VVVVVV, Terry Cavanagh's gravity-flipping platformer, is a decade old, and to mark the occasion Cavanagh has decided to make it open source. The news was revealed at AGDQ today, and you can get your hands on the source code now via GitHub. 

In case you've somehow avoided it for a decade, VVVVVV's a smart, minimalist platformer with one simple but brilliant twist: instead of jumping, you need to reverse gravity. It's tricky but never cruel—you can turn off death entirely if you want, and there are plenty of checkpoints. 

Both the desktop and mobile source codes are available, and Cavanagh has provided some notes to accompany them. 

"I think even a peek of the source code will quickly reveal that VVVVVV is not a technically sophisticated game! Even by the standards of self taught indie devs, it’s kind of a mess," he warns. Little does he know, it's all equally indecipherable to me.

"I was young and more interested in getting something on the screen than implementing it properly," he writes. "Maybe the best thing about VVVVVV’s source code is that is stands as proof of what you can hack together even if you’re not much of a programmer."

 Check out the notes on Cavanaugh's blog.

‘Metal as fuck’ is a modern colloquialism used to indicate whether an object, idea, or action is verifiably rad. But calling something metal means much more than ‘cool, but edgy’. It’s a phrase that should be reserved for only the raddest and the saddest of shit, to be wielded precisely—break glass in case of impossible geometry. 

Which is why I want to avoid easy picks for our professional take on which PC games are the most metal. Any game can have skulls and Satan, and sport cool hats that say “Metal” on them. But a true metal designation comes from something beneath the surface. 

True metal is emotion that swells infinitely into a dead signal, a raw, sustained wall of noise that blots out everything else. Metal can also the the total inverse, a complete lack of emotion and the struggle or fascination that results from wrestling with the meaning of existence. Metal can be triumphant and transcendent, a screaming chorus against oblivion. Metal is also sometimes just some people screaming passages from Moby Dick, which I endorse. With that in mind, here are our picks for the most metal PC games, and some companion albums to get you into a similar headspace. Mute the trailers and play their song to hear and see for yourself. 

Neverending Nightmares 

Companion album: Moonlover by Ghost Bath

While the art looks right out of children's storybook, Neverending Nightmares is a blunt exploration of depression and suicidal thoughts. Designer Matt Gilgenbach would know—the game was inspired by his personal experiences with mental illness. Ultimately, it’s a hopeful tale, but finding that light requires tip-toeing through one eerie location after another, while getting harassed by monsters and extremely graphic visions—like, some seriously awful stuff. You’ve been warned. But it’s this plain, honest approach to mental illness that makes Neverending Nightmares so metal. Metal as fuck. It’s a game that addresses something very real and personal without flinching, taking a long soak in darkness to exfoliate the soul. 

VVVVVV + MMMMMM 

Companion album: Epicloud by Devin Townsend Project

VVVVVV’s vanilla form isn’t quite metal. It brushes against psychedelic rock with such bright coloring, but there’s something transcendent in overcoming its difficult platforming challenges. It’s not quite metal on its own, but a second, officially sanctioned soundtrack by the original composer SoulEye just pushes it over the edge. MMMMMM is a metal version of the VVVVVV score created as a collaboration between SoulEye and guitarist FamilyJules7x. After seeing a metal cover medley of VVVVVV’s tunes on YouTube, SoulEye reached out and immediately went to work on a louder, brasher, more triumphant recreation of his original songs. Even better, with every download, he included a mod file that inserts the MMMMMM compositions into the game. It’s the only way I can play it anymore.

Yankai’s Triangle 

Companion album: The Direction of Last Things by Intronaut

Yankai’s Triangle is an eerie, psychedelic puzzle game about spinning triangles to form triangles so you can keep making triangles. Some of them have eyes. Some make squishy sounds. Some of them whisper. 100 puzzles in and little has changed, but I’m still going, hypnotized by the rote act of spinning shapes. If I didn’t need to eat or sleep and didn’t need to work, I might be content spinning shapes forever. A pointless existence? Nah, we’re talking triangles here.

The Cat Lady 

Companion album: Commitment to Complications by Youth Code

I’ve never played a game as bleak as The Cat Lady. You play as Susan, a woman who commits suicide and is transported to a strange nether world where the ‘Queen of Maggots’ makes her immortal until she rids the world of five psychopaths. It’s one hell of an opener, but nothing about the game is pleasant. Susan is severely depressed, and interfacing with a character that wants nothing more than to die, while tasked with murdering murderers—well, it’s an uncomfortable journey through terrifying, true aspects of human experience. The Cat Lady reflects some of the darkest metal out there, trashed up in the slightest by a scribbly, industrial aesthetic that prevents it from being too dour to play. It’s still sad as hell, offers little in the way of hope, and doesn’t care much about how much fun you’re having. In other words, it’s metal.

American Truck Simulator 

Companion album: Four Phantoms by Bell Witch

Peak solitude is best experienced on dead silent freeway in rural Nevada. I know the mountains are out there, but I can’t see them. Tiny lights flicker on and off in the distance, either the occasional porch light or a blinking LED on some strange power station. If I tell myself I’m driving on a highway through the ocean, or nothing at all, I’m there. The experience isn’t painful or aggressive—it’s wonderful, and a bit overwhelming. Look at all that darkness. Look at everything we can’t see. Just make sure to stay under the speed limit. Fee notices crowding the screen take me out of it.

