A group of co-op speedrunners have completed the Left 4 Dead 2 campaign “Dead Air” a record time of 7:53, and to do so they’ve used some interesting strategies.
Runners burhác, LuckY, bill_play3, and JurasPatryk have claimed the world record in completing “Dead Air” the fastest in a thread on Reddit. Despite the lack of a single campaign category on what most consider to be the most official speedrunning records site, the names in this run appear enough in the top ten records for most parts of Left 4 Dead 2 that we can probably trust the claim.
I don’t know all that much about Left 4 Dead 2 speedrunning, but I have an interest in the game itself, and seeing some of the strategies that the runners use is fascinating to me. The one in the .gif at the top of this page in which the player Mario stomps a zombie to get over a fence is awesome, and the move late in the video where they use the acceleration from an item throw to rocket up onto a skybridge is a great moment of knowledge and skill.
I love to see people really stretching a game to its full potential, and the fact that these players are more or less just playing this game very, very quickly is bonus. No one is glitching out of bounds or doing super strange stuff. Instead, it’s mostly just running through a level very fast. Any zombie film survivor would be proud.