The most iconic ladder in gaming history... you can now skip. #metalgearsolid #gaming #gamingsecrets
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00:00So, speedrunning a game is one thing, but maybe you sometimes just want to skip one
00:04particularly troublesome or boring section of a game that you've played numerous times before.
00:09Now, while the average player likely isn't aware of the various tricky things they can
00:13employ to circumvent levels, or even entire chunks of a game, just about any modern video
00:18game will have a ton of YouTube videos demonstrating how it's possible to cut a
00:21sequence down to a mere triviality. So let's take a look at them today, as I'm Jules,
00:26this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Video Game Sections You Didn't Know You Could Skip.
00:3110. Liberty Island – Deus Ex
00:34Deus Ex opens with a memorable mission set on Liberty Island, and while you probably
00:39shouldn't skip it on your first playthrough, you definitely can employ a sneaky trick
00:43to breeze through the vast majority of the hour-long mission on subsequent runs.
00:47The skip is achieved by retrieving a gas grenade near the pier's exit,
00:51and then heading over to the Unacto HQ. Throw a grenade at the HQ's front door,
00:56and doing so should cause some of the gas to leak inside the building,
01:00in turn alerting the AI inside and causing the guard to open the door in a panic. You're then
01:04able to run inside past the guard, triggering the end of the Liberty Island level without
01:09really doing much of anything. Hilariously, Eidos clearly realised the potential for players to do
01:13this, and so the guard inside will say, I heard you just slipped by a lot of terrorists. Pretty smart.
01:189. The Lighthouse Battle – Half-Life 2
01:21In Half-Life 2's mid-game chapter, Sand Traps, you'll get to the end of Highway 17,
01:26and reach Lighthouse Point, a coastal resistance base which ends up being
01:29attacked by the Combine forces. Gordon must then help protect the base during a lengthy,
01:34protracted shootout. But creative players found that there was a way to skip right past this.
01:39The siege sequence is triggered by parking your vehicle in the area,
01:42and approaching a resistance officer who calls you over. But if you do neither,
01:47you're able to sneakily circumvent it. By either piling items up into a platform-like formation,
01:52or grenade jumping, you can propel yourself onto a grass verge in the area, which you can
01:56then follow around to reach a cave-like entrance nearby. This entrance leads directly into the
02:01next section of the game, the famous Antlion Beach, while saving at least five minutes of
02:06your time in the process. 8. Up to Vault 112 – Fallout 3
02:12As expansive as Fallout games might be, the game's critical path is relatively short,
02:16with the early game setting the player on the path to meet up with your father. On an initial
02:21playthrough, you'll need to complete a number of quests which will eventually lead you to your
02:24dad's location at Vault 112. But once this location is known, there's absolutely nothing stopping you
02:30from just making a beeline for it on a future run. And so, upon exiting Vault 101 at the end
02:34of the game's prologue, you can skip a few hours worth of missions by just heading straight to
02:39Daddy at Vault 112. Now, getting there isn't a simple amble by any means, but the game makes
02:44no concerted efforts at all to prevent you from booking it to Dad once his location has been
02:49ascertained. Hilariously, some players have even reported legitimately stumbling upon Vault 12 by
02:54total accident while exploring the wasteland, in turn accidentally skipping over massive parts of
02:59the story, much to their chagrin. 7. Most of Rat Race – Battletoads
03:04The original Battletoads' tenth-level Rat Race gives the player the opportunity to skip right
03:08through the bulk of it. When you reach any of the bombs in the race, kick the bomb and the
03:12pursuing rat will begin falling upside down. Charge or kick the rat twice before he lands on
03:17the ground, and the level will come to an abrupt end, due to the rat being the game's end-stage
03:22boss, General Slaughter, in disguise. KOing the rat will trick the game into thinking that you've
03:27also beaten General Slaughter, sending you straight to the eleventh level without needing
03:31to formally battle him at the end. It's a tricky sequence to pull off, but each of the three bombs
03:36on the stage gives you an opportunity to do so, saving yourself the legwork of getting through
03:40the rest of it as God, and the developers, intended. 6. The First Half of Outskirts – Halo 2
03:47Halo 2's Outskirts is, to be blunt, quite the pain in the arse. You have to contend with a
03:53host of jackal snipers who can make short work of all but the most diligent of players,
03:56though mercifully there is a secret workaround which allows you to skip basically the entire
04:01first half of the mission. Referred to by fans as the Rooftop's Vacation, this exploit lets you
04:06leap from a piece of rubble onto a ledge in an early alcove part of the level, letting you reach
04:10the otherwise inaccessible rooftops and speedily make your way to the Hotel Zanzibar. This lets
04:15you skip over a sniper-filled alley and a series of courtyard battles, that are filled with tough
04:20enemies, and basically saves you about ten minutes of hard graft. This is, of course, especially
04:25useful for players attempting to complete a legendary run, who frankly need all the help
04:29they can possibly get.
04:315. Basically the Whole Game – NieR Automata Potato Potato
04:36In early 2021, almost four years after NieR Automata Potato Potato's release,
04:41reputed modder Lance MacDonald discovered the game's final secret, a secret code which allowed
04:46you to bypass pretty much the entire game. After defeating the prologue boss Marx, you have to place
04:51yourself between a series of barrels in the now-empty boss arena, and then, on the PS4 version
04:57of the game, hold R2 and press up, down, up, right, left, square, circle, triangle, and cross.
