Portal speedrunners are using a coffee mug to shatter the weirdest record.
Portal is all about creatively manoeuvring yourself through test chamber after test chamber, where cake may or may not be awaiting you should you manage to overcome every obstacle. But some players prefer to ignore all that and focus on an altogether different challenge: killing their test subject as quickly as possible.
As spotted by PC Gamer, the record for the fastest test subject death was recently smashed by a speedrunner named Pr0tal. The record had previously stood at 0.885 seconds, and Pr0tal managed to do it in just 0.855 seconds. That 0.03 second gap might not seem like much, but when we're talking about an entire category that takes place in less than a second, it's pretty considerable.
The game starts with Chell waking in a test chamber with a small table on which sits a coffee cup and a radio, both of which are key to achieving a speedy demise. "When I actually jump onto the cup for some reason it gives me a bunch of speed," Pr0tal explains, "launching me into the radio which kills me. So think of it like the radio being a brick wall and the cup is a high speed vehicle and I'm the passenger." You can see their method in action in the video below.
The speedrunner says that it only took them "a couple hours of grinding" to beat the record, which, according to speedrun.com, was held by Hrvatskii for the past year. But just mere days after Pr0tal beat the record, another speedrunner, Floorb, managed to have their test subject meet their maker in an even speedier fashion. The player managed a time of 0.84 seconds also using the coffee cup technique.
Not willing to give up their title, Pr0tal has since also managed to off their test subject in that time. They've not uploaded a video of this attempt, though. Instead, they said, "I think I might try to beat it first." Amazingly, there's also a third player, Korgus, with a time of 0.84 seconds, who also used the humble coffee cup to achieve death at record speed.
No doubt, all of these will be trying to improve their time oh-so-slightly so they can claim the number one spot. Who knows, maybe GLaDOS will even get them a cake.
In the mood for mind-bending puzzles, check out our guide to games like Portal.