Devil Daggers 

Companion album: All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood by The Body

The game is set in an abyss and you shoot daggers out of your fingertips against an endless stream of flying skulls and abyssal centipedes. Devil Daggers is PC gaming’s cursed arcade cabinet, so oppressive and indifferent to the player it feels evil. It’s an FPS that feels dangerous to play and impossible to conquer. There’s nihilism in throwing yourself against the demonic horde time and time again, only to gain a few more seconds or inch up the leaderboard. To what end? None. Just more demons, more darkness, and infinite, guaranteed failure. But buried beneath all the failure is a graceful, entertaining shooter. Hold onto the fun. Never let go.

Dark Souls 2 

Companion album: NO by Old Man Gloom

Every Souls game is metal, but Dark Souls 2 puts on a clinic. Some of its set pieces feel more tongue in cheek than the other games (see the ghost ship in No-man’s Wharf), but if that means we get to fall hundreds of feed through a tear in time and space onto a throne room suspended in a chaos realm before taking on an ancient king and his cronies with a litany of soldier friends at our back—it’s straight up Paradise Lost fan-fiction—then I don’t mind some cheese on occasion.

Darkest Dungeon 

Companion album: 777 - The Desanctification by Blut Aus Nord

Fill out the soundscape with metal instrumentation and Darkest Dungeon’s narrator will fit right in. He’s already the vocalist to your dungeoneers’ inevitable demise, commenting on the impurity of the land and describing enemies with sticky, odorous prose—so why not? He’s right though, about how awful everything is. Darkest Dungeon’s unforgiving turn-based combat will build a pile of corpses to heaven in no time. Go ahead, climb it. There’s nothing up there.

The Banner Saga 

Companion album: Times of Grace by Neurosis

Darkest Dungeon doesn’t give a damn about the player, but The Banner Saga sets up interesting, sympathetic characters and then proceeds to not give a damn about them. You just get to their lives get progressively worse through the medium of grid-based combat. Congratulations, you just beat the level—oh, and by the way, you’re starving and everyone you know is dead, including the gods. So where do you want to allocate those stat points?

Doom 

Companion album: Koloss by Meshuggah

Chugga-lugga-lug. No, I’m not drinking chocolate milk, I’m drinking blood. Hell yeah! It’s the sound Doom makes, chugga-lugga-lug, both in the soundtrack and the sound of demons turning to gristle beneath DoomGuy’s fist or a light red mist from direct super shotgun buckshot to the general face area. Doom is a self-aware montage of blood and pulpy demonic imagery, an ode to angsty trapper keeper doodles and a reminder that, damn, church is boring. Instead, go to hell. Doom is loud and fun and dumb in the first five minutes and all the reading is optional. You’re going to have the insides of a demon splashed all over your mug—and into your mug, if you have one handy like I always do. Drinking blood is metal. Do it. Drink blood.

“Drinking blood is metal. Do it. Drink blood.” — James Davenport, 2017

Night in the Woods 

Companion album: Grind your bones to dust by Exoskelett

Night in the Woods contains and addresses: witches, rural decay, the failures of capitalism, existentialism, and pizza. It’s metal. If you’ve ever seen your favorite food place’s windows boarded up with a sign that says ‘Going out of business!’ hanging from the front door, then you’ve experienced metal. Metal is sad, but true. Metal kind of sucks, really. So why play or listen to anything intended to be such a bummer? For some, it’s a helpful exercise that helps them overcome feelings of listlessness in tough times. Everything is slowly weathering away, including ourselves. Might as well hang out with our friends, break shit, eat some hot pies, and chip away at the man. There might be a happier ending somewhere down the line, but this isn’t it. Not yet.

Second Life 

Companion album: Monoliths and Dimensions by Sunn O)))

Metal often addresses transcendence, a means to escape our plane of existence, though not always literally. At the very least, good metal is a temporary vessel through which you can perceive the world in a new light, from above or far below. And Second Life has it right there in the name, a new world, a new life. But what truly makes it the most metal MMO is that upon shedding this mortal coil and Logging In, you’re not necessarily granted a clean slate. You’re bombarded with everything that every was and ever could be rendered in 3D engine from 2003. 

Second Life is a better life for many and a horrifying mirror for others. If you want to be a tall rabbit who fucks, you can. If you want to be a beauty blogger, you can. If you want to be a Chad and raise your seven sons in a quiet suburb, you can. It’s the time stream continuum compressed to exist on server farm. It contains the most primitive forms of good and evil, the big bang happening all at once, history remixed, terror, love, joy, unicorns with boobs—Second Life is more metal than we can comprehend.

Thumper 

Companion album: Teethed Glory and Injury by Altar of Plagues

I’ve already written at length about how much I love Thumper’s insistence on feeling awful: “I’ve been waiting for a game to bend my arm past my elbow for years now. That’s Thumper’s specialty, using the familiarity of a traditional music game ‘note highway’ to make the player feel anything but groovy.” If it wasn’t obvious, ‘awful’ is a compliment. Thumper is sustained discomfort in music game form, condensing the sense of tumbling down a hillside and barely staying fully conscious into a small metal scarab flying down an cosmic highway. It leaves me feeling exhausted and tense, but better prepared to face the pain again. 

