Borderlands 2 player who spent 9 months trying to finish the game without getting hit was beaten to the punch just hours before finally accomplishing his goal

Nov. 4, 2024

Now two people have completed a near-impossible challenge

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Hitless gaming proHeyblastyput over800 hours into beating Borderlands 2 without taking damage, and less than a day before he finally managed his goal, challenge run streamerdarksmoke11did it first.

“Yeah, darksmoke11 got the run less than a day before me,” Heyblasty notes ina Reddit thread, though darksmoke11 only started the Sisyphean undertaking about two months ago after being motivated by Heyblasty’s initial commitment to it, and ended up using a similar overall route. But it was never a real competition.

“The dude is really good,” Heyblasty congenially says about darksmoke11on Twitter. “As soon as I saw his first attempt, I knew that the ‘world’s first’ was not going to be free.”

If anything, it’s exciting that two expert Borderlands 2 players managed to do what many people thought was inconceivable. As a bloody shooter filled with damage numbers, Borderlands 2 provides a single-player experience that’s sometimes punishing and always riddled with bullets, though the game ultimately proved to be no match for either Heyblasty or darksmoke11.

Borderlands 2 was the 112th game Heyblasty knocked out with a no-hit run. He tells bewildered fanson Twitterthat “I’ve been doing hitless for the past six years now. The more runs you get the less hype you feel at the end.” That’s another thing Heyblasty and darksmoke11 have in common: after performing flawless takedowns of the Warrior monster in Borderlands 2’s final boss fight, both players hardly reacted at all.

“Dude, I just beat Borderlands 2 without taking damage,” darksmoke11declaresin monotone. “That’s awesome.” It really is.

Borderlands fan will get to see Borderlands 4 early after Gearbox agrees to fly him to the studio following cancer diagnosis: “I never expected anything like this.”

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.

Borderlands 4 reveal confirmed for The Game Awards as Gearbox teases the “first look at the most ambitious Borderlands yet”

How to beat the Path of Exile 2 Bloated Miller boss fight

Todd Howard “rolled his eyes” at the idea of Troy Baker playing Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, but the Bethesda boss later told him “you’re doing a hell of a job”