Turok 2, Hard mode Speedrun, PC version - 44 segments.

This has been a long time coming. I've always loved this game but I got interested in running it in February 2011, after spotting the "Turok 2 hard mode speed run" thread created by Squeebles for the N64. I started posting a little showing interest, before eventually practicing and running the first level; Somewhat competing with Ewil's excellent Port of Adia run also done on the PC. I chose to do the run on hard mode due mostly from inspiration from squeebles N64 efforts and also from the natural challenge the game offered. I had already played through the game several times on Hard in the past and enjoyed it, so surely a speed run in this catagory would be the best one, and I can honestly say from the level of optimization, the same run on normal or easy modes would probably only shorten the final time by 1 - 2 minutes. Squeebles informed me of a handful of great tricks when I first started out which really opened up a can of worms as far as further optimization goes. The tricks and strategies we both found throughout the months ahead still boggle my mind, and a lot of things were found during the making of the run !. I started the actual run on around the 10th September 2011, and finished it on the 13th May 2012. I should start though by saying that the PC version is much more favourable to speed run, or even to just play to be honest; Proper straffing, precision aiming and anytime saving add up to make the run much faster and also more playable. You can even skip the first level intro and the end credits, which the N64 version could not. So right off the bat, in no way should this be compared to an N64 run.

This submmission text is very long, but I felt it would be important to document everything as a sort of mini strategy guide to help viewers understand it all better and as a head start for budding runners interested in the game. I'd also like to think that the run could be used as a TAS planning guide or something if the game will one day emulate properly.

I'll get right to it explaining the all important glitches and tricks which to me is what this run is all about, and then onto explaining the run level by level.

Tricks list:

Overhead item trick: collect items hovering overhead no matter how high they are with a certain kind of jump, as you can imagine this can heavily speed up many areas, avoiding detours and such. The reach and range of the item in question affect the consistency for collecting it, so being a segmented run really was a priority here.

Water boosting: Fairly well known this one, but not well documented on actually how to do it. Just below the surface while looking up at the surface, double tap and hold forward, followed by a quick jump out the water, still holding forward. Turok will have heightened speed, lasting for as long as you want until you enter a portal or by simply pressing backwards in some instances. It also works with the fans in the Lightship just as you escape their grip !. This trick is another major factor in lowering the time, as you can make otherwise impossible jumps cutting out intended paths, and just the overall speed increase reducing many segments normal length.

Headhunter: With the warblade do a jump and slash to decapitate enemies. This is basically an ammoless quick kill for enemies where I make good use throughout the Hive.

Slope jump: From any point at the top or descending a slope, jump down it, and just as you land back on the slope, hit jump again to make Turok jump very far and fast. This has many uses, not just in this scenario. In this game, things like steps and talisman pads have a little incline which catagorise them as slopes, evidence of this is when Turok look springs when standing on their edges. So the same trick can be done from these things. The best use of this trick is seen for the River of Souls P-key collection and the Lightship Eye of Truth talisman pad jump.
Slope jumping also works in reverse: On flat ground, just as you touch the incline of the step, press jump to jump long and far. Furthermore when actually scaling a slope (example the rooftops in PoA), just before you reach the top, jump and you will also jump far and fast over the top of them.

Eye of truth skipping/boosting: The Eye of truth bridges are NOT activated by getting the Eye of truth talisman, they are simply invisible to the naked eye but have a large chunk taken from the beginning inhibiting you walking across them. This is bypassed by damage boosting from an enemy and landing on the invisible bridges starting point. However the aforementioned Lightship Eye of truth jump was done with a slope jump off the talisman pad because I was able to get Turok's speed increased from a fan, which increased the slope jumps distance. If it were normal speed, he won't make it. So the Hive Eye of truth jump is done traditionally with a damage boost from the rather helpfully placed Mantid, due to having no availability for speed increasing in that area. This is one of the largest skips in the game cutting out the backtrack to this level for the P-key