You guys really love hard games, or at least, you love whichever game you remember as the hardest. In my latest survey, I asked respondents to rank the hardest game they've played on a scale of 1-10. Over 40% scored their most challenging experience a 10, and 70% scored it an 8 or higher.

You also love a lot of different hard games, and have different ideas about what makes a game 'hard.' Among 2,660 respondents, the top game cited as the hardest they've ever played was only mentioned 385 times—around 14% of the total. (Actually, one person wrote in SEGA Bass Fishing 1,006 times, but I've cut that from the results, along with several variations of "your mom.")

What's the hardest PC game you've played?

Unsurprisingly, Dark Souls got the most mentions, with 14% saying it was the hardest game they've ever played. It was followed by Dark Souls 2, which took in about 5% of the results. From there, though, the results are immediately diverse, with shooters, platformers, puzzle games, strategy games, and MOBAs all bunched together. When I cut out jokes, console games, games with specific caveats, and those that received only one or two mentions, I was still left with over 70 games. (Here's my curated list of the top 77.)

The top 10, naturally, are the most popular hard games—and games that are arguably best known for being hard—so the results actually get more interesting the deeper into the list I go. At number 11, for instance, you'll find I Wanna Be The Boshy, a fan game based on number six, I Wanna Be The Guy, an intentionally difficult tribute to early platformers.

Further down (and I'm skipping around a bit), we find StarCraft II, STALKER, Insurgency, Alien Isolation, Kerbal Space Program, the Touhou series, VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, SpaceChem, Dustforce, Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and, of course, Bad Rats, a notoriously awful game which has accrued a positive rating on Steam, because ironic Steam reviews are all the rage.

It's good to see the Touhou Project's bullet-hell games earn some mentions. We recently published an introduction to the series, which is currently being localized by Playism.

VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, Dustforce, and SpaceChem all come recommended (I don't think I ever made it past Vogarr's first stage, though). I did expect to see a few more puzzle games. One game no one mentioned, I presume because it's newer and a bit more niche, is TIS-100. It's made by the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, and might be one of the most challenging puzzle games I've played (though it's presumably easier for experienced programmers, and anyone who paid more attention in school than I did). Print out the manual if you can.

Choosing difficulty

All of the games I mentioned up there can easily be described as 'hard,' if for different reasons. Against skilled opponents, CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and StarCraft 2 are very hard, and they're complex. Dwarf Fortress and Kerbal Space Program require a lot of learning. Super Hexagon, and the bullet-hell games and platformers, require precision control.

But plenty of games which aren't known for being hard can be very hard. The Witcher 2, for instance, came in at 19, in part due to its permadeath mode and first boss. Those damn RC missions from GTA: San Andreas also came up. Civilization V on Diety difficulty, too.

In the survey, I asked which difficulty setting (based on four generic settings) the takers were most likely to choose when starting a new game. The distribution is about as I expected: almost no one takes the easy route, the most people (39.8%) leave it on the normal difficulty, and slightly fewer choose the hard (28.7%) or the hardest modes (26%).

Broken mice and broken bones

When asked to tell us the worst thing they've done to express frustration with a game, plenty said that they don't react physically—they curse, uninstall the game, go outside, or do other healthy-sounding things. "[I] stopped playing for few months to get over my anger and hopefully renew my interest," said King_Matt. A calm and wise king is Matt. We can all learn from the great King_Matt.

And apparently, a lot of us need to. The word "broke" came up 222 times and "smash" was included in over 100 responses. Banana peels came up an awful lot, too. Here are a few examples:

I chucked my keyboard at my brick wall. It dragged the desktop with it. It corrupted my hard drive, broke my keyboard and most functions on the case didn't work properly. - Abernath

Thrown a banana peel out the window. But I picked it up later. - Kenu

I once got so frustrated while just trying to get fuel up to my ship [in Kerbal Space Program] that was trying to get to Mun that I decided to fly all my rockets into Kerbol (the sun). I spent about 5 hours just designing the booster/fuel ships to help get my whole fleet there and give them the last push into its blinding embrace. Once every single one was burned to ash, and all the crew with it, I deleted the save and went to bed. It was only after I woke up that I realized what I had done. To say the least, I cried. - Nerd__Guy

 Threw my lamp out the window. It was a damn good lamp too. - Anonymous

Literally ripped out a chunk of hair in frustration once. - Nate Dogg

I actually broke my grandfather's trackball mouse while playing when I was a kid on his PC. I had to buy him a new mouse from Walmart. - Brain

Threw more money at it. This is a recurring theme with me in multiplayer games. - Ryan Daniels

In my grandest fit of frustration, I suppressed my volatile feelings with the warm, cheesy comfort of Hot Pockets. A lot of them. It turns out one man can eat a lot of Hot Pockets. They come out a lot faster than they go in. - Chudbunkis

Threw a banana peel at the screen. - As7iX

Broke a finger. - Dodie

So is Dark Souls really that hard?

I predicted that Dark Souls would be the most popular game in the survey, so I added an extra question. I asked everyone, regardless of which game they put down as the hardest, to agree or disagree with the statement "Dark Souls isn't even that hard, ugh." I think we can all agree that I chose an extremely unscientific way to phrase the question, but we definitely can't all agree on whether or not Dark Souls is hard. 

