Just before the Orange Box hit shelves, I felt that it was my duty as a Valve fan to brush up on my Half-Life history in order to better prepare myself for (and appreciate the certain quality of) the episodes I was about to receive. I played the original Half-Life during the summer of 1998 in installments at a friend’s house. I realized at the time how awesome the game was, due to the solid game play, thoughtfully crafted realism and load-less, real-time flow of the story. But that was almost ten years ago, the play by play of Gordon Freeman’s escapades through the Black Mesa test facility are a mish-mash of boss encounters and long tram rides to me now. To Wikipedia!
This, however, only whet my appetite. My first thought was to try and download it from Steam it and play through it again to enjoy the adventure first hand. Though it was aged, I figured a quality game is a quality game and is always worth playing… unless it’s Mega Man. I realized that if I did start playing through, I would end up stuck in part 1 while part 2 and the subsequent episode would sit idly by. I didn’t really need to play it, I just wanted to get all of the details from the first game and look upon it again with a nine year older set of eyes.
In looking for an alternative I came upon a video of a fellow named Blake “Spider Waffle” Piepho on a speed run through the game. This was what I needed. The only problem was that Blake was going for a time record; no stopping for story line progression, no talking to Barney or Dr. Kliner and skipping anything he could by use of clipping. With a little wiki here and the speed run there, I was able to satisfy my hunger for first person shooting and theoretical physics.
Now I watch speed runs all the time, it’s better that most programming on NBC. I have never, nor will never beat Resident Evil 4. I just don’t have the inclination towards the RE storyline or the patience for its controls. That being said, I know that it is a good game. RE4 seems to me like the king of game I would like to watch someone else play, and now I can.
My favorite speedrun site is Speed Demos Archive. They mostly focus on old games. There’s a video of someone beating Jaws on the NES in under four minutes. Even after four minutes the game looks boring.