Watch a Halo speedrunner trade in guns for grappleshots in this impressive (and bewildering) video.
By Jessica Howard on January 12, 2022 at 3:33PM PST
Since the original Halo hit shelves in 2001, the series has only become synonymous with the first-person shooter genre,
which raises a rather interesting question: What would Halo be like without all the fights? Fierce gunfights and varied guns? As it turns out, the answer is still “deadly fun”.
Earlier this month, a Halo speed runner named Tom shared a highlight video on his YouTube channel, Simply & Slick, showing him beating Halo Infinite on the game’s highest difficulty level. no need to shoot as much as a bullet.
Although it took Tom around four hours to complete the entire campaign,
he managed to condense the experience into an impressive half-hour
filled with amusing moments.
So, how did he manage to do that? A whole lot of energy swords, gravity hammers, object beams and energy coils.
Tom also allows himself to use glitches as long as they are inherent bugs in the game, which means any kind of mod is a no-no.
Much of his technique to beat the game relies on using grappleshot’s ability to latch onto the game’s explosive coils,
allowing him to launch himself over great distances and avoid encounters with enemies.

At one point, Tom even managed to steal a Pelican causing him to end up skipping almost half the game.
According to Kotaku, the outlet initially reported on Tom’s impressive achievements,
initially intending to “take the pistol to the end” and give up on picking up the game’s powerful melee weapon.
However, it was ultimately proven impossible given the intense difficulty and nature of some of the bosses in the game.
Over the course of his life, Tom said he died about 100 times, with 50 of them being the game’s final boss.
Even so, he managed to complete his gun-free level in less than four hours.
While this may seem lightning fast, Tom says he actually boasts an even more impressive game-beat time: 37 minutes and 46 seconds.
With a time almost half of the current record time to beat Halo Infinite – one hour and four minutes – Tom is likely to set the record if he sends video of the run to the official record holders .
Unfortunately, however, Tom was unable to record the run, with a screenshot of his last run being the only proof of his achievement.
After his gun-free run, Tom said playing “only punches” with all skulls (the difficulty modifier) was his next self-imposed challenge.