Speedruns are artistry. Not only do they demonstrate complete mastery over a game, but they also poke away at the edges of what a game intends you to do. Watching a perfect speedrun is similar, I imagine, to watching good gymnastics, but they're more than just skill-based. They're borne of a curiosity about the edges of games: the things we're not meant to see and the things we aren't supposed to do.

There's a whole science behind speedruns. Players spend weeks and sometimes years chiselling a perfect path through a game. They exploit minor traversal bugs to gain speed, they tap away at the outer limits of a game world in search of hidden routes, and then they move to execute all these tricks in one graceful swoop. There's a strong collaborative spirit among speedrun communities, because in the end, it's all about what's possible, not who wins.

There are lots of different speedruns, and the rules vary depending on the type of speedrun a player hopes to achieve. Most of the runs I've featured below are Any% runs, which simply require the player to complete the game under any difficulty setting as quickly as possible. These contrast with 100% runs, which as the name suggests requires full completion of the game (any secret worlds or any optional collectibles, for example). 

What follows aren't "the best speedruns of all time" but instead a selection of especially impressive runs. I've tried to collect those most suited to spectating, so there are a lot of shooters and platformers. Meanwhile, I've generally avoided speedruns too heavily reliant on glitches that bypass huge sections of a game (like this Pillars of Eternity run, for example). I'm not arguing these aren't legitimate: just that they're not as fun to watch.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Bethesda made a big deal of Skyrim's 100 hour potential back in 2011, but I'm sure they're not surprised that speedrunner gr3yscale has beaten the game in less than 40 minutes. After all, Skyrim QA guy Sam Bernstein managed to complete the whole game, glitch and cheat free, in two hours and 16 minutes. If you know what you're doing, the biggest games can be reduced to a series of carefully timed leaps.

Gr3yscale's world record time of 39:24 uses a number of built-in exploits, but arguably more interesting than the run itself is this accompanying tutorial video on how he achieved it. The lengthy video is a step-by-step instructional, detailing everything from the graphics settings you should use (as low as possible) through to how to steal the Blank Lexicon from Septimus Signus in less than five seconds. If you've got any interest in the painstaking process of routefinding for a speedrun, it's a must watch.

Dark Souls

For the best example of speedrunner Kahmul78 s thoroughness, look no further than the 1:56 mark below. The way he switches his inventory load out in the middle of a plunge attack demonstrates that every second is precious for an adept speedrunner. He won t need those newly equipped arrows for a while, but when you re looking to shave off precious seconds in a notoriously difficult game, you don t waste time.

After clearing the tutorial area, Kahmul78 takes a very unconventional route through Lordran. Using the Skeleton Key starting item he passes through New Londo Ruins and Valley of the Drakes into Darkroot Basin, then onto Undead Parish. This not only skips the second boss encounter, but it also means facing off against the first mandatory boss battle by the eight minute mark. 

For the average first time player it s likely to take up to five hours to make that much progress (or about ten, if you re like me). The fact that this whole run wraps up in under 48 minutes naturally  attracted a lot of attention when it was first posted. There are quicker Dark Souls speedruns out there which exploit a major glitch, but this is the real deal.

Dishonored

With so many tools at his disposal it's little wonder that Corvo Attano can get the job done quickly. He's not really meant to do it this quickly though, with speedrunner TheWalrusMovement completing the stealth adventure in 34:35. Attano's Blink ability a lightning quick dash mainly used for covert operations is utilised a lot in this run, to the extent that it's difficult to keep track of TheWalrusMovement's routing. 

Nonetheless, Dishonored is a surprisingly enjoyable game to spectate, and TheWalrusMovement is forthcoming with his secrets. This world record run can probably be improved the runner's commentary points out a couple of areas of improvement but this is the best out there in the meantime.

Doom 2

Picture this: you ve just returned from Hell only to find that Earth is in worse shape. You were really looking forward to having a beer though, so you want to save the world as quickly as possible. But how quickly is as quickly as possible? How s 23 minutes and three seconds sound? Not bad at all! Start pouring.

The work of speedrunner Zero-Master, this Ultra-Violent mode playthrough managed to topple a record set in 2010 by Looper. That s a long time in speedrun years and it only managed to come out on top by 22 seconds. A backseat speedrunner will no doubt see areas of improvement in the below video, which Zero-Master concedes to in his YouTube description, but for the time being this is the quickest run there is.

While Doom 2 is probably the most popular speedrunning instalment in the series, it s worth checking out speedruns of the two Final Doom WAD packs too. These outings upped the difficulty dramatically, and if you want to see a run with a few clever rocket jumps, look no further.

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke 3D s Build engine is home to a lot of glitches very handy to speedrunners. As Duke speedrunner LLCoolDave explains in this video, a major one is crouchjumping . If you crouch while freefalling and then hit the jump key before touching the ground, Duke can clip through certain walls and structures. The engine in Duke 3D is less than stable, allowing for switches to be triggered from unintended vantage points and whole regions of levels to be skipped.

As in most glitchy speedruns, triggering the engine s limitations at just the right moment is an impressive skill in itself. Speedrunner Mr_Wiggelz manages to complete the game in 9:19 below, though it s worth noting that only the first three episodes of the Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition feature (the fourth episode didn t appear in the original game).

