Regarding the game hacking. Most of the games nowadays has protections, and loads of them too.
however using simple software like artmoney or similiar you can edit values that are stored in your RAM *not sure about this* this of course is risky but if you spend some time on it it is fully possible. Im guessing that this method isnt really useful for "userjoes" like me in any other scenario than what is mentioned above. And regarding hex. We (me and my brother) used to play Battle Zone. this game came with a .zfs file. if you edited this in HEX you could make yourself invunerable and so on. However you had to patch it before entering a multiplayer game to make it work. I used Hex workshop for this and thats all the experience i have.

Note that i dont recomend anyone to try what i mentioned above. And i do not condone with piracy and/or game cheating/hacking

oh and 2 more things: sorry for getting of topic and thank you for posting this

regards /w0ob