There's now a $20,000 bounty for anyone who can achieve the impossible in Halo 2

(Image credit: Microsoft)

If you have an abundance of time and a talent for Halo 2, you might be in with a chance of winning a five-figure bounty. All you have to do is achieve something that's never been done before in history.

Streamer Charlie 'Cr1tikal' White is offering $20,000 to anyone who can achieve a full 'Legendary All Skulls On' (LASO) playthrough of Halo 2 Anniversary without dying. That means a max difficulty playthrough with (almost) every modifier activated, whose effects range from 'your foes have more health' to 'all enemies are invisible now'. The only modifier you have to keep deactivated is the 'Envy' skull, which replaces your torch with an active camouflage system. Good luck.

There's not a single recorded instance of anyone ever completing such a run without dying. Even completing a LASO run while allowing deaths is an incredible feat, only ever attempted by a tiny minority of the hardest of hardcore players. The closest anyone has come, White admits in his challenge video, was a deathless LASO run by 'Jervalin' that kept the 'Envy' skull turned on—meaning Jervalin had the advantage of being able to turn invisible at any time.

Cr1tikal's optimistic about the challenge, though. "It makes the goddamn thing nearly unbeatable," he admits in his initial challenge video, "but it is just barely possible". Of course, in that first video he set the bounty at $5000, and the lack of anyone coming forth to claim it eventually led him to kick it all the way up to $20k.

Perhaps the only thing stopping it happening was the absence of a $20k reward at the end, but it could be that this feat requires such a rare combination of luck and skill that it might as well be impossible. Cr1tikal himself confesses he can't get past Halo 2's first two rooms following his own rules for the challenge. But if you're a Halo 2 savant, you can stream yourself completing your LASO run and submit it for review right here.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.