A while back the SourceRuns team had done a segmented speedrun of Half-Life 2 known as Half-Life 2 Done With a High Magnitude of Velocity (DWaHMoV). Since then they’ve done runs of Portal, Portal 2 and some mods, but now they have come out with their next big segmented run: Half-Life 2: Episode Two – Done Quick or EP2DQ for short. Check it out in it’s full glory after the jump.

There’s something strange going on over at BlackMesaSource.com.

The website for the highly anticipated Half-Life recreation modification, Black Mesa, started showing a mysterious video the other day of an analogue TV filled with color bars, which is directing viewers to a some sort of countdown clock.

Update: It appears that the Black Mesa Workshop is now publicly live and a new map ‘dm_tension’ has also been added. Earlier this week we also saw a strange countdown appear on the Black Mesa website, could this be part of whatever they are about to announce?

Several multiplayer levels from the popular Black Mesa modification may have just been leaked thanks to a glitch on the Steam Workshop.

Dying is almost always a bad thing in Team Fortress 2 (indeed, most shooters). You aren’t helping your team while dead, you aren’t having fun while dead, and a good many unlocks are dedicated to keeping the player or his teammates alive. Trying not to die is, for the most part, a pretty good strategy and you’ll go far with it.

Despite the age, Half-Life is a game that many set their sights on, mainly for the challenge that is speedrunning. You know, the thing where people try to beat a game as fast as humanly possible, with or without scripts. And loads of bunny hops and grenade jumps. Loads of ’em.

Using a mod that restores Half-Life to its original 2001 version, a group of people has after 4 years of preparation and practice managed to beat the world record speedrun of 27 minutes, with a whopping 20 minutes and 41 seconds clear time.

A year and a half ago, in late 2010, Michael “DemonStrate” Yanni created a jaw-dropping 9-minute speedrun of the original Portal, titled “Portal Done Pro“. It was the new world-record time for the fastest playthrough of Portal 1, and understandably, it was widely publicized at the time.

But you know what they say: records are made to be broken. And yesterday, PDP’s world record was not only broken, but smashed wide open. Read on!

I tend to think of myself as an average to high-skill player. I’m not the best, but I’m pretty good at most games I play, and I’m pretty damn terrific at some of them. I won’t name any of them, because some of them have leaderboards, and when it comes to my high scores, I don’t even trust my own grandmother. But when I see shit like this, then I start feeling inadequate. It’s like the locker room all over again.

Here’s one for the history books: the world’s fastest HL: Blue Shift speedrun. And another one for the history books: this thing was released almost 3 months ago. So the only logical conclusion here is… quadrazid is fast, Vic is slow. It’s funny, you see, because I can’t strafejump for s**t. Hell, I can barely tell the difference between strafejumping and bhopping. But I still manage to dominate Portal 2’s Challenge Mode on my Friends list.

Speedrunning! It’s been around since 1994. Some consider it a form of art, some don’t. But what we do know about it is that it is damn fun to watch! I mean, come on. Whether you’re watching a Quake speedrun, a Metroid speedrun, or what have you, it’s almost as entertaining as actually playing the game in question.

There’s two main types of speedruns: single-segment speedruns and multi-segment speedruns. The latter is a speedrun in which the runner does not actually do it in one sitting – he does it in multiple sittings, in multiple segments to ensure perfection and correct any mistakes. The former is a speedrun made out of one single segment. No pausing, no saving. One single sitting. That means every time you make a mistake, you either bear with it, or call off the entire thing and start over. So a single-segment represents the ultimate test of skill and endurance.

The Valve community hasn’t shied away from speedrunning either. Last year’s astounding 9-minute Portal speedrun by DemonStrate still holds the world record for Portal speedruns. And there’s also been numerous Half-Life speedruns – single-segment, multi-segment, crowbar-only, you name it, these guys have probably done it.

The world speedrunning record for Half-Life 1 is still held by Blake “Spider-Waffle” Piepho, who completed his infamous “Half-Life in Half an Hour” speedrun (for which a series of commentary videos can be found here) in October of 2006, with a time of 29 minutes and 41 seconds. Blake’s also done a number of other Half-Life speedruns. For more information on Half-Life speed runs in particular, head over to Source Runs. You should also check out the Speed Demo Archive, and the Speed Run Wiki.

But let’s get to business, shall we?

We all know Portal’s a short game. Most people finish it in just over 3 hours. Except for this guy.