Now granted, I spent the first half of my gaming life doing precisely that. When I got Quake installed on my first PC, I played for about 5 minutes before I decided to cheat and hack it. I was God in a brightly lit dungeon, with ammo being the farthest concern from my mind. In retrospect, this revolutionary game was slighted by my laziness and bloodlust. Game programmers put a LOT of work into making games challenging, and that challenge is what makes the game fun, not necessarily the slaughter. To just mindlessly kill things via cheats is to voluntarily vote against thinking, as far as I am concerned.
However, it somewhat begs the question, why even include the cheats in the first place? It's beyond me, but it's still very fun to play with them. To run amuck and just turn enemies into red paste is a grand stress reliever, and slightly less sociopathic than shooting real people. It's an escape to an alternate world anyway, why should I have to be bound by its rules too?
My final thought is, at what point should you consider using cheats? At what point is it fair to you and the game designers to start playing around? Where have you explored all that needs to be explored, and had time to enjoy and embrace all the subtleties of their work, their sold gift? I think it's either after you've played through the entire story on hard mode, or at least twice on regular. Then, feel free to hack, cheat, and rob the AI of their opportunity to make you feel weak and outsmart you.
4 days until L4D2, everyone! Happy gaming!
-The0
Traditionally, cheat codes were there for developers to test the game. Nowadays, many games have goals other than completion: either watching a story unfold or gathering achievements (which can't be won if a cheat code is in place).
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, cheat codes allowed you to get better at a game. Without the 30-life code, I would never have played Contra so much.
That's why cheat codes that don't necessarily make you better at the game, but make the game more entertaining are great for using after you have finished the main story. For example: The good driver cheat in GTA III. What is more entertaining than jumping around in an Esperanto, or flying a tank across the open ocean? Not many things sir, not many things.
ReplyDeleteI think that old game "Driver" did a very good job with handling this issue. IIRC, the game was completely impossible to hack or cheat until you finished the game -- and successfully made it through the very last jaunt through NYC (The President's Run anyone?). The final level was essentially impossible under the regular settings and took a good deal of skill, and a lot of luck, to get through completely. After that, the game pulled out all the stops. "Freight Train" mode was my personal favorite cheat, and it promptly spoiled every bit of fine skill and finesse that I had cultivated over the previous few weeks.
ReplyDeleteLong live "Driver." All other games are crap by comparison.
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Ok, not really. I'm just a sucker for driving/racing games.