Long opening post:
Do remember when it was a mark of shame to crack a book (or site) in order to progress in a game? Perhaps it still is...
But do you remember a sense of accomplishment for knowing that you beat something on your very own, and you may not have gotten 100% (or more!) completion but at least you beat it?

What I'm wondering is any or all of the following:
1. What games do you feel no shame for having cheating at?
2. What games did you beat without ever having to cheat and you felt a sense of accomplishment?
3. What games do you still feel a vague sense of shame for cheating at?

Now to define "cheating" for the purposes of this post...
Cheating is using any resource other than your own mind or skill or any outside influence to progress in a game. Therefore, if I play FF7 and the *only* thing I know is the code to the vault because I was watching my friends while they played, I have cheated if I open the vault because I knew the code prior to playing. If your older sibling beat this really hard section for you, you cheated. If you looked it up in a guide, you cheated. If someone told you how to do it, you cheated.
If you blindly guessed, you're okay. If the game itself gave you a passcode, that's legal. If dumb luck was involved, that's fine. If you're a master of skillz, then great.

Yes, this is an extremely harsh definition, but it suits my purposes for figuring out what constitutes as your own abilities and the ability of someone else.

Any of the GTA games I didnt give a crap about cheating in, hell half the time it made them more fun.

I try to never cheat as it ruins enjoyment and sense of reward.However the games I do end up having to google a god mode cheat is mostly ported to PC games(Or badly made PC games) where they have a auto save feature and the game auto saves you in a position where you have 10 health and two grenades at your feet.

So without further ado:

1. No shame! Jurassic Park for the SNES. There's a billion little fiddly things to do and no save. Also, Pokemon Explorers of Time. Someone has figured out how to get me all the wondermail I could ever want. You have to raise new recruits from level 1 anyway, and it's harder than in the regular pokemon games.

2. No help! I beat FF4 (back when it was 2 in the US) without using a guide or any help. Oh, the things I missed!

3. Still ashamed! We had to use a guide to get anywhere after the first dungeon of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES). It was our first foray into something beyond Mario (and platforming in general) or Tetris-like things. But after we started using it, we realized how >stupid< we had been. It was so easy! However, that didn't stop us from buying guides for LoZ:OOT and LOZ:MM... and every other Zelda thereafter. Those were... not as easy. (Even though we can beat OOT in hours now, not days.)

I guess, by your definition, I cheated to get through Psychonauts by accessing a walk-through online. I did so only because I got irretrievably stuck in an early level (I didn't recognise that part of the terrain was destructable... I blame Schaefer for that, because the cue that it was had been used elsewhere in that level for non-breakable terrain) and I did want to continue. I did so again on "Meat Circus", because that [censored] knife-thrower puzzle was just too much to solve on a timer.

Otherwise, though, I tend to stay cheat-free.

-- Steve

Grand Theft Auto, but only when I had someone come on over, so we could just do random stuff in-game. Never saved afterwards, of course.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. First time and only time I knew how to cheat (godmode, teleport etc.) in an online game (and it only worked with version 1.00), but I didn't really abuse it. Occasionally I'd go on a public server with an alias, to go snipe people on the Omaha map after teleporting myself onto the roof of the bunkers, but meh. It gets boring quickly because people just wait for your head to pop up.
I also cheated when using my normal nickname, but only when other people were. If someone would teleport under the map, to kill off my entire team, I would just go underground as well, kill that person, then kill myself. I just wanted to see a game played fair.

Oh, another one: Pokémon Pearl. Used pokésav to get my pokémon battle-ready, simply because I can NOT be arsed to grind them to level 100 and try to get their IV's and EV's right.

I'm not against using walkthroughs, but only to make sure I'm not missing anything. I won't look up answers to puzzles or strategies, etc. However, I will look up stuff like the location of all 100 skulltula for the Ocarina of Time, and similar things.

I don't use cheat codes until I've completely beaten a game legit, and never online.

Simon_TR:

I don't use cheat codes until I've completely beaten a game legit, and never online.

Same here. Although I will admit that sometimes the cheating is more fun than the real game, if slightly less challenging.

Haha, I used to cheat all the time when I first started gaming. Mostly for messing around you know like spawning a million evil chickens in Baldur's Gate, then spawning a hundred Drizzt's to butcher em'?

Don't cheat at all these days. However, although I don't consider looking up a guide occasionally cheating per say, I'll still rarely do so unless I'm really stuck.

1. For the gta series i feel no shame for having cheated. Most of the time it was hilarious giving all people guns and/or running around shooting everything in sight.

2. The singleplayer campaigns of the call of duty series, beat all of them without cheating on veteran. Although i camped underneath a trainwagon in the last level of cod:uo. My poor pc couldn't handle all the action back then.

3. I cheated in X3:reunion, a space sim game. Gave myself lots of money and some nice ships to fly. I feel ashamed because the fun part of the game is all about getting enough money and reputation to buy those ships in the first place. So i got bored real quick after that. But it did feel awesome to fly a carrier class containing 40 fighters and pay the nearby pirate sector a short visit.

