Half-Life 2 Speedrun Record Falls To Sub-90 Minute Game

[Earnest Cavalli]

Half-Life 2 Speedrun Record Falls To Sub-90 Minute Game


Half-Life 2 can be completed in an hour and a half, and we've got the video footage to prove it.

Half-Life 2 is a monumental game. Not only is it inarguably one of the best shooters created to date, but it's underlying technology has also been used to create a handful of titles that are arguably even more popular. With such success, it's only natural that those gamers who dedicate themselves to burning through games as quickly as humanly possible would be attracted to Half-Life 2, and thus we present the clip at top-right.

That footage was taken by the SourceRuns speedrunning community, and it marks a new world record for runs through Half-Life 2 that are not assisted by outside programs of technology. The SourceRuns crew does rely on glitches present in the Half-Life 2 code and the video has been edited from some 200 gameplay segments, but beyond that the clip is basically just a capture of really, really dedicated Half-Life 2 fans turning the game on its head in an effort to reach the end as quickly as possible.

According to the notes attached to the YouTube video, the creation of this speedrun involved 600 days of effort, and the end result is a completion time of 1:27:51.09. The SourceRuns crew has promised to release a second video in the near future explaining all of the techniques it used to create this first vignette, and we'll be sure to keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, maybe some of you think you could do better. Maybe you've spent years practicing your Source kung fu, and now you've finally got a stage on which to share your talents. I tell you what: If any of you can offer video proof of a faster Half-Life 2 run, I'll not only report on the story, but I'll say very complimentary things about your appearance and the way your hair smells.

Because here at The Escapist, we care.

Source: PC Gamer [http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/07/08/new-world-record-speedrun-finishes-half-life-2-in-under-90-minutes/]

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[Legion]

And people complain modern shooters are too short.

To be honest I am surprised it is possible due to all of the sections where it is necessary to wait for doors to open and such.

 

[Starke]

...I'll say very complimentary things about your appearance and the way your hair smells.

Because here at The Escapist, we care.

*Screams incoherently and starts rocking back and forth.*

 

[CriticalMiss]

I'm a bit disappointed that it isn't a single segment run. It's more impressive when someone can haul some serious ass in the game from start to finish and not rely on chopping it up in to manageable pieces. Still, they've done it faster than I ever could so kudos to them.

 

[bismarck55]

Article needs moar Half Life 3 speculation. Why can't Valve speedrun HL3's development?

Half Life 3.
I want it.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Suquencebreaks!!!

The item grab hover reminds me of power bomb chaining in Metroid, except it looks even harder to do.

 

[lacktheknack]

Article needs moar Half Life 3 speculation. Why can't Valve speedrun HL3's development?

Half Life 3.
I want it.

All the internets to the one who can find the most convoluted way of proving this run time actually means HL3 confirmed

It was completed in three halfs of an hour.

Actually, not quite. It was completed in 1:27:51.9.

If we divide THAT by 3 by removing the colons to make 12751.9, then put the colons back in place, we get 59:17.1.

5 and 9 = September 5. 17.1 = 5:06 PM.

If you need further proof, 17.1 -> 171. 171 / 3 = 57. 5+7 = 12. Counting from twelve, it's five hours and seven minutes. If we take the half-life of that gap, it's a mere 30 seconds, and 30 -> 3+0 = 3.

The cincher is that 12 -> 1+2 = 3.

IT'S COMING, GUYS!

Bonus marks if you spot the mistake.

 

[bafrali]

Umm, is this really a newsworthy occasion? I am all for bringing up the classics but this is ridiculous.

 

[Best of the 3]

watching this with a freind. We're simply flabbergasted as to how fast this is.

 

[Weaver]

I'm a bit disappointed that it isn't a single segment run. It's more impressive when someone can haul some serious ass in the game from start to finish and not rely on chopping it up in to manageable pieces. Still, they've done it faster than I ever could so kudos to them.

I agree with this. I sort of feel like speedruns only "count" when they're a single run and aren't tool assisted.

