Speedrunning, eh? For many it is seen as a way of life, a gaming experience like no other as the player gets to test their skills to the limit, looking for shortcuts, glitches even, all in order to prove themselves to the world. But why? Well, to go reaching an end goal in the shortest time possible.
For others, it could well be seen as gaming hell.
I sit slapbang in the middle of those two camps. I’m far from a speedrunning god, but do occasionally like the tests they bring. Going up against the clock, shaving milliseconds off times can feel great. But it can also become a huge source of frustration.
And so Hirilun comes to the table. A speedrunner in all but name, this tasks you with running, jumping, ducking and clambering across a number of levels, all with the express intention of hitting an end goal within a set time. Do so, and rewards will be yours. Or at least you’ll find yourself unlocking further stages, thrust into the test of skills once more. In fact, there isn’t much in the way of real rewards for excelling at Hirilun, besides perhaps a sense of worth.
Playing as a first person parkour experience, immediate thoughts bring Hirilun in line with the likes of Mirror’s Edge. But whilst that franchise utterly excelled in what it was tasked to do – at least until Mirror’s Edge Catalyst – Hirilun stumbles and falls, especially in the early stages.
In fact, it takes a while to understand how to approach Hirilun, so much so that we’ve taken to playing it in two ways: timed, against the clock as it has seemingly been intended, and then more as a humble platforming adventure, forgetting about the time pressures and just enjoying the ride.
Frankly, it’s in the latter with which we’ve preferred Hirilun.
Monochrome in style, the black and white world of Hirilun is only occasionally broken up by the smallest splatters of colour. There’s the red of a glowing checkpoint and end goal, with gold splashes coming in the form of time-halting pick ups and occasional environmental boosts; fans that spring you skywards for instance. Aside from that, the near pen-like scribblings of the world are all that you’ll be left with as your journey unfolds.
That’s fine though. We quite like the visual style that is going on in Hirilun, even if one black box fast becomes another, no matter how hard the developers try to make distinctions. We have a feeling others may not love it quite so much though and there have certainly been times in the most mazey of levels in which disorientation has become real.
No matter, dip your toe into the world of Hirilun and you’ll be left with little rhyme nor reason. There’s no story or narrative holding it together, with a series of singular, non-linking stages available from the main menu. It’s very much a case of pick your poison and run with it, starting with a couple of initial stages, the rest unlocked as you tick off time limits. Those levels are okay though, as you find yourself flowing through worlds that deal with Shafts, Plaza, Pipes, Factory, Conveyors and Skyscrapers. We don’t need to sit here and tell you what the focus of each is; it’s all explained well enough in the stage title.
Those levels come with three stars to obtain, each sitting behind a speedrunning time limit. But once you get to grips with what is on offer – and take in a couple of dummy runs first – attempting clock-beating runs becomes par for the course. Take the Plaza level for instance – complete it in three minutes and you’ll get 1 star. Rip a minute off that and you’ll get 2 stars. For full 3-star completion you are looking at completing the Plaza stage in some forty seconds. Our very first run lasted nine minutes, before we started to shave those times, hunting down shortcuts, dodging, ducking, diving and parkouring to timed glory.
There are abilities to help you nab those stars too. Coming in the form of a dash, a speed boost or a glide, each level runs slightly differing use-scenarios; sometimes those abilities are limited, others will see them recharge. The problem is, Hirilun isn’t always precise enough for these to be completely handy – we’ve tried to dash our way over some pipes for minutes at a time before it has all come together.
It’s not helped by the fact that Hirilun is a twitchy little bugger too. Controls aren’t as precise as we would like, stuttering on camera movement with little momentum able to be gathered. And of course, with this being a first person parkour affair, actually landing where you want to after a jump is very hit and miss. With the A button actioning that jump, you’ll be left to constantly move the thumb on your right hand from jump to thumbstick, moving the camera and attempting to get a grip on your positioning in the world. We’d much prefer to have seen the jump assigned to a trigger or bumper perhaps, ensuring that there is more ease in taking in the surroundings and each jump.
All this means that Hirilun is limited. Whilst we can get on with the visual style, there are only a few levels and stages to go at; even if you’ll need to run through them all a good few times in order to understand the intricacies and details of each, learning as you go. But it’s in the controls where this one is really let down – constantly twitching from face button to thumbstick, from jump to camera is a right ballache, resulting in more missed jumps than is acceptable.
By all means give Hirilun a crack if you’re a speedrunning fan, if you are happy to navigate the same area over and over in hope of shaving some seconds. But the highs of Mirror’s Edge this is not.