Space jumping: Named by me after the trick in the metroid series for the similar effect, unfortunately it is limited only to the bizzare properties of certain platforms in this game (particularly moving platforms), where standing underneath them you can keep tapping jump continually to rise upward until you poke through the platform and land on top of it. Unfortunately there is no huge skipping in this manner, and it is quite slow. But there is one place in the Lightship where I use these platforms to perform 2 Metroid Prime esque jumps to reach platforms, which otherwise would make the room around 15 seconds slower.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: I started the recording of this run round a friends house on his PC. After I completed the Port of Adia run he informed me a few days later that my progress got deleted by some PC hardware issue, but the recordings however were fine. With the go ahead from Mike, I re-did the level replicating my stats exactly according to the recordings, before eventually meeting up with it and saving it in the same spot. Using a save before the totem to check my time and With a good level of judgement doing the totem itself again I was certain that I got it saved to within a few seconds of where the recordings saved.
Just when I thought everything was back on track, a few more problems related to this started to emerge as the run went full steam ahead. While I replicated stats correctly, I didn't replicate the exact pickups in the level. So in the process of backtracking to PoA to grab the P-key, I unkowingly walked over and collected 2 more pistol clips behind the house on the way to the P-key which technically wouldn't be there, since I collected them in the original recordings. When I found out about this during The Lair run, I shot out 20 rounds to keep things fair and back on track. It's very close though with me nearly going overdrawn on Mag-60 shots in the remainder of the PoA backtrack. There was also a shotgun I picked up by accident too giving me a further 3 shells stocking me up to 20 from 17. I didn't know about this one until a bit later in the run so that is why I never intentionally shot out 3 shells, instead it was rectified naturally by later picking up a shredder in The Lair bringing it up to a
total of 20 shells, and still would have done so even if I never picked up the shotgun by accident, and once again I never went overdrawn on shredder shots by going under a shell count of 3.
One very last niggle to mention before I get onto the level descriptions. A strange glitch occured in The Lair when collecting the Sunfire pods for the first time. The pack I collected gave me a full 6 instead of the usual 3. We still don't have any idea why this happened and even when doing the run I didn't realise this glitch was happening at all (it was doing it on every playthrough of that segment). I simply thought this particular one granted you all 6 at the time. In any event having the full 6 only sped up the totem by around 5 or so seconds. It was helpful nonetheless.

The run:

Port of Adia - 6 segments:
Water boost right from the start speeds this section up by a fair few seconds, then again later rescuing the first child. This will be a common thing I'll be doing throughout the level and the entire run.
There really isn't much to say about this run. It's all very self explanatory, and was fairly easy in comparison to some of the later levels. I pretty much kept Ewil's route and speed throughout but just added the water boosts in there to speed the level up by a total of around 35-40 seconds. Not much in the way of tricks apart from the odd slope jumping here and there and of course the water boosts. I made some small mistake getting stuck in front of a Endtrail near the end, the trick is actually to jump right over him using the slope jump. later on just past that I collect the last level 3 key using an overhead item jump catching it from beneath the ceiling. It's a tricky one and so it's one of those I'd only do in a segmented run. Good totem battle !.
I'd say this entire level could be improved by around 5 - 10 seconds with more pefectionism in each segment, but also if I did more consistent one-direction-strafing, instead of adjusting the strafing direction to go round corners. This is something I found out in level 6, although not entirely certain that it really is faster.

The Death Marshes - 4 segments:
Probably the easiest level to run, and being that it could well be the smallest doesn't hurt either. It does however contain some very nice abundant skips. For a tip: The Pistol with auto aim is very effective at headshots on the gunners, taking them out quickly.
Segment 7: Not much to say here, a long but pretty standard segment, I grab the shredder via overhead item grab, which will really help this level and River of Souls later on.
Segment 8: Here you'll see another trick which I call Swamp jumping. This swamp kills you if you let turok stay in it too long, however jumping around in it will keep Turok alive for certain number of jumps. The number of jumps depends on how quickly you tap jump after landing back down in it. As I believe Turok has some sort of timer of around one second from the moment he touches the swamp till death. Jumping as soon as you touch down makes the timer stop counting down momentarily before starting again on the next touchdown. This trick allows some excellent corner cutting in this area. It also works on lava (albeit with less leniency), and laser grids. Later on I jump down from the bridge to the 2nd prisoner avoiding the intended path saving quite a few seconds, also grabbing a full health via an item jump and then collecting the grenade launcher which will really help out River of Souls just like the shredder. Just after that you'll see quick kills on armoured purlin. With auto aim, aim near their legs to get shredder kills on their stomachs.
Segment 9: After resquing the two 2 prisoners, the next great skip in this level comes in the form of getting the eagle feather early due to a glitch in the solidity of a wall support collumn. It's supposed to drop Turok right through it, but landing on a certain edge will get him to stand on it, From there a simple strafe jump to the eagle feather is all is needed, then you can take a small walk round to the talisman portal switch saving a huge intended walk. Of note: Death Marshes is done before RoS because of getting the breath of life talisman early, which will enable some water boost opportunities in Ros which contain soul water. I collect a satchel charge from inside the last prisoners cage via another item jump. Later in the raptors cage it's possible to kill all 4 of them without them even moving, but the timing is very tight; So I tripped up a little here, then failed some quick kills on the sentry purlins afterward. This place proved too hard for me to be perfect at though.
Segment 10: The Totem strategy is something I found myself and is pretty easy. It's also very consistent but does require you get to the top of the slope as fast as possible to fend them off inside their spawning cache. Otherwise if you're too slow they've already started jumping down and the strategy is pretty much lost at that point. You also need to stand at the very top of the slope and far back as possible to get a good view of their heads.
I'd say with some more slope jumping, one-direction-strafing and no mess up at thet raptors cage, it could be possibe to shed 10 seconds on this level. Other than that I'm very pleased with it !

