Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Glitches Overview

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Glitches Overview
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Glitches in General - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Glitches

Glitches in Modern Warfare can be separated into three categories. The first is Hacks, which are only possible with a modded Xbox 360. These aren’t very widespread, due to the requriement that your console be physically modified, often with an expensive chip. Hack chips allow the user to modify the firmware of the Xbox itself, allowing abnormal behavior on Xbox Live. Players using hacks are often easy to identify; their gamertag will show up as a name that’s not theirs, in colors other than white, and sometimes using symbols not available to normal users, such as the buttons on the controller.

The second category is Exploits, which involve using bugs in the code of the game to do something the gameplay doesn’t normally allow. In Modern Warfare 2, these mostly involve performing repeated actions around the geometry. Sometimes, they interact with the weapons, perks, and killstreaks in the game to give the player an unfair advantage over players who cannot perform the glitch.

The third category is actual Glitches, which are also bugs in the code of the game itself. Unlike exploits, however, glitches don’t give a player an unfair advantage. Usually they have no advantage at all, and sometimes are actively detrimental to the gameplay experience. These can involve bugs when the game changes hosts in-game, or bugs with the geometry of the maps, or even odd interactions between game elements.

Each of these three forms of glitch will be explored in the rest of this article. Be warned, however, that this is not a tutorial for each of the glitches in question; this is simply knowledge of the existence of the glitches. The majority of the glitches I’ll write about have been patched. Right now, the most common glitches found in the multiplayer experience are hacks.

If glitches aren’t your thing, maybe you’d rather check out one of the other Modern Warfare 2 articles available on Bright Hub? The Challenge Guide, for instance, or the tips and strategies for the first Map Pack?

Glitches That Aren’t Glitches - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Glitches

There are a few gameplay interactions that many players consider to be glitches, but aren’t. Some of them have been patched, and others have not.

OMA Tubing is one such ‘glitch’. OMA Tubing is when a player uses a class with One Man Army, an assault rifle with grenade launcher attachment, and often Danger Close. Currently, using One Man Army to switch to the class you’re already using will refill all of your ammunition, including grenades. This allows you, effectively, infinite ammo. However, the switch time leaves you defenseless, and using grenades is harder than most people make it out to be. Currently, Infinity Ward claims to be working on a fix for the situation, but no word on what that fix is has been released.

Care Package Knifing is another of those glitches. Originally, when you got the Care Package, Senty Gun, or Emergency Airdrop

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killstreak, you would get a smoke marker to throw down to call it in. In order to allow you to move to safety to call in your box, the care package grenade allowed you to move somewhat faster than normal. However, you could still knife with the grenade out, as a means of self-defense. Unfortunately, coupled with Marathon, Lightweight, and Commando, that movement speed increase turned you into a high-speed short-range-teleporting knife-wielding engine of death. Fortunately, Infinity Ward patched this, so you no longer get a movement speed boost with the grenade out.

Boosting is not a glitch, but it IS unfairly gaining an advantage over your opponents. Boosting involves getting a friend on the other team, heading to a secluded corner of the map, and farming challenges. Often players will use tactical insertions to farm headshots, sitrep equipment kills, and killstreak rewards. Fortunately most boosters are flat-out bad at the game and are easy and fun to hunt down while playing normally. Nothing feels quite as good as finding and killing a booster on his 23rd kill before a nuke.

Modded Controllers are also not technically hacks. Instead, they’re controllers that have chips in them to reprogram the buttons. Most often they are used to make semi-automatic weapons, such as the FAL assault rifle or the pistol secondary weapons, automatic. Often accompanying these rapid fire button presses is recoil correction, making the guns abnormally accurate.

Did I forget anything? Post in the comments if you remember a glitch I forgot. Unfortunately there are so many of them, that’s possible. Then, head on over and check out the guide to callsigns!

Hacks and JTags

First and most common of the hacks category of glitches is the JTagged Name. These names are obvious to spot when you find one in a lobby. The player’s gamertag will not match the gamertag that displays if you view their gamercard. It can be in any color, or combination of colors, that the user inputs. It can also contain symbols used in the Xbox system, such as the symbols for the controller buttons. Additionally, a JTagged name can get around the word filters. While this hack itself doesn’t affect gameplay directly, a player

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with a long name can disrupt your field of vision if they’re on your team. Alternatively, a player with a small or nearly invisible name can be harder to find on the enemy team, similar to the effects of the Cold Blooded Pro perk.

