10 Recent Video Games That Got Beat In Record Time

Dedicated speedrunners absolutely broke these huge games.

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Housemarque

As much as video games are often best enjoyed while stopping to smell the roses at every possible opportunity, there's nothing quite like witnessing an expert player bend a game over their knee and break it down into its most basic components.

The speedrunning community has grown massively in recent years thanks to sites like Twitch allowing skilled players to broadcast their brain-breakingly impressive speedruns live to their followers.

Watching someone with a ridiculously comprehensive understanding of a game's mechanics use every trick in the book to plow their way through it in record time - possibly using glitches and exploits in the process - is absolutely fascinating both as a "sport" and a window into video game development.

These 10 recent video games, some of the most popular and acclaimed of the last year-or-so, has each been demolished by dedicated speedrunners who clearly invested dozens if not hundreds of hours figuring out how every tiny nuance of the games worked.

These final runs are typically astonishing displays of pattern memorisation and dexterity, showing what can be achieved with sufficient commitment and perseverance...

10. Halo Infinite (26 Minutes)

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343 Industries

Though the critical path through Halo Infinite's campaign isn't that long - clocking in at around 10-12 hours - speedrunners have had an absolute field day using every dirty trick possible to boil a playthrough down to less than 30 minutes.

At present, the world record on Easy difficulty is a ludicrous 25 minutes, 45 seconds, held by runner B34RFAC3, who also holds the world record for a Legendary difficulty run of 28 minutes, 59 seconds.

Pulling off a tight speedrun is heavily reliant on the player's expertise in using Master Chief's much-loved new Grappleshot - a grappling hook which allows players to propel themselves across the game's environments at great speed.

Even so, knowing how to make the absolute most of the Grappleshot is what truly separates the skilled from the preternaturally gifted.

B34RFAC3's run, which is apparently the product of over 700 hours of work, is nothing short of mesmerising, even as he insists there's still more time to be saved.

Also be sure to check out IGN's hilarious video where they got some of Halo Infinite's developers to react to the previous record holder's speedrun.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.