The River of Souls - 8 segments: (1 more for the PoA P-key)
Segment 11: The Ceretops ride: I think it's safe to say it's faster to ride on it than to go on foot. Double tapping forward does the head butt move which increases speed. There's also a great trick Squeebles taught me, iirc you hold the missile button, and then tap the gun button. This will shoot the missile launcher weapon very rapidly, killing turrets much faster.
Segment 12: After the Ceretops ride and the subsequent boring areas on foot, you come to an area with a bridge over Soul water that needs to be lowered by shooting a switch. I didn't know at the time but you can actually jump into the soul water and jump right out passing through the raised bridge, cutting out the 20 second walk to the switch. So yes I lost 20 seconds here. But as of writing this near the completion of the run, it is just 1 of 2 big things in the entire run I didn't exploit by accident.
Segment 13: I use the best weapon for the job on the Soul gates: Explosive shell shredder. Shooting it from far back like this instead of actually going into the room stops the door shutting, which would lose time waiting for it to open again after the gate is detroyed, and of course starting the shooting this far back is faster anyway !
Segment 14: Within the confines of the watery labrynth we come to the first Sister of despair. This was torture trying to get the fastest strategy for this place. The big zombies are hard to kill in one shot consistently, but with this route around the large area, you can kill them easier, and I believe it is the fastest feasible way. The Sisters themselves are pushovers. Thay take 2 grenade shots, but I do an early grenade shot before she appears to exploit the splash damage, killing her even faster.
Segment 15: The 2nd Sister graveyard, though simple to look at on the surface, went through another painstaking optimizing process, and as always another grenade launcher kill to seal her fate.
Segment 16: We come to a huge skip collecting the Primagen key for this level which was mentioned in the tricks list above. A simple combination of slope jumping off the rimmed wall and overhead item grabbing is the order of the day here. Just past this I do another tricky slope jump to get to a switch to open the final door to the end portal, which otherwise requires a big detour to the switch. From here I keep a huge water boost increased speed going to the Soul gate and eagle feather and ending up at...
Segment 17: The 3rd and final Sister graveyard: Another painful one too. Big zombies are one of the most annoying enemies in the game. Not a perfect graveyard this one but as close as I was going to get it. Hundreds of retries here like the other two.
Segment 18: Totem battle: Not bad. It kind of looks worse when I stop moving to check if shots actually killed them or not, which isn't really wasting time in the grand scheme of things as I still have to wait a bit for other Endtrails to make their appearence. Still, it wasn't perfect though.
Along with the 20 second saver trick I missed earlier you could probably improve this run by a further 20 seconds. It's a very hard level compared to the previous two and also much longer, and being perfect on the sister graveyards is nigh on impossible. Again more slope jumping wouldn't have hurt (I wasn't aware of it's versatility at this stage of the run) and one-direction-strafing would help too.
Segment 19: PoA Primagen key collection: Standard. shame there is no starting portal to the PoA, Otherwise you could backtrack. I hold one big segment starting from before the key until the end of level, because it's just too easy. You'll see the mistake mentioned above about the ammo situation collecting two clips and a shotgun. Furthermore you'll see the full health right near the end portal which was gotten in the original recordings, but it's here because I skimmed past it in the stat replication. I skim past it again as to keep things fair and square.

