Super Creative Ways People Have Cheated In Video Games

Since the human race started playing games, we've had cheaters, and video games are no different. During the early console era, third-party devices like the Game Genie were made to help players pick up extra lives or skip stages, but these days, games can simply be hacked. Here we have a few examples of creative ways gamers have gotten around the rules. We're not recommending you try all of them, but we're also not saying they aren't worth investigating.

Let's start with the simplest way to cheat in modern first-person shooting games: adding a dot to your TV to assist with hip-fire or quick-scoping. This post on Reddit gives us a short primer on how using something as simple as two strings wrapped horizontally and vertically across your TV screen can help you know where to aim your gun if you're hip-firing, which is shooting your weapon without aiming down the sights. If you want to use fancier technology, there are accessories that let you put an actual red dot on your screen. It's a crutch at first, but you just might be able to train yourself to aim for those spots after a while.

League of Legends fans might already be aware of the Attack Move, a command that lets you attack targets as you move. It's an effective way to kite and allows you to attack the very next thing you see as you're walking. According to Craig Snyder of MakeUseOf, Attack Move also helps you check bushes more efficiently—and hit anything you see in them. There are steps you need to take to bind the command to your keyboard or mouse, including getting a third-party application called X-Mouse Button Control and rebinding commands, but the results should speak for themselves.

There are plenty of beefy characters in Super Smash Bros. with amazing abilities and incredible powers, but who would have thought Pikmin's Olimar could be one of the strongest? He has to be played under the right settings, but Captain Olimar is a frightening combatant when custom moves are enabled, because he can supercharge his Pikmin and hurl them at his poor opponents, battering them down to damage levels that can send them flying away. This power exploit was found by a Smash player named Trevor Williams, according to Yannick LeJacq of Kotaku, and you can see the results in this video. Think twice about judging goofy little Olimar—he just might bring the pain.

Dark Souls 3 has broken a lot of spirits, so it's only fitting that someone break the game—even if it wasn't in the name of vengeance for our tears and lost lives. A speedrunner named Distortion2 discovered this glitch, using it to beat the entire game in only 36 minutes and 43 seconds. (That's roughly the amount of time it takes for most pizzas to be delivered to gamers crying out in agony over the bosses that keep trouncing them in Dark Souls 3.) According to Patrick Klepek of Kotaku, the game-breaker involves the player casting the Tears of Denial spell to survive dying, bringing them back to 1 HP. This is done while traveling through a gap in the world's geometry, so they're essentially falling through the world. As you can see in the video, it can cause the game to glitch out a little, but if it works, it works.

The Blue Öyster Cult told you not to fear the Reaper, but as this little cheat in Overwatch proves, a little fear can't hurt, especially if the Reaper's hidden in the walls of the Temple of Anubis and can kill you unseen. The masked assassin has a nifty little move that allows him to teleport from place to place, and in the Temple of Anubis map, there are spots he can use to teleport past walls or ceilings, dropping him into a spot at the last capture point. A Reaper player can remain hidden behind the walls, able to attack everything in sight while staying protected. It's bad enough that this guy can teleport, clear whole teams with his Death Blossom ultimate, and become incorporeal for a few seconds, but eating his shotgun blasts from behind a wall takes things to an unpleasant new level.

The art of sword-flying is a Halo 2 technique that sends players hurtling through the air thanks to some fancy trigger-work and weapon-switching. According to YouTube user Tareq Alkak, you first have to be wielding weapons like a Rocket Launcher and a Plasma Sword. Next, use the Rocket Launcher to lock onto an enemy, turning your aiming reticule red, switch weapons, and lunge when the Rocket Launcher disappears from the screen. You'll go flying great distances and can position yourself up high, taking potshots from your very own sniper's nest. This only worked in the original Halo 2, so don't expect the same physics in the remaster from The Master Chief Collection to provide the same thrills.

This next one requires a little patience, but Bioshock Infinite players will be richly rewarded. For starters, you'll never again need to collect money, lockpicks, or gear. For as long as you can stand it, you'll be able to farm the "Return to the Hall of Heroes" chapter for as much loot as you want, even to collect all of the gear in the game for those sweet combat bonuses. According to IGN, you have to follow seven steps that take you around the entire map. You'll have to clear the place a few times, but the end point of each run will bring you to a respawning gear box that spawns random gear each time, meaning that you can collect every piece of equipment in the game if you're patient enough. The only downside is that you can only have a maximum of 30 lockpicks, so you might max out in just a few runs. But still, who doesn't want unlimited Silver Eagles to spend on ammo and upgrades?

The original Loot Cave from Destiny is the stuff shoot-and-looters' dreams. You could stand in a single spot and just wait for mobs to spawn rapidly, and every wave you cleared yielded a shiny treasure trove of Engrams that could be turned into weapons and armor. To make it happen, you just had to travel to the Cosmodrome on Earth (the non-mission Patrol version), and make your way to the Skywatch area of the map. Near a spire, you'd find the cave that spawned trash mobs for you to mow down. Because these mobs spawned so rapidly, you piled up a lot of loot; after a few waves, you could just run and dive into it, much like Scrooge McDuck into his money bin. This trick has been patched, but we'll never forget our first time filling up that cave with shiny Engrams.

Do you like stealing in role-playing games? More importantly, do you like stealing from NPCs in Elder Scrolls games without getting caught? We have three words for you: buckets and kettles. One nifty trick that kleptomaniacs have found useful in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the placement of a bucket or kettle on NPCs' heads, which prevents them from seeing you stealing from them. For whatever reason, the buckets block their lines of sight (crazy, right?), and you can't be caught robbing them of everything they own. The example in the video shows just how ridiculously easy this cheat is, turning even the most bumbling adventurer into a master thief.

Here's a classic cheat. Remember the Rainbow Road track in Mario Kart 64? Remember how annoyed you'd get when your buddies beat you? They probably did it using this little shortcut, which involves jumping off the side just before that large drop. If you were lucky and your aim was on target, you'd land smack-dab in the middle of the track up ahead, having bypassed about a third of the course. The same sort of trick was possible on the Wario's Stadium course, where you could use one of the jumps to vault over the barrier and onto another segment of the track, landing close to the finish line. It was dirty...but it was also pretty awesome.