My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: Doesn't exist yet.
Easy difficulty run
Verifier Responses
Decision: Reject
Reason: It's really obvious from all of these responses that this run was more of a casual runthrough than a true speedrun. Even the verifier who accepted the run admitted the runner missed a lot of shots (which should be grounds for rejection in an FPS run IMO).
Run available upon request (PM me).
Easy difficulty run
Verifier Responses
Quote:
The ideal definition of a first-person shooter is when you're in a game, playing from the first person, and you shoot things. The runner has the level geography mapped out perfectly, never gets lost, and uses legit shortcuts from time-to-time, however even with aim assist on, the runner misses his targets A LOT. I wish the runner could have tapped the screen to the right after each level was over so it would show the exact time the level was completed, as well as the accuracy. Because it would be well below 50%. The fight with the golems in particular seemed to take forever, and that doesn't even require shooting them. I don't believe however, that this breaks the run, because it is very quick, and very well planned. I just think the runner needs to go and shoot some virtual cans before tackling another FPS speed run. The runner did not die nor cheat from what I could see. The only room for improvement I can offer is to aim better. Other than that, a decent and speedy run.
Quote:
Easy mode runs should be near perfect. This one isn't close.
Oh, it starts out great. I like his running throw of the timed mine onto the satellite in Siberia. Then it quickly turns bad. Like when he gets snagged by those guys right before the portal. It being the 1st level, he should've simply restarted. However, I know how it is to play the 1st level of a game over and over again, then ultimately moving on though I might've wasted a second or two. The difference is, I do single-segment runs. He did segmented. There's no excuse for him not to have restarted.
Whatever. Chicago, the 2nd level, is worse. First, he didn't have to wait for the first guy to pass by before dropping down to street level. Instead, the runner should've shot near the guy, which would've gotten his attention and prevented him from blocking the runner's path. He also wasted time with the guy immediately before the phone booth. He should've just shot him. Then there's the sloppy kill of the guy with the Tommy gun. He also shouldn't have wasted time getting the double Tommy guns. He could've killed the boss very fast with just one. I did it, and I didn't even have to reload. The runner did reload, and he had two guns! Weak. Also, the runner could've saved Tommy gun ammo by protecting Marco with the Luger.
Notre Dame, the next level, was more of the same. My biggest complaint is how he waited for the guys to stop burning. Did he even test running around the flames? I did it on my first try and didn't catch on fire. And what was with him taking his time with killing the zombie on the stairs after rescuing the 2nd maiden. Just run past!
I figured there's no point to keep watching. I reject the run.
Out of curiosity, I popped the game in after not playing it for a long, long time, just to see if I could do any better. I can and did, at least up to the point where I stopped watching the run. Granted, I did put a lot of time into the game back in the day getting all the platinum medals (woot!). The thing is, according to the forum, the runner hasn't even beaten the 1st level on hard. He shouldn't have attempted a run, even on easy.
Oh, it starts out great. I like his running throw of the timed mine onto the satellite in Siberia. Then it quickly turns bad. Like when he gets snagged by those guys right before the portal. It being the 1st level, he should've simply restarted. However, I know how it is to play the 1st level of a game over and over again, then ultimately moving on though I might've wasted a second or two. The difference is, I do single-segment runs. He did segmented. There's no excuse for him not to have restarted.
Whatever. Chicago, the 2nd level, is worse. First, he didn't have to wait for the first guy to pass by before dropping down to street level. Instead, the runner should've shot near the guy, which would've gotten his attention and prevented him from blocking the runner's path. He also wasted time with the guy immediately before the phone booth. He should've just shot him. Then there's the sloppy kill of the guy with the Tommy gun. He also shouldn't have wasted time getting the double Tommy guns. He could've killed the boss very fast with just one. I did it, and I didn't even have to reload. The runner did reload, and he had two guns! Weak. Also, the runner could've saved Tommy gun ammo by protecting Marco with the Luger.
Notre Dame, the next level, was more of the same. My biggest complaint is how he waited for the guys to stop burning. Did he even test running around the flames? I did it on my first try and didn't catch on fire. And what was with him taking his time with killing the zombie on the stairs after rescuing the 2nd maiden. Just run past!
I figured there's no point to keep watching. I reject the run.
Out of curiosity, I popped the game in after not playing it for a long, long time, just to see if I could do any better. I can and did, at least up to the point where I stopped watching the run. Granted, I did put a lot of time into the game back in the day getting all the platinum medals (woot!). The thing is, according to the forum, the runner hasn't even beaten the 1st level on hard. He shouldn't have attempted a run, even on easy.
