Run Killers In Video Games
3 years ago
North Carolina, USA

What are some things in video games you would say are the biggest run killers during speedruns? Like maybe a specific enemy? a specific character? a specific mission? or a specific glitch that occurs at a part in a game? I'd like some examples from y'all please!

1 Example i can give is Ashley Graham from Resident Evil 4. She sometimes gets caught in those bear traps when you walk pass them and you lose time freeing her. Also in some areas of the game it's a little difficult to get through sometimes without her dying. In my opinion she's just a run killer in general since you're pretty much escorting and protecting her the whole game.

Israel

In Jak 2, the top runners reported that the game crashes about 1 out of 8 full runs, and the reason for that is out of control for the player. When that happens, you need to reset the console and then load a recent save, costing some precious minutes.

Gaming_64, Daravae and 2 others like this
Austria

In the player's "control": muscle memory While in general muscle memory is a good thing for fast execution of actions, it can screw you up in non-standard situations. You practice the "standard run" throughly but when you need to adapt bc of some reason you might do the mistake of still going for the standard play aaaand screw it all up -> rip run Happens I guess in most of the games...

Belgium

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team -- in almost all battles, you want to die in order to go to Easy Mode. When you die, you have 3 prompts:

  • Retry
  • Retry (Easy Mode)
  • Quit to Title Screen.

If you select "Retry (Easy Mode)", it will ask whether you are sure you want to go to use Easy Mode. If you select "Quit to title screen", however, it does NOT ask you for confirmation. It is very easy to accidentally highlight the last option: if you press down to go down a bit too early, you'll be holding down while the game shows the three options. Because according to the game you're "holding down", it scrolls down as if you were holding down to scroll through a long list. This means that if you press down just a bit too early, you will be select the last option and not the Easy Mode option.

Result? Your run dies.

This has happened to me during Glitchless speedruns before. I never ever save during Glitchless, and I once lost a run like that six hours in. It was painful. Has happened a few times in Any% too.

Sonic Adventure 2 - I once fell asleep during a 180 Emblems run, my enemy here being my bed. I was over an hour ahead.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Ivory likes this
United States

I have always been mostly a high scorer, many speed runs too but I have noticed, it gets to a breaking point where the game appears to figure you out and screw you in any way, to stop your win. I have had glitches and of course just normal game play where AI doesn't line up in your favor, or a shot doesn't fall.

United States

Besides skill and talent oh there is quite a bit of luck

Netherlands

In Dark Souls III All Bosses Speedruns, runners run on a downpatched version of the game which unfortunately suffers from a RNG runkiller where randomly at any given point during the run, a prompt can occur saying: "You lack the license for this DLC. Returning to title menu..." and the game will put you back to the main menu.

Example:

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Ivory and Pat_Speedruns like this
Kentucky, USA

For me personally...

Monaco - Multiplayer Runs can be killed hard by one player of 4 going off script, either intentionally or due to lagging out and rubber banding. Monaco - Singleplayer Runs … have more competitive ILs and thus are even stricter about having good RNG with Coin spawn and enemy spawn. One of the more notorious in the community are "bathroom coins and vent coins" which are coins that spawn in 1x1 tile areas that normally you wouldn't even reveal.

Majesty : For an RTS - Majesty has ONLY randomized maps, and then hero AI is randomized by decision tree (I've found the greed values for 1/5 map distance pretty well though), and then combat is also random (low rolls vs high rolls when dragons are involved means instant death!) Having a hero randomly decide to fail a fear check, or a Rat cycle through all his other options and attack your castle, reseting the AI of literally everyone to defend it are just a hint of the many ways this game can destroy you. This game is a slot machine of terror for the normal ILs, but then some levels are even extra spicy due to factors like teleport spawns (Ixmil/Darkness), using the greed value of enemy charathers instead of your own (Siege/Urban), having to rely entirely on spells for an entire level and thus their own damage range (Rescue/Crown), and most recently, frame perfect tricks that require temporarily turning the In-game-speed down to pull off (Trade Routes/Dark Forest)

Kid Mystic ./ Sleepless Hollow / Dr Lunatic - My biggest problem is that there is a LOT of stuff to memorize (100 Brains in SH, about as many Candles/Brains in the other two)… Dr. Lunatic has a handy menu screen % tracker, but in SH if you come up short when you get to the 100 Brain door at the end, you'll have no idea which part of the game you missed a Brain in and need to backtrack too. KM also has a low HP glass cannon thing so some of the later fights used to cause resets but I think I got over it.

Star Control 1 - Arilou can input read. Sometimes they die to their counters, sometimes they will wipe you without taking damage. All the Alliance ships are pretty mean, but they are the biggest reason why the badguy half of the run takes 2/3 of the total time despite having the same number of missions as the good guy half. Star Control 2 - The first 9 minutes of this are on-rails to meet the best cycle of the Arilou portal opening. I reset this a LOT because having to wait an in-game month is about ~3 whole minutes in real time. Star Control 3 - Dialog based game overs - I believe that their is at least 10 during the run(Vux,Owax2,Exquivan x3, Harika,Plexor,Precursor,Herald) It makes it very hard to mash through the conversations despite the Very easy combat (overwhelming player force) and lack of movement tech compared to the other games in the series. Also to continue the meme... Arilou conversations appear to be just optional in a casual playthrough but I found through testing that they are secret "time gate" event triggers for some of the actual mandatory events in the game, so during the routing process I had to find out how to force the Arilou events to trigger so that everything else would trigger on schedule.

Jönköping, Sweden

cats.. If you have a cat, close it out from the room you speedrun at. I've seen them kill routers, reset consoles and covering game screens. Cats are the biggest RNG in gaming history

Ivory and Reality like this
Valhalla

In the game I run, Neutopia, crypt 6 is my biggest run killer. In any% you skip the steel armor, so you take extra damage. Wizards and chain traps will deal 2 full life points of damage when your max HP is only 9. You can turn the wizards into slugs with rings, but you need to get good RNG for enemies to drop the rings. It has the most required kills of any dungeon, plus a lot of narrow areas with almost unavoidable enemies, depends on RNG. And if you're going for a quick kill, I think the boss of crypt 6 is the hardest in the game.

Vatican City

In Biba's Adventure's, its timing. Especially in a speedrun setting, that kills many runs. The timing can make the difference between clearing a level early and reseting 90% into a run.

Australia

Kaos' Kastle in Skylanders Giants. there are two skips that are super hard but save a heap of time. When I mean a heap of time I mean half the level, so at least the first one is essential if you want to get a good time.

Edited by the author 3 years ago