Is it cheating when you're stuck in a game....

callaway92

From recent memory I only needed to do this once before and it was in Uncharted 3 where you had to move the big globe thing around so light shone on a certain part of it. It f'ing drove me nuts.

Even after watching in on Youtube then, I still struggled to get it right :P

RoyalMarine

ah come on...

who really went and found all the skulltulas in ocarina of time by themselves...

Timmyctc

Alot of it may not be cheating. But its hearbreaking when you eventually yield and look up the solution only to realise it was staring you in the face. Or that the puzzle was just a bit too smart for you; and you're sitting there with an erection, sobbing and doubting your gaming skill.

cml387

I admit that I used an internet tool to hack into terminals in Fallout3 regularly, well all the time.
There was so much going on in that game that I didn't see a problem.

nesf

Timmyctc wrote: »

Alot of it may not be cheating. But its hearbreaking when you eventually yield and look up the solution only to realise it was staring you in the face. Or that the puzzle was just a bit too smart for you; and you're sitting there with an erection, sobbing and doubting your gaming skill.

Leisure Suit Larry was a bitch alright.

Penn

I wouldn't necessarily consider it cheating as it's similar to just asking a friend how you do it. And if that was cheating I never would have finished Metal Gear Solid 1 as I couldn't figure out what Meryl's Codec number was.

Considering how big many games are with loads of collectibles, side missions, character abilities, weapons etc, I don't think it's cheating to find out how to do something or where something is located. It's only cheating if you enter in a code or something which pretty much does it for you.

And anyone who says they didn't use the internet to figure out some of the Glitch riddles in Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood are damn liars and are not to be trusted.

balkieb2002

Point and Click and some puzzles in games (especially the Broken Sword series) have caused me to look up how to get past certain parts though I do miss that feeling of satisfaction when you figure it out yourself.

There are some games where the combat/action sections don't interest me but I really want to play to the game for the story usually in some RPGs.

Last time I did this was in Mass Effect. Lost my save game for the first one just as the second game was coming out so I used to a trainer to overpower my character so I could blitz the combat sections and concentrate on the story sections. Actually also used one on the second game to speed up the the mining mini-game.

Beefy78

People keep talking about Metal Gear Solid but surely the best example in that game (seeing as Otacon actually tells you where to find the codec details) is the fight with Psycho Mantis. I don't remember how I beat that fight the first time. I suspect that a friend of mine told me how. But I've played through that game 20 times since and never really seen how you're supposed to work that one out without someone telling you how to beat him. Does someone tell you by codec if you've not worked it out a few minutes into the fight?

I don't consider this cheating as such. I can't say that I've never looked online if I've become stuck but it would only happen when I've become really frustrated with the part of the game that I'm on and like someone else said most of the time it would be because of poor level design. A couple of times there would have been a "oh of course... don't I feel stupid?" when I've read a response (one part of AVP on the PS3 in which you need to put out a fire in order to escape an infinite hoard of aliens being one which springs to mind) but most of the time I'd move on without a second thought.

Penn

Beefy78 wrote: »

People keep talking about Metal Gear Solid but surely the best example in that game (seeing as Otacon actually tells you where to find the codec details) is the fight with Psycho Mantis. I don't remember how I beat that fight the first time. I suspect that a friend of mine told me how. But I've played through that game 20 times since and never really seen how you're supposed to work that one out without someone telling you how to beat him. Does someone tell you by codec if you've not worked it out a few minutes into the fight?

The problem with the codec thing is that you're told the number is on the back of the CD case. There's a room in the tank hanger which has a computer in it. Almost directly under the computer is a guard who, since he's in the room below, shows on the map as a flashing dot (but without the cone of vision the guards usually have, and he stays standing on that spot). Unfortunately, since this is still at the start of the game, many people thought this dot was signifying that there was a CD case beside the computer. Once you get that into your mind, any notion of it being on the back of the actual game case goes out the window because you become convinced it must be at the computer.

As for Mantis, you have to call the Colonel a few times before he tells you. They hint at it and his hints become more obvious each time you ring him, but after 4 or 5 calls he'll just tell you what to do in a "Wait, I've got it! Plug your controller out...etc" kind of way. Same with the other bosses really. They'll give you more obvious hints on how to win the more you ring them (Try using this weapon when he does this... etc)

Shiminay

I'd suggest that if you've reached a point in a game where your frustration levels are at the point where you're even thinking about looking up how to get past it, you should - we supposedly play these things for fun after all I've done it several times, I don't feel one bit bad for doing so, but I almost always feel like a tit for not figuring out what often times ends up being a stupidly obvious solution - except for those Assassins Creed <spoiler>Subject 17</spoiler> bits, they just made my brain hurt and I didn't enjoy them, so would eventually take an evening where I'd load up the solution on YouTube or whatever and just go and do them with spite and venom in my heart

The other side of that same coin is, if I keep having to look up how to get past puzzles or set pieces in a shooter or whatever it happens to be, maybe that particular game isn't for I and I can probably better invest my time playing something that won't frustrate me as much.

Cheating in multiplayer means I hope you contract aidscancer and that you die in a fire in the aidscancer ward of the hospital.

Looking up and learning strategies from better players is not cheating though, it's learning. If you wanna get better at anything, you look at those who are at the top of the ladder for whatever activity it is and see how you can emulate what they're doing to hopefully score similar results

Zillah

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

So many examples of hard segments in games are merely examples of bad design.

^^^ Absolutely this.

When I was younger I was a bit more of a "purest". I'd do everything on my own no matter how hard or obtuse it was. But far too often the reason I was stuck was not because I was being stupid but because the obstacle/solution made not a lick of sense and was some arbitrary nonsense like "oh you were supposed to push over the statue which makes a boulder roll into a tree and then the tree gets angry and bashes the door open?". Neither I nor my guy had any reason to think that would happen, it is a stupid puzzle. I'll give the puzzle a go but if it doesn't seem to be progressing and I'm at that point of running around trying to find anything on the walls that is interactable --> google.

The other thing that I have zero tolerance for is when I need a key that is definitely going to be lying under a table in one of the last fifty rooms I was in and I am expected to do an obsessive compulsive cleaning of the entire game space to find it. Nope, straight to google on that one.

I'd guess maybe 1 in 10 times I discover that the solution made sense and that I probably should have worked it out myself...but the other 9/10ths it's some nonsense and I'm immediately glad I didn't waste an hour in frustration on something that didn't deserve ten minutes.

C14N

Well call it cheating or not, I think that as long as you don't completely depend on it, it's okay to use them now and again. Sometimes, getting stuck is just no fun and for me it would be nicer to find out how to move forward in 5 minutes than spend 5 hours trying to figure it out for the sense of satisfaction. Sometimes using a guide isn't that bad either imo (sorry video game industry, but finding 100 of your item scattered around an open world has never been a fun endeavour). Definitely, if you just want to learn an in-game technique or something, there's no harm in that.

There's something a bit iffy about using it for actual puzzle games or the like though. If you bought the game to figure out brainteasers, then your pretty much wasting your money if you abuse it as much as if you got stuck.

Cheat codes can be fun or can spoil the game depending on how you use them. GTA is a great example of silly codes that make the game more fun for just messing with. After sinking about 80 hours into Fallout 3 though I just gave in and abused codes on that too though. I had had enough and just wanted to see how it ended but it definitely soured the gameplay, especially when you become addicted to them.