05:02This code will cause the game to skip immediately to the last of its many endings,
05:06as well as unlocking a chapter select menu, in-game trophy store, and even a debug menu.
05:12MacDonald emphasised that this wasn't a glitch or an exploit, but a cheat code hard-coded into
05:16the game's engine, and the game's director subsequently took to Twitter to confirm that
05:20this was indeed the game's final secret he'd encouraged players to seek out.
05:24While there's certainly a lot of pleasure in beating Automata Potato Potato and experiencing
05:28its endings the hard way, it's an intriguing find all the same.
05:324. Test Chamber 14 – Portal
05:35With the Portal games being focused around the player's manipulation of physics,
05:39it's perhaps not terribly surprising that creative players are able to circumvent much
05:43of the intended gameplay, even skipping entire test chambers in the process. Take Test Chamber 14,
05:49which will take more regularly skilled players a couple of minutes to get through,
05:52or you can just bypass it completely. This is done by placing a portal by raising the platform
05:58at the exit, and then heading to the left to trigger a raising staircase. From there,
06:02get to the top of the staircase and drop a second portal on the floor behind you where the steps
06:06have receded, and then just jump down into this portal. This will slingshot you out of the first
06:11portal you dropped by the raised platform, giving you enough momentum to reach the top of the
06:15platform, and then strut away to the exit that is mere feet away. This can easily be achieved
06:20in 30 seconds and save you all the faff of having to spend several minutes actually lowering the
06:24elevator as Valve originally intended. 3. The Boat – Mirror's Edge
06:30Mirror's Edge's parkour traversal mechanics may be ludicrously entertaining, but they're also
06:34heavily exploitable, in large part because the original game was rushed to market without
06:39extensive QA testing. EA's loss, though, is the player's gain, as it gave speedrunners ample
06:44opportunity to skip sections of the title, perhaps most impressively a large chunk of the game's
06:497th chapter. The boat sequence in this chapter can be skipped by making use of an infamous kick
06:54glitch, where if you kick in the middle of a wallrun, you'll briefly land on an invisible
06:58platform from which you're able to fleetingly jump, in turn allowing you to reach areas that
07:01you definitely shouldn't be able to. By using the kick glitch just ahead of the boat, you're able to
07:06reach and trigger the post-boat checkpoint, shaving around 5 minutes off your playtime,
07:10or for speedrunners, about 3. 2. The Ladder – Metal Gear Solid 3
07:15Snake Eater
07:16Nobody who's played Metal Gear Solid 3 will ever forget the infamous scene where, after defeating
07:21the tricky boss, The End, players will have to climb an extremely long ladder that feels like
07:25it's never going to end. The two-minute ladder climb, set to the game's iconic theme song,
07:30is as hilariously bizarre as it is strangely serene, even if it's also the bane of anyone
07:35trying to speedrun this game, because it's an unavoidable brick wall that slows progress.
07:41That was until just recently, when speedrunner April discovered a glitch to skip the ladder
07:45entirely. The glitch is achieved by standing next to the ladder and then equipping a specific
07:50series of items that will force Naked Snake into a T-pose, then attempting to climb the
07:54ladder will send him flying to the top of the shaft. And like that, speedrunners found a
07:59foolproof way to shave 2 minutes off of their runs, even if for regular folk, the ladder climb is
08:03admittedly a much-needed moment of tranquility following the absolutely exhausting fight
08:08against The End.
08:09At number one, everything up to the last boss, Spyro Enter the Dragonfly.
08:14So when it was released back in 2002, Spyro Enter the Dragonfly received wildly mixed reviews,
08:19with many critics pointing to the game's overabundance of bugs, indicating an obviously
08:23rushed cycle of development. Many also complained about Enter the Dragonfly's short length,
08:28though per those aforementioned glitches, you can actually boil the game down from a few hours
08:32to mere minutes. But you see, the game shipped with a glitch where if players performed a
08:36ground pound on a locked portal cover, they'd clip through it and be able to access the level
08:41inside. This even applies to the portal that leads to the game's final boss, Ripto. Within
08:45seconds of starting the game, you're able to approach the Ripto portal, ground pound it,
08:50and end up right at Ripto's feet, ready to take him on. This has naturally allowed speedrunners
08:54to beat Enter the Dragonfly in the time it takes to brew a cup of coffee, or even less, in fact,
08:59as the current world record sits at a mere 1 minute and 7 seconds. Incredible, right?
09:04And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 video game sections you didn't know you could
09:08skip. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
09:11the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter
09:15at RetroJ with a zero, or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming
09:20outside of work, as well as my Warhammer Battle Reports, and it'd be great to see you over there.
09:23But before I go, and I hope you don't skip this section, I just want to give you a bit of
09:27positivity, my friend, because you are a massive legend. You deserve all of the best things in
09:31life, alright? And don't let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, alright? You deserve
09:35love, you deserve happiness, you deserve success, and I want you to go out there and absolutely
09:39smash it today. As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that,
09:44and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.