Getting through that quickly requires serious accuracy-he’s very good at making running headshots-which puts a priority on pistols and SMGs over heavier hardware.
In practical terms, it means that Summit1g had to play through the entire game, rather than taking advantage of bugs or exploits to bypass segments. (If you’re curious about the different category options, you can learn more on the knowledge base.) Which brings us to Summit1g, one of the top streamers on Twitch with 5.9 million followers, who recently set a new world record for Max Payne 3 on “hardcore” difficulty in the any%, glitchless, cutscene skip subcategory-that is, any percentage of the game complete, not taking advantage of any glitches to move ahead faster than normally possible, but skipping cutscenes where possible. One of the great things about the hobby is that a game’s popularity isn’t really a factor: Old, even forgettable games like SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom can be just as interesting to speedrun (and watch) as contemporary hits-more so, in some cases, as obscure games often have weirder gimmicks for speedrunners to exploit. That sort of thing doesn’t matter when it comes to speedrunners, though.
Despite my own enthusiasm, though, it didn’t live up to public expectations, and the series has been moribund for the past decade. I will argue all day long that Max Payne 3 is every bit as good as the first two games in the series (which were great) and easily up to the very high standards of developer Rockstar.