Quote:
Quality (Capture)
Pretty good. I viewed the MP4s.
Quality (Gameplay)
Siberia
Instead of going into that building and pressing the switch, he can just walk right across the planks of wood into the building. He loses 10 seconds because he doesn’t.
Gets caught on enemies neat the end of the level, he could have either just punched them or run around them.
Chicago
Gets caught on an enemy while exiting the building.
Instead of straying off the path to the informant, missing two shots on an enemy, and picking up a machine gun, he should have just met the informant first and let the enemies with the machine guns come to him, since after that point, you need to wait for him to walk to the other side of the block anyway.
Also, he backtracks in the nightclub to pick up another machine gun, since he’s low on ammo from wasting it earlier.
Instead of just running up to the boss and shooting him in the head, the runner misses a ton of shots on him and has to RELOAD to drain the last 5% of his health. He even continues to shoot him after he’s dead and the Time Crystal has been dropped next to him. Fuck.
If these mistakes were fixed, at least 30 seconds could be shaved off the time.
Notre Dame
Loses 5 seconds when he stops on the stairs and misses two shots in a row on a zombie.
Loses at least 10 seconds when he stops in front of the exploding wall, misses some shots on the zombies, and even waits until their fires burns out to pass them.
Instead of wasting at least 8 seconds on the stairs by stopping, waiting for the zombie to get up, waiting for it to come down the stairs, and then shooting it, he should have just run past it.
Instead of going up the stairs to rescue the girl first, he gets the time crystal first, which of course involves a 16 second trek the wrong way. And of course, the zombies that spawn block his way because he was so slow and he has to kill them.
The Portal Demon goes horribly because he misses a bunch of shots, shooting wildly instead of concentrating, resulting in him shooting the posts almost as much as he does the boss.
He also misses half his shots on Jaques, resulting in a very bad looking boss fight. It only takes three headshots with the shotgun to finish him off, but the runner stays too far back and suffers for it.
Planet X
Instead of using the turret to kill the enemies, he does it on foot.
If he had a better knowledge of the enemy spawn points in the following section, he could kill them quicker and enter the UFO at least 15 seconds faster. He should have also stood next to the beam-in point and killed them from afar so he could just run into it once it activated. Instead, he has to run to it, and even kills the 4 guys that come out of it, losing another 10.
Gets unlucky with the beam-in point and loses 4 seconds because of it.
Neo Tokyo
Not much to say, because you need to wait for the girl to reach the end anyway.
Well, there wasn’t much to say for the first section, but dear God, there is for the second. Ignoring him getting caught on a wall, he somehow manages to miss every single enemy with his first and/or second shots. Hell, he could have just punched the guys from behind and it’s an instant KO. He also takes an unnecessary trip to the weapons locker, when the guy will come at him with the gun he needs after he pulls the switch.
Wild West
In a run that would make Stanski cry because of the long time taken in such a short stage, the runner avoids two of the three biggest easy-to-pull-off timesavers in this stage, including shooting the explosive barrels from the inside of the prison instead of going all the way around to the back, and shooting the water barrels from outside the barn to avoid going into it and to the upper level. The third timesaver involves two huge tricks in the last section. The first is to push the mine cart and run in front of it instead of pushing it the whole way, and the other is to stand next to the wall it busts through while shooting the Colonel from afar. The runner, doing none of this, adds 50 seconds to his time. It doesn’t help that he still doesn’t headshot the boss even though he’s standing right next to him and has to reload because of it.
Atom Smasher
This is where the game gets hard and tricky. This is also where the runner makes some really, really bad choices. Starting off by going to a computer panel and manually using a drone gun to eliminate a whole two guards, ones that could have been disposed of by simply running up behind them and punching them. He then goes out of his way to pick up a gun, and then misses a headshot of a guy firing at him right in front of him. He turns around while running backwards, fires, and continues to misses, all while taking damage and eventually hitting the guardrail instead of continuing to run the way he’s supposed to. Then, he has to wait at least 8 seconds for the guard to run up to him in order to finally kill him so that the area can be cleared of the bad guys so the scientist can disarm the bomb. It’s almost like this was has second attempt at a run of this stage and he didn’t even know that. At least 30 seconds are lost here alone. It’s really awful.
Goes out of his way to kill a guy and get some body armor. He wouldn’t need to do this if he had done the first part right.
The hallway part goes pretty bad, from multiple missed shots to guys blocking his way to doors closing right in his face and him seemingly not knowing how to open them again.
