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

Richard Dower

.....to go on the internet and Youtube to see how it's done?

I'm a huge Arkham City/Asylum fan....game is amazing but jaysus it's frustrating! :mad:
There have been the odd few times i was really stuck or a Riddle challenge and could think of NO bloody way to solve it!

Like....i had NO idea you could use explosive gel on Riddler ? marks! :eek:, i always thought you had to Batarang the feckers! :rolleyes:

I don't like cheating, the whole point of the game is a challenge, to use your brain and solve them, and 95% of the time i do....but you just get stuck on that one........:o

cherryghost

Of course it's cheating. Look back 15 years ago, you think you could do that? Come on man... stop cheating and grow a pair, use that muscle in your head

Dravokivich

cherryghost wrote: »

Of course it's cheating. Look back 15 years ago, you think you could do that? Come on man... stop cheating and grow a pair, use that muscle in your head

Back then people photocopied each others walk through out of magazines

Randall Floyd

Depends on what you're looking for in my opinion, location of collectibles bugs the hell out of me and i look them up online occasionally.

Tweej

If I'm really stuck as to what to do, I'll do it. No shame in doing it.

Agricola

Cheating to me is God mode etc. I wouldnt count watching youtube. I was in the same boat with Arkham City. Sometimes you just cant work out how a move is supposed to be executed or you cant survive the nth wave of baddies. Youtube just lets you see how it can be done successfully, but you still have to have the skills to get through it yourself.

Anyway Im too old to care about cheating anymore. I dont have the time or inclination to punish myself with a game. If I can find a shortcut I will usually use it. I still get great value from the games I play and Im happy.

YellowFeather

Almost two decades ago, my dad rang the 1800-£5-per-minute-phone number to find out how to get through the final Zelda dungeon in Link's Awakening (had to shoot a statue with an arrow - simpler times ). I was a child at the time, but I still feel disgraced when I think back.

Don't do it man - you're better than that!!!

Varik

For for the Arkham games yes, it's cheating.

other games depends.

Grumpypants

You can cheat but we get to stand out side your house doing this.

Richard Dower

Varik wrote: »

For for the Arkham games yes, it's cheating.

other games depends.

Please explain your reasoning.............

RobbingBandit

Downloaded both Zelda Oracle games for the 3DS two days ago, I have spent at least 30 minutes on guide sites since then, no shame in needing help, games are meant to be fun not frustrating.

marshbaboon

Depends on the situation really. If it's a puzzle, and it's making an attempt to be clever rather than convoluted nonsensical garbage, I'll try to figure it out on my own & only look at walkthroughs if I'm stuck to the point that I can't proceed.

If it's just an incredibly complex game (dwarf fortress, feed the beast) you basically can't play them without tutorials.

danthefan

If it's a single player game then you can do whatever the hell you like, "cheating" is obviously a pejorative term but if you decide you want to watch a YouTube video or give yourself infinite ammo or lives or whatever then it's up to you. There is no right or wrong way to play a single player game imo.

Like the first thing I did when I got Skyrim was mod out the carry weight limit. Inventory management is not something I am remotely interested in. I'm sure someone somewhere would say I was cheating but honestly I couldn't give a toss.

Turtwig

Multiplayer cheating is a no no.

Single Player Cheating would be going on the internet to get a solution to a puzzle in Layton but it's not black or white, it depends on the game and the moment you're stuck in.

When the original Splinter Cell game was released for PC the vanilla the had a bug in it that made completing one level almost impossible. It was doable but only after the gamer accidentally or intentionally avoided a sequence of events that would trigger a bug. Back then, many folk were still using dial-up. Downloading the latest patch wasn't really something you would consider a priority especially if the bug wasn't immediately obvious. In Splinter Cell the bug happened the first time you used the Laser Mic in the campaign so the player really had little way of knowing if they were recording the actual conversation the correct way. It was one of those moments where even though you were doing what felt intuitively right you still weren't sure you were actually doing the correct thing.