The Lair of the Blind ones - 7 segments:
Before I begin this one I shall explain the other fairly big mistake in this run.
It would have been faster to do The Hive before The Lair to avoid the backtrack here later to get the P-key. I knew that Marshmallow did The Hive before The Lair, but at the time of my run we had the impression that the gains of aquiring the Torpedo launcher early in The Lair and using it for The Hive would probably trade off the same time taken for having to go back to The Lair. But after some testing this unfortunately wasn't the case. So I lost about 25 - 30 seconds for doing this level order :(
Segment 20, Standard. I did the tricky big jump out the wall landing far into the water, the stalactites are very annoying and will stop you unless you position Turok perfectly.
Segment 21: Overhead item trick for the very high cave door key. Naturally this is the hardest grab in the run. I didn't want to make it go over 3 jump attempts to aquire it. This attempt had 2 jumps. Honestly you can often find yourself standing here for minutes trying to grab this one ! From here I keep a humungous water boost to the next portal a mile away. The increased speed also allows me to collect the first level 6 key and run away with it so fast that the shutter doesn't come down fast enough to trap you in the room. Just a little further on I could have saved a few seconds by simply jumping over to the other side from the left instead of dropping the obelisk with the tek bow.
Segment 22: I shoot off the 20 pistol rounds because of the stat replication mistake. Later on I collect a satchel charge via the item jump, which is another tricky one and probably saves around 10 seconds. Further on I use the water boost out of the underwater tunnel and use it to make a big jump from the wooden walkway to the platform containing the cave door key, cutting out a minutes worth of rooms and big spiders. At the Thermal vent I death warp back to the portal which saves between 5 - 10 seconds. After that I use the water boost speed again to make the same jump as before, and then continue on to the next drop.
Segment 23: Last item jump in the Lair to get the satchel for this area which is also hard, cutting out a hefty swim into an area to collect it normally. 2nd thermal vent: No death warp as it's only a small walk back to the portal. Exiting the water maze now and much later at the lava area, I take a shortcut by jumping into the tunnel with the sentry dinosoid.
Segment 24: On the way to the 3rd thermal vent, I collect the 2nd level 6 key at a certain angle and run away to get out the room before the shutters come down. It's pretty tight timing without the water boost speed. 3rd thermal vent: Easy. Death warp again like the first one. Just after that I collect the strange Sunfire pod which gave me a full 6. Why???
Segment 25: Running back to get the cave door key followed by another death warp to cut out the backtrack. Further on, there is no escaping the shutters on the 3rd level 6 key room. With ultimately means an ensuing tricky room op using grenade launcher followed by Mag-60. Went well but not the best it can be.
Segment 26: Totem. Easy as hell with the sunfire pods. Of course having more than I should have is a bonus, but it only would have slowed it down by a few seconds if I had 3. It seems I also accidently activated the invincibility glitch for this totem which is easily done by accident. It's caused by killing the last enemy at the totem but quickly reloading the segment during the waiting stage. However upon close inspection it seems I only would have been hit by one thing in the totem, which was a grenade. From this point onward until collecting a full health in The Hive, my health never goes under the amount which the grenade normally inflicts. So that was ok. The Blind One boss: Tough boss on hard mode. Shredder is very effective on the first set of tentacles, though failed to get some one-hit-kills on some of them. 2nd phase, acid spitters: Shredder can also glitch and kill these in one shot but it's rare so I use the grenade launcher for a reliably quick 2 shot kill for each of them. 3rd phase, the
powerful hammer tentacles: Explosive shredder shells are best here. Sometimes it's very hard to see the tentacles as they move around a lot, but it went quite well as did the boss overall. This level can probably be improved by as much as the River of souls could of been. It's another long and tricky one. But pleased with it nonetheless.