Screws up the magnet part, resulting in a bad-looking attempt best left for the outtake reel, which I’m starting to think this whole thing might qualify for. Also, he doesn’t need to watch it get all the way to the top and drop it. At least 8 seconds are lost here.
Again, he misses killing a bad guy, so when he tries to activate the scientist, he realizes he needs to do it and has to head back out to nail him, losing another 8 seconds at least.
Has real trouble simply activating the switches, losing over 10 seconds. It’s embarrassing.
Sloppy sloppy sloppy!
Aztec Ruins
This is where the game gets unfairly stupid in regards to the last part of the level. Needless to say, this should be fun to watch.
Well, I knew it, I didn’t even need to wait a fraction of that time for the bad to start. He not only misses two shots on the guy in front of him, but he also backtracks to light his arrows, kill the yeti thing, and wait for him to run away to pass him. He then stops to kill another enemy. This 23 second mistake could be avoid if he’s fast enough to just run by the yeti thing before it blocks his way.
Progression through the ruins could be 10 seconds faster if he maneuvered better and was more efficient in his killing.
Instead of falling off the stairs to the switch, he goes down them, losing 6 seconds.
Yes, the Golem dropping can be hard work, yes, through practice and good timing, he can knock off over a minute from this process.
Robot Factory
This is where the game throws one of the greatest levels ever to be found in a video game at you. This is going to hurt me. I just know it.
Actually, the first part of the level doesn’t go that bad, except that he could have acoided killing the big robot and gone around the other way. It is 3 seconds faster. He also could have kept his lock on the node while sidestepping into the body armor instead of picking it up afterwards.
He kills a trash can robot, but had enough time to take out the second node first and simply run by it and the spawning robots. But it doesn’t end there, oh no. Since the grenades don’t finish off the trash can robot, he fire another one way off course and it misses, he then has to run back down the hall to hide from their bullets before popping out to finish them off. This whole section wastes 25 seconds.
Since he doesn’t kill the floating grenade robots when he has the chance (by simply aiming up while running under the doorway), they follow him into the next room and drain half his health.
The next section is where it all falls apart. I know it’s hard to survive using a fast strategy, but over 30 seconds can be saved if he did. Most of the problems come from using the wrong weapon and running from place to place when he could snipe them all from one location. Using the Lasergun, not Plasma Autorifle, you can one-hit-kill snipe each robot as it’s beaming in while only using a little movement from one location. He also misses two shots while standing right in front of a robot. For the last one, he misses a one-hit-kill charged shot and then has to dance around it twice while firing weak shots at while looking stupid. He also waits for robots to come to him instead of sniping them in their standard beam-in points. Well over a minute and a half can be dropped from the time if he came up with a solid strategy.
If he had got more plasma grenades, he could have finished The Machinist off even faster.
Space Station
This is where I’m temped to not even watch the level run, because it’s a 5 minute 14 second run of a stage that can be beaten in less than 4 on the same difficulty. Worse, there exists a video of someone doing it in 4:14… ON HARD. But I’ve come this far, so it’s only reasonable that I finish it.
Instead of getting the ammo, he should have dropped off behind the Time Crystal platform and went out the door and saved over 10 seconds.
Instead of summoning the Level 3 elevator and waiting for it to take him down, and killing the enemy before hand, the runner could have just jumped down the shaft and saved 15 seconds.
Fails to destroy the first wave of Timesplitter ships, and another one later on.
The rest of the time lost comes from backtracking to get the spacesuit.
Timing
The runner provided the times here. They’re all too high.
Importance
The more I watched, the more I was temped to start taking high power drugs to kill the pain. Look, if we even think about accepting this run onto the site when videos exist on Youtube showing the all the levels beating beaten anywhere from 18 seconds to a full minute and 50 seconds (!) faster, SDA would implode. The runner should simply copy these strategies and get as close to those times as he possibly can. I know it’s his first time submitting to SDA, but he has to look at the works of people like Yautja Elder, Kibumbi, and Dragorn to understand what SDA accepts as a good segmented speedrun. It’s almost as if he’s just running through the levels quickly rather than looking for strategies and shortcuts and taking risks. As much as I hate to say this, the music in the Wild West level is better than anything seen in this speedrun.
Pretty good. I viewed the MP4s.
Quality (Gameplay)
Siberia
Instead of going into that building and pressing the switch, he can just walk right across the planks of wood into the building. He loses 10 seconds because he doesn’t.
Gets caught on enemies neat the end of the level, he could have either just punched them or run around them.
Chicago
Gets caught on an enemy while exiting the building.
Instead of straying off the path to the informant, missing two shots on an enemy, and picking up a machine gun, he should have just met the informant first and let the enemies with the machine guns come to him, since after that point, you need to wait for him to walk to the other side of the block anyway.
