Sometimes, it’s about the little things in life that truly matter..

Like deposing the equivalent of gods with led based weaponry, for example

As much as I regularly seem to gravitate towards giving my all to entertain and inform, I too must rest my weary head and take it easy from time to time. I’ve spoken often in the past about making sure one is prioritizing quality of life, and good bouts of rest help to make the “on moments” even more on.

Which is why I’m glad there was a random speedrun posted today of Doom: The Dark Ages, being bested in an amazing 42 minutes by speedrunner SeekerTV, as I felt it had been too long in having a good reason to bring up Doom out of the random blue. The vid is just one in a long line of impressive feats from the speedrunning community, in a series hosted by IGN entitled “Devs React”, and it’s always amazing what the community comes up with vs what the devs didn’t intend.

Aside from some of the more obviously prominent go to tricks utilized in speedrunning, like clipping through weak pieces of environment, exploiting enemy animations, and running wildly with reckless abandon in out of bounds areas, SeekerTV utilizes a glaring flaw in the mini-map system that let’s him instantly teleport himself to the end of many of the levels, allowing for a truncation of several hours of gameplay into mere seconds of distillation.

As always, the devs are a mix of awe-inspired, horrified, left reeling in sheer astonishment, while feeling abject cringe, and total bafflement, as they watch their several year long project of math, artistry, creativity, hardworking blood, sweat, and tears be reduced to a few dozen minutes of virtually metaphoric dismemberment involving code, polygons, and top of the line gameplay systems reduced to ash and farce.

As is the case with many of the videos, one of the devs watching, game director Hugo Martin, takes a moment to comment that he loves seeing what the community does after one of his games launches, due to the engagement levels related to the fan commitment in having mastered the game engine with thorough dismantlement, one piece at a time, in discovering elements that the devs themselves didn’t even know were possible. Martin also mentions its never personal when they get ideas from said speedruns, go back, and then start to patch out truly heinous bugs and glitches after they’ve watched some of the runs, as it does expose some really unfortunately overlooked parts of the game that needs some extra touch ups, but that’s just part of the back and forth song and dance that both devs and players will eternally be involved with.

I think even aside from the fact I’m still enjoying the title on my second playthrough on Nightmare after I 100% the whole thing, I am a massive fan of speedrunning myself, and getting fun ideas to go back through a third, fourth, or fifth time, in really putting the game through the ringer is always at the top of my list of favored moments. However, even if you aren’t an insane completionist like myself, The speedrun is worth a watch, if you’re into Doom, speedrunning, or dev commentary, a perfect storm of interest for me, especially on a much needed lazy day off.

Cheers.

-Pashford