Mr_Wiggelz admits that he messed up a couple of times during this run, so it probably won t be long before we see it bettered.

Click here to watch on Twitch

Fallout 3

Some genres, especially platformers and shooters, are particularly suited to the speedrun. Others, like the open world RPG, definitely are not. That doesn t stop people from trying to beat the likes of Pillars of Eternity, Skyrim and Fallout 3 in the time it takes to prepare an English breakfast, but there s inevitably glitches involved. Games like these are designed to eat up your time and life.

Rydou s 18:53 speedrun of Fallout 3 (that s 18 minutes, not hours) utilises a few glitches, but no cheats or third-party programs. As he explains on his YouTube page, this run makes liberal use of a quicksave bug. Basically, if you rapidly quicksave and then quickload you ll briefly have the ability to clip through walls. In this way, the player-character goes from birth to saving Washington in less than 20 minutes.

After a bit of publicity off the back of this speedrun, Rydou moved to emphasise the difference between cheating and exploiting glitches. For those who wonder about the legitimacy of the run, using and exploiting glitches have always been a part of the speedrun community. This is a way to push the game even further, and [is] not considered cheating.

Half-Life 2

An hour and 32 minutes might not sound impressive for a Half-Life 2 speedrun: the game's an all time classic and ten years old to boot. You can blame the game's regular unskippable dialogue sequences for that record, but hey, at least it gives record holder Gocn k some time to take a break. He needs it.

There are some interesting strategies in this video. GocAk makes liberal use of two traversal glitches common in Valve's Source Engine, namely Accelerated Back Hopping and Accelerated Side Hopping. For a stunning example of the former skip to the 29 minute mark, where a sequence of careful jumps actually propels the player into the air. 

Sourceruns.org has a more detailed description: "When you exceed the game's speed limit, the game tries to slow you down whenever you jump, back to the desired speed. By default the game thinks that you're moving forwards, so when you exceed the speed limit, it'll accelerate you backwards. If you are facing backwards, this will only increase your speed. So, the faster you're going - the more you will get accelerated."

Hotline Miami

No big tricks or glitches here, just an exceptionally talented player. Speedrunner Dingodrole completes Hotline Miami in 20 minutes and seven seconds, but his ultimate goal is to get below the 20 minute mark. If you watch the whole run you'll notice there's very little room for improvement, and Dingodrole seems to have the routing down pat. He's been steadily chipping away at the time for a while now, so it's probably inevitable that this will be beaten some day.

I Wanna Be The Guy

It pays to know a game intimately before embarking on a speedrun, but that rule has a different meaning when it comes to I Wanna Be The Guy. A parodic love letter to 8-bit platformers, I Wanna Be The Guy subverts every reliable trope in the platformer rule book. Shiny red apples aren t collectibles: they ll kill you. Don t worry about reaching those spikes: they ll come to you. Nothing is predictable, and everything is learnt from the experience of dying. You can t learn this game, you have to memorise it.

So it s always fun to monitor the speedrunning community s progress with I Wanna Be The Guy (as well as its many follow-ups). You need a great memory and superhuman dexterity to complete the game once, let alone in 28 minutes and 40 seconds without glitches, as Tesivonius has done.

Click here to watch on Twitch

Portal

A few caveats: this is a segmented Portal speedrun, which means the game wasn't completed from beginning to end in a single playthrough. Instead, the best level times were stitched together for the final video. Additionally, there were four different speedrunners involved: Nick "Z1mb0bw4y" Roth, Josh "Inexistence" Peaker, Nick "Gocnak" Kerns, and Sebastian "Xebaz" Dressler. Some would argue a segmented speedrun is illegitimate, but wherever you stand on that matter, it's still interesting to see what's possible.

This run uses neither cheats or hacks, but it does exploit a number of glitches. "This run first started after the discovery of a new glitch, which snowballed into a whirlwind of discoveries of new tricks, skips, and glitches," the team writes. As you'll see below, the glitches make for a disorientating watch, but its fascinating nonetheless.

Quake

The Quake speedrun scene used to be massive, boasting its own highly organised community in the form of Quake Done Quick. The below video sees all four episodes of the game completed in 11 minutes and 29 seconds (on Nightmare difficulty!) and demonstrates world class bunny hopping and rocket jumping skills. The occasional glitch is implemented and whole chunks of certain maps are skipped with the help of rocket jumps, but no cheats were used.

Spelunky

Twitch streamer Bananasaurus Rex is, or was, the world authority on Spelunky. It was he who figured out how to kill the game s invincible ghost. It was he who achieved a solo Eggplant run (this involves carrying an Eggplant to the end of the game, obviously). It was he who collected $3.1 million worth of gold in a single playthrough. Arguably the highest bar he set was the legendary 5:02 Hell speedrun. Simply reaching Hell is difficult enough on its own, but completing the whole game using this route is punishment. Doing it in five minutes is God tier.

Unfortunately for Bananasaurus Rex, someone managed to beat his Hell run, and not by a measly couple of seconds. Youtuber Latedog beat secret boss Yama in 4:36, creating a new record which let s face it will probably only be beaten by accident. Like Bananasaurus Rex he utilises the warp device, which is somewhat reliant on luck but pretty much crucial if you want to shear minutes off a playthrough.

