This Half-Life 2: Episode Two speedrun is pretty much flawless

Maybe it should be called Eighth-Life instead of Half-Life…

We’ve pretty much had to accept the fact that Half-Life 3 is never going to happen. That’s… fine, I guess? We still have the original two games, plus Alyx for those of you who have a VR headset. Over the years, fans have been challenging themselves to finish the Valve FPS series in eye-wateringly quick times, and there’s a new one that puts a number of runs to shame.

Recently, the YouTube channel SourceRuns (via PCGamesN) uploaded a Half-Life 2 speedrun, specifically of Episode Two, that clocks in at a staggering 9:46. Completed by speedrunners jorik and qv2b, the run is the culmination of 196 segmented pieces, which have been spliced together to produce this insanely quick time. It’s definitely worth a watch.

Once the game starts, you’ll see just how much both players are able to skip past huge chunks of the game using exploits. In fact, much of the actual run itself takes place during the final battle at White Forest. Here, the action really slows down as Gordon Freeman defends the area from a Strider attack. Evidently, players haven’t found a way to jump past this part that doesn’t involve doing the actual fight.

However, at the time of writing, jorik and qv2b’s video has not been featured on speedrun.com. This could be because they use a modded version of Episode Two, which removes the cutscenes, thereby reducing the time automatically. However, qv2b is second on the leaderboard, having achieved a time of 31:12:850 a year ago.

Half-Life 2 is easily one of the most influential FPS games of all time, almost surpassing the impact of its 1998 predecessor. To see people zooming through the game, (and its expansions), in unbelievably quick fashion shows how skilled some have become at guiding our mute scientist hero.