In case you’ve spent all day pondering how you’ll kick some serious butt as Reptile thanks to the newest Mortal Kombat X trailer, we’ve gathered up some more news from today to keep you in the know. In today’s Gaming Daily, a Dark Souls speedrunner broke a world record, players of the hit mobile game Plague Inc. raised some serious cash for Ebola research in West Africa, and Resident Evil Revelations 2 has some questionable microtransactions.

Dark Souls Speedrunner broke the world record in an impressive run. 

While it seems like people are doing speed runs for just about everything these days, it’s the Dark Souls runs that truly are impressive. It’s fascinating to watch skilled players utilize different methods to breeze past enemies, take out tricky bosses in a few hits and drop off ledges like it’s nothing. Though videos of 30 minute runs have been floating around the web for the last few years, a 19 year old named Alex (NaxHPL on YouTube) has just managed to break the world record, clocking in at 25:17.

According to the website Speed Souls, there are three different runs people attempt. While the “Any%” and “All Bosses” runs include playing the majority of the game, the “Any% Kiln Skip” run completed by Alex takes advantage of a glitch (only on Xbox 360 patch) that allows players to skip to the last area in the game. A post on the Dark Souls Wiki reveals: “You can skip to the Kiln when you get the Lordvessel. Rest at firelink and go to firelink altar, walk to kiln door turn right and jump off. When it gets to loading screen quit the game, when you turn back on you will be inside kiln, the door will be closed so the only way out would be homeward bone/dark sign or death.”

Despite a few major missteps, Alex managed to make it to the Kiln in record time. The best part of the whole thing however, is his priceless reaction at the end when he realized what he’d done.

[HT: Kotaku]

Players of Plague Inc. raised $76, 000 for Ebola research. 

That’s right. Plague Inc.–a game about trying your hardest to spread a deadly disease to wipe out humanity–has raised over $76,000 to help research Ebola. After announcing a campaign to raise money for the cause a few months back, Ndemic Creations owner James Vaughan revealed today on the developer’s website that over 800,000 players have visited PlagueInc.com/StopEbola to donate a huge chunk of change to support charities fighting Ebola.

Vaughan remarked, “I’m extremely proud of the Plague Inc. community, together we have raised a significant amount of money for charities across the world and provided an example of how groups of gamers can come together and be a force for good.”

Well done, guys. Well done.

[HT: Ndemic Creations Blog]

Resident Evil 2 will have microtransactions, but it may not be what you think.

Ah, microtransactions. It seems like they’re present in just about everything these days. After a press event earlier today in Spain, rumors started to erupt that Capcom was going to charge people to keep on playing after they’ve died. According to reports, the rumor was that instead of restarting a chapter after getting killed halfway through a chapter, you would have the option to buy back your own life.

Well, after much confusion, the developer revealed to Kotaku: “Regarding your question, players can use “life crystals” when playing through Raid mode in Revelations 2. The crystals essentially act as continues (re spawns) in Raid mode when players die. Blue life crystals can be earned through playing daily missions and red life crystals can be bought. The two crystals act the same, but there’s an option to buy if players run out of blue (earned) crystals or don’t want to spend the time earning them. If players have both blue and red crystals, the game will prioritize the blue crystals over the red ones. Again, these are only used in Raid mode and not in the main campaign.”

Although the microtransactions are only part of the raid mode and won’t affect the main campaign, the decision to charge people for something like this is a little worrisome.

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That’s it for today everybody. Keep Nerdist tabbed for all your upcoming gaming news, reviews and features!