Also, he backtracks in the nightclub to pick up another machine gun, since he’s low on ammo from wasting it earlier.
Instead of just running up to the boss and shooting him in the head, the runner misses a ton of shots on him and has to RELOAD to drain the last 5% of his health. He even continues to shoot him after he’s dead and the Time Crystal has been dropped next to him. Fuck.
If these mistakes were fixed, at least 30 seconds could be shaved off the time.
Notre Dame
Loses 5 seconds when he stops on the stairs and misses two shots in a row on a zombie.
Loses at least 10 seconds when he stops in front of the exploding wall, misses some shots on the zombies, and even waits until their fires burns out to pass them.
Instead of wasting at least 8 seconds on the stairs by stopping, waiting for the zombie to get up, waiting for it to come down the stairs, and then shooting it, he should have just run past it.
Instead of going up the stairs to rescue the girl first, he gets the time crystal first, which of course involves a 16 second trek the wrong way. And of course, the zombies that spawn block his way because he was so slow and he has to kill them.
The Portal Demon goes horribly because he misses a bunch of shots, shooting wildly instead of concentrating, resulting in him shooting the posts almost as much as he does the boss.
He also misses half his shots on Jaques, resulting in a very bad looking boss fight. It only takes three headshots with the shotgun to finish him off, but the runner stays too far back and suffers for it.
Planet X
Instead of using the turret to kill the enemies, he does it on foot.
If he had a better knowledge of the enemy spawn points in the following section, he could kill them quicker and enter the UFO at least 15 seconds faster. He should have also stood next to the beam-in point and killed them from afar so he could just run into it once it activated. Instead, he has to run to it, and even kills the 4 guys that come out of it, losing another 10.
Gets unlucky with the beam-in point and loses 4 seconds because of it.
Neo Tokyo
Not much to say, because you need to wait for the girl to reach the end anyway.
Well, there wasn’t much to say for the first section, but dear God, there is for the second. Ignoring him getting caught on a wall, he somehow manages to miss every single enemy with his first and/or second shots. Hell, he could have just punched the guys from behind and it’s an instant KO. He also takes an unnecessary trip to the weapons locker, when the guy will come at him with the gun he needs after he pulls the switch.
Wild West
In a run that would make Stanski cry because of the long time taken in such a short stage, the runner avoids two of the three biggest easy-to-pull-off timesavers in this stage, including shooting the explosive barrels from the inside of the prison instead of going all the way around to the back, and shooting the water barrels from outside the barn to avoid going into it and to the upper level. The third timesaver involves two huge tricks in the last section. The first is to push the mine cart and run in front of it instead of pushing it the whole way, and the other is to stand next to the wall it busts through while shooting the Colonel from afar. The runner, doing none of this, adds 50 seconds to his time. It doesn’t help that he still doesn’t headshot the boss even though he’s standing right next to him and has to reload because of it.
Atom Smasher
This is where the game gets hard and tricky. This is also where the runner makes some really, really bad choices. Starting off by going to a computer panel and manually using a drone gun to eliminate a whole two guards, ones that could have been disposed of by simply running up behind them and punching them. He then goes out of his way to pick up a gun, and then misses a headshot of a guy firing at him right in front of him. He turns around while running backwards, fires, and continues to misses, all while taking damage and eventually hitting the guardrail instead of continuing to run the way he’s supposed to. Then, he has to wait at least 8 seconds for the guard to run up to him in order to finally kill him so that the area can be cleared of the bad guys so the scientist can disarm the bomb. It’s almost like this was has second attempt at a run of this stage and he didn’t even know that. At least 30 seconds are lost here alone. It’s really awful.
Goes out of his way to kill a guy and get some body armor. He wouldn’t need to do this if he had done the first part right.
The hallway part goes pretty bad, from multiple missed shots to guys blocking his way to doors closing right in his face and him seemingly not knowing how to open them again.
Screws up the magnet part, resulting in a bad-looking attempt best left for the outtake reel, which I’m starting to think this whole thing might qualify for. Also, he doesn’t need to watch it get all the way to the top and drop it. At least 8 seconds are lost here.
Again, he misses killing a bad guy, so when he tries to activate the scientist, he realizes he needs to do it and has to head back out to nail him, losing another 8 seconds at least.
Has real trouble simply activating the switches, losing over 10 seconds. It’s embarrassing.
Sloppy sloppy sloppy!
Aztec Ruins
This is where the game gets unfairly stupid in regards to the last part of the level. Needless to say, this should be fun to watch.