Then there are those moments in a game where you've figured out the solution to the problem proposed but it's not working out for you and you can't explain why. The camera angle, shifts, the jumps seems too long, you character should make the jump but for someone reason never does.
In the better designed games this is less of a problem but it still exists nonetheless. In the Sands of Time there's a section where the game forces you backtrack through a certain obvious path. However, if you choose another route the Prince will inexplicably fall to his death each and every time. It's so bad he'll actually over jump the platform sometimes! It's even worse when you consider the net results of both routes is theoretically the same.

Nowadays games tend to be far too easy so when frustration does hit a player they're less able to handle to it and the internet does provide a ridiculously easy crutch to lean on. In skill games where implementation and dexterity is required this isn't much of an issue. But in games where knowing the solution is the only implementation required it leads to moments where players can get stuck and seek online solutions en masse. For a game like Layton I wouldn't regard this as correct, however Layton offers you multiple puzzle choices at any one time. If the game is more limited and forces to be stuck on particular puzzle in one particular room for eternity then it's ok in my view to seek help. It's just about being balanced. Sort of like life I guess. If you seek help for everything then you're doing it wrong, but if never seek help then chances are you may be doing it wrong too. Also, how many little quirks about a game go missed if you don't research the game you're playing?

Some games become more enjoyable when you use 'cheats'. Is there anything more epic than landing a military helicopter on a stormy sea and launch missiles at the tanks on the roads in Vice City? Of course there is! Having an epic shoot out on the military tower and constantly retuning your health is epic craic for me. For others these things might not even raise an eyebrow - but I loved them! Another one would be playing the Endurance level on Rogue Leader with infinite lives. Tie fighter killing heaven! without the frustration of annoying kamikaze ties.

My criteria is fun. If the game isn't fun then you are free to do whatever it is that makes the game fun for you. It's not correct to have game experience ruined for you because you a boss is poor designed. After all you bought it so it be up to you how you decide to enjoy it. If that's destroying the physical copy of it with sledgehammer, then so be it.

Vojera

It's no different to asking your friend with the same game how they got past it, so I don't think it's cheating. Doing it too much can spoil a game though, it removes the incentive to work at it.

nesf

Some single player games are so straightforward that looking up stuff is being extremely lazy (I will admit to doing this in some of the Lego games simply because it was my kid playing them and finding out the answer fast meant I could get back to whatever it was I was doing!).

Others though, e.g. Anno 2070 or Crusader Kings II. Honestly you'd have to be an extreme masochist not to look at a few youtube videos for them as, quite famously with Paradox games, very little of the crucial base mechanics are actually explained well in-game or in the manual. You could definitely play either without ever looking at a guide or let's play but you're making life hard for yourself and it's not like these are the kinds of games were knowing how the basic mechanics works spoils the games and reduces their longevity. My belief is that both of these games, and games like them, are built with the idea that the community will fill in the information gaps with wikis and guides.

marco_polo

Depends I try not to but if something is on the verge of ruining a game then I would resort to an internet hint.

If the answer is really obvious then I tend to feel silly afterwards, but if it is somehow convoluted or a glitch, then I move along 100% guilt free.

The latest example I can think of was a qte fight in max Payne 3 that was hypersensitive to keystrike timings. I can't say I'd have a much greater sense of satisfaction at the end if I had wasted a few hours on it figuring it out myself.

Sabre0001

I'd prefer to cheat to get past a point than cheat myself out of the full game experience

Retr0gamer

I don't think it's cheating. Any time I'm stuck in a game and look it up it;s always something really stupid like a badly textured switch that blends in with the background or something else really obvious or badly designed. Back in my megadrive days I was stuck in Shining Force 2 because I couldn't advance the plot. Took me about 2 months to find out that a plank of wood I received in a battle needed to be used on a tree in a town I had been through 5 hours beforehand. I'd take being able to advance the plot over something silly like that killing the game on me.

deathrider

I often get phonecalls from mates asking me how to beat this bit or that bit if they're stuck in a game. If I don't know the answer, I'll tell them to check it out on youtube, to which they usually reply "No! That's cheating!".
How come it's not cheating if I help them, but it if if someone else does?... My guess- they're mental!

My ultimate cheat was in Morrowind.. Had put about 600 hours into the game when I realised I had found the Keening or Sunder blade earlier on (i think it was one of those) and lost it in a storage box that reset.
Had to open up the dev kit and place it in a box to finish off Dagoth Ur.