This is all really interesting. The kind of responses suggest that cheating is "okay" if you get hopelessly, hopelessly stuck; if it makes the game even more "fun" or "funnier"; or if the game is "unfairly hard" due to port-problems.

However, I'm also seeing a good many responses that suggest that cheating is never okay. I didn't expect it, but it's completely reasonable. Does that say something about how my morals have degraded due to easy access to the exploitation of video games?

While I am in complete agreement about cheating online or against other people that don't have the same cheats (like if everyone has a code to give them all guns that shoot shurikens and lightning as opposed to butter-flavored donuts, at least the playing field is still "even") do we think cheating is "okay" due to the fact that it's just a game, because it's you vs the computer and the computer always has an unfair advantage, or because it is just you and the computer and you want to get your money's worth out of a game / finish the compelling storyline? I hope we continue to get some posts, because this is turning out to be very interesting.

Also, I forgot we completed Kirby's Adventure for the NES without cheating. It was a team effort though, my sisters and I, and so in this case by my very own rules, we cheated because we helped each other. So, should I append the rules to include team effort i.e. two heads are better than one? If both (or more) of you are puzzling it out without cracking the book, aren't you still, in a sense, being completely legit?

Used to cheat a bit. Put cheats in for the bonus skaters in Tony Hawk's 3 on PS2, plus I've used a few walkthroughs. Don't think I've cheated at all in this generation though, although I have helped other people with bits they were stuck on. My exception will be if I get FF XIII, I've finished X and just about to go back to XII (which I stopped when I got my PS3) - but I always use a walkthrough cause there's just so much stuff.

I was given Goldeneye for the N64 by a family friend, and he'd left his completed gamesave on the cartridge (those were the days...) he'd unlocked nearly all of the cheats, and I spent many an hour gleefully running around the second Bunker level with invincibility, infinite ammo and all weapons firing dual RPGs/Grenade Launchers in every direction (until the frame reate dropped considerably. Dual P90s and Autoshotguns were pretty cool too. For a long time i always used cheats in any game that had the option, but only once I got older did I see the value in a game actually presenting a challenge.

I started using a strategy guide to find side quests and hidden Espers. There's just SO MUCH to do in that game, you need a hint. For pete's sake, there is actually an item you get only by opening and NOT opening certain chests throughout the game, and you are never given the faintest clue to this, at all. But for the Espers and whatnot, the battles were usually extremely difficult. The kind of battle to get your palms sweating. You really had to earn those Espers, so I never felt guilty about looking up how to find them.

I'm most ashamed of never beating Final Fantasy IX without cheat codes. I've only beat it once and that was when it first came out and I was younger, with a game shark. I couldn't touch the final boss at all so I used it. A lot. Oh foul game shark. Usually glitched my games to heck by using it anyway. I'm currently going through the game again, kicking its arse pretty good all on my own!

I'm also ashamed that I couldn't play Resident Evil 2. I'm a pansy. Scared the poo out of me. Still does. The ONLY way I could get through it was with the sound off and with a gameshark, making me invincible and giving me whatever weapons and ammo I wanted. Made me feel much better.

I dont think cheats are all that fun, even after you beat the game without them. I dont know why people find them so appealing.

Gamer137:
I dont think cheats are all that fun, even after you beat the game without them. I dont know why people find them so appealing.

It's exactly this kind of opinion that I want to understand. Bravo, sir! Now granted, there are games that are much "easier" to complete or beat without cheating. There's still a massive amount of skill and practice involved, but you don't *need* a strategy guide to beat Halo, or Soul Caliber. However, I've gotten the vibe that it's nearly impossible to get through MMORPGS and RPGS without one these days. Definitely MMO's though. I mean, who doesn't use quest helper in WOW? Just because Blizzard doesn't have a problem with it doesn't mean that it doesn't fall under the definition of cheating I'm using here. It's not part of the original game (or a patch for the original game).

But then again, is a little help now and then such a bad thing? If you can work collaboratively with another person, then why can't you turn to someone in the virtual world and figuratively say, "I need a little hand with this. Oh you have a guide? Great, can I borrow that? Thanks, man!"

If you don't feel as if a game is a test of your personal achievement potential, then why shouldn't you ask for help if you get stuck? So then, does your personal outlook on what a game represents to you determine your morality?

Thank you all for the replies thus far!

Arcadia2000:

What I'm wondering is any or all of the following:
1. What games do you feel no shame for having cheating at?
2. What games did you beat without ever having to cheat and you felt a sense of accomplishment?
3. What games do you still feel a vague sense of shame for cheating at?

1. All that I cheat in.
2. The halo series since they have no cheats.
3. None.

I try my damnedest not to cheat in anyway, in any game with only one real exception. I beat most games without ever having to use a cheat, walkthrough or other outside help. But to answer your three questions:

1. I am in no way, shape or form ashamed of using cheats to beat any Grand Theft Auto game. The only cheats I use in them are the cheat for all weapons and to lower wanted level. Technically it doesn't really make the game any easier. Just eliminates the annoyance of having to drive to the gun shop everytime I run out of ammo, and having to run from the police for half-a-fucking-hour everytime I finish a mission.