Well, I knew it, I didn’t even need to wait a fraction of that time for the bad to start. He not only misses two shots on the guy in front of him, but he also backtracks to light his arrows, kill the yeti thing, and wait for him to run away to pass him. He then stops to kill another enemy. This 23 second mistake could be avoid if he’s fast enough to just run by the yeti thing before it blocks his way.
Progression through the ruins could be 10 seconds faster if he maneuvered better and was more efficient in his killing.
Instead of falling off the stairs to the switch, he goes down them, losing 6 seconds.
Yes, the Golem dropping can be hard work, yes, through practice and good timing, he can knock off over a minute from this process.
Robot Factory
This is where the game throws one of the greatest levels ever to be found in a video game at you. This is going to hurt me. I just know it.
Actually, the first part of the level doesn’t go that bad, except that he could have acoided killing the big robot and gone around the other way. It is 3 seconds faster. He also could have kept his lock on the node while sidestepping into the body armor instead of picking it up afterwards.
He kills a trash can robot, but had enough time to take out the second node first and simply run by it and the spawning robots. But it doesn’t end there, oh no. Since the grenades don’t finish off the trash can robot, he fire another one way off course and it misses, he then has to run back down the hall to hide from their bullets before popping out to finish them off. This whole section wastes 25 seconds.
Since he doesn’t kill the floating grenade robots when he has the chance (by simply aiming up while running under the doorway), they follow him into the next room and drain half his health.
The next section is where it all falls apart. I know it’s hard to survive using a fast strategy, but over 30 seconds can be saved if he did. Most of the problems come from using the wrong weapon and running from place to place when he could snipe them all from one location. Using the Lasergun, not Plasma Autorifle, you can one-hit-kill snipe each robot as it’s beaming in while only using a little movement from one location. He also misses two shots while standing right in front of a robot. For the last one, he misses a one-hit-kill charged shot and then has to dance around it twice while firing weak shots at while looking stupid. He also waits for robots to come to him instead of sniping them in their standard beam-in points. Well over a minute and a half can be dropped from the time if he came up with a solid strategy.
If he had got more plasma grenades, he could have finished The Machinist off even faster.
Space Station
This is where I’m temped to not even watch the level run, because it’s a 5 minute 14 second run of a stage that can be beaten in less than 4 on the same difficulty. Worse, there exists a video of someone doing it in 4:14… ON HARD. But I’ve come this far, so it’s only reasonable that I finish it.
Instead of getting the ammo, he should have dropped off behind the Time Crystal platform and went out the door and saved over 10 seconds.
Instead of summoning the Level 3 elevator and waiting for it to take him down, and killing the enemy before hand, the runner could have just jumped down the shaft and saved 15 seconds.
Fails to destroy the first wave of Timesplitter ships, and another one later on.
The rest of the time lost comes from backtracking to get the spacesuit.
Timing
The runner provided the times here. They’re all too high.
Importance
The more I watched, the more I was temped to start taking high power drugs to kill the pain. Look, if we even think about accepting this run onto the site when videos exist on Youtube showing the all the levels beating beaten anywhere from 18 seconds to a full minute and 50 seconds (!) faster, SDA would implode. The runner should simply copy these strategies and get as close to those times as he possibly can. I know it’s his first time submitting to SDA, but he has to look at the works of people like Yautja Elder, Kibumbi, and Dragorn to understand what SDA accepts as a good segmented speedrun. It’s almost as if he’s just running through the levels quickly rather than looking for strategies and shortcuts and taking risks. As much as I hate to say this, the music in the Wild West level is better than anything seen in this speedrun.
Quote:
Video quality is good! However...
Run:
1. Easy mode gives you about half as many objectives for each mission, meaning you don't play the whole level. Also it is practically impossible to die. This makes it not so impressive.
2. Guy has terrible aim, even considering it's on the analogue sticks. This isn't always important but it makes the bosses at the end slower, often requiring more reloads than necessary = bad.
3. Movement errors near the beginning of segments.
4. Some level-specific planning errors: i.e. not getting set on fire by the zombies to skip some waiting on Notre Dame (you can get put out in the fountains later)
5. Sometimes he switches weapons and stands in place for no reason? Cheesy
I haven't even watched it all yet. I'm saying no from what I've seen so far.
Run:
1. Easy mode gives you about half as many objectives for each mission, meaning you don't play the whole level. Also it is practically impossible to die. This makes it not so impressive.
2. Guy has terrible aim, even considering it's on the analogue sticks. This isn't always important but it makes the bosses at the end slower, often requiring more reloads than necessary = bad.
