Last year, we noted the rapid growth in the popularity of speedruns, and this trend continued in 2023. Fortunately, there were plenty of interesting new games suitable for high-speed playthroughs. In this article, we will talk about a very effective run in Ghostrunner, another erotic quest from tomatoanus, and also remember the scandal around the Minecraft speedrun. It’s a shame that 2023 itself couldn’t be skipped so easily!
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Most controversial speedrun – Minecraft
In June, a blogger under the nickname Dream, who gained 15 million YouTube subscribers by releasing videos about Minecraft, published a speedrun of his favorite game. The gamer reached the Ender Dragon and killed him in 20 minutes, thus setting a world record for the version of Minecraft that he used (on newer games you can go even faster – here is the current record holder).
For half a year, Dream rested on its laurels, releasing only entertainment videos and not knowing that a real scandal would soon break out around its passage. In December, Speedrun.com moderators posted 29-page report after reviewing the speedrun, we came to the conclusion that the blogger had somehow modified his game – he was too lucky at certain points. Other minecrafters from YouTube immediately started hunting a witch under the nickname Dream.
The player himself still denies all charges. He provided the moderators with a save from the game, in which he set a record, and also announced that he intends to conduct his own investigation, for which he has already hired an astrophysicist from Harvard. How this story will end is still unknown – the entire Minecraft community is holding their breath waiting for a new video on the topic from Dream. We can look at this Schrödinger’s world record in detail.
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Dizzying Speedrun – Half-Life: Alyx
Speedruns for VR games are not a very popular genre. First, most platform titles are more fun rides than full-fledged games. And secondly, not everyone has the headsets themselves. Be that as it may, Half-Life: Alyx in 2023 tried to fix both of these problems at once. It not only became the first virtual reality title claiming the title of the game of the year, but also significantly spurred sales of VR glasses – at some point, manufacturers even reported a shortage.
Half-Life: Alyx speedruns are distinguished primarily by the fact that they are very difficult to watch due to the specifics of control in VR – the camera switches too abruptly. However, with the transition to the next generation consoles, there will probably be more games in VR, and therefore now is the time to train the vestibular apparatus so as not to suffer so much when watching the speedruns of the future!
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Biggest Speedrun Breakthrough – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The process of finding optimal routes in games never stops, because even the oldest titles have loyal fans. Due to this, every year gamers manage to update world records for games, which, it would seem, have long been studied up and down. In 2019, runners unexpectedly found a new trick in the classic Doom, and in 2023 the loudest breakthrough happened in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
At the beginning of the year, speedrunners discovered a new trick, which, due to a seemingly random sequence of actions, allowed them to skip virtually the entire game and go straight to the final cut-scene. So the travel time was reduced from 17 minutes to ten. However, the runners, of course, did not stop there and continued to look for workarounds. The current record today is an amazing 7 minutes and 9 seconds from Frenchman Amateseru.
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Most esports speedrun – Dota 2
Competitive speedruns are a strange but still existing trend. As it turned out, you can “pass” Dota 2 in a variety of ways. The most common of these, of course, is the destruction of the enemy throne. But even this problem is divided into many different categories. For example, in one gamers compete, who will break the enemy base faster on their own, without allied and enemy heroes, while others play 5v5 with bots. There are categories in which you need to finish off a hundred creeps as soon as possible, level 25 or take Roshan. In general, there is a lot of space for entertainment in case the provider suddenly turned off the Internet for you! Below is the fastest solo throne demolition on Huskar. It turns out that this can be done in less than 5 minutes!
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Most Meme Speedruns – Outlast, The Sims 4, and Our Old Friend Goose
The sexy speedruns tomatoanus isn’t the only unusual category in the speedrun world. For example, The Sims 4 has a category “black Widow”, in which the passage is considered successful if your sim has survived five spouses. Outlast has a page for passing with super jumps enabled – all wounds in it begin with players jumping out of the map.
I really liked one of the speedrun options for PC Building Simulator – a game in which your only task is to build computers. Usually the challenge here is to assemble a more powerful car and not break anything, but there is a category of speedruns in which these rules do not apply. In it, gamers strive, on the contrary, to assemble and configure a PC so that when it starts up it gives out a “blue screen of death”. It turns out guides on how not to do it.
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Well, where are we without Untitled Goose Game?
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