Completely justified imo.

Tipsy McSwagger

It's better to 'cheat' and move on in the game than to get frustrated and stop playing a game you might have forked out €40 for.

Clover

No it's not cheating imo , do it myself from time to time when I'm really stuck so that I can move on through the game.

Canis Lupus

Dunno if I'd say it was cheating. Back in the day before easy internet access I could spend ages trying to figure something out. Whether it was sometimes bad level design like Jedi Knight that had a few levels with really obscure jumps or a tricky dungeon in Zelda I'd get mad, turn the game off but come back and get or eventually.

I guess now I'm older I find YouTube is an easy crutch but moreover I have too many games and a short attention span. I rarely put the time into any single game like I did when I was young and I figure 'cheating' is an acceptable excuse to get through a sticky part of a game quickly.

Mal-Adjusted

I never understood the negative connotation with using Cheats. Games are meant to be fun, not frustrating. If i can't get past a certain area, i'll gladly cheat in order to continue playing the game. It's either that or just give up on it, which isn't really fair considering how much these things cost.

There are times when it's not really applicable though. Online stuff is against another person and would give you an unfair advantage, but against the computer is okay.

landsleaving

If you're not having fun anymore it's not cheating. I'm playing through Ocarina on the 3DS and there's some stuff I just forgot about that I had to look up. The Ice Cavern was one. I'd gotten the piece of heart in the same area and forgotten that going left led to the place I needed to actually go. Queue 3 hours of wandering around Hyrule aimlessly, shouting at Navi. I just looked it up. Life's too short.

And now the water temple. I hate you, water temple.

Tipsy McSwagger

Cheating is putting in a code to get infinite lives or a level skip.

johnny_ultimate

So many examples of hard segments in games are merely examples of bad design. Take some of the more... obtuse point and click puzzles out there. They require stretches of logic so illogical that really it's just wasting your time trying to operate on the same thought pattern. Even recently I can recall looking up a solution to a baffling puzzle and thinking "Really? How the **** was I meant to figure that out?!"

That said, it can sometimes be tricky determining between bad and brilliant when it comes to puzzle design When you're sitting there stumped, and suddenly the solution dawns on you, and you realise whoever put it together is an absolute genius - having looked up the solution before that beautiful realisation can feel a little like you've cheated yourself out of that satisfaction.

KonFusion

Without looking up a walkthrough (I think it was on 'supercheats.com', many moons ago) I would have never have known that Meryl's codec number was on the back of the cd case in MGS1. (Took me over a year to get around to it and when I discovered it I felt so retarded).

We had no internet at home at the time, so I had to get my mom to print it off in work and bring it home :pac:

Same with Alundra. Without a walkthrough to consult that game would have been impossible for me to complete. Even with the walk-through it was still harder than most games today.

So I guess it depends.

Tomk1

Depending on the game, if a game is meant to be a puzzle-type then that's part of the game, atfer trying everthing fo a few days, putting the game down and stuck for a month, then it's time to bite the bullet & look for a hint on what to do.
Back when the internet was newish, I played Douglas Adams' Starship titanic, what a great game but got stuck towards the end for over 8 months, maybe more, trying the game for hours of tormenting frustration every now and again, even when I got the web I wouldn't look up what to do, till one day I had to admit I was beat, and had to look it up the solution, which turn out I did try but you try and try over and over till it worked (think it was catching sparrows).

In Tomb raider underworld had to look up on how to defeat the beast-thing at the end, hours of 1min segments being killed over and over again was no fun.

I think it's ok when the alternative is having a twitch in your eye when someone mentions the game.

Sometimes a brief suggestions/hints can be ok, like in Skyrim I didn't follow the story plan, one of the last quests I did was join the stormcloaks of which one of the sub-quests showed you how to solve & open the stone circular puzzle doors using the glaw, I didn't know the solution was on the glaw, or that you could even inspect the item, so I just tried every combination until I got the door open, took 10-20mins each time and thought that was part of the game as tomb-raider often had puzzles like that.

If it adds to the gameplay and enjoyment of the game no it's not cheating,but if it ruins the game then whats the point in playing.

Marsden

No it's not cheating up, down, left, right A + start is cheating.

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.