Important news for 20th Anniversary runners. Hard Mode = Fastest Difficulty to run.
5 years ago
Florida, USA

On the 20th Anniversary Edition of this game you have 3 different difficulties to choose from. Easy, Normal and Hard. I've seen some great runs on the leaderboards and wondered why some didn't have better times. Then it occurred to me today when testing every difficulty. Easy and Normal mode run slower than Hard. A good example is when Lester is swinging the cage after he is captured to break loose. After timing all 3 difficulties. Easy = 44 seconds, Normal = 42 Seconds, Hard = 38. I started the timer at the beginning of the cutscene with Lester and Buddy in the cage and stopped it after Buddy points and talks. This was timed on PS4 so with PC differences it may be slightly faster but will have a similar gap between difficulty time. For Any% runners the only thing I noticed that was tough on hard was the wall glitch at the beginning when Lester doesn't have his gun due to the Aliens laser gun fire being way more accurate but just by the difference in speed alone you can easily get that time back doing the standard strat. You can still perform the strat either way on hard but it may take some time or a new strat to confuse the Enemy AI a bit to buy you enough time to glitch through the wall without getting shot. Also for me personally the Slugs at the beginning are much easier to dodge on hard. So try it out for yourselves guys and enjoy the golds you'll be getting in future runs. :)

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Japan

This is the greatest discovery of this century. I feel that the playback speed of the cut scene is different. Verification is here.

Beckski93 and RetroBrando like this
Florida, USA

Thank you for taking the time out to do this. This video is a good example :)

"NintendoHardGamer il y a 2 ans (2 years ago) I see ^^ Be cautious, there are 3 difficulties in this version who also change the general speed."

Gosh dang it ! I swear I didn't try to hide it, Thought it was a known thing >< Strange that they made such modifications when you think about it. Kinda like the "fast" mode on 15th Anniversary who is stupidly faster (something like 1,5x), making the whole game look odd. For what I remember from my experience, differences do not change the general route and technics for the speedrun, but if you play normally you can sometimes be surprised by ennemies acting slightly differently if you let them alive longtime enough.

So... Did you all of you played 20th anniversary in normal mode ? Does that mean that you'll have to re-do your speedrun in hard mode Brando ? =p

Bretagne, France

The problem with Hard mode is that from what i've experienced:

It becomes almost mandatory to kill the first ennemy in the jail right at the beginning except if you force luck so that he doesn't crouch shoot you, which happened like 1 time out of 10 for me.

The energy walls disappears faster than in normal difficulty and for some reason the strat I was using at the end just won't work and had to change it to something riskier sadly (It's faster tho).

Also unlike what you seem to have experienced brandoo the beginning becomes EXTREMELY harder for me to get right with the "slugs" when using Hard difficulty. I have to rely on alot of luck to pass it even though the pattern is almost identical everytime on Normal. (And 15th anniversary)

United Kingdom

Yeah the slight differences between the difficulty modes are certainly interesting... I'm not too sure why they're a thing either! Brando originally thought for a second that PAL was slower than USA because he was accidentally running on easy mode haha.

With the way different strats may differ on each difficulty I think it's ultimately up to the player to decide which difficulty to run on - but good for us all to be aware that each difficulty slightly alters the speed/accuracy of the enemies/consistency of certain strats etc.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Florida, USA

15th is a bit like normal Timmy with the slug set up. PS4 slug section is a bit easier than on PC but still easier than normal. I'll tell ya now every skip is possible on 20th hard and if you can perform it without the wall glitch you'll probably still get a better time. Wall glitch is possible but it takes a lot of resets because the enemies shots are very consistent and accurate when hitting Lester.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Florida, USA

haha NHG I never knew and I hope not to get full credit. I just realised it and we found a steam comment mentioning it. It seems it gives Lester normal speed. Not like that Turbo shit you see in 15th which should I not allow? It's like he's on speed or coke LUL Also Timmy I think you are a great runner and a great addition to this game. I'll drop you a follow. I've also made a new discord if you guys like to join and talk strats and maybe even have fun race nights :) https://discord.gg/7SjzFqz

No no That's not for that, I don't want credits for anything xp ! I just regret that I didn't talk about it when I was enumerating differences between all versions. About 15th faster difficulty, I don't know... I mean it's really ugly but I don't know if it's a good reason to forbide it x) All Timmyakmed said about those differences makes me think that I did not play enough to 20th anniversary ! Not in hard at least x) There are indeed a lot more differences than what I remembered.

Okay 'bout the Discord, i'll try to join it, hopefully it'll work better than when we tried to add each other.