Great Moments in Left 4 Dead 2 Speedruns

PCI Gaming has released a new speedrun! They’re one of my favorite L4D2 channels on YouTube and you should definitely check it out. (Keep an eye out for yours truly, who appears at 2:54!)

While recently PCI Gaming have been releasing 4-person speedruns of the default maps, they first made a name for themselves through their solo speedruns, where a single player blitzed through the map without allies or even bots. (Which was why they appeared in my video discussing L4D2 soloers). In honor of their new video I thought I could dedicate an article to my favorite moments from their speedrunning catalog. I already mentioned one in an older article so I’ll skip that one this time.

1. Nick doesn’t bother to wait for the ferry. The first map of Swamp Fever has an impassable river running through the middle, where the survivors must trigger a horde and wait for an insanely slow ferry to chug its way to the riverbank. Unless you’re Princess Twilight, who crossed the river with clever use of a bilejar and a lot of momentum.

2. Coach takes the scenic route down Memorial Bridge. PCI Gaming blew my mind in their very first video when Shadu demonstrated the ballsiest way to bypass Memorial Bridge I’ve ever seen. I don’t even want to think about what Coach’s shoulders felt like after that.

3. Zoey defies gravity with a slug shotgun. They’ve used this trick several times since discovering it, but nothing will beat the first time PCI Gaming used explosive ammo to bypass a huge chunk of Dead Air map 2. After common-boosting himself on top of a decorative pillar, Nightinside reaches the crane in record time, then finishes it off by leaping off the building and using knockback from his explosive ammo to negate fall damage. Fun fact: this trick only works in Realism Expert difficulty! Try it yourself!

4. Ellis turns the Screaming Oak roller coaster into a jungle gym. I don’t blame the zombies for failing to kill Shadu when he speedran the infamous roller coaster in map 3 of Dark Carnival. After grabbing a laser sight in the parking lot, he completely bypasses the remaining triggers by nimbly hopping from plank to plank. Considering the Screaming Oak is one of the hardest crescendos in the game, it’s cathartic to watch.

5. Francis reaches new heights with a bilejar and a chainsaw. Speaking of difficult crescendos, the finale of Crash Course will test even the toughest team of zombie fighters, so I was excited to see how PCI Gaming tackled it. For the first minute or so, Nightinside is sprinting around the map in a panic just like most people trying to survive this finale, but then he wings a bilejar into the rafters and creates a ladder of common infected. And the chainsaw? Halfway through camping on the ceiling, a Smoker grabs him and he severs the tongue!

6. Bill shakes hands with a tank. Traditionally, PCI Gaming speedruns are done on Realism Expert, just for the awesome factor. But on exactly one occasion, they switched to normal difficulty to pull off a particularly daring feat. While blitzing through the third map of Blood Harvest, Ash vaulted onto the roof of a shack and found himself face-to-face with a tank (and a pool of spitter acid, for good measure.) How does he get out of this one?

Have you ever wanted to try blitzing through Left 4 Dead 2? PCI Gaming has released their speedrunning tools for anyone to use and even have a YouTube tutorial explaining how to install and use them! Regular viewers of our SPUF of Legend channel might recognize who they used to narrate the tutorial 🙂