Super Meat Boy

When humankind is wiped off the face of the earth by some malevolent alien society, the planet s new inhabitants will learn a couple of things as they sift through the rubble. First, we really liked bottled water. Secondly, Coca-Cola was an especially totalitarian leader. Thirdly, we were really bloody good at Super Meat Boy.

Speedrunner Vorpal has been chipping away at the world record for a while, but this is the best he/she has managed so far: the base game completed in 17 minutes and 54 seconds. That stat doesn t include the dark levels or any of the retro themed ones, but anyone who has spent half-an-hour with Team Meat s punishing platformer will peek through fingers as Vorpal passes the final boss run by the skin of his teeth.

VVVVV

Speedruns can be beautiful. Twitch streamer sheilalpoint completes VVVVV in 12:12 in the below video, and watching it (with the sound down) can be like watching a weird 1970s art film about a little man s efforts to euthanise himself in outer space.

The beauty of this run is that there aren t really any major tricks, just a thorough knowledge of the game s layout. Sheilalpoint pulls some interesting maneuvers with the game s checkpoints particularly in one sequence where hitting them as they collide with spikes actually increases the momentum of the player character but otherwise, this is plain old fashioned mastery.

For more awesome speedruns, speedrun.com and speeddemosarchive.com are invaluable resources. Think we've missed something important? Leave it in the comment section below.

Image via Steam user MVDK.

Written by Matt Thrower

Fifteen years ago I thought myself the god of Unreal Tournament: an untouchable colossus of speed and firepower tearing through every difficulty level with consummate ease. So naturally, as soon as I got broadband I tried out for a high ranking clan. They wiped the floor with me, blowing my avatar asunder with the same insouciance I had playing against the bots and laughing as they fell before me.

It was the beginning of a long and illustrious career of being Very Bad Indeed at online games. Yet here I remain, regularly clocking hours on Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty, and DayZ and regularly left propping up the leaderboards.

I m hardly alone. Public servers commonly have their fair share of deadbeats alongside the clan members and twitch kiddies who rule the maps. The gaming demographic increasingly includes middle-aged people with kids and mortgages who want to kick back in the evening and have some fun, but don t have the free time to practice. And, predictably, the more experienced players slaughter them, time and time again. Why do we keep coming back for more pain?
Suckers for punishment
Lennart Nacke, who researches affective gaming and entertainment computing at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, suggests it might be connected to something he calls the feedback loop of self-regulation. We need four things to regulate our behavior: standards, monitoring, strength and motivation, he tells me. People in online games form their standard by participating in matches and monitoring their own performance. Every time they engage in another match they get feedback on their prior performance and adjust their current efforts.

But doesn t that mean that practice would eventually lower their motivation when they reached their desired standard? The randomness of the players and the randomness in the twitch games themselves mean the standard is constantly adjusting, he says. It keeps the players in a monitoring loop of their own behavior and this leads them to come back.

StarCraft 2: Making you wish you had extra hands since 2010.

This desire to practice and improve is a colossal motivator, an effect more widely known as positive reinforcement. Mia Consalvo, Research Chair in Game Studies at Concordia University, agrees and she has some data to back up her opinion.

In my research on why people cheat, I found that most players went to great effort not to cheat they wanted to earn their achievements in games fairly, via their own efforts, she says. This leads me to believe that often, players really want that sense of accomplishment that comes from their own efforts and skills via play. That suggests that such players are earnest in wanting to advance in the game. And here that takes the form of multiple plays, even without success.

There s substantial research to back up the hypothesis that, counter-intuitively, failure actually encourages further participation. A 2011 study of internet chess by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Sami Abuhamdeh suggested that players actively chose more capable opponents, and had the most fun against people that they beat only 25 percent of the time, on average.

This seemingly contradictory enjoyment of failure has a parallel in philosophy known as the tragedy paradox. Why do people actively enjoy works of art that prompt unpleasant emotions such as sadness and fear? There s no straightforward answer, but we re all familiar with the experience of bellowing the rage and frustration engendered by failure at the screen, and then quite sincerely telling our friends how great the game was.

Lennart points out that video games offer a uniquely good environment to explore this effect. They put us in an explicit rule context, where our boundaries are known and we can quickly observe the skills of other players, he tells me. This framing of a game allows us to set clear a goal for our behavior and it is much easier to monitor our progress than in real life, where the rules are not clear and the skills of our opponents would be unknown to us.


Raging against the machine
Lennart's explanation doesn't entirely explain why gamers like me, who ll simply never have the time or the reflexes to beat the teenage experts that throng the servers, continue to play in the face of repeated maulings. I know I m a hopeless case, so it can t just be the lure of potential improvement that keeps me going.

What s particularly interesting is how this attitude contrasts with that engendered by overly difficult solo games. We ve all played games with excessive learning curves and uneven difficulty spikes, and often the response is annoyance and frustration followed by throwing in the towel. It seems to me there must be something qualitatively different in playing against other people, but what?

Consalvo thinks that it might just be me. I've known players that have attempted particular moves or levels in single player games up to 100 times, she relates, so we can't say they would just give up against the computer. It seems to depend on the persistence of the player and their investment in a particular game. Players will vary widely at their 'frustration point' where they will give up.

Quake Live: Browser play means it's even easier to lose than ever before.

