Games Done Quick, the charity organization raising money for Doctors Without Borders, just featured a Half-Life: Alyx speedrun as its first-ever VR title.
GDQ has been hosting speedrun streams in bulk to raise money for years now, but this year’s summer event is the first to be held from runner’s homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, runner Buffet Time took the chance to run Valve’s recent return to the Half-Life universe on the Index headset. It’s fitting to see Alyx as the first VR game for GDQ, given Half-Life 1 and 2 are popular speedrun choices at the event.
This attempt ends up at just below 40 minutes; not the fastest the game’s been run but still ridiculously quick. Watch here for some seriously fast VR playing. It starts around the 45 hour, 31 minute mark.
Naturally, speedrunning VR games is very different to traditional games, but there some similar elements, like glitching past walls. It’s fascinating to see how the platform augments the experience, though. Buffet Time uses dash locomotion to move faster, but actually assigns to movement to a button, not the stick, for even faster results. The game’s intro sequence is quickly hopped through, but once we get into the meat of the campaign, Buffet Time starts ducking to crawl through walls.
At one point, he throws himself to the floor to skip certain sequences and, in the second level, he navigates the opening to the quarantine zone by getting onto the floor and throwing himself back and forth. It’s quite a thing to see.
Alyx isn’t the only VR game good for speedrunning – Superhot VR is a popular choice for runners too, though it’s never featured at GDQ. Were you impressed by this Half-Life: Alyx speedrun? Do you think you could speedrun Alyx this way? Let us know in the comments below.
