Where Have All the Cheats Gone?

[SyphonX]

I've always said it has less to do with 'achievements', and more to do with the level of immersion that games have attained. Cheating often "breaks the immersion" in games, and it has become less acceptable to do so. Nearly every game these days immerses you until you drown outright, and coming up for air breaks the fun.

Besides, I primarily play on PC, where 'mods' are more prevalent, where cheats are trivialized by "Fly like superman with a fully automatic atomic bomb mini-gun" mods.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

using an Action Replay to unlock more than half of F-Zero GX (because you needed to transfer your memory card from an F-Zero AX machine... and only 7 exist! Screw that!)

It turns out that you don't actually need to use the arcade transfer to unlock everything. From what I remember, you can do it all using only the GC version of the game, but, and it's a pretty big but, you basically have to beat everything in the game on the highest difficulty, which is borderline impossible to do. The only things you miss out on are a couple custom machine parts, but everything else is at least theoretically possible if you're extremely good at the game. I've seen it done, but I've never come remotely close to doing it myself, because holy crap is that game hard.

 

[Trishbot]

using an Action Replay to unlock more than half of F-Zero GX (because you needed to transfer your memory card from an F-Zero AX machine... and only 7 exist! Screw that!)

It turns out that you don't actually need to use the arcade transfer to unlock everything. From what I remember, you can do it all using only the GC version of the game, but, and it's a pretty big but, you basically have to beat everything in the game on the highest difficulty, which is borderline impossible to do. The only things you miss out on are a couple custom machine parts, but everything else is at least theoretically possible if you're extremely good at the game. I've seen it done, but I've never come remotely close to doing it myself, because holy crap is that game hard.

Oh, yeah, I know. I LOVE F-Zero GX... but I think you're underselling how difficult that game is.

I remember beating the entire Story Mode, and I felt really good about it. It was tough. VERY tough. Hours upon hours of defeats, crashes, and near-victories. I finally beat it and the game goes "great, you beat it on Normal. Now try HARD." Um... what?

And then, did you know that if you beat the Prix on the Hardest settings, you unlocked FMV ending movies for every character (including the AX racers)? But that means in order to see everyone's, you have to beat the Prix on the hardest settings nearly 40 times!

Again, I LOVE that game (and I wish it was online. Can you imagine how great that would be?), but a game that difficult is one I feel no shame about using a code to unlock more than half the content for considering how difficult it was just to unlock less than 5%.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Oh, yeah, I know. I LOVE F-Zero GX... but I think you're underselling how difficult that game is.

I remember beating the entire Story Mode, and I felt really good about it. It was tough. VERY tough. Hours upon hours of defeats, crashes, and near-victories. I finally beat it and the game goes "great, you beat it on Normal. Now try HARD." Um... what?

Yeah, I had just as much trouble making it through it on Normal, and even thinking about Hard made me cry. Then I looked it up online and discovered that you have to beat Very Hard to actually unlock anything important and immediately accepted that I would never, ever complete even half the game, even though I'd managed to finish everything in all the previous ones, starting with the original. Whoever was in charge of F-Zero GX was just sadistic and evil.

 

[General BrEeZy]

rockbands the only achievement game i know of that has "cheats", and they disabled achievements when they were active. why cant anyone else do that? the shooters especially can have fun with it, just like Goldeneye and Perfect dark! sure the fast animation would be tough with all the loadtimes, but do it anyways!! xD

 

[mikespoff]

So instead of having cheats on for a ridiculously difficult game, the games have gotten easier but you get a bonus for playing them in a way that's more challenging.

Not a bad shift, really. It certainly encourages you to spend longer playing the game, which may translate to actually enjoying it more...

 

[Drexlor]

I used to use cheats in almost any game I could find them for if I ever did multiple playthroughs of them. Now, earning trophies is much too tempting to use them anymore. I am forced to go only on pure skill (Unless I can exploit what is already there for really hard trophies).

 

[Flunk]

Are you sure cheatcodes weren't killed by games becoming easier? I can't think of any recent game I've been unable to beat, nothing like Prince of Persia or Contra anymore.

 

[CCountZero]

Usually after I beat a game I'll cheat with it to have more fun with it. Hooray for cheat engine (pc) and trainers! I absolutely hate anyone who uses cheats in multiplayer though, just ruins the whole point and spirit of the game then.

I really miss cheats in games though because sometimes with the right cheats they really extended the gameplay.

The only thing I can think of is that most games now don't need them because they are so easy. The difficulty now-a-days throws me off whenever I fire up an older game and I get my ass handed to me until I switch up my tactics or apply some thinking to get through certain obstacles and situations.

Pretty much my thoughts.

I know a lot of people dislike CheatHappens for "making money off CheatEngine" or some bull like that, but really, if I can pay for a lifetime sub and save myself 85% of the time I'd spend fiddling in Engine, I consider it fair game.

Personally, I was really ticked off when Blizzard went all banhammer on those dudes who used a trainer for single-player SCII, because it interfered with their achivement score, which is apparently a big deal because it disrupts the multiplayer. Or something.

In a world where developers complain about piracy, they sure seem to be encouraging it too >.<

Loved to see how the Debug menu for DX:HR was still buried in the code, waiting to be unlocked.
No reason for PC gamers to complain about the non-existent New Game+ any more

 

[Clonekiller]

I admit it. I still play Age of Empires II once in a while just to get my killer machine-gun car. (Galactic Battlegrounds for Simon the killer ewok as well) I do miss the goofy god-mode units in RTS games. Spawning an army of hapless stormtroopers in Jedi Academy, and then leading an army of spawned rebel soldiers in a massive firefight of my own making was also fun beyond all reason. Yeah, I do miss cheat codes, though somehow I'm not quite sure achievements are totally to blame. I would guess it's more of a case of developers not wanting (or forbidding) spending time creating goof units. Still, it would be awesome if I could turn my party members in ME2 into killer space hamsters.

