{"id":39599,"date":"2017-07-09T12:05:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T16:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39599"},"modified":"2017-07-09T23:20:58","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T03:20:58","slug":"summer-games-done-quick-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39599","title":{"rendered":"Summer Games Done Quick 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really love the Games Done Quick<\/a> charity marathon. It’s been running for about a week and the final game (Earthbound) is just wrapping up as I write this. This show has been the best one so far, and I thought I’d share a few of my favorite moments.<\/p>\n

If you’ve never caught the show: <\/p>\n

Some of the best speedrunners in the world come together to complete various games in implausibly short timeframes. Castlevania in 32 minutes. Getting all goals and medals in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 in 16 minutes. All of Half-Life in 35 minutes. Some runs have additional constraints like “no out-of-bounds glitching” or “get all secrets”, just to keep things interesting.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is performed in front of a live audience and streamed to the world via Twitch. The event runs around the clock for a week. The show covers a variety of games from the 1990s to modern titles, although the nature of speedrunning means the list skews towards retro titles. A run is more fun to watch once the speedrun community has been able to study a game and discover the best shortcuts and techniques.<\/p>\n

Some runs are demonstrations of dexterity and timing, while others are driven by having an encyclopedic knowledge of glitching techniques. Some runs basically just feature someone playing the intended game really well, while other runs will have the player running around outside the level, circumventing entire sections of the game, and exploiting unusual builds to trivialize combat. The former makes for runs that are amazing to watch, even if they don’t result in ridiculously short times. The latter can result in someone beating a game ten or even a hundred times faster than a proper play-through, but the resulting chaos is hard to follow if we don’t have someone handy to describe what the runner is doing and what’s supposed to be happening in the game.<\/p>\n

For me the sweet spot seems to fall somewhere between these two extremes. I like a run that makes a game ridiculously short, while at the same time it can be frustrating to watch a run where the player spends all their time out-of-bounds, zipping through featureless grey voids, and pressing the in-game camera up against strange little lumps in the level geometry. I like to see a game beaten quickly, but not so quickly I can’t even tell what’s going on. I also like when runs are short overall, because it gets boring watching the same game for too long. Like, I get that eight hours is a really short time<\/em> for beating Final Fantasy 7, but that’s still eight freakin’ hours of Final Fantasy 7<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I’ve watched as much as I could this year, but I’ve caught less than a third of it. Here are my favorite bits so far:<\/p>\n

#4 Dark Souls in 29:05 by BubblesDelFuego<\/h3>\n

Click to watch the run.<\/div><\/a>
Click to watch the run.<\/div><\/p>\n

Bubbles is a fan favorite at GDQ. He runs a lot of different games, to the point where I have no idea how he time for it all. I know enough about Dark Souls to realize the incredible time investment required to be able to play the game at this level. This run has a few glitches (like using a particular weapon animation to escape fall damage after jumping off a cliff) but the meat of the run is just skill and memorizing enemy behavior patterns. <\/p>\n

#3 Tetris: The Grand Master<\/h3>\n

Are they... are they playing on CRT monitors?! Click to watch the run.<\/div><\/a>
Are they... are they playing on CRT monitors?! Click to watch the run.<\/div><\/p>\n

This part of the show was actively frustrating. The Tetris gameplay was a blast, but there were these long setup times between rounds. I gather the problem was how long it took to get the machines connected up properly. As one of the runners said, “It’s almost as if there should be a home version of this game.” And yeah, it’s apparent we really need a working version of Tetris on the PC that isn’t a half-assed broken mess<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first Tetris segment required a brutal hour and twenty minutes of setup time leading up to an eight-way race between players<\/a> that lasted just 12 minutes. Then (after 12 more minutes of setup) there was a game where four people engaged in a 2-player head-to-head mode<\/a> by having two players share a controller, with one player doing movement and the other rotation. And finally (after another six minutes) one player took on Tetris rev mode<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed this section, although if they do it in a future marathon I’ll probably just wait for the whole thing to appear on YouTube so I can skip the setup phases. This show already has a lot of downtime. I’m not sure what sort of engineering wizardry is required to get these machines (I’m pretty sure this stuff is running on arcade hardware) hooked up to the streaming system and the controllers everyone had in their laps, but this must have been a huge headache for the crew.<\/p>\n

