Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1mbTLOJma7c0VF7kaCiYjHj7p_X8djHV
Please note: Controllers enable dropping out, which is required for a large skip saving maybe 20-30 seconds. This guide includes the differences between controller and keyboard.
General Stuff: Always run by double tapping the move button. Always re-initiate run when you get slowed down below running speed. Skip Cutscenes by pressing the fire button. Speed up unskippable cutscenes by holding the fire button. You regain control of you character after a cutscene as soon as you see your picture appear in the corner. Play on Normal difficulty. Kill the General at the end of each level, activate the flag, and jump onto the helicopter ladder. The General does not need to die, if he is far enough away from the flag the game doesn't really care. Clear unlocks. Don't rescue Bros. And most importantly, always be on the lookout for faster strategies. My route is not perfect.
Level 1: There is a lot of very precise jumping in this level. At the very start, you need your jump to be well timed and just the right height to prevent getting caught by ledges. Next, you need to climb the hill by mashing up. Jump up onto the tower with the terrorists. This will require you to mash up in order to catch the ledge. Missing this jump is okay, but you do need to get up there in order to skip the cutscene. It is very important to skip the cutscene because it is sooooo slow. It's like 5 seconds long or something. I don't really know anymore because I reset any run that doesn't skip the cutscene. Anyways, now you need to keep on trucking to the first checkpoint. The big steel structures are checkpoints. You'll want to jump onto a pig and shoot just before you land. If you did it right, you will start running really fast. You should be running throughout the jump. Pig running will give you varying amounts of speed. The fastest speed is very rare and will only save about 2 seconds, so don't worry about it. If you do get speed from the pig you can try to get the checkpoint jump. Run underneath all the straw houses, or whatever they are, jump over the wooden crates, jump onto the checkpoint (jump very early because you're going very fast and you don't have time to slow down), and finally jump onto the first ledge of the hill. If you are going fast enough you will land on top of the ledge without slowing down. If you stick the landing, continue onward and use the ladder to travel the remaining distance. If you get slowed down, climb over the hill and shoot through the boxes. Now just finish the level.
Quick Tips: The pig's movement as well as the movement of the General is completely random and will very often ruin your run. Pigs will dodge your jump and the General will hide behind terrorists. This is one of the more technical levels, but you can still get good times without perfect execution.
Level 2: Try your best to clear your jumps onto the first two structures. Jump off of the second into the cutscene and hold the fire button to speed up the cutscene. Start running again once the cutscene is over, you can move before the camera pans back to your character. Run to the end of the level, jumping to avoid catching your legs on stuff.
Do you have a controller?
If yes: Enter the cutscene. Pause with your controller. Use the arrow keys and enter on your keyboard to select dropout (Arrow keys and enter are hard coded into the game, and are the only way to maneuver the menus while paused during a cutscene). Press fire immediately to join back into the game. Note: you can switch to keyboard controls at this point, or you can continue to play with your controller.
It no: Throw grenades into the cutscene trigger and die during the cutscene. If you do not die during the cutscene you will lose a considerable amount of time.
Level 3:
Did you perform the skip in level 2?
If yes: Climb up and shoot through the ground at the top.
If no: Start the level by skipping the first cutscene and speeding up the second. If you ever notice that the cutscene are playing slower than usual you may want to consider restarting the run from a fresh boot of the game. This is definitely not something that you will need to worry about unless you are trying to get WR. At most you will lose 1-2 seconds per cutscene. Anyways, now you're going to need to flex. Just mash the fire button as soon as the button prompt appears. You don't need to mash very fast because the game only accepts so many inputs. I will note however that you can start flexing before the voice says flex. The flexing complete cutscene can be skipped shortly after the voice says flexing complete. Next, you need to spawn randomly in 1 of 4 cages. The further right you spawn, the faster your run will be. Shoot out of your cage and make your way up the ladder. This next cutscene is technically skippable, but it's not faster. Just go up the ladder and kill the guard offscreen. You don't have to kill him, but he can kill you, so kill him. I find that the cutscene ending is a good time to check the pace of my run. On my computer with my shitty load times the fastest time I have seen as the cutscene ends is 1:11.
With and without skip:
Continue onward by jumping onto the telephone poles. The fastest way to complete this level is by performing a radiator jump. I call the big electrical things attached to the telephone poles radiators. While running, jump onto and off of a radiator. If you timed it correctly your jump will have a little extra juice. To maintain this speed you need to jump overtop of the wooden crates. You will need a big jump in order to do this. You will usually not have a big enough jump. After this it is just a matter of running to the end of the level.
Quick Tips: I often lose time on this level, so just try to not lose too much time. Don't reset to be in the first cage or to get the good radiator jump.
