Halo Hackers Go Wild, Unleash Flamethrower

Thanks to Halo.Bungie.Org for info on a new Halo Xbox hacking movie revealing some spectacular new tricks, including the ability to use the previously unavailable flamethrower and gravity rifle weapons in-game, plus much more outlandish stunts. As the site says, "...even if you're not excited by the hacking scene, it's a hoot to see how much damage you can do when you're standing in a tower of 3 dozen Master Chiefs and your assault rifle fires frag grenades." These hacks were accomplished by hex-editing a cache file on a modified Xbox, and coincidentally, Gearbox Software have just posted the a new screenshot of the PC-exclusive flamethrower weapon, which probably works a sight better than the unfinished Xbox one.

Comments

I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the complaints about Halo are valid. Halo is a very good FPS game, but it wasn't as earth-shattering as some (such as myself) hoped it would be (a la Half Life). The game does get quite repetitive, which can be expected of a Doom or Quake-era game, but these days, a gamer SHOULD expect more than seemingly endless hallways that all look alike.

Halo was a decent single-player game, and there's no denying that the co-op and deathmatch modes are a blast to play (especially with multiple XBOXes hooked up). I can only hope Bungie/Microsoft will be smart enough to allow not only multiplayer deathmatches on XBOX Live (which is already confirmed), but online co-op as well. Halo 2 with online co-op could definately be considered a "killer app" for online console gaming.

Uh...(just to stay on topic)...cool hacks. ;)

Re:Flame and Shadow?

[KU_Fletch]

why the hell would flames cast shadows?

strange...

[wuHoncho]

It is just me or did the soundtrack seem, well, japanese? The movie in general is just flat-out weird. Not quite funny. Just weird.

I'm not a big fan of Halo myself. I've never played it. None of my friends have. There's just not that sense of greatness about the game that makes me feel like I really need to give a crap about it. But something is worth noting about the game; and that's the sudden deluge of movies circulating the internet that were recorded using the game. This is probably due in part to the game's amazing graphical capability, of which the X-Box itself is very likely playing a key role in, but perhaps also due in part to something easily facilitating video recording? I read something awhile back (probably one of the OpenGL 2.0 white papers about pixel pack/unpack from 3D Labs, maybe not, my brain's starting to fall asleep right now) that seemed to underline the fact that you can send a lot of data to a video card and have it be all accelerated and fast and all, but it's not quite as easy to send it back into memory for, say, recording high-quality 3D rendered movies in real-time. That all we'd need is some kind of bus or compression scheme to get the stuff back into main memory from the video card and all of a sudden you'd have this massive flood of 3D-rendered indie movies.

That said - it is quite likely that this, and the others like it (if you haven't already, check out Red vs. Blue and see what I'm talking about here), is the tip of a very big iceberg.