I thought about doing some weekly posted speedrun thingy for a few days now, but the tasked seemed kinda huge. Figuring what kind of format to use and where to start at. @Nanashi gave me the idea to go for one community each week, so shoutout to her for that.
So, essentially I will go for one game each week. Talking about what happened the last month or so: possibly world record changes, categories, found glitches and route changes.
I will also link a few streamers so you can check them out to see if the game interests you. Probably gonna link the channels that did Tutorials on a few categories as well.
This Week:
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I decided to go for Mirror's Edge first, simply because it's one of my favorite runs. Additionally, there are probably no more useful glitches to be found, and the routes in the different categories are fairly optimized by now, so it's only about grinding for perfection at this point. Because of this, there can be a very long timespan between changes that are worth going over, so I can focus on plenty other communities in the mean-time.
The game has four main categories nowadays. The big three, being Any%, 100% and glitchless%, and 69 Stars, which revolves around the Time Trial mode.
For those that don't know what these categories mean: Any% is simply finishing the game as fast as possible, glitch exploitation and everything. 100% is pretty self-explanatory, finishing everything in the game as fast as possible, collectibles and all. glitchless% is basically Any%, but without the use of glitches. And 69 Stars, which means getting three stars on every Time Trial level in the game.
For those that know this game already a little longer and are wondering, third person mode is not a legit category and doesn't have a leaderboard, or at least no leaderboard I know of.
For those that don't know, there is a way to modify a few files, which makes it possible to play the game in third person mode, making the jumps harder to hit, but is overall only hilarious, since every model that isn't supposed to be in front of the camera looks buggy as shit.
The current World Record holder for Any% is Requiem720 with 30mins and 5secs(uses quite a few more segmented strats compared to the other runners), with MrWalrus following him closely with a 30:11(uses a few more chains, but the runs are mostly identical), and everyone looking forward to who gets sub30 first.
Glitchless% is currently led by glost999 who got sub46 four days in advance of me writing this, having quite a lead with 45:48 (mostly french commentary), compared to Alexanderfive's 46:26.
100% and 69 Stars are both rather uncontested right now, with Phillotrax being up by 1min 23secs compared to Zumbit's 43:31 in 100% and ZooKetra being up 19secs on Voetiem's 22:51(no sound due to copyright claims).
(I'm using times without loading times when refering to runs. Runners may use times including loading times when refering to their runs.)
Since there are no new glitches I will just talk a little bit about the one glitch that is actually visible during runs, that being kick-glitch. Kick-glitch basically means, that when you attack during a wallrun, a small invisible platform will spawn under you for a few frames, which can be used to roll off, slide on, side-jump on or jump of from. Jumping and Side-jumping being the only ones used during runs. This glitch is absolutely not missable when watching a any%, but it's earlier visible in MrWalrus run than in most runs, since he uses a chain(combination of mutiple kick-glitches, wallruns and/or side-jump-boosts) right at the start of prologue which is kinda hard to pull off.
Another used glitch, that isn't really visible, is how small edges give you a boost when interacted with on the first frame that changes your characters stance while crossing it. A reason it's not very visible is, that its frame perfect and can only really be used when the game is running at around 61/62fps, which makes it really hard to use and takes a ton of practice.
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Now for those that might want to get into running this game. Especially Any%.
I recommand checking out MrWalrus Twitch-channel, since he streams for mutiple hours a day, almost every day, and his chat is very nice and'll be glad answering any questions that might come up. In addition to that I'd also check out his youtube-channel, where he is currently making a up-to-date tutorial on the routing, standard and advanced. But when it comes to the small things other videos are fine too, for example Floubz ''speedrunning tricks'' tutorial and Ovendonkey's Mirror's Edge Tutorials playlist where he has some older (arguably easier) routing guides for most of the chapters, a few small videos on some tricks and even tutorials for most of the time trial levels, also I don't know how the routing for those changed over time.
There are sadly almost zero tutorials for routing in the other categories, so I recommand just watching their speedruns. And most of the tricks used in the other categories are already explained in the tutorials above. The only thing that might come in handy is remembering the location of all the runner bags for 100%.
In case you're wondering how competitive the ranking is, let me give you a few stats. There are currently 120 people listed in the Any% category, 1h 2mins 14secs between first and last place. In Glitchless% are 31 people competing with a difference of 1h 25mins and 53secs between the world record and the last one listed. 100% is run by twelve runners, only 28mins and 37 secs in between. And last 69 Stars, with also twelve runners and a total difference of 35mins and 4 secs between first and last. So feel free to try out any category you want.
The Leaderboards can be checked under http://www.speedrun.com/Mirrors_Edge
Anyhow, this pretty much wraps it up for this week. I appreciate any kind of feedback and hope you'll be looking forward to next week.
[spoiler title="Screenshots/Videos"]
Intro Scene
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 2 during Jacknife Race
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Chapter 9
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Video for those that wanna know what third person mode looks like (Disclaimer: Story spoilers included)
[video=youtube][/video]
[/spoiler]