GCN’s Aaron Espinoza talks about how the new Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare hack is ruining the game.

As you many of you Call of Duty 4 PS3 gamers out there may already know, a new hack has hit and has it’s own name. The UFO hack. For those who don’t know what it is, I will explain it in the most basic terms possible. You can fly, go through walls and use it to kill people from any vantage point.

To many, this hack may very well be something that some are looking forward to using in the near future. People like myself, on the other hand, just want this patched up as soon as possible. Online Gaming is about skill and not about downloading cheap software that enables you to cheat your way through an online ranked match.

Unfortunately for myself, my PS3 suffered the dreaded, “Yellow Light of Death” so I have not been able to view the hack personally for myself, nor do I wish to be engaged in a match with some of these hacking scumbags. But even I could tell from looking at the you tube videos that these people are really desperate for attention and desperate to raise that Kill/Death ratio.

I honestly do not see what is so beneficial about hacking a game. Sure, you may get a lot of kills but where is the fun if you’re invincible? The fun in playing a game is when you’re in the heat of an intense gun battle knowing that at any moment you could be stabbed from behind or sniped from across the map. Dying in a game is what makes that game fun, believe it or not. It really lets us gamers know how to improve ourselves and allows us to learn from mistakes. Then you go on to improve your mistake and know you can get the sneaky bastard when you respawn once more.

What does a hack do? Absolutely nothing. It takes no skill to fly around a damn map and kill people from above. You may get a few laughs from it knowing that people can’t kill you but just so you know, you’re complete garbage. Everyone in the game knows you’re garbage, and you yourself know you’re garbage. There isn’t any other way to put it.

I have heard the most stupid excuses to why people are using this hack. Some include: 1) “Call of Duty 4 is boring! This hack makes it fun.” 2) “This hack is fun because I kill people.” or the ever so popular: 3)“The game has been out for almost 2 years, so stop crying.” Sure, those aren’t the only ones but I really don’t feel like going back and searching for excuses at the moment. Here is the issue with the people who have said those excuses, and also my answer:

1)If you believe Call of Duty 4 is boring, I highly advise you go play something else. There are tons of online games to choose from, go play them. We here at the GCN have a Top Ten PlayStation 3 Titles List in case you are looking for suggestions.

2)I have heard this one(or close to it) on many of the you tube videos and forums out there. Look, if you honestly admit that you like the hack simply because you get kills, I could imagine why you didn’t like to play without it. From writing that, I get the impression that you DON’T get kills and that you must really SUCK at the game. You’re only hurting yourselves now by hacking the game. On behalf of the honest PlayStation 3 gamers out there, we hope you get banned for life and never return to any online game or console ever again.

3) This one is the one that aches me the most. So what? Are you guy stating that just because a game has reached 2 years of life it should be hacked? Just because MW2 is in development, that gives you an excuse to ruin what we currently have to play with up until it’s release? Are you all really that stupid? Just stop ruining the game for everyone else. There are many skillful gamers out there who really don’t need to put up with this hacking bullcrap. Either play right, or just get the hell out. You’re embarrassing yourselves and also putting your PSN IDs in danger of getting banned.

I have stated this many times in this article; I don’t see what’s so fun about hacking Call of Duty 4. It just throws all your skills in the trash. Admittedly, I have done some of the “glitches” in which you can walk outside the map, but even those got boring. Sure, I got kills. But it wasn’t much fun. There wasn’t any danger. The thing about Call of Duty 4 is that it puts you in the action, you feel like you’re in a Warzone. But the feeling is absent when you’re cheating yourself to win. I never did those glitches again, and I always pushed myself further to play and be better than the rest in the room, and I have always achieved that goal. Then comes the sense of satisfaction. The satisfaction of playing honestly on the field without using any kind of game enhancements (besides the perks in the game, of course).

So now this has spread to the 360. This is going to be worse for those who do it on Microsoft’s side of the fence because cheating in a game is against code of conduct. You can bet they will be reported by Xbox Live Gamers who come across those using the UFO hack. And I thank Microsoft for implementing that feature to Xbox Live right on the dashboard. Hopefully Sony will update their XMB screen to have a REPORT PLAYER section.

Look, just don’t do it. If you are, just stop now. If you’re thinking about it, just don’t. You’re only going to look like an ass to the entire Xbox or PlayStation community and also put your ID in risk of getting banned.

And before I get panned for this, I want you to truly look back at when you first played Call of Duty 4. What made it fun? When made it feel intense? Also try to imagine the game if you were invincible the entire match. Now if you’re EXTREMELY good at the game, like myself and many others, then you’re set straight and I’m not talking to you. When I say invincible, I mean if you stand in front of an entire team and they’re shooting you and you just cant seem to die while you just shoot each one down at your pace. Is that really fun? You may get a kick out of it, but think about it in the long run. It will just get boring.