Good game/good speedrun, bad game/good speedrun, good game/bad speedrun
3 years ago
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
3 years ago

Give your best examples for each. Let's keep things positive and leave out bad game/bad speedrun (also if a game truly is bad at both, it's probably not that well-known). When I say good/bad game, I just mean its merits as a casual game for someone with absolutely no intent to speedrun it. As for my picks...

Good game/good speedrun - this is definitely the easiest category with the most possibilities, but I probably couldn't live with myself if I didn't pick Dark Souls. I adore the game personally and have played it casually a good dozen times probably. Most people play it once and feel an immense sense of accomplishment for completing it once (and rightly so). Deeply challenging while also perfectly fair, it's the kind of game you're hard pressed to feel bad about failing at. The exploration aspect of a first playthrough is also top-notch.

But it's a magnificent speed game also. Practiced runners not only dispatch bosses with seemingly effortless ease, they also perform intricate and visually impressive sequence-breaking glitches a casual player would never encounter. The experiences are fundamentally different (such that the handful of attempts I've made at picking up the run over the years usually never last long :P ) and I quite love them both.

Bad game/good speedrun - I'm gonna bring up a game called ChromaGun. It isn't a horrible game, but several things hold it back from being truly enjoyable casually. It's a first-person shooter puzzle game, and when you read those words, what do you think? Well trust me, the ChromaGun developers did too -- the game is littered with Portal references. The poor voice acting of the narrator (and the scant few "sassy sarcastic" lines they gave him for when you respawn after dying) can make slogging through the puzzle rooms a bit of a drag. I will say the ending is a bit of a treat, though. Again, I don't hate this game but in my thumbs-down Steam review I gave it a 5.5/10. It's just not great.

Yet with that said, I kinda got addicted to playing it fast for a little while. When you know the solutions to each puzzle room like the back of your hand and your challenge is rather to execute them as quickly as possible, the entire feel of the game becomes different. You almost never hear that mediocre narrator. The Portal references are Easter Eggs that are out of the way for a speedrun. It's just movement, puzzle solving, and at a pretty speedy clip to boot. It's not a bad run game at all.

Good game/bad speedrun - inFAMOUS 2 is one of my favourite games of all time and is by far one of the most overlooked gems on the PlayStation 3. I think we've finally reached the point where inFAMOUS 2's graphics wouldn't be acceptable for a modern AAA game, but it sure took a while. This 2011 game pushes the PS3 about as far as it can go performance-wise and the writing and voice acting are simply phenomenal to boot. Both the game's endings (Good and Evil karma) are tremendous. How many games struggle to have one good ending (lots!), this game has two incredible endings.

But there's very little tech to a speedrun. It's just doing the missions fast. Movement and fight optimizations alone might sustain a 20 minute run for me ( cough https://www.speedrun.com/icey cough ) but not a ~3 hour run. In contrast to the original inFAMOUS, which isn't quite as good on its merits as a game but is full of interesting speed tech, inFAMOUS 2 would never be a game I could seriously dive into (and haven't, despite running other inFAMOUS games).

What are your picks?

Pear and Ivory like this
Jönköping, Sweden

Good game/speedrun - https://www.speedrun.com/moon_crystal

Bad game/Good Speedrun - https://www.speedrun.com/ghoul_school

Good Game/Bad speedrun - https://www.speedrun.com/metal_storm any% is horrible.

New York, USA

I'm sticking with games I run for this as a challenge. Good/Good: There's a flash game called Super Mario 63, a fangame of Super Mario 64 by Runouw. It's essentially a 2D Demake of SM64, but adds the FLUDD from Sunshine. The dialog, gameplay, and bosses are all great. The speedrun is equally awesome, peppered with amazing movement and a splash of glitches. Bad/Good: Garfield Kart. This is exactly what it sounds like. Mario Kart, but with Garfield. On its own, it's not bad, but compared to other kart titles, it's lacking. It can also be a bit glitchy. I got softlocked less than 20 minutes into my casual playthrough, and it's happened again a few times during my speedruns. However, the speedrun makes it much more impressive. Admittedly a lot of the tech is similar if not carbon copy of tech from Mario Kart, but it still makes the speedruns impressive in their own right. Good/Bad: A very simple choice for this one. A point-and-click-esque flash game called Break the Limits. It's a largely story driven game around turning your thoughts into emotions and actions to change the world around you. Very well designed and written overall. But because it's a point-and-click, there's really not much to the speedrun beyond fast mouse movement, and a fair amount of waiting on dialogue.

Pear and Caidren like this
Kentucky, USA

Good/Good Super Mario 64 is an obvious pick. I'd argue that even with its problems, its still one of the best aging games of the N64/PS1 era in a time where they were still getting used to 3D. The speedrun tech for it is insane and even if you're bad it still feels really good to get a good split. (For a more hidden gem, Gunpoint is really good both casually and speedrunning)

Bad/Good This is the hardest one to pick, I guess there are some flash games that are more fun to run than to actually play casually? I can't really think of anything.

Good/Bad Visual Novels, for example the Ace Attorney series. Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, Zero Escape, are all great but have pretty crappy speedruns imo as they are made up of just holding or mashing 1 button.

Pear and Quivico like this