The Hive of the Mantids - 9 segments: (includes the DM P-key)
Probably my favourite level, but also maybe the hardest. It took by far the longest to finish.
Segment 27: Shredder on the turrets is fairly consistent at one-shot-kill. Later on the Headhunter move comes into play on several Mantids in succession. For collecting the level 6 key, I run fast enough to catch the platform that takes me to the top with the key, instead of using all 4 platforms. Just further on I get stuck a little in front of mantids towards the end, which happens a couple times throughout this level. These are minor problems which happen nearly every attempt, mostly in much worse cases. As long as the the rest of segment went exceedingly well against the odds, then it's worth keeping if the enemies blocking you was minor. I would like to add, each segment had hundreds of retries, and after doing that many you know when you've made your best attempt, and which isn't worth improving.
Segment 28: Damage boost from a mantid to send me all the way to the lowest platform for the next area, instead of taking the giant drops from the other side. Death warp after destroying the force field pole which cuts out a couple of pointless rooms and sends me right where I need to be instantly. Rest of the segment is prety standard stuff, nothing worth mentioning.
Segment 29: The very first wave of small grey worker mantids are the most annoying shits I've come across. Always blocking me on every attempt. Went through several weapons to see what was best and eventually shredder came out on top. A bit further on you'll see me completely skip the slow room that locks you in and a horde of mites come and have to be killed. All the room does when completed is activate the platform for returning when you have the eagle feather. I bypass this with a death warp after collecting the feather. The death warp trades off much better than doing the insect room.
Segment 30: Probably the segment to take the longest to finish in the whole run. Maybe in excess of 400 attempts. It went through numerous testing until eventually settling on this optimization. Not to mention just being downright hard as well. Believe it or not but it really is worth restocking ammo in the save room to get full explosive shells for the force field generator. Any other weapon is pretty slow. But secondly, going to the save hub has another very useful time saving quirk here: Making Turok walk over to the save portal and back again triggers the movement of a platform in the other room which I need to use later to go to the Force field generator. so in actual fact the save hub wastes very little time, maybe a few seconds, and the ammo I get will trade it off better !. After restocking ammo I go to the small force field pole, and destroy it in the quickest way: A grenade along the floor which thankfully doesn't drown because the water is shallow enough, and passes it underneath the big Soldier's legs. It's one of my favourite tricks in the run for it's sneakyness :P. Exiting this area with a water boost I make my way to the Generator, with no delay from the aformentioned platform, which usually takes in excess of 10 seconds. At the Generator, the original strategy was to destroy all the poles, and then die by the onslought to warp back to the save hub. But while this is a safe move, it is actually slower than staying alive and making it out in one piece. It's really hard though and another thing i'd only do segmented. Indeed it gets quite hairy later on with me surviving by the skin of my teeth to save it in the next area...
Segment 31: Quite a straight forward one this but not easy of course. Flaming the embryo is generally the fastest way, although green shell shredder can glitch shots dealing damage from inside their bodies killing them even faster. It's not worth it though because I'm sure the glitching only occurs when the embryo gets dropped to the floor, so it takes ages to shoot it down with the shredder. In which case you may as well just walk up to it and flame it.
Segment 32: Very tough one. The first main room is nasty, and the mantids seem to be overtly aggressive here for some reason. Moving on I pick up another flamethrower tank behind the big Mantid. The Embryo part looks as if I'm going to die, but a good trick here is to circle the Embryo while flaming it to keep yourself alive. Once it's dead I death warp back out to the main area which is faster than the intended route. Got stuck quite badly by the little grey workers, though is wasn't as bad as nearly every other attempt. This happens everytime and I couldn't come up with a way to prevent them from blocking me :( Later on, water boost speed collecting the satchel charges.
Segment 33: Last Embryo: Nice damage boost to start it off which saves 2 seconds. Just further on I switch to plasma rifle and snipe through the fog to catch a glimpse of the platform to make it start moving because it actually only starts moving when you see it, depite activating it via the switch. This trick saves 1 second, lol. Another helpfully placed flamethrower tank in the Soldier pit. Charge darting 1 or 2 Soldiers here makes this room a breeze, otherwise your dead meat. Another death warp after killing the Embryo saving a rather large backtrack. Tricky damage boost from the mantid on the bridge. I shoot to alert it's attention, but it doesn't always go according to plan, but 2 seconds saved here like the other one. Master computer: Simple job but it's important to shoot the first 2 turrets otherwise you won't make it back alive unless you got a lot of health. Exiting this place I make my way to the P-key for this level.
Segment 34: Already been explained but I'll mention it breifly. No backtrack to this level for the P-key, for this, the most awesome trick in the game: Damage boosting onto the invisible bridge. Specifically here you need to make the Mantid come at you by waiting a bit on the left side of the tunnel. The damage boost itself is fairly consistent when you get the hang of it. Of course you need to know the curvature of the bridge when walking on it but that's not hard at all after some practice. Small death warp back to the portal after collecting the key is actually required since you can't get back on foot due to the piece missing in the bridge. It saves time anyway.
Segment 35: Totem: Easy enough Totem but I needed a flamethrower tank to spawn to help the second phase of the Queen, which of course upped the reset factor a lot. Firestorm cannon is definitely the best weapon for the job but this totem went averagely. The segment was salvaged by the Queen battle being superbly fast. Missed a few shots at the end but it's still the best battle I had of which there were far too many. Probably close to segment 30 in reset count. I now go and collect the Death Marshes P-key, all in the same segment. The key area itself was a nightmare, making me die or reset in equal measure to the queen or totem. Death warping again is the fastest strategy after nabbing the key. But I could have executed this a little better honestly.
This might just be my favourite level run out the lot. Sure I could have improved each segment by a few seconds, but I got everything I needed to be done and more, much more. It was like a full length game run in itself !. Anyway the final hurdle awaits !