Unfortunately, players who have JTagged Xboxes often do more than simply hack their name. One thing they can do, if they find the right scripts to implement, is the Care Package Nuke. The Care Package Nuke is exactly what it sounds like. The player will get to four kills, call in their care package, and the care package will contain a Nuke 100% of the time. This is obviiously a hack, because nukes cannot come from care packages normally. This is easy to spot, when a nuke timer goes off and the player calling it in has less than five kills. Unfortunately, this is enormously disruptive to gameplay, causing the game to last only a couple of minutes at max. One interesting variant to this hack is making EVERY care package a nuke. Of course, the first player to call one in wins, as a second nuke cannot be activated after one is already counting down. Another variant is setting the care packages to any other killstreak. If an emergency airdrop comes in, and all four packages are EMPs, or Stealth Bombers, or some other killstreak, you can bet they were hacked to be that way. Unless they’re all Ammo or UAVs; that happens often enough normally.

Hacked Lobbies

Hacked Lobbies are essentially a JTagged Xbox user starting a private match and forcing Xbox Live to recognize it as a public match. Normally a private match can only be joined by players on the user’s friends list, but with a hacked private lobby, suddenly anyone can join. This is used for two things.

Abnormal Game Types are the less common of the two ways a hacked lobby can manifest itself. A large number of things can be changed about a game, especially with hacks. Some examples include ‘ice skating’ mode, wherein the traction of the ground is reduced, jump height is increased, and movement speed is increased. Another hack is infinite ammunition and no reloading, which a

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llows guns to fire endlessly. A similar version for killstreaks makes an AC130 shoot it’s big gun constantly without pause, making the field below a cloud of constant explosions. Those are the obvious alterations, of course. Minor alterations can include longer time limits, higher kill limits, or limited huds.

10th Prestige and All Challenge lobbies are the most common use of the hacked private lobby. In both, the hacker sets the game such that a single kill will grant the player doing the killing an infinite amount of EXP, kills, headshots, and so forth. Every flag that signals a challenge complete will be set. Essentially, that one kill will set the killer to 10th prestige, with every challenge complete, every gun camo unlocked, and every title and emblem unlocked. Unfortunately, the vast majority of players with the gold skull level 70 10th prestige icon are hacked. Fortunately, they’re often ridiculously bad at the game.

Along side the all challenge lobby is the Gold Deagle and Spinning Skull set of hacks. Essentially, the spinning golden skull emblem and the golden camo for the desert eagle are not unlockable through normal gameplay. You can be assured that any player using one of those hacked to get it.

Geometry Exploits

Geometry exploits come in a few flavors. The first of which was an epidemic for a month before Infinity Ward patched it to put a stop to the insanity. This exploit, of course, was the Care Package Glitch. The care package glitch was an interaction between care package grenades and climbing over objects. Essentially, the player would throw the care package marker and climb over an object at the same time, resulting in one grenade thrown and another still in the hand. This worked for care packages, sentry guns, and even

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emergency airdrops, making the skies filled with killstreaks at all times. Hell for low level players, heaven for cold-blooded stinger-wielders.

The second form of geometry exploit is the Elevator Glitch. The player would find a place on the map where the geometry overhangs a small big of ground where they could go prone. It boils down to standing up under the overhang, in a specific place, which would rocket the player high into the sky. From there, they would have a good view of the entire map and would be able to rain death down from above. Of course, they were also obvious sitting in the sky and completely unable to take cover. God help them if they weren’t silenced.

One possible use for the elevator glitch was getting outside of the map. However, unlike the places in CoD4 where you could shoot through one-way walls and rake in the kills without risk of dying, getting outside of the map in MW2 serves little purpose. Basically the only thing to do outside the map is explore the areas that are only modeled as backgrounds you see when a chopper gunner flies into the map.

