Because Speed Runs Are Beautiful + Awesome Games Done Quick 2013

Look how beautiful this is.

I like exploring spaces as much as anyone else. It's one of the most enjoyable things to do in a video game, but I find myself constrained by my perspective sometimes. If some games are about power fantasies, I long for a complete view of the world I inhabit. Not just a world and a cute approximation of said world in map-form, I want to turn it upside down, crease it out, and shake the thing to see it from every possible angle. Like the knowledge that Earth is floating in space and is considered not just on its own terms but as part of something much larger. Like there's something more just outside of our vision.

I like rolling the mouse wheel all the way back and taking in a world floating on nothingness, or falling through what I thought was sturdy flooring and watching a land disappear above me. I am in a place, there is something outside of here, I just don't understand it.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is stunning when torn from Samus' perspective. Just a series of connected passages flickering in and out of existence, like the world does not exist unless you are staring directly at it; when you turn your back everything will disappear. And just in the distance is a glorious horizon that you can't reach because you'll fall and won't have anything to hold onto.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2013 + Die Hard

Awesome Games Done Quick 2013 is well and truly underway! Yay!

And in between all the fantastic runs and technical showmanship one run in particular has caught my attention. Before today, the extent of my knowledge about Die Hard for NES revolved around a video review by the Angry Video Game Nerd which, as you can guess, is not the most thorough of critical analysis you can find out there.

The run (which has been, and will continue to be, done in 10 minute bursts throughout the marathon based on donations) relies on breaking the game's internal timer. Die Hard seemingly takes place in real-time with a clock ticking down the time you have left until all the hostages are killed. Every step you take affects the timer and each flight of stairs you take down or up a floor docks a specific amount of time dependent on your foot power. If you spend the game absentmindedly walking over broken glass, John's feet get cuts and bruises meaning that it takes him longer to go up and down a flight of stairs meaning that more time is subtracted each time you do. Those stairs aren't going to climb themselves.

The goal of the game is to systematically sweep each floor in the building and eliminate the terrorists on each level (40 in total). The main elevator then springs to life, you take it down to the 30th floor, kill Hans Gruber and save the day. This is arguably the developer intended route.

The speed run, though, doesn't do any of that. Rather than going up and down each floor to kill all the terrorists individually, this run encourages the player to purposefully damage John's foot power to affect the internal clock. Once the feet are damaged enough, the next two-three minutes of the run consists of running up and down stairs, whittling the timer down to two minutes which then prompts the main elevator to automatically come up and let John reach the 30th floor.

You still need to eliminate the 40 terrorists in the building in order to open the last door to Hans Gruber, and you only have two minutes to do so, but now you're fighting them all at once on the last floor of the game. Sheer mayhem! The first run got up to Hans Gruber but died fighting him, and the second run killed all the terrorists but ran out of time just as John stepped into the room with Hans.

The run itself is understandably hilarious thanks in part to the absurdity of damaging John and walking up and down a flight of stairs ad nauseum (a technique the runner called "frame-perfect stairway buffering" hehehe) but unintentionally highlights what makes the game so interesting: it's remarkably open-ended. With such a vague objective as "kill all the terrorists" and seemingly little preventing a player doing so in whichever way they want, Die Hard welcomes ingenuity and choice. This run couldn't of existed otherwise.

Additionally, Die Hard inspires with its mechanics. The game takes place from an overhead top-down perspective but does something practically unheard of even today. John can only "see" in the room that he's in; all other rooms have a fog of war effect on them preventing the player from peeking into them until they've moved John inside. Dat realism! Despite being granted a god-like perspective, the player is locked to what John can see at any given moment.

And what game has ever made injury affect player movement? With a low foot power meter, the time it takes to walk up and down a flight of stairs is increased, indicating that, yes, this man is injured and he's not indestructible.

I'm just surprised, if anything. Die Hard doesn't look remarkable and in some cases resembles a light bullet-hell shooter with all the projectiles you're dealing with at any point in time, but it is an odd, little thing with interesting ideas. I don't think I ever would have noticed it were it not for its presentation in a speed run setting. That's the value of these crazy challenge runs.