Equally, some of those effects that make failure actively pleasurable when playing online also apply to the offline world. Nick Yee, a research scientist who s been studying online games for over a decade, points out that it used to be near impossible to beat games. Most people who played Pac-Man or Tetris never beat the game, but they kept playing because it provided a challenge and allowed them to sense their own improvement.

It s the same psychological feedback loop that we ve already encountered. Winning in itself isn't necessary to create engagement, Nick says. In fact, one could argue that not winning at Pac-Man and Tetris were precisely what kept people playing.

Lennart, however, suggests it might be related to the unpredictability of a human opponent when compared to a bot. If the standard of the game is too high, the frustration threshold will be hard to overcome for players, he tells me. But against humans, the randomness of the opponent influences how we build our standard and makes it harder to form comparisons, essentially keeping us engaged for longer because we haven t yet met the standard that we rebuild every time we engage in gameplay.
Friendship through failure
This was starting to chime a little better with my personal experience. Maybe the attraction is as simple as the humanizing element; the huge pull we have toward sharing activities, even if it s with faceless strangers who might be thousands of miles away and want nothing more than to repeatedly blow us to pieces.

Mia thinks that could well be the case. Being social is not always about communicating it is also about engaging in a shared activity with others, she says. Sometimes that means simply being among other people; it could mean engaging in a group quest or even PvP or other competitions.

The point that you don t have to talk or even text with other players online in order to feel a sense of companionship from them is also one that Lennart makes. They are just enjoying the company of other people and even if they could not communicate with other players directly, they are still enjoying the shared language of playing the game.

Dota 2: So complex, you can deny opponents XP by killing your own minions.

Lennart and some colleagues ran a study on this hypothesis, analyzing several months of log files from a large site that matches players for online board and card games. They found that while user s behavior mirrored many aspects of real-life socialization, they were forming only transient relationships and talking very little. What could explain their actions?

The main point here is that games themselves are a form of communication, he tells me. They allow us to communicate with other humans by monitoring and comparing our behaviors in the game to others and witnessing personal growth in an easy to understand constrained environment. Games, even the competitive ones, are in my opinion one of the most social ways we can interact using technology today.

And there s my answer. I play a lot of board and card games, and have long been aware that a big part of the draw for me is the enjoying the company of friends and family and gaming at the same time. I m no good at those games either, but I do have a fantastic repertoire of funny stories about my spectacular failures.

So I m happy to carry on being the bottom of the pile just to have the pleasure of knowing that behind all the nicknames on top of me are real people, and I ve contributed to their game, their narrative, their own repertoire of anecdotes. Whatever my losses in the game, I ve won a little victory in my real world life.

Valve updated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive today with two additional maps and a refit of the Classic Competitive matchmaking system. Vertigo, a classic Defusal map, returns with a Source facelift to its multi-leveled mayhem and shadowy camping nest corners, while Monastery chills things out with an Arms Race among the snowy promenades of a windswept temple.

Classic Competitive matchmaking now involves queuing up until 10 player matches are found before starting a game. Group queuing and matchmaking with friends are also possible through a "Play with Friends" option. Head over to Global Offensive's website for a short FAQ on the new matchmaking.

CS:GO should be with us come summer, according to Valve, giving us a bit of time to train our mouse hand muscles and hone our twitch headshot skills before inevitably suffering repetitive death at the hands of seasoned CS 1.6 pros on release. Those pros can't touch console bros, though. Valve's Chet Faliszeck yesterday told Joystiq cross-platform play is gone from CS:GO. Awww.

There's a good reason, though. "The beta has proved we want to update not just the beta, but the game itself post-launch frequently on the PC," Faliszeck told Joystiq, "To do that we need to separate the platforms so one doesn't hamstring the other. So for that, we have removed the idea of cross-platform play -- essentially make all platforms stronger by not mixing them."

Seems fair. It'll mean more updates for us PC players, most likely. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is currently in beta. You can complete a Steam survey for a chance to claim a spot ahead of release. Meanwhile, let me introduce you to some new CS:GO screenshots. I'm sure you'll get on like a house on fire.

Valve are incorporating the immensely popular Gun Game mod as official modes in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Arsenal: Arms Race and Arsenal: Demolition are the two new modes. They'll be playable across eight new maps created with help from the creators of the original mod.

Gun Game replaces Counter-Strike's cash-for-guns system with a kills-for-guns system. Everyone starts with a pistol and gets a new weapon for every kill. Those unfamiliar with Counter-Strike might recognise a very similar mode appearing in Call of Duty: Black Ops, but the original CS mod was the real deal, and it will get official backing when CS:GO is released early next year.

Valve have sent over nine new screenshots, showing some lovely jungle areas. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive doesn't seem to be pushing the Source engine especially hard, but it's a significant step up from Counter-Strike: Source.

Ever fancied yourself as a Counter-Strike master? Ever thought about going pro? There's a lot to consider, even once you're among the best players around. Professional gaming's no easy gig, and there's far more to it than simply knowing how to aim a crosshair at an opponent's face. As such, we've been chatting to Elliot Welsh, aka. 'wez' of leading competitive gamers Team Dignitas, to find out his ten top tips for moving up the ranks in the world of professional Counter-Strike.

