Metal: Hellsinger is being torn in half by speedrunners.

It seems like Metal: Hellsinger was made for speedrunning. The whole game is pretty short, with a focus on replaying levels to perfection, trying out different builds and strategies until you can make your way through hell with ease. And now, players are doing just that, blasting through the whole game in less than half an hour.

The Any% record for Metal: Hellsinger is down to 26 minutes, down from the usual playthrough length of four and a half hours. Even runs that involve beating every optional fight the game throws at you are down to 50 minutes, requiring players to truly master rhythm-based combat as they slaughter their way through the eight stages.

Related: I’m Too White For Metal: Hellsinger

As you can see in adamcoolcat's run, the Any% category hardly involves playing the game as most players would. In the first few seconds of the first level, the runner finds a way to launch themselves across the map, immediately making their way to the first boss.

Even if you do follow the intended path, incredible times are still possible. Just eight hours ago at the time of writing, YouTuber The Casual managed to get the All Forced Encounters run down to 49 minutes and 25 seconds. Despite this being a much lengthier playthrough, and one focused on speed rather than high scores, The Casual is still able to constantly shoot to the beat, seemingly never losing their rhythm.

As incredible as these times are, they're hardly surprising for anyone who follows speedrunning. Increasingly, we are seeing players rush to beat games faster than anyone else as soon as they launch. Even games that clearly aren't made with speedrunning in mind, such as Elden Ring, quickly amass dedicated communities, looking to blast through games with a mix of glitches, shortcuts, and an incredible amount of skill and perseverance.

Speaking of Elden Ring, the record for that now sits at a staggering three minutes and 56 seconds. Even without using glitches, players have managed to beat the game in under an hour, with the record currently set at 59 minutes and 11 seconds.

Of course, there will always be those that simply don't "get" it. If you love a game, why would you want to skip so much of it? The best way to explain it to the unconverted is that speedrunning in no way replaces casual play. By the time runners are trying to pull off skips and cheats, they've typically completed a "normal" playthrough already. Speedrunning is completely separated from this, and almost comes from a point of curiosity about how our favourite games are stitched together. Can you beat Fallout: New Vegas without ever interacting with the Legion? Do we need to follow the path laid out for us in Stray? What is the perfect combination of controller inputs in Super Mario Bros.? All of these questions and more are answered with speedrunning, as they lift the hood on our favourite games, showing us what makes them tick.

Metal: Hellsinger may be far off from being one of the great speed games, such as Super Mario 64 and Metroid, but that hasn't stopped these players from grinding away regardless. As more players enter the gates of hell, however, it's possible that we will see these times brought down even more.

Next: This Week In Elden Ring: Dragonlord Placidusax's Secret Head, Dragonborn Runebears, And Ragdoll Physics

Rhiannon is a News Editor at TheGamer, and can often be spotted preaching the good word about Dragon Age: Origins. Which is the best game, in case you didn't know.