Cheating!
Or “using your resources”. Pick your term.
We’ve all done it. Hooked a Game Shark up to your Game Boy to give yourself a Mew and a few hundred Master Balls and Rare Candies. Used Power Overwhelming, Operation CWAL and Show Me the Money in StarCraft. Typed “imacheat” a dozen times into SimCity 2000 to give yourself millions of dollars.
…well, I’ve done all of those, at least.
I just finished a rather fun game of Civilization IV wherein I used the World Builder to give myself a massively unfair advantage. I gave myself several dozen Great People right from the start, resulting in a huge leg up on tech, building, and money. Once I had done so, I proceeded to play a mostly “normal” game, except that I had nukes and the Apollo Program by the mid-1700s, a full two centuries before I can usually snag them if I’m playing at my best. (Well, I also wasn’t afraid to drop a Globe Theatre on the heads of a city that showed any sign of unhappiness. Nor was I afraid to give myself a bunch of Factories early or rifle through other civilizations’ pockets for their unique buildings. BUT. OTHERWISE. NORMAL GAME. *shifty eyes*)
It was a lot of fun! However, a great deal of that fun came from the fact that I was already very familiar with the game and knew I could win normally, and it was amusing to speed up that process.
Which brings me to my next point: I don’t tend to use cheats when I can’t win. Rather, I use them when I can win but want to add some spice to the game. Once I beat Pokemon, it was fun to do it again but with that legendary Mew. Once I was already decent at Starcraft, but couldn’t be bothered to finish a particular game the “normal” way, it was fun to wreak some havoc. And as for SimCity 2000…
…
…okay, I used to have SERIOUS money problems with that game. So, maybe that’s my exception to the rule– I’d cheat just to make that one playable. I’ve learned a lot since then, though! I actually make money in SimCity 4! Legally! No, really!
So how about you guys? Do you cheat often? Did you have a Game-Sharked-Mew just like I did? (Because really, how many times did we try to use Strength on the truck behind the S.S. Anne? And how much Lemonade did we give to the thirsty girl on the Celadon Department Store roof? ALL THE KIDS AT SCHOOL SAID WE WOULD GET A MEW AND WE DIDN’T. You can’t blame us for branching out, now, can you?)
I used the Missingno glitch to get a level 255 Nidoqueen.
Everyone was mad.
I’m pretty much the same, I occasionally cheat if I feel like I want to finish a game but cba actually doing it legit, like DooM 3, but usually I only cheat and stuff once I’ve got the hang of things.
The only game I really ever routinely cheated at was SimCity 2000 because I was abysmal at making revenue.
Then again, I usually also used the cheat menu to unleash countless disasters at once just because I could.
Cheater here. I used a couple of cheats in Halo CE to get through the campaign (unlimited ammo and unlimited life I think). I’ve used strategy guides for some games if I can’t figure out what to do. However, recently, after telling a friend that, he was more or less telling me that it was better for me to learn how to do it on my own and figure out the puzzles myself rather than take away from the fun or knowing I’d completed without any help.
And yes, in Pokemon I did the same things (except I did not get a Mew, I got pokeballs).
It takes me maybe a few hours playing a game before I use every and all cheat codes I can find. I like making every game a sandbox game!
When it comes down to it I am usually far less interested in messing with controls, puzzles and how to freeze/bash with a wrench the bad guys than I am with wandering through games with god mode on so I can see how the story plays out.
And how about playing on easy with overpowered characters against the computer? I love playing the singleplayer campaign on Dark Crusade set as easy with the Necrons. The computer doesn’t have a chance XD
I agree with you, it’s fun to play for real, it’s awesome to play with friends (or against them), but many times you just wanna relax and have fun, and those easily breakable virtual critters make it so damn easy :P
Until the most recent generation of Pokemon games, it was absolutely mandatory that I gave myself a nigh-infinite number of Rare Candies, EV-training items, and the all-important TMs. Not to mention creating eggs with appropriately-IV’d mons if necessary.
Being competitive at a kid’s game is SRS BZNS.
I always cut out the grinding in RPG’s, i like following story lines but don’t see why i have to spend hours leveling beforehand.
I’ve gotten the missingno glitch to work, but my favorite is Glitch City. This basically tricks the game into dumping you out into an unknown location, so it “creates” a location by grabbing whatever hex values happen to be present.
It was so fascinating how this garbled “location” is actually coherent, and you can walk around in it. Just a neat little programming trick that doesn’t require a gameshark.
But, yeah, I used all the cheats in Starcraft et al, just never to win the campaign. That would be…well…cheating :)
Ah, Cheating, my old friend…
I pretty much cheat in every single-player game I play.
As far as I can remember, there is only five games I completed without cheating.
1. Deus Ex 1
2. Deus Ex 2
3. Total Overdose
4. Some Dungeon-based game I can’t remember.
5. F.E.A.R.
and possibly Dragon Age 2 will be number 6.
(This doesn’t mean that I didn’t cheat after I completed the games.)
I like to give myself an advantage.
That way I can stroll around and look at stuff you normally won’t see if you just play the game.
And, admittedly, I do get that “You are all going to die, bitches” thought when I am surrounded by enemies…
…and I like it!