Level 4: Initiate wire running as soon as possible. Run along the ground, jump over the pile of boxes. You are running pretty fast at this point, so I use the suicide bomber as a visual cue to know the jump is coming. Don't jump too high. Keep running into the hill and climb the ladders to the top. If you are wire running, the ladders are faster. If you lost your speed, climbing over the hill is better (I would reset, but you do you). After the top of the hill, the route gets really messy. Try to get as many radiator jumps as you can. I do not know what a perfect route looks like. Ideally you would get a radiator jump on the first possible radiator, jump across the telephone poles and get to the end without ever losing your speed. I do not know if this is possible; I have never done it. Unfortunately, you cannot control your speed so your jumps must have the perfect height in order to land on the poles rather than the wires. The final obstacle in this level is the Bruiser (minigun terrorist). If he sees you, you should kill the General, run behind the Bruiser, and wait for the helicopter. If you are confident enough, you don't have to run behind the Bruiser, but you need to get your butt onto that chopper.
Quick Tips: Your goal on this level should be to not lose time. Focus on not dying at the end.
Level 5: At the start of this level, you must take a moment to appreciate how lucky you are to be running Low% instead of Any%. First, run into the cutscene. Just activate it as soon as you can. Speed up the cutscene, jump the gap, and throw grenades onto the first mortar vehicle. Next, jump onto the second vehicle, climb up to the telephone wires. Initiate wire running on the second (or third) section of wire. Time your jump to land on a wire down below and maintain your wire running. Climb the explosives to get over the ledge (which explosives you get is random). The final step of the level is to climb the tower. You can jump onto the troop transport to possibly save a fraction of a second. This avoids a small amount of climbing. Just don't jump onto the transport while it is still moving because it will slow you down. Now scale the left side of the tower. You will need to jump outwards and grab onto the ledges. This takes some practice to do consistently, but it's pretty easy. Kill the General and fly away.
Quick Tips: Make sure you throw grenades onto the mortar vehicle (or it will kill you later). When climbing the explosives to reach the base of the tower, more often than not, you will run smack into the ledge and lose your speed. If you get stuck under the ledge and can't climb over, just shoot the ledge. It will break, allowing you to climb.
Level 6: There is really only one way to complete this level. Anything but exactly what I describe is too slow. Jump over the propane tank and shoot while midair (this will scare the pig away). Shoot the propane tank ASAP and jump on. Stand at the very back of the tank and wait for it to start moving. At some point you will need to double tap right and jump. I find that you should jump just after your bro passes the tree. If you did everything right you will land on top of the next hill. If you land in front of it you jumped too soon and if you clear the hill you jumped too late. I know it sounds obvious, but it is very important that you land on top of the hill. If you do not land on the right spot you are going to hate your life. All you have to do at this point is execute a series of precisely timed jumps, hold the fire button (to kill the General/dogs), and fly away. All of your jumps should be small. The first three jumps are in rapid succession - you want to jump as soon as you touch the ground. The fourth jump requires you to wait.
Quick Tips: Don't worry about the Bruiser at the end of the level. Run right by him and focus on the General. Practice this level a lot because if you don't execute it perfectly you will lose a lot of time (this level is very consistent with practice).
Level 7: Here's a fun and easy level that sometimes just kills your run. Doesn't that sound fun? Jump onto the first tower and get over to the wires. You want to jump such that you can wire run off of the last section of wire. This is where the run killer comes in. The ledge at the end of the wire has a suicide terrorist on it. Maybe 1 in every 10 runs he just decides to turn around. There is no good way to avoid this. You need to initiate the wire to go fast, and if you have time to react you weren't going fast enough. Anyway, you want to jump immediately after getting the wire run. Jump onto the crate at the edge of this building and jump to the next building. You want to land on the crate below you on the lower level. You now have a choice to make, but the correct choice is to keep running to the next ledge and jump the gap. Then just keep running to the end of the level. Don't let anything scare you, you're going too fast for them. The other (more wrong) option is to climb the ladder and perform a propane jump to the end of the level. The correct way is 0.5 seconds faster (ish).
Quick Tips: Don't use the propane jump as it is slower and less consistent. If you are struggling to make the jump with wire running speed, you may need to reduce your lag. Ever since switching computers I have made this jump every time.