The Primagens Lightship - 6 segments (2 more for The Lair P-key and Primagen battle)
Out of all the levels I'd say this one went the best. Mainly because I was worried about not meeting my target time of sub 2 hours, but also through better knowledge of the intricate movements like slope jumping and one-direction-strafing. I can't actually pick out any places where I lose any more than 1 second at a time, unlike the other level runs. So I think this was the cleanest one !
Segment 36: I stretched this one out to be one segment for the first quadrant of the ship, as it appeared to be just about easy enough. Light Troopers are incredibly deadly on the PC, even more so on Hard mode, as is shown right at the start. Moving swiftly on to the large room with the fans, I get the first fan boost of the level keeping my speed for the duration of the segment. Further on to the large square room with two ion capacitors placed together on a ledge. I use the Space jump technique mentioned in the tricks list to do 2 jumps to reach the platforms with the capacitors, and then doing the same back to get onto the walkway. This also demostrates these particular platforms leniency in allowing you to perform the trick on the outside of the platform, instead of under it. Just further on the fan boost speed enables me to jump across the gap to the tunnel, instead of taking the slow whispers climb. Very handy !. Collecting the last ion capacitor and drawing the bridge is a tricky thing. It's very easy to lose your fan boost speed here for some reason. On top of that there is a Light trooper roaming around the area that appears in random places nearly everytime. Which is why you see me shoot a charge dart into the empty corridor in case he was there. Nice quick power generator restoring. good segment !
Segment 37: This segment is one half of the 2nd quadrant of the ship. First tricks to mention would be getting a fan boost and using it to make a jump to the platform and onto the other side to flick the switch for the door. Further on past the laser grid vault I get a boost from the giant fan to make it across the bridge to the razor wind. You don't actually need the speed to make it but my increased speed is gotten anyway of course. From here I go to the Eye of truth bridge and use a slope jump off the talisman pad landing on the invisible bridge, I then deactivate the 2nd force field switch and jump down and and go to the next portal, then step back inside, walk back to the main room and collect the ion capacitor before finally dying to warp back to the portal. Believe it or not, this is a few seconds faster than getting the ion capacitor first and walking all the way through the air ducts, then doing eye of truth jump and going to the portal.
Segment 38: Fairly straightforward, but hard like all the rest of them. In the first large room I collect one ion capacitor via a clever jump slipping off the edge and turning quickly back. 2nd Power generator gave me lots of troubles due to Turok actually being too fast from the water boost. It's trickier than it looks to insert the damn crystals like that at this speed, believe me :P
Segment 39: The next quadrant also split into 2 segments due to difficult stuff. At the first big room you can make the jump into the center with strafe speed. When I jump onto the moving platform you see me use a space jump to get on top of it, which was a safety move in case I missed it, which indeed happened. After nabbing the capacitor and getting back onto the center, the jump to the exit side is very hard and has to be pixel perfect, though it strangely appears easy to do in the video. Moving on to the air ducts, I made sure I got boosts out of every fan, which can be tricky because Turok can stay in them for longer than you expect and you don't initiate the boost at the correct time. It's also worth noting that strafe jumping into these fans is a bad idea as you can get stuck in the walls and can't move for a while.
Segment 40: The big room with staircases: Lots of very effective slope jumping here. This entire room is a pig and enemies are vicious. At the power generator you have to initiate the jumps around the totem quickly otherwise you'll fall down the gaps. Againt it's harder than it looks.
Segment 41: Like the first segment of the lightship, this is 1 segment for an entire quadrant. It's easy enough but it's pretty epic. At the first assembly plant I glitch through the wall when taking the ride to the upper floor. Just some small quirk I found. Just past that I unlock the door first and then destroy the plant. You can't see it in this video but when I turn around to exit the plant after destroying it, the door has only just unlocked. So it's quicker this way. Later on, collecting the next ion capacitor and destroying the 2nd plant, I skip the eagle feather. Because we don't need the Eye of truth :P. For the next section, there's actually many orders in which you can do the objectives here, but this is the fastest, which happens to skip collecting the arbitrary crystals at the 2nd plant right after you destroy it. When I return to the main room with the light troopers patrolling the area. There's a strange but very helpful trick I found here. If you run facing your back to the troopers as you run past them, it prevents them from shooting you, and instead they try to lunge at you. This was a lifesaver here because nearly every time they killed me outright with their guns. If I recall there's 3 of them on the return instead of 2 for some reason. I wouldn't stand a chance !
Segment 42: Mother boss - Nice boss to fight normally, but a pain to speed run properly. The goal here is to glitch the shredder shots (more damage than usual). I actually have no idea how this even happens, but it can even destroy her arms in one shot. For round 1 I missed the first shot but I made up for it by finishing the round in 3 shots, which is pretty much best you can feasibly get. On the 2nd round it is somewhat harder to blow off the arms in similarly few hits, but it's still doable and I managed to get it spot on here. The Mother gave me her best move: the swing, which gives me a good opportunity to shoot them. For round 3 I stick to the same weapon, however I believe the flamethrower is faster generally but I didn't have a full tank. Also I believe being hard mode means that the mother has more HP and would need more than the 50 units of the flamethrower, so a slow weapon switch woud have to ensue after it's run dry. Either way the shredder is not bad at all for this round. It comes at a price though because I had to make sure the first 2 rounds of the fight were done with as few shells as possible so I could finish round 3 without needing to switch weapons. As you can see I did it on the last shell. Razor wind would have been fastest because of it's very high damage but it's too slow at returning.
Segment 43: Standard stuff. Sucks having to go here at all really, knowing that it would have been faster to get the P-key when I did the level, if I'd done the better level order of Hive 1st, Lair 2nd.
Segment 44: Primagen. Initially on the surface this is one boring drawn out battle, but in speed run context there's much to talk about. strategies: The flying mechs are dispatched in what I deem the fastest way using a ricochet explosive shredder to kill 2 in 1 shot, then quickly killing the other 2 singularly. The ricochet shot takes a fairly precise shot mind you and with a certain timing as they come out of their hatch. The Primagen himself has a random (at least to my knowledge) quirk where he leaves his terminal but lands soon after. What he usually does is fly right to the edge of the arena, and then comes slowly hovering back wasting many second. He did the quick landings in all 3 rounds on this attempt. So that was very lucky since I don't know exactly what makes him do that. For round 1 antennas, explosive shredder on his face eliminates the need to accurately aim for the antennas individually. So it's very useful but of course I needed to manipulate the battle to get the shells. For his last healing process in each round I use the razor wind to stop it immediately due to high damage. So why didn't I use the razor wind for each time he heals? It would mean switching back to shredder, but there just isn't any time to do that and effectively get a quick shot in again for the antennas, so I stick to the regular shells for the healing and then quickly switch to explosive shells to blast his face again when his antennas are vulnerable. Unfortunately for the first two antennas at least I didn't have any explosive shells, but you see it for the last two, even getting a shot in while he was flying !. For round 2 it's pretty much the same process, not much to say, there were some missed shots though. Later on I missed some shots on some flying mechs coming out of their hatch. Round 3 was perfect, didn't miss a headshot on this sucker. All in all this was by far the best attempt. Half the reason for this was the excellent luck getting him to land the fast way for all 3 rounds.

