Have you ever/would you ever? I never thought I'd want to, but I've come across a game that's making me strongly consider it. I'd love to hear thoughts on the matter.
I've done that before. Depending on the game, it works, especially if the routes are good (as in, everything is explained etc).
I don't think it's a bad thing either, however you'll definitly miss some stuff (mostly because outside of the speedrun routes, you won't be doing much).
Yes I've done this before. A speedrun and a non-speedrun playthrough can be two very different ways of enjoying a video game. We probably all know of games that we like to play but would not like to speedrun. So it is natural that the opposite would sometimes apply.
For me personally this happened with Super Mario 3D Land. After playing one or two levels I had no interest in continuing the game. Months later I saw a really cool GDQ run of it by Kosmic. I realized that this would give me a different way of possibly enjoying the game and this motivated me to give the game another try. So I started learning how to speedrun the levels before I'd even completed a playthrough. Thousands of hours later I still speedrun it and I have never just played through the game in a non-speedrun fashion.
I have certainly considered running games that I hadn't (and probably wouldn't) play casually, but if I run any of those I would do a casual playthrough just to get a general feel for the mechanics, route, etc, before diving into learning any tricks.
I’ve done it and I’m personally not a fan of it. I find it much harder to learn a route when I’m not familiar with the game at all. But I also feel like it depends on the game. If it’s a game with a lot of menus, that might not be too bad, but if it’s a game with heavy moment tech or other tricks, then it might be difficult to learn without knowing the mechanics of the game.
Those types of runs probably won’t be very good to start with if your first run is also your first playthrough pretty much, but that just means more/bigger improvement and more practice ahead of time can still result in good times since you’ll get experience playing the game that way. I’d say it’s up to you and the type of game that it is.
I've done it for both the games I ran for the 12 hour challenge (Transformers War for Cybertron and Shadow Warrior 2013), both very tech heavy but not something you'd find/use through a casual playthrough. If the game you're eyeing has a lot of skips or OoBs or general speedrun tech in my opinion it wouldn't be necessary to do a casual playthrough as it'll do you little good when you can just practice that stuff by itself.
Never not played a game casually before speedrunning it, but I have followed a speedrun route without thinking about my own. The first speedrun I finished, I ended up looking at the speedrun right after beating it casually without working on my own route. It greatly influenced the route I took, and even though I knew I could improve on the larger execution errors, I overlooked smaller ones. Now, I always working out a route on my own. Only once I've got a solid route, ran it a few times, and have an estimate will I look at outside sources for further strategies. If I work backwards it'll influence my own ideas of what works or what might be fastest.
I have with racing games, some of them i have played atleast a decent chunk of to understand it somewhat
I haven't played a game casually for 3 years except for games without any existing runs already, where I play through it normally but merely to work out what the route should be (so not strictly 'casually'). I don't know if I'm capable of enjoying a game casually anymore.
^ That's tremendously sad.
The game that has me interested in doing this is called Dandara. I picked it up on deep sale on....PS4, actually, usually that sentence ends with "Steam" doesn't it?....and at first blush it's VVVVVV meets Super Metroid. Those are both brilliant speed games but they're games I've struggled to enjoy casually (don't have any serious plans to run either of those). I played Dandara for about 30 minutes and made absolutely no progress. I just got lost over and over. I feel like I'd enjoy the game more if I already knew where to go, and I just don't think I have the free time to devote the likely dozens of hours I'd need for a casual playthrough (it leans pretty heavily on the trope of Metroid~esque exploration). And yet I feel like I might want to run it. The movement is exhilarating when it goes right, and a glance at the leaderboard shows the run length is pretty comfy (WR is 37:41).
It would take all of these things happening at once to make me consider picking up a run without a casual playthrough, so this is probably why it's the first time it's seriously crossed my mind.
Yeah it is kinda sad when I think about it. I used to love just stumbling through a game blind (I must have sunk 300+ hours into skyrim including probably 10+ hours crafting spoons), but I've since become obsessed by the speedrun mentality.