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My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/Left4Dead.html

Crash Course run

Verifier Responses

Quote:
I was surprised and excited to see that some new Left 4 Dead content appeared on the list. Unfortunatley after watching the result I am a bit disappointed and would say this is a rejection for me.
I'll try to comment on what could be improved in terms of gameplay in order to keep the run in the same level of play Tristan delivered on the first serie. I'll separate the run in two levels to comment and also because I don't know how a whole campaign run would fit in the current content for L4D (more later). I'll make no distinction between a PC and XBox run considering faster is faster and a XBox run can obsolete a PC run and vice versa.

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Crash Course - The Alleys: ~3:50 total play time
One of the biggest time saver of the whole DLC is unfortunately absent here. A look at the Left 4 Dead thread on SDA or other Crash Course speed runs on youtube would have shown a way to skip the bridge event by running through fire. All it takes is picking pills at some point in the run (present either at 1:28, 1:31, 1:58, rarely at 2:05 and 2:23) and swallowing them halfway through fire (no matter the difficulty since this fire deals fixed damages supposed to block you from passing even in easy).
5s are lost struggling with zombies at 1:47. This sort of fights should be almost banished from an individual level run and kept at minimum for a complete campaign run.
At 2:45 the runner should aim for the event trigger with a more direct route since he is losing 5-8s there.
I am not sure how bots deal with the fire bridge when you go through and leave them behind. I know that you can eventually spend a ton of time waiting in the safehouse for them either dying or reaching you. That's one of the main reason this run should be performed in expert so that they die at some point in the level and don't waste any time. Killing them at start or giving them as bait to the tank seems optimal but there is also another trick that is quite unreliable: the bots are supposed to respawn close to you when they are too far. It has been said that you can force the respawning by running backward and looking at the ground or something like this. It worked... sometimes.
4:14 seems like a long route around the bus.
No Left 4 Dead run include any complex bunny-hopping sequence for it is pretty hard to gain speed and maintain it. In slopes it works quite differently and the acceleration is easy to obtain by jumping each time you land. Not a lot of time to save here but worth noting.
To prevent bots from "patching you up" just take out your own medkit without using it.

Time lost AFAIK: >1min
+: Not too much time wasted waiting for bots.
-: In the end this level is 1:48 slower than the best IL run for Crash Course m1. Even if I don't except the same standard for a full campaign run and can accept mistakes, it seems a little too important in this case. Not using the event skip.
REFUSED

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Crash Course - The Truck Depot:
Again the runner is skipping an important time saver. At 6:04 you can climb on the red car then the white truck to pass over the fence and appear close to the 6:51 point. The red car is trapped and will activate a horde which is actually not that bad to reach the zombie limit.
Getting huntered then downed by the tank looks ugly. I know that tanks are pretty hard to avoid when you try to keep your route as straight as possible but here it looks messy. Finding a nice way to dispose of this tank is the challenge in this level.
Note that when you scope the sniper, your running speed is lowered by 60% when the model has the zoom on his eye. So, don't zoom Smiley
Only 7 seconds lost by waiting for bots (+ some more setting up to this point) isn't that much but I would like to point a better strategy overall. The goal is to kill the bots before and use the fact that they insta respawn before the finale.
I won't comment on the final battle as I have no time to compare with and didn't test it much. Only thing that may be better is to aggressively rush the spawn points as Tristan did in his Blood Harvest finale. These fights are quite random and only a decent amount of tries can tell what is a good or bad time on it.

Time lost AFAIK: >40s
+: Bots are again quite cooperative
-: Not using the well known shortcut. Pounced then incapped by a tank. A more aggressive finale would be better I think.
REFUSED

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First of all I have doubts about the rules chosen by the runner. Normal mode will be slower than easy mode (tank killing mostly) and slower than expert mode (getting rid of bots). The game was ran as IL runs to this point and the DLCs crash course and the sacrifice should fill the table for the current gamepage IMO. So either it is considered a different game or it is a different category (hence missing the 4 other campaigns ran the same way).
The fact that the runner admittedly made only 3 attempts and didn't reach his first goal (that would have been closer to a nice looking run from my experience) is also a bit of a problem. Luck manipulation and average time comparaisons will take more than 3 attempts with this level of mistake tolerance.
The fact that he didn't use the two shortcuts for the campaign calls for a rejection in itself.


Quote:
I try to keep it simple.

I dont think the runner thought about the difficulty. Easy is generally the fastest, but on expert its easier to get rid of the bots.
Its also questionable, if a run of a full episode makes sense. The enemy placement is random so its hard to nail a good attempt and 3 attempts arent enough tries. Unfortunately you see this pretty good in the video.
He often looks around and runs into enemies and other stuff(he doesnt lose much time, but if add up the time he lost durning this small mistakes). There are also 2 shortcuts missing. the jump through the fire at the end of the first level (saves about 1min) and the jump over the red car with the alarm (saves about 40 sec and sometimes it doesnt trigger the tank)

I reject the run.


Quote:
Not much to say that the others havn't already. Its ok play that isnt up to SDA standards.

Reject. But do some research, Play IL instead of the whol campaign and keep playing till you get ridiculous luck and everything goes to plan. Then submit.


Quote:
Get blocked by zombies at points? Missing to MAJOR skips? Getting healed by allies? I reject this run!
P.S. Runner should have done more than 3 tries. Speed running ironically can't be rushed.


Decision: Reject

Reason: Sloppy play and doesn't execute two big shortcuts.

The run will be available for month, PM me for a link.
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