#CLUSTERTRUCK DEV HACK SERIES#

The best speedruns are those that give you a newfound appreciation for a game, and after watching this one I felt a much deeper fondness for Catalyst. Unless you're familiar with Mirror's Edge, you might not even realize the moments when he's gone out of bounds or is doing something extra tricky because, like the best parkour, it all looks so effortless. In the true spirit of parkour, Matchboxmat uses many of Faith's abilities to go outside the intended path and pull off some legitimately impressive stunts without actually breaking the game. See, Mirror's Edge Catalyst boasts a big open-world to run around in but the game still pushes you along a linear path from objective to objective. This is probably my second favorite run this year for one reason: It's nearly impossible to tell when Matchboxmat is exploiting the game.

#CLUSTERTRUCK DEV HACK SERIES#

Instead they each use a series of very subtle tricks, like pausing the exact same frame that they jump to basically trigger auto-jumping and bounce through a level extremely quickly. It's speedrunning in its purest sense because neither runner exploits game-breaking bugs to gain an edge. Despite the odd mistake, watching them tear through each level is almost dizzying. This head-to-head race is a photo finish because both Fimbz and Warm_Ham are just so damn good. Nothing makes you more aware of how bad at videogames you are quite like watching two people crush Super Meat Boy in 20 minutes. Trying to beat each other's meat in Super Meat Boy If you're a fan of dad jokes, this is your El Dorado (also Halfcoordinated's dad sends him a message via donation that's really cute). The only thing is that the whole run is set to a constant barrage of Nier puns from the commentators that range from clever to cringey. If you haven't played Nier, you don't have to worry too much about spoilers either since every cutscene is skipped and Nier doesn't make any goddamn sense anyway. Nier's combat can be complicated for people who have use of two hands, but Halfcoordinated makes it look easy with one, pulling off some very technical skips to bypass huge sections of the game. 097Aceofspades never once loses his cool even when the entire world seems to be conspiring against him. It might not be anywhere near the world record, but this run is so unpredictable and fun to watch. But halfway through the run, Clustertruck's developer hacks into the game and starts screwing with him in the best possible way. Speedrunner 097Aceofspades continually has to contend with very thin trucks, trucks with lasers, or inverted mouse controls.

If you're not familiar, Clustertruck has Twitch integration that allows viewers to alter the game by voting in the chat. Ignoring that this high-octane platformer took longer to beat than Divinity: Original Sin, this Clustertruck run has an excellent twist.

Clustertruck dev hack