Seriously Ubisoft: You need to patch the version of Tetris you crapped out onto Steam a couple of years ago. This game is too culturally important to treat it like some lame movie tie-in that can be thrown together cheaply and abandoned after release. <\/p>\n

Moreover, whoever owns the rights to Tetris The Grand Master<\/em> really needs to get a version out on modern platforms, since this seems to be the preferred entry for high-level play. <\/p>\n

#2 Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast in 48:07 by CovertMuffin<\/h3>\n

Click to watch the run. DO IT!<\/div><\/a>
Click to watch the run. DO IT!<\/div><\/p>\n

Some runs are fun because they’re amazing demonstrations of skill. Others are fun because the runner is charismatic and charming. This one is both. CovertMuffin seems so happy to be doing the run, he was even thrilled when things went wrong. I deeply envy his ability to enjoy a game even when he fails the same insane jump for the tenth time in a row in front of 150,000 people. I’m also amazed at his ability to perform tricks while also explaining them to the audience. Most runners have the “couch crew” to back them up. Usually two to four other experienced streamers will sit on the nearby couch and offer commentary to explain the action to the dumbfounded audience. You can see Muffin’s crew in the screenshot above, although those guys couldn’t get a word in because Muffin is a multi-tasking badass.<\/p>\n

As someone who has to pause a game in order to talk, this looks like sorcery to me.<\/p>\n

I really loved Jedi Outcast back in the day, although I doubt I’d be able to sit through the whole thing these days. It really does become a slog in a few spots. This speed run is a nice drag race down memory lane. <\/p>\n

#1 Prince of Persia: Sands of Time in 1:25:05 by HennaJoe<\/h3>\n

Click to watch the run.<\/div><\/a>
Click to watch the run.<\/div><\/p>\n

Judging by the comments sent with donations, people really enjoy seeing their favorite games broken by clever speed runners. A run is more amazing if you have a frame of reference for just how much time the runner is saving with their shenanigans. The same is true for me when it comes to this game. I dabbled with speedrunning this game years ago, before I even knew speed running was a thing. I never found any of the technical glitches, but I remember finding a few tricks and shortcuts to avoid doing puzzles. <\/p>\n

I love this game, and I’m sad Ubisoft ran this series into the ground. I don’t think anyone else is really working on this particular blend of fluid platforming and puzzles. The trend these days is to dumb down the puzzles, add tons of cover shooting, and then pack the entire thing with elaborate cutscenes. Yeah, I get that the Uncharted<\/em> games are really good. But they aren’t good at the stuff Sands of Time<\/em> is good atAnd don’t even get me started on Tomb Raider.<\/span>, and I’d love to see this kind of gameplay get a revival. <\/p>\n

Sadly, this is one of those areas where it’s still hard for indies to compete. Sure, it’s trivial to make the environments and models these days, but the Prince had literally hundreds of different animations to support all the possible ways his various moves might chain into other moves. I wouldn’t be surprised if his move set was overall more complex than Lara Croft’s was in 2013. That sort of thing takes lots of time to get right. It requires programmers and animators to work together very closely. I’m not saying it’s impossible or anything. I’m just saying you’d need just the right team, and even then you’d require a pretty big budget by indie standards.<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

HennaJoe was lots of fun and I loved seeing the ridiculous glitches in action. He was so entertaining I’m considering looking him up and watching his streams, and I never<\/em> watch streamers.<\/p>\n

What did I miss? I know I caught less than a third of the streams. What other runs were really good?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really love the Games Done Quick charity marathon. It’s been running for about a week and the final game (Earthbound) is just wrapping up as I write this. This show has been the best one so far, and I thought I’d share a few of my favorite moments. If you’ve never caught the show: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}