To the uninitiated, ‘hacking a game’ sounds like the opposite of fun. People often confuse hacking with cheating. What they don’t realize is that there’s a subtle but very real difference between the two practices.
Put simply, ‘hacking’ a game is changing the game mechanics so that things work a little differently. ‘Cheating’ involves making yourself impervious to aspects of the game mechanics in a way that gives you an unfair advantage.
Can hacking make a game easier? Yes, absolutely. For a lot of people, hacks are ways to overcome aspects of gameplay that are frustrating or counterintuitive. Think of it as like bowling: you can do it with the sides up or the sides down. The sides up make it easier if your ball constantly ends up in the gutter. But that’s not the same thing as being allowed to walk down the alley and kick all the pins over.
Below are a few of the ways that hacks can enhance a gaming experience, with examples. They might give you some ideas about how you can use hacks to freshen up your gaming experience.
1) Make Multiplayer More Competitive
Using hacks in games like Black Ops Cold War can make the multiplayer aspect more competitive. Simple tweaks like the ability to show aim on-screen or penetration checks, where you can see if your weapon can penetrate walls, can make the game more straightforward if you’re not a pro. Black Ops Cold War is a highly competitive game and it’s frustrating to be used as target practice.
Especially in multiplayer games, it’s just as little fun if you lose every time as if you win every time. Using Black Ops Cold War hacks can level the playing field and bring everyone a more exciting game, so they’re well worth giving a go. If you’re a fan of Black Ops Cold War but are looking for a more entertaining experience, you may want to try this.
2) Make the Impossible Possible
The Fire Emblem games are well-known to Western audiences these days. This is thanks to the hugely popular series of RPGs as well as the inclusion of characters in the Super Smash Brothers series.
What most people don’t know is there were 6 Fire Emblem titles released in Japan before no. 7 was released in the U.S. simply as ‘Fire Emblem’. These games were considered too difficult for the market, but early Western fans of the games created translations and ROMs to give them a try.
The ROMs allowed for ‘savestates’, which was a hack that allowed you to save during a chapter. In the original games, if you lost a character you had to start the whole (long) chapter all over again. This hack saved many computer monitors from being thrown at the wall.
3) Get Silly
You can use hacks and mods if you just want to do the silly stuff that original gameplay doesn’t allow you to do. For example, in the much-loved Steam game Stardew Valley, there’s a hack that allows you to date any villager.
In the original, there are a number of characters that the player can date or marry, but also some others who can only ever be ‘friends’. This is largely due to the dubious age gap between the character and the older villagers, but hey — if you want to date the wizard, now you can!
4) Simple Utility
In games like Minecraft, you have to switch between tools on a regular basis depending on their purpose. Hacks like the Engineer’s Tools mod allow you to combine multiple tools into a single item. It just makes it… so, so much easier to get around.
It’s not like games were realistic in the first place, right? You know that ‘bag’ you carry around that contains several semi-automatic weapons, a bicycle, and a thousand nourishing snacks? Sometimes it’s for the best to just accept the absurdity as part of the fun.