3. Movement errors near the beginning of segments.
4. Some level-specific planning errors: i.e. not getting set on fire by the zombies to skip some waiting on Notre Dame (you can get put out in the fountains later)
5. Sometimes he switches weapons and stands in place for no reason? Cheesy
I haven't even watched it all yet. I'm saying no from what I've seen so far.
Quote:
In short:
The runner looks like he knows what the objectives are that need to be completed on each stage, but he has no idea of how to do them quickly. This run was not practiced and it shows tremendously. Numerous mistakes in exection and route and poor play quality overall. Rejected.
In (very) long:
Rejected. If this were a single-segment run, I would definitely reject it. The fact that this is segmented makes this an easy judgement. The overall quality of play is poor. For a single segment run, there really is no excuse for any stage to be more than 40 seconds slower than the best known individual stage times. For segmented, it should be somewhere in the 10-15 second range. I'm not expecting a run with times matching the best individual stage times, but I am expecting an effort to at least approach them. This run does not do that. It ignores known faster routes that are not difficult to accomplish. I'll comment on each stage and point out where this happens, but first I'll mention things that are seen throughout the whole run.
First, I don't think the player is using the standard control setup, which is generally the best as far as getting tight fast turns and accurate aiming. Non-standard control setups have been used effectively for speed, but this is not the case here. A large amount of time is lost from taking turn far too wide or from over-turning
Whenever the player has to activiate an object in the game(such as flipping a switch or opening a door), the player has a tendancy to run right up to the object, wait a second, and then activate it. Doors and other objects can be activated quite a ways before you actually reach them. A lot of time is lost from this throughout the run, and it just isn't very smooth.
Also, I think the runner does not use auto-aim. Why? This results in very painful to watch sequences where enemies need to be taken out quickly to open a door, but because the runner does not use auto-aim the results are a bunch of painful time-wasting misses. This is very apparent on robot-factory.
Individual stage comments
Siberia:
At the beginning, entering the building and hitting the switch is unnecessary. The best route is to run straight for the hole in the roof, and allow yourself to be seen by the security camera(which the runner also does). This activates the alarm, which in turn notifies a guard who opens the locked door that the switch is supposed to open.
Near the end of the run where the runner collects the crystal and then places the mines: There is a better way. Place the mines first, turn and get the crystal(the runner does not make use of a hole in the side of the cage the crystal is found in), and then go to the end of the stage. Doing it this way avoids getting stuck on many of the enemies in the area.
Chigago:
There is no reason to stop and wait for the guard at the beginning.
For the end of the run, getting the 2 x tommygun is a time-waster. The boss can be taken down fast with just the single gun. If the runner had been more careful with ammo earlier in the run...
Notre Dame:
Wastes too much time waiting for the flame zombies to die off after the explosion. The runner doesn't want to catch on fire, but you can get through much sooner without catching on fire. The very best strategy for the stage has you going right through, catching fire and then doing most of the rest of the stage while on fire(which makes saving the maidens much more difficult), but good times can also been done without catching on fire.
Poor route choice in getting the crystal before saving the maiden hanging from the rope. Faster to save the maiden first.
For the part where you have to help the hunchback kill the eight zombies that appear(doing so unlocks a door), the best strat has you killing 6 of them and leaving two for the hunchback while you get on with heading towards the giant boss. Usually the hunchback will kill the last two in time, but not always. Since this is segmented, there's no excuse not to take the chance.
Planet X:
For the most part, bad execution is what's wrong here. The strategy for the stage is straightforward, but as an example, near the end where the runner enters the spaceship, he should be right there when the entrance opens up(that would be the beam of light), but instead he's about as far away as you can get.
Also during the part where he kills enemies to open the lasers: Usually I go and get behind one of the gun turrents. His idea of taking them down on foot may actually be a good one, but it would have to be executed right(for example, you want to be next to the lasers when they go down, not way far away like he is). I may toy around with this idea. It could lead to an improvement in the individual stage run.
Neotokyo:
This is the worst stage in the world to speedrun since the first 3 minutes or so are spent just waiting for the hacker to get the password. No way around it. The runner follows the best strategy, but it's executed very poorly.
Wild West:
Best strat at the beginning is to go into the jail and shoot the wagon through the jail window. Saves a good 7 seconds or so if done correctly.
For saving the girl in the burning building, going inside the building is a bad route. You want to shoot the barrels from outside of the building, ideally without stopping, but even stopping and aiming is faster then what the runner does.
Bad route during the portion with the minecart and boss. The best route would take some explaining, so I'll just give a link showing it:
Atom Smasher:
There is absolutely no reason to do what the runner does at the start and use the turrent gun. Huge time-waster.