Level 8: It's boss level time! Nothing special here really. Run to the end and kill the boss. You get style points for shooting the birds on the fence posts. Yes, there are birds and you can shoot them. As for the boss, the strategy is thus: shoot approximately between the miniguns and the body. Keep shooting until It fires 3 missiles. Then throw grenades, shoot a tiny little bit more, and jump away to the right (the left has a bro to rescue, which you are not allowed to rescue as it would invalidate your run, so stay away). Keep shooting, being careful to avoid the shockwave of the robot landing back down. Ideally you want to run into this shockwave sop that it just barely doesn't you. This maximizes your damage, but isn't too important. The boss also bounces and lands a second time. If you are on the ground when he lands a second time you can die. So again, ideally you land on the ground just after he does. Keep shooting until the robot dies. It might try to throw bombs at you which you will want to avoid, but usually you can just keep shooting. If you lights up his guns, you're golden, because this attack is basically useless up close. You can even stand in the base of the fire without taking damage, but don't push it. Just stick to the non-shooty side and finish him off. You can also save a little time by throwing more grenades, but it gets a little tricky. The other opportunities to throw grenades are right after you throw the first set and jump to the right. This allows you to do more damage during the part of the fight where you really aren't getting much damage in, but it will also delay how quickly you can get back in there and shoot. The final opportunity to throw grenades is just before you think it is going to die. Throw the grenades, jump to the right, and shoot him dead. If you do manage to get all 3 of your grenade sets off, you will be a shoe-in to save 0.5 to 1 whole second over the 1 grenade throw strategy. Can you spell worth it?
Quick tips: Kill the dog, Don't die. Seriously though dying loses a lot of time.
Level 9: Run to the furthest pig, kill it, and melee it into the open. Climb on the back and start swinging (melee continuously). Pay attention to the oil-rig-mining-looking towers in the background. At about right when you are over top of the third tower, stop pressing melee. Pause for like a quarter or a second, double tap to run, and jump. You should get a boost every time if you do it right. Now just carefully jump to the end. Depending on where you started your boost, you might bonk on something. If you want to avoid this, you can pig fly a little longer. Be careful though, if you wait too long to jump you will overshoot it. Also, every second you don't jump is time that you aren't boosted, and thus are losing time. So you'll probably sacrifice 1 sec of time save to be much more consistent. That just isn't how I live this game anymore. It's up to you though.
Quick Tips: Shoot during your jump at the start of the level to scare the pig closer to where you want it. This is a little finicky though, and you might accidentally bring the building down on top of the pig and totally kill your run. With a little practice though, at most you'll just fuck it up and wonder why you even bothered going for this time save.
Level 10: This level comes down to one trick. Practice this trick if you want to succeed. It's about a 4 second time loss if you miss the propane boost, so not necessarily a run killer, but it sucks. Knock over the propane tank to initiate a boost. Then just jump like a madman and hope you times everything right. There are so many situations which can happen here. I will break it down like this: there are two small buildings before the large building. You want to bridge the gap between these buildings.
If you lose speed before the gap, just slow down and safely make the jump. Climb down to the little ledge and get a run at it. Then just take the upper path to the end of the level.
If you fall into the gap just take the bottom path. Run right at the suicide terrorists and jump at the last second. They will miss you every time. Jump onto the turrets that pop out of the ground. Now climb the tower in a zig-zag pattern. Alternating between jumping on telephone poles and the building. Then climb the final ladder and to the end.
If you actually get the trick, there are so many things that can still go wrong. It doesn't matter if you take the upper path or not, it just depends on where you end up. Go whichever way is closest. Just watch out for the bruiser as well as overshooting. If you think you are going too fast, be prepared to stop yourself. Jumping repeatedly will usually do the trick because you will bonk into the wall above a doorway. Otherwise get ready to move left. That's pretty much it, get to the end.
Quick Tips: Line up yourself on the propane tank by running into the corner. Run and jump approximately as your character model passes the right side of the tree in the background. Just keep jumping.
Level 11: Final boss level, nice. You did it. At this point, the run is yours to fuck up. Let's hope you practiced. Jump to the terrorist with the RPG. You can't actually see his rpg, but he has one, and he will shoot it eventually. Climb the left side of the tower to the top. We are going to perform a cutscene skip. Run and jump off of the ledge. You wat to jump roughly before the right side of your character model reaches the ledge. _________| Char Model | <------------ Notice there is some distance between you and the ledge. It's pretty easy to get, but practice this. You need to skip the cutscene in order to get the quick kill. Restart the level if you activate the cutscene. It IS faster to restart at that point. Now the game decides to introduce some RNG into your run, because it knows you haven't had enough yet. Below the checkpoint there will be one of three explosive types. A propane tank, a red barrel, or a grey barrel. The propane tank is the easiest, the grey barrel is the hardest, and the red barrel is the fastest.
Propane tank: drop down to the right side where there are crates. Run into the crates while firing 3 times. This will remove all the crates which is needed to push over the propane tank. Then just push over the tank and perform a propane jump. Your speed doesn't really matter as long as it is faster than normal.