End game/time: 1 hour 55 minutes 26 seconds. My goal before I started the run was to see if sub 2 hours was possible, so that was accomplished, and by a good margin, so I'm very happy about that. Before the run I did a test run which was very optimal but no where near as ironed out as this one. That clocked in at 2 hours 13 minutes, so I beat that by nearly 20 minutes !. I'd say I could probably beat this run by around 90 - 120 seconds providing I didn't make those two large mistakes mentioned earlier costing between 20 - 30 seconds each. But the rest of time could have been saved by just being a little more perfect here and there in many segments, but also totems and bosses could have been slightly improved. Lastly the saving costs around 1-2 seconds each save. So it was in my best interest to keep them to a minimum, and I really did. My previous test run may have contained as many as 100 saves, so this run is much smoother.
Well here ends the submission text. I must say it was a pleasure to run and work with Squeebles on this. We really destroyed this game didn't we !. This is a shared victory, hah ! Thanks to Ewil for his great inspiration from his PoA run, and Marshmallow for his original N64 run. Thanks to Veritate for pointing out the RoS trick I didn't get to use. It's honestly better that it's known than to stay unknown, even though I missed it. Last thanks to all who commented along the way, Phazon, Exo, ridd3r etc. I had fun making it, but there was plenty of anguish and cursing too, hah. Enjoy !

