, with each portion having a different player tasked with developing the shortest route, and then stitched together in order to achieve Frankenstein's speed monster.
If you're really interested in learning more about the team's feat, you can check out its spreadsheet, where it documents the entire process, divided into sections and displaying each second it manages to win through careful planning and discovery.
The video shows the team using the "bunnyhop" technique, which allows players to improve their speed but is generally frowned upon by speedrun purists, as it has been officially removed from the game, but which the team manages to exploit through a mod.
