There are a number of ways to speed run Half Life 2. Any% no voidclip means that the runner is trying to beat the game as quickly as possible without having to finish all of the side missions or get all of the collectibles. It also means that the runner can’t abuse Half Life’s “void” or skybox. In other speedrun categories, players can repeatedly save and load in a way that glitches them into out of bounds areas, allowing them to finish the game much quicker. Using glitches like this is how something like a 6 minute Prey speedrun is possible.
RELATED: Half-Life’s G-Man Has Message for Players
The new world record holder is a Danish speedrunner who goes by Maltemller. He absolutely smashed the previous record of 52:48:070. His new run clocked in at 48:32:00 which is a mind-bending 4 minutes faster than the previous run. To put that in perspective, the 5th through 10th best records are all within a minute of each other. So to be this much faster than the previous time is a massive achievement.
This isn’t the only record Maltemller has in Half Life 2. He currently holds the world record for ‘cutscene-less fun%’ run, and has second place in the ‘glitchless any%’ and ‘cutscene-less – HL1 movement fun%’ categories. With a record like this, he’s well set up to start setting records in Half Life Alyx, once it’s released.
With the 16 year wait almost over, and a new Half Life game on the horizon, players can look forward to more Half Life content in the near future. And with the release of any new games comes the inevitability of the speed running community getting their hands on it. While it’s unclear just how popular VR speed runs will become, considering that there’s already a brutal Ringfit speed run, it’s hard to imagine that speed runners won’t gleefully take to the new Half Life Game.
Half-Life: Alyx releases March 23 exclusively on PC.
Next: Overwatch Players ‘Speed Run’ to Lowest Possible Rank
Source: Speedrun.com