Watching the rest of this one was painful. Poor route choices, poor execution. We have the runner stopping to kill a bunch of enemies at one point. Then, at the place where you have to wait for the huge door to slowly slide down, the runner chooses not to activate the door immediately and instead waits until he's gotten the attention of a scientist to deactivate the bomb. Wrong. Activate the door, then while you are waiting for it to open, do the other stuff. Parallel, not sequential. The runner also needs to spend time practicing the stage to get a feel for how the objectives work and how to do them quickly, in particular getting the attention of the scientists in a timely matter. The execution of this stage is inexcusable for a segmented run.
Aztec:
Runner stops to kill enemies at the start. They need to be killed on the run. Next, the runner back-tracks to add fire to his crossbow to kill the wood-golem. You can just run past the wood-golem and ignore him.
There is a much faster method to kill the golems at the end. An explanation would take too long. Once again, I'll refer to a video:
The golems don't always cooperate with that method, but it's reliable enough for use in even a single-segment run. Not to use it in a segmented run is bad.
Robot Factory:
This starts out okay, but at the point where the runner back-tracks to take cover from a spider bot it gets very painful to watch. The runner also stops to kill some enemies that don't need to be killed. For taking out the node on the ceiling near the end, the runner waits way too long before he starts to take it out. After that the runner has to kill enemies that appear in order to open up the lasers blocking the way. The best weapon to do this with is the laser gun, which the runner does not use at first. The enemies appear in a pre-determined order which is the same every time and this section can be done very quickly.
Spacestation:
Poor route at the beginning.
After activating the self-destruct sequence, the runner needs to head to the lower levels of the stage. To do this, the runner activates and waits for a lift. The fastest route has you just dropping down the shaft and disregarding the lift entirely. You take quite a bit of damage, but since this is on easy and a segmented run, it should be done. This stage isn't difficult to survive, even with the extensive damage the optimal route has you taking.
After going down the lift, the runner collects the spacesuit. This is needed to avoid damage when going outside of the spaceship later on, but the damage taken isn't that great(even if you skipped the lift). The spacesuit should be skipped.
Poor execution on taking out the enemy spaceships.
The runner goes out of the way to collect more body armor. Why? He has full health and the stage is almost over. Why, why, why?
The runner looks like he knows what the objectives are that need to be completed on each stage, but he has no idea of how to do them quickly. This run was not practiced and it shows tremendously. Numerous mistakes in exection and route and poor play quality overall. Rejected.
In (very) long:
Rejected. If this were a single-segment run, I would definitely reject it. The fact that this is segmented makes this an easy judgement. The overall quality of play is poor. For a single segment run, there really is no excuse for any stage to be more than 40 seconds slower than the best known individual stage times. For segmented, it should be somewhere in the 10-15 second range. I'm not expecting a run with times matching the best individual stage times, but I am expecting an effort to at least approach them. This run does not do that. It ignores known faster routes that are not difficult to accomplish. I'll comment on each stage and point out where this happens, but first I'll mention things that are seen throughout the whole run.
First, I don't think the player is using the standard control setup, which is generally the best as far as getting tight fast turns and accurate aiming. Non-standard control setups have been used effectively for speed, but this is not the case here. A large amount of time is lost from taking turn far too wide or from over-turning
Whenever the player has to activiate an object in the game(such as flipping a switch or opening a door), the player has a tendancy to run right up to the object, wait a second, and then activate it. Doors and other objects can be activated quite a ways before you actually reach them. A lot of time is lost from this throughout the run, and it just isn't very smooth.
Also, I think the runner does not use auto-aim. Why? This results in very painful to watch sequences where enemies need to be taken out quickly to open a door, but because the runner does not use auto-aim the results are a bunch of painful time-wasting misses. This is very apparent on robot-factory.
Individual stage comments
Siberia:
At the beginning, entering the building and hitting the switch is unnecessary. The best route is to run straight for the hole in the roof, and allow yourself to be seen by the security camera(which the runner also does). This activates the alarm, which in turn notifies a guard who opens the locked door that the switch is supposed to open.
Near the end of the run where the runner collects the crystal and then places the mines: There is a better way. Place the mines first, turn and get the crystal(the runner does not make use of a hole in the side of the cage the crystal is found in), and then go to the end of the stage. Doing it this way avoids getting stuck on many of the enemies in the area.
Chigago:
There is no reason to stop and wait for the guard at the beginning.