2. Like I said I beat pretty much every game without cheats. But when I was younger I didn't have any such morals and cheated all the time. One of the first difficult games I ever beat without using a cheat, walkthrough or help from someone else was Final Fantasy VII, still feel accomplished.

3. I'm still ashamed of using a walk-through to help be get through parts of Still Life and Dream Fall: The Longest Journey. There were a few puzzles I couldn't quite figure out how to do and had to look them up online.

Maybe it's because I'm one of those Ritalin-chewing self-gratifying wankers that everyone furiously advertises to these days, but I've never really cared whether or not I'm cheating. I bought the game, I'm playing through it, and I suffer absolutely no guilt over enjoying the thing my own way. I do like to go through games plain, when I can, but as soon as it starts getting too annoying or un-fun I crack open the console and give myself infinite hit points. Even in story-driven love-fests like Planescape Torment and Morrowind, where I've immersed myself to the point that playing a fan-modded blue elf with dual scimitars (and not noticing the Drizzt similarity until it's far too late) doesn't seem as ridiculous as it wholeheartedly is, I just don't care enough to stick to the core gameplay unless the core gameplay is unutterably fun just how it is.

Let's sling some examples.

Chrono Cross. I'm hardly a completionist, but my first time playing through that game I missed so much content that it wasn't long before every single boss I came across was carving me up for hors d'oeuvres. There's a whole lot of innocent, non-intuitive stuff that can wreck everything that the game just never tells you about. So I felt not toolish at all when next I went through with a walkthrough open next to me trying to find out which dialog option to avoid so as to not lose forever three separate characters.

Fire Emblem. When a character dies, they die forever, and you never get to use them again. Healers have absolutely no way of defending themselves, and there are very, very few of them, and maybe one or two on horses. Fuck that shit, I'm invincible.

Morrowind. Wait! Morrowind is good! I don't need cheats for Morrowind! Well, no, technically I don't need it. Technically, it is also a HELL of a lot less fun to play when I CAN'T fly around picking off cliff racers with mass implosion spells. Sometimes it's just plain FUN to be the superpowered asshole that commoners shriek and cringe away from. Sometimes it's fun to be able to kamehameha the big horrible things that would chew through your skeleton with the ease that only a vindictive game developer can provide. And come on, Vivec without high-speed levitation is too annoying to contemplate. And I didn't really TRY to emulate Drizzt with the scimitar thing. I was a mage, honest.

I never cheat in multiplayer games, though. If only because I hate being called on it.

bluerahjah:
Any of the GTA games I didnt give a crap about cheating in, hell half the time it made them more fun.

Yep. Same here.

By your definition, I cheat compulsively because I look at a FAQ quite a bit. I draw the line at using cheats again other players, and don't use actual cheats, but I feel no shame in using a guide. Mah, I suppose it's because I prefer to let my brain turn off while gaming, and use my fingers more.

"What games do you feel no shame for having cheating at?"

Disgaea. Any of them. I always exploit the hospital's "Random Item Rarity" system, to build up a load of money at the start.

007 golden eye... would use super slow or fast forward cheat with invcibility to get a funny cinamatic (like on slow when james bond grabs onto the helicopter on slow it makes it look like the copter was leaving as soon as he jumped in the air and then he flew off)

I don't agree with your definition of cheating, I think in order to cheat you have to be using some method outside the parameters of the game, either by hacking it with an AR or Game Genie or other hacking software, using a cheat code in the game, or having someone else play the game for you and claiming it as your own.

Guides don't count as cheating, neither does getting help from someone as long as you're still playing the game.

That being said, I don't usually even LOOK at a guide or any other documentation about a game until I'm done at least one playthrough. I made that mistake with Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced and it ruined it for me, not just with spoilers, but knowing that you can get Steal Weapon really early means that everytime I play the game, I have to do that.

I don't count guides as "cheating", but I do feel they can detract from my own gameplay experience, but once I have played through the game, I'll ALWAYS crack out a guide and try and get everything I missed on my first playthrough.

1. Mark of Kri. There's a certain point of difficulty where it stops being challenging and it becomes poor game design. An action game with a neat combat system that was bogged down with eight hours of compulsory stealth missions.

2. I don't think I've ever played a game that didn't require peeking at a walkthrough. Now I'm depressed.

3. Just too fucking depressed to answer this one...

Altorin:
I don't agree with your definition of cheating...

Guides don't count as cheating, neither does getting help from someone as long as you're still playing the game.

And this is a prime example of why humans as a species are at the top of the pyramid - we cooperate. I knew someone was going to come out and finally say, "I disagree." I was actually surprised it wasn't in the first 3 posts. Bravo!

So do we revamp the definition to write out strategy guides? Or are we talking about a whole different question here?

Because the original point was to determine what you've managed to accomplish on your own without help. