Welcome to my first speed run that has made it onto the site!

Thanks to Radix for hosting and putting up with my poor knowledge of technical skills (saying it lightly) for some time now.
This was one of the few games I hadn't sold a couple of weeks before finding this site, so I knew I had to do this at some point, especially when discussions for the first game arose.

It is probably the best one to run as you get the jetpack immediately unlike R&C1, and there is less chance of screw-ups without R&C2s hacking puzzles.
That said, it is made infinitely difficult by the need to upgrade weapons and health, or collect bolts for armour. There are many areas which take off over half health each hit, and the final level is 1-hit kill - so there are many frantic laser dodging moments throughout.
It is also designed with infinite lives, so dying is all part of the game - unfortunately for the person trying not to.
The decision to do Single-Segment was always in the back of my mind, and it took a lot of nerve and ten times as many attempts to accomplish it.

Onto the video itself:

*I apologize for any audio farts, I haven't checked through for them fully but I'm sure I noticed some while recording*

*You may want to read this after/during watching the video. I had to do this when looking at other speedruns and they don't remind you. Trust me, the following wall of text is very confusing*

Veldin
Menu setup is less perfect than I'd have liked (I keep the 'pause during weapon-swap' since Ratchet stops anyway and it reduces exposure time during fights) - overall not a problem.

Florana
I do some bolt hording firstly, as there's a small room with lots of bolts. Very irritating are those homing-boomerangs that slice through the environment in their attempt to take off significant portions of health, that's why try to kill them all hahaha...but I screw that up.
Path of Death is always fun, relaxing rather than difficult at the start of the game.
The boss is very easy; my weapons are too limited for me to mess this up.

Marcadia
Simple, lots of random blasting just to gain experience since ammo is restored every time you enter that big command ship thing.
Mission 1 – kill 'em all. I take an inordinate amount of damage…
Mission 2 – rinse and repeat.
Mission 3 – ahh, I suck at fps.
Mission 4 – it finishes on a timer so I mess around a bit.
Mission 5 – usually easy though more complex. I get hit by a plasma blast. I never get hit by those plasma blasts >_<
The laser-refraction area seemed to optimise itself, which was nice.

The first arcade game is done fine, wall-bounding to the top just takes practice. Some aesthetically appalling mistakes interlaced with the good though. The boss goes down quickly.

Annihilation Nation
Always a laugh. The first part is done without damage (that explains the skill point). Then large-scale destruction in the arena.

Aquatos
Not my favourite planet, Skidd can get stuck sometimes so you have to wonder around and mop up some enemies before he continues. The Clank sections are short but sweet, and the Tyrannoid stuff is simple. I learnt the tunes to the Tyrannoid conversations off by heart ^_^'

I then do the second arcade game since they all need to be done at some point and the bolts allow me to buy some more armour so I don't die horribly and painfully if that's alright with you. This is the only one where I don't get the skill point for speed since I spend some time collecting bolts.

Tyrannosis
Driving is pretty good, and the route is the only sensible one but took a while to find.
The boss is fairly hard to dodge, but I of course make it look easy... Its glitchiness is the only reason I can defeat it with my basic weapons, hooray for that. I finish it with my nitro-launcher to get more experience with it.
Mission 1 –good use of refractor for those horrible laser-robots, otherwise my nitro-launcher makes short work of everything (the benefit of few weapons).
Mission 2 – hovercraft is fun! Not much else to say.
Mission 3 – ditto. Destroy everything on this one.
Mission 4 – A death! Nooooo! I didn't even remember this at the time, must have supressed it, my hand slipped, what more can you do? I hang around a bit because if you get to the final area too quickly the enemies don't load and the mission is non-completable, since you must kill them all (only in the final area) to win.

VR-Training is good, it doesn't matter how quickly you use the hacker so I play around during those.

