Hacking

The title needs no real explanation. People in any game, if they can, hack or cheat to make the game easier or different. Some do it to frustrate other players or to make themselves look aces to others on the internet who don't know that they actually hack.

Now, this wouldn't have been tonight's topic of discussion, but I joined three out of the twelve games I played tonight to see unbelievable scores posted at the top of the leaderboards. At first I thought the players were just really good, but I began to watch the killfeed and discovered differently. Also, the scoreboard itself told a very clear story. In MoH, as in any shooter that requires a good deal of aim, programs called aimbots allow for pinpoint accuracy and kill shots at any distance, almost always in groups of four or five. Also in games like MoH and MW2, where bullets do not feel the effect of gravity and where the game rewards players for accurate headshots and then goes on to give them extra abilities for those kills, you have a recipe for broken games.

What exactly did I see in these games? Kill to death ratios of something like 50/1, headshots that do not account for actual human movement of the mouse, impossibily consistent headshots, absolutely no one being able to kill a player. The list could go on. In each of these games, I recognized the hacks as aimbots that automatically, and within the code of the game, put the targeting reticle exactly on the enemy and then pulling the trigger, shifting at an inhuman rate to the next target.

What is so pathetic about this is twofold. One, why do you want to just sit back and let the computer play the game for you? These players literally sat in one place and let the game do the work for them. It ceases to become a game at that point and little more than clicking a button and watching. If you need to watch Medal of Honor or Modern Warfare 2 and not worry about your own skills, go on YouTube. Search for five seconds and you'll see crazy scores that come legitimately and fun commentators who enjoy the game for what it is while not trying to cheat their way through (for the most part. There are some fakes up on YouTube, too). Two, and this pertains almost directly to Medal of Honor, the game is still in beta. Beta! This game won't come out for months, and many, many things will probably change between now and October and any score you post will most likely be erased, forcing you to start from scratch. Your hacks might even be unusable at that point, and where are you then? No real skill or game knowledge and hated by everyone you play with.

Maybe these people want to show their mastery and ability to manipulate game code or pad their stats to the point where they look like the proest pros to ever pro up a pro server. Any legitimate player with two functioning brain cells knows a hacker/cheater/no skill player when they see one. Whether this is actually the case is usually in favor of the positive, but sometimes players just have that kind of skill or their don't play the way that some consider "good." That being said, I digress. If these people think that learning how to infiltrate a game, alter its code or exploit something inside it to their own benefit will get them jobs or endear them to the developers or other players, I know they are sorely mistaken. Then there are of course those that do it simply because they can, and they don't care what others think; some even find it amusing. Enter the troll.

At the end here I must apologize. This is perhaps the most personal blog I've written, and I want to stay away from that. News reviews and critical evaluations, Xiant, not personal beefs with the games. Get more news up, more reviews, Xiant. Talk less about yourself.

Okay, let's try that.

Thanks for reading,
Xiant