Game Element Interaction Exploits

Game Elements refer to perks, guns, attachments, and other bits of gameplay. This type of exploit is the interaction between a few of these elements to cause an unfair advantage. One early example of this, which has since been patched, is the Javelin Jihad glitch. This used, obviously, the javelin missile launcher, which has a large blast radius for it’s explosion. Through a series of weapon switches and timing, the glitch would somehow load the explosion into the player. This meant that, when the player using the glitch died, they would explode with the force of the javelin rocket. Excellent for payback and for racking up multi-kills. Also excellent for pissing off players and making them want to snipe.

Second of these glitches was the OMA Shield MG glitch. OMA allowed the player to switch to a shield class, while at the same time,

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they hopped on a mounted machine gun. When the OMA class came up, the player would still be holding the mounted machine gun, but would have the riot shield in front of them, making them essentially invulnerable from the front. Unfortunately, Infinite Ward designed the maps so that nearly every mounted machine gun in the game is placed in an exceptionally worthless place, making this glitch rarely used and even more rarely a problem.

The third interaction between game items that could be considered an exploit was the Double Models. The Model 1887 shotgun, wielded Akimbo, with FMJ, stopping power, and steady aim, ensured that anyone in front of you for half the length of the map would die. Infinity Ward patched this, but forgot to fix the FMJ version, so it continued for another week or so before that too was patched. Now and then you may find a player running around with akimbo models. If you do, feel bad for them not knowing any better.

Glitches

There are really only three types of disadvantageous glitches. The first is the OMA Pack/Laptop glitch. When a player uses OMA, a rucksack fills their screen, ostensibly containing the pieces of their new kit. When a player calls in many killstreaks, they pull up a laptop allowing them to target part of the map. If either of these is happening when the host of a game quits, the game will change hosts. When the new host returns, the OMA change timer or the killstreak assignment will have been reset. Without the completion flags, the game doesn’t change the player. So, you run around with a rucksack or laptop filling your field of vision, unable to do anything but knife. Not very useful.

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Like the geometry interactions from the previous page, there are geometry interactions involved with glitches here as well. Getting Stuck in Geometry is one of them. A few places in the maps, you can climb on top of or over objects, but not fully clear them. One example is on Quarry, by the large red fuel tanks, on the left side of the hole in the fence. Trying to move through that area will result in you getting stuck. You can’t move, jump, or go prone. You can still turn and shoot, crouch and stand, and knife. The only possible benefit to this glitch is that it counts as being in the air, allowing you to get the Airborne challenge done if you get two kills.

Another in the vein of game element interactions from the previous page is getting Outside Radiation. In Afghan and Wasteland, you can get outside the radiation if you run a marathon/lightweight class, have painkiller active, and throw down a tactical insertion. The radiation is designed to kill a player before they can move very far, and so it doesn’t stretch out infinitely. So running outside the map with painkiller, which lets you survive longer, and dropping a tac insert out in the radiation, starts you off. From there you spawn on the tac insert and keep running. Usually, by the time you are about to die a second time, you’ll be outside the radiation. Much like the outside the map glitches, this one isn’t very useful to anyone besides boosters.

Closure

Infinity Ward made a buggy game, but to their credit, most of these issues have been patched. Of course, that’s not to say those were

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the only issues. Do you know of one I don’t? Is there one still unpatched that you think should be? Go ahead and post it in the comments, and let me know. The more people know about it, the more likely something will be done. If you want, you can go to Robert Bowling’s Twitter and let him know of a glitch you’ve found. He’s the community manager for MW2 and can keep you appraised.

If you’re done with MW2 after all this glitched insanity, you can always check out Heavy Rain (it has nudity!) or Final Fantasy 13, both new games with lots to do.

By the way, ignore the picture. I’m not a JTagger and I don’t sell hacks. I’m sure you can find someone to scam you if you really want, though.

This post is part of the series: Modern Warfare 2 Cheats & Tricks

This article series contains all the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 cheats, tricks, secrets, glitches, hints and tips you need to maximize your gameplay.

  1. 9 Ways to Spot Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Cheats
  2. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Glitches
  3. Reliable Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Trainer Programs
  4. Secret Spots in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Hints and Tips
  6. Tips and Tricks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2