Daxx
Charge-boots are a must and are well used since those robots have very quick melee attacks. The hacking is more serious now; I know I was bored doing it so I can't imagine how boring watching it would be… never mind!

Obani Gemini
Cool level. Executed well but not perfect as I forgot where one of the satellites was.
By the end I have horded just enough bolts to buy a Flux Rifle, so that I can upgrade it efficiently in time for the warp-copter back on Daxx.

BlackWater City
A bit tougher, and is basically used to upgrade my weapons to a decent level. Notice that zooming with the Flux Rifle deals more damage.
Mission 1 – same old semi-mindless destruction. A bit close for comfort though.
Mission 2 – once again, focusing on flux rifle.
Mission 3 – the easiest mission here, and done well too.

Daxx
I return with my greater firepower to destroy that warp-copter. I also use a shortcut that chops off 20 seconds. This is the only one I found in the game since the encoding or whatever goes into these games is excellent, and I need to approach from the right direction to latch onto the swingshot. The mini-boss is easy and I finish with the flux rifle to get experience.

Annihilation Nation Revisited
We do love them charge boots don't we?
Scorpio is scrap in seconds (alliteration for the purposes of humour).

Holostar Studios
With Clank it's a nice break, and the Giant Clank portion is fine except one of the giant ninjas goes awol.
Ratchet's portion of the level however, is a nasty little section due to those green lasers. Luckily I get him hacking very quickly, since interruptions while he finds the correct position can kill you with rapid-fire. I get hit twice half way through, then twice more at the end, and I am very lucky to scrape through it.

Obani Draco
The first look at the Gravity Boots, which make for some fun playing.
The boss is called Courtney Gears, which is why the boss fight is Britney Spears themed. That is a reason, not an excuse.
Courtney herself ruined several runs but is fairly easy with practice - lots of health and ammo most of the time. Come to think of it, most of those 'ruined runs' were me randomly throwing myself off the edge of the arena. I finish on the flux rifle to again channel experience into that.

Zeldrin Starport
Begins the 'run for your life' segments in which my health is so low that minor mistakes can end the run.
Other than that this level is simple.

More arcady goodness. I forgot the layout of the third arcade game but pulled it together eventually.

Even more ventures into the 2D realm. The fourth arcade game is a nuisance that required extensive practice, especially since the Nefarious boss is very random. He has three stages of attack, but unfortunately you'll only see the first and a small part of the second (=D).

Metropolis
Again with the evil green lasers, but there is much enemy dodging and it comes out alright. One part is ridiculously close (hell it practically goes through me), phew.
The boss gets mushed, what more can I say.

Crash Site
Laaaaaag! (though the compression seems to have dealt with that…) No deaths! The idea is simply to hug the outside of the map and relying on luck, making sure to stay away from the humanoid robots again due to their speed and strength.

Arcadia
Mission 1 – I always feel like I'm cheating on this one.
Mission 2 – done well, though someone was talking to me throughout the entirety of this.
Mission 3 – I bought the Annihilator just so I would remember to get it at some point. Now it's trickier. I need to charge towards that platform otherwise the kill doesn't register. I drive the vehicle slowly at one point otherwise you start getting lasered=bad. Then I simply need to pop off the big aliens at long-range (or drive straight through them – Super Assassin!)
Mission 4 – I try to kill just enough enemies to be able to turn the switches unimpaired, but I stupidly got my vehicle destroyed and subsequently went on a bit of a rampage.
Mission 5 – Kill everything. Finally have another weapon to use!

The fifth arcade game I again forgot the route, and I reckon it shows. The end is just embarrassing and I finish on 1 health.

*No armour upgrade! My biggest concern and it makes the following levels horrifically difficult. It was either that, or spend an extra half and hour hording bolts (I used the money to buy that Annihilator by the way)*

Quark's Hideout
Interesting. It took some time before I found how easy it was to dodge the Quarkbot punches. The Clank section is harder this time, but still done well.

