Twitch streamer and Halo fanatic JerValiN claimed MoistCritikal’s $20,000 reward for being the first person to defeat Halo 2 on legendary difficulty with all challenge skulls turned on over a month after the initial challenge was issued.
In early July, popular Twitch streamer and YouTuber MoistCritikal crafted a deviously difficult challenge for his audience, offering up $20,000 as the ultimate reward. Halo 2 is already notorious for its difficult LASO (legendary all skulls on) challenge. The streamer added an extra stipulation, however, by requiring the winner to perform a deathless, one-shot run of the campaign.
Countless streamers took up the challenge and the Halo 2 category on Twitch saw a near exponential rise to over 287,000 hours watched in July alone, per Stream Charts. Weeks into the endeavor, however, the true difficulty of MoistCritikal’s challenge set in as many deemed the deathless run impossible. It was made immensely more difficult by the addition of the difficulty-modifying skulls, which stripped players of core gameplay functions such as a HUDs or radars.
Speedrunner and Halo veteran JerValiN led the pack for most of the challenge. The streamer notably made several runs to Gravemind, widely considered Halo 2’s most challenging level near the tail end of the game. After being stopped just shy of the finish line multiple times, a crucial skip found by a fellow competitor allowed JerValiN to finally push past the game’s final level.
JerValiN did not celebrate his monumental achievement alone as both his wife and child charged into the streamer’s camera view to celebrate his $20,000 achievement. Over a month in the making, the Halo 2 speedrunner thanked his fellow competitors as well as his community, who soon after flooded his channel with gifted subscriptions.
The creator of the challenge himself rejoiced that someone had finally claimed the bounty to his challenge, reaffirming that he was always confident that someone would eventually finish the game. MoistCritikal also revealed that JerValiN himself was planning on a much more difficult version of the LASO challenge, adding the stipulation that he isn’t allowed to fire his weapon.
Though it is unclear when JerValiN will take up this next challenge, he can certainly enjoy the reward of his weeks-long struggle for now.
