A speedrunner who goes by Can’t Even has recently broken their own top time for an Out of Bounds run of Valve Corporation’s classic Portal. The previous time, 7m 12s 255 ms, was achieved by Can’t Even a little over a week ago according to Speedrun.com. The new time, which Can’t Even obtained on December 29, was 7m 7s 920ms. While the difference between Can’t Even’s new time and the second place time (7m 21s 340ms) held by Msushi is only about 14 seconds, in speedrunning, it’s a lifetime. Just looking at the top 10 from the site, only the tenth place runner is above seven minutes; the other times are separated by mere seconds each.
The stream posted by Can’t Even, which you can check out below, follows the run, and it’s jam-packed with strange glitches, pass-through walls, and dark voids of nothingness. The run is nothing short of unbelievable, with all of the world hopping and void jumping happening very quickly. Blue and orange portals are flung left and right, allowing Can’t Even to quickly traverse the in-game levels. All the while, GLaDOS is commenting as normal, though I half-expected her to make an offhanded comment about the level hopping.
Can’t Even is also in 23rd place on the list of Inbounds speedruns, with Msushi taking the top spot for that run. As a matter of fact, the Out of Bounds speedrun record is the only one not held by Msushi. Currently, Msushi holds not only the Inbounds record but also the Glitchless and Inbounds Legacy records. The in-depth rules for each of these runs can be found in their respective tabs on the site.
To the fans of the speedrunning genre, there is also an upcoming competition dubbed PACE, hosted by the Global Speedrunning Association in April 2019. While it doesn’t look like there will be a category for Portal (sorry Can’t Even), speedrunners for games such as Super Mario 64, Super Mario Odyssey and Celeste will compete to see who can beat each game with the fastest time.