1. Get your hardware sorted
If you want to compete on an even playing field, the last thing you want is a dated rig or sloppy internet connection holding you back. In a game whose combat is as finely balanced as that of Counter-Strike, just a slight framerate drop can be catastrophic. "Low fps can affect your recoil, bullet registration and smoothness of your game," says Elliot. "If you're stuck with a terrible computer, you don't really have much chance online against someone with a top-end machine. Also, a good computer and connection will be the same conditions you'll be playing on when you turn up to a tournament, so you won't have to adapt to different conditions when you set up on the day."


2. Find a team you get along with
Sometimes in life we're all thrown into a situation where we have to work with people we aren't so fond of. Like at PC Gamer, for example. Bloody scoundrels, the lot of them. But there's no doubting that getting on with your team mates is going to make things a whole lot easier down the line. In fact, it might even be better to pick friendly souls with potential to improve than switching in the cream of the crop without knowing them well. "Playing with people you get along with will make you enjoy the game much more, and undoubtedly be more likely to stick together," says Elliot. "Changing your lineup every month won't do you much good, even if you're replacing a player with someone slightly better."

3. Practice your tactics in the best environments
If you're considering competitive Counter-Strike, the chances are you'll already spend a fair number of hours playing the game. But practicing in the right environments is key to your continual improvement. Deathmatch servers are a good place to start - "You respawn as soon as you die, so you're constantly shooting and it's a good way to improve your gunplay," Elliot explains - and clan war practice is pretty much essential. Use a chat program such as mIRC to search for practice games against other teams, and try out all the tactics you've been mulling over in your head. "I'd advise having ten minutes after each match you play to assess what you did wrong, what you did right, and how you could improve," adds Elliot.

4. Watch demos of other players
Practice might make perfect, but there are numerous intricacies to Counter-Strike play that you may be able to pick up from others. Watching demo videos of other players is a great way to assess their mad skills without fear of being gunned down if you take too long to stop and stare. Professionals will have various different ways of moving, aiming, shooting and reacting to different situations. Just make sure you try out your own moves as well: "All players have different styles," warns Elliot, "and one player's style may not be suitable for you or your team." Demos from Dignitas' players can be found on their website.



5. Forget the rest, play against the best
It's always nice to win, so it might be tempting to select weaker opponents for practice matches. But this can be counter-productive. Unless you're playing at the highest level you're capable of, there's not a great deal of compulsion to improve - and certainly less you can take away from both victories and defeats. "Although playing against people below your own ability will still benefit you in some ways," Elliot explains, "playing against top teams will give you an insight into the level of professional play, and allow you to learn from high level players."

6. Communication is key
As with all team-based games, but perhaps even more so with Counter-Strike, it's important to be in good contact with your team mates throughout a match. A lack of communication can be the difference between a decisive victory and an embarrassing, crushing defeat, so talking to each other is tremendously important. But simply maintaining contact isn't enough: it's imperative to be efficient with your communications. "It's best to keep your calls about what's happening short and quick, and explain everything you know, such as how many enemies you see, if you see the bomb carrier, and what weapons they have," says Elliot. And be sure to get hold of a voice chat program such as Ventrilo or Mumble to utilise during practice: they allow you to speak to your team mates whether you're dead or alive, an advantage not afforded by Counter-Strike's in-game chat system.

7. Embrace the community spirit
You might be tempted to pour all your spare hours into improving your game, but there's more to being a professional Counter-Strike player than simply playing Counter-Strike. Your team could consist of the best players in the world, but if no one knows who you are, you're probably going to end up going nowhere fast. "Playing an active role in your country's Counter-Strike community means that there is more general interest, which means there will be more tournaments and therefore more oppotunities to practice in competitions and under pressure," says Elliot. "Also, it allows you to make friends to casually play with when your team may not be online, so you can still practice even if your team mates aren't around."



8. Master the three pillars of skillful combat
Elliot flags three key things to master in Counter-Strike combat: recoil, flashbangs, and smoke grenades. Counter-Strike's recoil patterns are very different to many shooters, and it's imperative to master the technique: "For most professional players, the general technique is to spray at close range, tap fire at medium range, and tap slightly slower at long range, all while moving in between taps to make you a harder target to hit," suggests Elliot. Meanwhile, good grenade use can make all the difference. "Again, watching a professional player's demo will give you some useful tips," says Elliot, "but it's always best to join an empty server with your team mates and practice them for yourself."

9. Financial advice
Counter-Strike isn't all about the combat tactics. It's also a game in which managing your money is key to high-level success. At a professional level, you'll need to make sure your finances are in check whether you're winning or losing, because ensuring your team is finely in-tune and well-timed with quick purchases is essential. Elliot's top tip? "If you find yourself short on money after - say - losing the pistol round, the best thing to do is save your money by not buying anything for one or two rounds, so you can save up enough cash to purchase a rifle and armour."

10. For goodness' sake, stick with it
It might sound obvious, but the only way you'll reach the dizzy heights of top-level professional gaming is to keep plugging away until you're good enough. It's a lot of work, and something you'll need to treat like a real job as much as play - even during those inevitable times when morale reaches rock bottom. "A lot of dedication is needed to become a professional," says Elliot, "and there will be times when you and your team are trying to improve and results may not always go in your favour. If this happens, the best thing you can do is stick together, and keep playing through it."