Starship Phoenix
Finally some action here! I like ninjas! Not much else to comment on…

Koros
Relies heavily on frantic charging. Those robots can sting! I didn't anticipate getting mangled at one point, and you can tell how critical my health is at this stage.

Command Centre
I despise this level, 1-hit kill anybody? I practiced it diligently to make sure I wouldn't screw it up… and succeeded... after three full playthroughs! I am very happy not to have died here (and thanks to Radix for not accepting it immediately, prompting me to do it one more time).
I level my Annihilator and Flux Rifle to their highest version here since the enemies at the very end give the highest experience, though it may look a little sloppy with all those intentional deaths (7 in total).

Boss time! Was very difficult, puts the bosses of the previous games to shame. The souped-up Flux Rifle pays its keep and the Annihilator does its job wonderfully. Honestly, I couldn't have bought any other weapons, levelled them up, and defeated Nefarious easier without running into ammo problems. My cover tactics at the end are brilliant and make it so much easier, this tough finale looks like a breeze.

Well, it isn't really the finale, but the Biobliterator is such a pushover I don't think it counts. Well, that's the end of the game, thank you very much!

*I keep the ending cutscenes in. They aren't the best but why not?Also, the sound cuts out on one side for some reason. Hoorah...*

An uninteresting note on monetary issues:

How best to spend the bolts was a tricky decision. The first armour I dubbed as essential, and that is true. The Flux Rifle is used because it deals decent damage against Nefarious, though it requires bolt collecting in the earlier stages. I tried three approaches on the final setup:
- Getting the armour upgrade. This uses almost all the bolts (250,000) just after the 5th arcade game, and makes the final few levels slightly easier. However, Nefarious is impossible with a crippling ammo shortage.
- Getting the PDA. On Quark's Hideout a significant detour nets you an item that allows the buying of ammo anywhere at inflated prices. This also costs 250,000, and is a viable method as long as you're very decent with the Flux Rifle.
- Getting more weapons. Since the Annihilator is most powerful it is the obvious choice, but I was put off due to levelling time. However, this turned out to be less than the time to get the PDA and with the benefit of increased speed and ease for the final battle. It's just irritating it took me so long to figure it out.

A possible other run would be a maxed out game completed as fast as possible, but that would only focus on route optimisation, and would generally need to utilise all the weapons for the sake of interest otherwise there wouldn't be much point I feel.

I don't think I'll try and improve this run as the errors are few and it was bloody hard. Full support to anyone who does though!

There ya go, hope you enjoy(ed) it! I'm very pleased with this achievement.

• Pirate Booty!

  Using a new technique of punching and then jumping immediately after, Qwark can cover more distance and traverse the level faster. I found that in the first second of the level I could punch-jump to make it through the first set of platforms without damage to slow me down. This jump took awhile to perfect and being at the very beginning of the run, it resolved in me restarting often before 3 seconds had even passed. At the end I would restart if the space eel didn't go straight. After many failed attempts I came up with this.

• Arriba Amoeba

  Not too much different here, more punch-jumping to speed things up. This run has more mistakes than the others but it is still a solid time.

• Shadow of the Robot

  Punch-jumping combined with better accuracy during the bomber-robots section helped achieve this time.

• Deja Q All Over Again

  A perfect time on this level would probably result in around 2:38-2:39.

  After many frustrated attempts I finally nailed a near perfect run. More punch-jumping, and I skip the second to last laser-bug fight.

• The Shaming of the Q

  I did this level pretty fast. I got hit some. I didn't really have any shortcuts. It is still a good time however. Who doesn't love running away from boiling acid while shooting frozen-rocket-shooting-robots and avoiding big purple blobs?

I greatly encourage people to try to improve these runs.

Thanks:

• Radix
• nate
• mikwuyma
• Cannibalk9
• Psonar (Mike's note: Uh oh, expect a rant from DJGrenola soon)

expanding and improving the game list one run at a time.

-tenfoLd