 

[ace_of_something]

The original Street Fighter II you had to put in a cheat code on the SNES version to play as the same character. This was considered the biggest damn deal ever at the time.

I remember the game genie and gameshark actually. I remember the game genie would sometimes crash games too.
My buddy had a game shark and he would always switch to a different memory card on his PSx to use it because the GS often screwed up save files.

There was a dark side.

 

[beniki]

NES games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and Shinobi were made infinitely more playable thanks to codes that allowed us to skip levels

Um, Shinobi? One of Sega's flagship franchises in the arcade/8-/16-bit eras? A NES game? Really?

*checks*

Wow, it really exists - didn't expect that. That's like Uncharted on the XBox 360.

Final Fantasy was a NES original too, if you can believe that.

I do miss the old button push codes though. Those were the days when gaming was still silly and serious at the same time. Now it's big money and focus groups and devs pushed too hard to make fun of their own games.

Anyone remember DK mode? Or paintball mode? Where are Mario's Warp Whistles, where you have to squat on a random block for a few seconds to go behind the background? The simple pleasure of hammering out a combo during a title sequence is a long forgotten experience.

But hey, we've got automatic Facebook updates telling people we never really talk to anyway that we cleared Level 2 on Mirror's Edge. That's a fair trade right?

The 4th wall of video games is built too high now. I don't play it, but does Call of Duty have console commands any more?

And if someone responds to that saying of course you can use an Xbox controller, I'm going straight to my rocking chair to grumble about kids on my lawn.

 

[unacomn]

I miss Big Head mode. Every game used to have it. EVERY GAME! Now where has it gone?
And you know what, sometimes it's not even the achievements, it's the companies. Because Eidos wouldn't delay Tomb Raider Underworld until it was done, Crystal Dynamics couldn't add Lara's Giant Tomato suit. Just imagine it. Lara Croft as a Giant Tomato, fighting undead in Hellheim!

 

[Gitty101]

Meh, I don't really miss them to be honest. But I suppose to those of you who really care about this, there is always the option to mod PC versions of the game.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Sadly, those days are gone. We live in a time where a cheat is no longer a secret coded into the game by fun-loving developers, or an exploit unlocked using a popular, store-bought accessory. Cheating, as we once knew it, is dead - and we have Achievements to blame.

I disagree 100%. I base this on the fact that cheating died long before achievements came along. I refer, specifically, to the PS2/Xbox/GC era, by which time cheating was phased-out almost completely. There's also the fact that games have existed with cheats in the achievement era, and they're programmed specifically to just not allow achievements to unlock if a cheat is active (I believe Starcraft 2 does this). Rather, I offer that it was the fault of online gaming becoming more and more popular, mixed with today's gamer having a different view on them.

Take the online gaming; Imagine if there was a Game Genie for the 360 that you could pick up at any Best Buy or Gamestop. Imagine the impact that would have on any of the popular online multiplayer games that are currently all the rave today? They'd be irrelevant. Games would be swamped with people using legally purchased devices to give themselves infinite ammo, space jumping, and God only knows what else. It just wouldn't work. Multiplayer would be a complete graveyard outside of the few people who enjoy messing around with the cheats with other people using those same cheats.

Then there's the gaming community itself. Ironically, in an era where people will throw a *****-fit over the slightest bit of challenge in a game, people will throw an even bigger fit if someone posts a video of themselves playing a game with even the subtlest of cheats activated. Simply put, cheats aren't popular in today's crowd. You had to use a cheat that gives you 30 lives to beat Contra? Clearly you just suck at the game. Come back and brag when you do it without cheating. You dirty cheater.

To put it in the simplest of terms, cheating didn't die-out because of achievements. Cheating died-out simply because times have changed.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

the golden days of Hexwizard made so many games fun in replays.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

I really want proper cheats in my games. Out of new games only Duke Nukem Forever has real, proper cheats (god mode BTW disables trophies).

I sometimes replay Blood on PC. Eventually it pisses me off and then I type "Lara Croft" and start firing bouncing endless napalm balls in all directions. I wish more games did that now...
I mean, you can't go wrong with a lot of napalm.
Oh, and some older cheats were delicious. Shadow Warrior anyone? Purely cosmetic cheat... That replaced your missiles with white exploding rabbits? I believe Postal 2 stole the idea later (cats instead of machinegun bullets).

No, Postal 2 used cats as a silencer for the gun. As in they stuck the barrel up the cats rear end. It wasn't a cheat, either.

No, I've played Postal 2 a lot and it had a cheat... It was "rockincats" if I remember correctly. It will make your gun fire all cats instead of bullets. Cat meat shower. But yes, in normal game you just use cat as silencer.

 

[Artemicion]

Actually the 2008 Spyro game had built-in cheats that wouldn't turn off achievements - activating some of them actually popped a few.

Not that I'm sure anyone cares.

 

[czarevilsam]

I really want proper cheats in my games. Out of new games only Duke Nukem Forever has real, proper cheats (god mode BTW disables trophies).

Personally, I was really ticked off when Blizzard went all banhammer on those dudes who used a trainer for single-player SCII, because it interfered with their achivement score, which is apparently a big deal because it disrupts the multiplayer. Or something.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/1316152

Starcraft 2 has cheat codes, they simply disable achievements. You don't need trainers unless you just want the achievement points.

 

[ltbigjohn]

mercenaries 2 had cheats too. i will never get tired of dropping a nuke on a single jeep.