Red barrel: Clear the crates as described above. Position yourself slightly to the right of the left leg of the checkpoint. -|--______ In this case the '-' indicates your character model. You still want to be touching the post, but more of you should be on the right side. Red barrels only require one bullet to activate, and they activate immediately. So as soon as you shoot, run and jump to the right. This is actually pretty consistent. If you line yourself up properly you will not have any trouble.
Grey barrel: Sucks to be you, you got the worst barrel. Don't worry about the time loss because your run time is pretty much decided at this point in the run. And it's probably less than 0.5s anyway. Luckily you get to clear the crate faster with this barrel. Just hold that fire button down and run into the crates stopping once you reach the grey barrel. You want to shoot the barrel because it takes some time to explode. Wait maybe 1.5 seconds and run and jump. If you got the timing right you're well on your way to catching up with the alternate versions of yourself who got where they are today because they're lucky.
Finish the level by killing Stonebanks by any means necessary. Or hey, how about this method which is as fast as possible: Run past the railcar which Stonebanks is in and jump onto the ledge with the pop-out turret. It usually helps to slow down at this point, because you need ol' Stonebanks to catch up to you anyways. Get on top of the turret and throw grenades onto the bottom of the railcar. At this point any number of things can happen, just remember not to panic because you were never in control anyway. First (and most likely), your grenades will be stuck to the air and Stonebanks' railcar will drive him towards his impending doom. Second (less likely), your grenades will blow up not killing Stonebanks, but its okay because you stood in the right spot to activate the buzz saw which riped him to shreds anyway. Third (still pretty likely), either of the above two scenarios except you sacrificed yourself to throw your grenades in an epic action movie moment. This is just fine, because you don't actually need to be alive to progress to the next level. And finally (the least likely and worst option), screw it all up and aren't able to attack your grenades to the bottom of Stonebanks' railcar. In this case, we have a back up. If you miss you window it's probably too dangerous to try to attack from below. So just lob those grenades onto the right side. This will also get the job done. Be careful of missiles, but not too careful. All that's left to do is mash that little guys face in!
With any luck Stonebanks is now dead, and you have just come to the startling realization that Stonebanks was a robot.. wait WHAT!!?? I know spoiler alert. If you're not too shaken up at this news you might want to skip the cutscene upon seeing Harrison Ford's pixelated face saying something about a cold one. I think it's supposed to be Harrison Ford, who knows.
Quick Tips: Those tips weren't quick enough for you? I don't think I could have been any more brief. Pray to the random number gods that you don't get a red barrel, and mash the fire button as soon as possible.
Level 12: At this point you are going to have to look in the mirror. It is absolutely essential that you do this. You need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself a question, "Do I want a 2 second WR or a 5 second WR?". And perhaps more importantly, "Do you feel lucky?" Well, do you? Punk! But seriously though. You have a decision to make, and you better believe you have to make it right now. Are you going to go for the super swag 360 MLG pro boost? Because in this level there is an explosive barrel, and you need to know that when you see it, if you're going to risk it all.
You feel lucky: Mash the fire button to speed up the countdown. Start running as soon as you see your characters face in the corner of the screen. Look up ahead for the explosive barrel. Its right at the start of the level, and if its grey you're going to see nothing but gold. This boost is essentially identical to the grey barrel boost in level 11. Shoot down the crates and activate the barrel. Pause for a second, run and jump to the right. Plan your jumps carefully making sure not to lose your speed. You will usually lose your speed at the very end which is fine because its random what the end of the level layout will look like. It's roughly the same, but some patterns are better than others.
You dont: Run and jump. Don't stop, don't slow down. Just before the end there is a bruiser. If he is having a bad day he can ruin your run. Don't shoot him, you won't have enough time to kill him, but he might have enough time to kill you. On the second last jump before you reach him, you want to jump just high enough to get up, any higher and there is a small chance he will have turned around, seen you, and start shooting. Bruiser have a delay on their attack, so he will hit you if you don't stop. Unfortunately, you might not be able to see it coming. Another solution is to throw grenades just before the final jump before you reach him. One of the grenades will stick to him, he will freak out, and never shoot. Just be careful not to stick around for the explosion. Just keep trucking through. _____-----[[[[[[[[[ Here is a rough diagram of the bruiser and mentioned platforms. Your jump from the '_' platform should be small, and you can throw grenades from the '-' platform to stick to the bruiser on the '[' platform. Hopefully that makes sense, but honestly it isn't rocket science. The end of the level is a little random, so try your best to jump without losing any speed. It's not a big deal if you don't; a lot of crate patterns probably cannot be done without slowing down. Jump onto that helicopter ladder and chill.
Yay, tutorial complete! You did it. :) Any questions let me know.