For the end of the run, getting the 2 x tommygun is a time-waster. The boss can be taken down fast with just the single gun. If the runner had been more careful with ammo earlier in the run...
Notre Dame:
Wastes too much time waiting for the flame zombies to die off after the explosion. The runner doesn't want to catch on fire, but you can get through much sooner without catching on fire. The very best strategy for the stage has you going right through, catching fire and then doing most of the rest of the stage while on fire(which makes saving the maidens much more difficult), but good times can also been done without catching on fire.
Poor route choice in getting the crystal before saving the maiden hanging from the rope. Faster to save the maiden first.
For the part where you have to help the hunchback kill the eight zombies that appear(doing so unlocks a door), the best strat has you killing 6 of them and leaving two for the hunchback while you get on with heading towards the giant boss. Usually the hunchback will kill the last two in time, but not always. Since this is segmented, there's no excuse not to take the chance.
Planet X:
For the most part, bad execution is what's wrong here. The strategy for the stage is straightforward, but as an example, near the end where the runner enters the spaceship, he should be right there when the entrance opens up(that would be the beam of light), but instead he's about as far away as you can get.
Also during the part where he kills enemies to open the lasers: Usually I go and get behind one of the gun turrents. His idea of taking them down on foot may actually be a good one, but it would have to be executed right(for example, you want to be next to the lasers when they go down, not way far away like he is). I may toy around with this idea. It could lead to an improvement in the individual stage run.
Neotokyo:
This is the worst stage in the world to speedrun since the first 3 minutes or so are spent just waiting for the hacker to get the password. No way around it. The runner follows the best strategy, but it's executed very poorly.
Wild West:
Best strat at the beginning is to go into the jail and shoot the wagon through the jail window. Saves a good 7 seconds or so if done correctly.
For saving the girl in the burning building, going inside the building is a bad route. You want to shoot the barrels from outside of the building, ideally without stopping, but even stopping and aiming is faster then what the runner does.
Bad route during the portion with the minecart and boss. The best route would take some explaining, so I'll just give a link showing it:
Atom Smasher:
There is absolutely no reason to do what the runner does at the start and use the turrent gun. Huge time-waster.
Watching the rest of this one was painful. Poor route choices, poor execution. We have the runner stopping to kill a bunch of enemies at one point. Then, at the place where you have to wait for the huge door to slowly slide down, the runner chooses not to activate the door immediately and instead waits until he's gotten the attention of a scientist to deactivate the bomb. Wrong. Activate the door, then while you are waiting for it to open, do the other stuff. Parallel, not sequential. The runner also needs to spend time practicing the stage to get a feel for how the objectives work and how to do them quickly, in particular getting the attention of the scientists in a timely matter. The execution of this stage is inexcusable for a segmented run.
Aztec:
Runner stops to kill enemies at the start. They need to be killed on the run. Next, the runner back-tracks to add fire to his crossbow to kill the wood-golem. You can just run past the wood-golem and ignore him.
There is a much faster method to kill the golems at the end. An explanation would take too long. Once again, I'll refer to a video:
The golems don't always cooperate with that method, but it's reliable enough for use in even a single-segment run. Not to use it in a segmented run is bad.
Robot Factory:
This starts out okay, but at the point where the runner back-tracks to take cover from a spider bot it gets very painful to watch. The runner also stops to kill some enemies that don't need to be killed. For taking out the node on the ceiling near the end, the runner waits way too long before he starts to take it out. After that the runner has to kill enemies that appear in order to open up the lasers blocking the way. The best weapon to do this with is the laser gun, which the runner does not use at first. The enemies appear in a pre-determined order which is the same every time and this section can be done very quickly.
Spacestation:
Poor route at the beginning.
After activating the self-destruct sequence, the runner needs to head to the lower levels of the stage. To do this, the runner activates and waits for a lift. The fastest route has you just dropping down the shaft and disregarding the lift entirely. You take quite a bit of damage, but since this is on easy and a segmented run, it should be done. This stage isn't difficult to survive, even with the extensive damage the optimal route has you taking.
After going down the lift, the runner collects the spacesuit. This is needed to avoid damage when going outside of the spaceship later on, but the damage taken isn't that great(even if you skipped the lift). The spacesuit should be skipped.
Poor execution on taking out the enemy spaceships.
The runner goes out of the way to collect more body armor. Why? He has full health and the stage is almost over. Why, why, why?
Decision: Reject
Reason: It's really obvious from all of these responses that this run was more of a casual runthrough than a true speedrun. Even the verifier who accepted the run admitted the runner missed a lot of shots (which should be grounds for rejection in an FPS run IMO).
Run available upon request (PM me).
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