This is the longest and most frustrating FPS I've ever played...yet it turns out to be semi-speedrunable. This game suffers from a host of problems and is technically inferior to the first title, in my opinion. The slideshow framerates makes playing the game somewhat painful and can be headache inducing. Of course, this assumes you can get past the horrible controls that seem to lag behind your commands. This game seems to give the hint that the Lost World is really drowning in thick maple syrup instead of normal air.

Due to the game's chronic struggle to reach double digit frames I use auto-aim, which is very liberal in giving headshots when your crosshair is several feet from the target. Another problem is that the lookspring in this game can only be disabled if you move left or right...if you go forward while looking in the air your view will immediately and automatically lower to ground level. What an inspired scheme!

Port of Adia: The only serious mistake was missing the easy jump near the beginning...oh well. The rest of the level is pretty smooth, although getting past enemies in tight corridors can be nerve wracking and somewhat random.

Death Marshes: I do the third level second so that I can collect the Breath of Life talisman and use it at the end of the second level. The biggest trick here is using tek arrows on the armored Purr-Linn for headshots and hence OHKO's.

River of Souls: The use of the "no blood" setting in the options menu neuters the otherwise dangerous zombies in this level...rather funny, I think. This level looks the same everywhere!

Mantid Hive: This is one of my favorite level due to the music and the weaponry found within...flamethrowers, bores, scorpion missile launchers, firestorm cannons, charge darts...it's all good. The charge dart rifle, in particular, becomes my standard gun for the rest of the game. With a simple charged shot any enemy will be stunned for 10-15 seconds and extremely vulnerable. This is especially useful here since the mantids are quite scary.

The most painful areas are the hatcheries with the queen embryos...definitely the laggiest rooms of the entire game. One, two, three...(that's me counting each individual frame as the N64 draws it on the screen).

I think there's a part where I fall down a pit, but it's OK because I warp back a similar distance to where I was going in reference to the fall itself.

The queen boss is just bad. Not the run, but the actual boss itself. No comment, Acclaim.

Lair of the Blind Ones: Even the people that liked the game usually give up here. This is nothing more but hundreds of tunnels with random mushrooms and spider web textures...yet I beat it in roughly 40 minutes. Yes, knowing where to go in the water maze took several tries. Yes, the boss is dumb...and his name is "golden eye." Clever, but comparing this to a good game is probably not a good idea...

Primagen's Lightship: This might be my favorite level. Each of the four sectors differs from the others in many ways and the enemies are actually quite inspired...the music is good...problem? There is no cheese at the end of this maze, just more towers and a big, ugly boss (although it's better than the others; at least there's no little phase where it throws weak enemies at you).

Of course, after this we get to BACKTRACK! Isn't that everyone's idea of fun? It's such a clever way to make a game artificially longer.

Finally, we get to the final boss...and wow...he makes the Campaigner look respectful. Back are the weak enemies between phases and the extremely tiny targets you have to hit. The only trick is to shoot his face when he recharges his energy so he...doesn't recharge at all! At least he is reduced to a fine paste in the end.