 

[UNHchabo]

I'm a bit disappointed that it isn't a single segment run. It's more impressive when someone can haul some serious ass in the game from start to finish and not rely on chopping it up in to manageable pieces. Still, they've done it faster than I ever could so kudos to them.

Hmm... I could've sworn Marshmallow's 2 1/2 hour run was single-segment, but apparently it's not.

Well anyway... I helped with the earlier HL2 speedrun, "Half-Life 2 Done Quick". And by "helped" I mean that I held the record on two of the airboat chapters for about half a day before someone beat me. My name is in the credits though!

You can find that run, coming in at 1:36:57 total, here: http://archive.org/details/HalfLife2_13657

Here's the "outtakes" video from that run:

Spoiler

Edit: After watching a little bit of this new run, I'll say that I don't think it can be directly compared with HL2DQ: this new run was done using the updated version of HL2 that uses the Orange Box engine, while HL2DQ used the original version. There are several exploitable glitches that were fixed in this change, while others were added. Thanks to Accelerated Back Hopping [http://wiki.sourceruns.org/wiki/Accelerated_Back_Hopping], runners can now move significantly faster across open ground than they could using the old bunny-hopping method.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

If its edited together, than its not a speedrun. Thats like saying you beat an older console game on an emulator without dying, but used savestates.

 

[UNHchabo]

If its edited together, than its not a speedrun. Thats like saying you beat an older console game on an emulator without dying, but used savestates.

Speedruns have three separate categories, that are all counted separately. Single-segment, segmented, and tool-assisted. This is segmented; tool-assisted is where you're allowed to take a game frame-by-frame and wrestle every millisecond you can out of the game, even if you're doing things that no human could ever do with a controller. In 2003 somebody had a famous 11-minute tool-assisted run of Mario 3 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTNpC6lYYrs]; after everyone found out that he didn't "really" play it, they called it "fake". In that case, I don't think he did anything that was physically impossible, just incredibly unlikely.

According to this page [http://wiki.sourceruns.org/wiki/Category:Half-Life_2], there was a recent single-segment run done by "S." with a time of 2:16:54. That video was done with the "old" engine, so it can be directly compared to the HL2DQ run. I think you can find that video here [http://www.twitch.tv/lotsofs/c/2175974], but I haven't watched it yet.

 

[Amir Kondori]

I'm a bit disappointed that it isn't a single segment run. It's more impressive when someone can haul some serious ass in the game from start to finish and not rely on chopping it up in to manageable pieces. Still, they've done it faster than I ever could so kudos to them.

I agree with this. I sort of feel like speedruns only "count" when they're a single run and aren't tool assisted.

As long as people are up front about how they did it I don't think it really matters. They have different categories of speed runs and the main thing is being honest about how you got it.

I used to love speed running the boss challenge in Aria of Sorrow. I don't remember my times anymore, several minutes, I used to play it all the time, especially during bathroom breaks.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

Anyone else find that motamo's obsession with assess annoying after the first.... 50 or so times that they did it? Like really? every single woman , constantly, for every run you're doing? come on guy...

Could always tell when it was motamo's 'turn' because their entrance was always punctuated by lots of closeups, none of the others seemed to feel this compulsion >.<...

 

[th3xile]

I guess that I'm dumb for not knowing; but how does he do that super fast backwards run and flying jump stuff?

 

[thiosk]

The only speed run that matters is Super Metroid.

My god mockball was revolutionary.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I guess that I'm dumb for not knowing; but how does he do that super fast backwards run and flying jump stuff?

It's something to do with the Source Engine. It's how Portal speed runs work, too; and also why I never care for watching speed runs of Source Engine games. It just isn't fun to watch people backwards-hop their way through the game; though admittedly some of the tricks they use are interesting, like how he grabbed that box so he could jump the line at the beginning, then pissed-off the guards so they'd smash-up a nearby bench so he could grab the board and put it into one of the actors to cause him to glitch straight to his next script location rather than him slowly walking there. Sections like that are why I might actually sit through the HL2 speed run at least. Always fun to see what glitches, exploits and work-arounds the speed runners found.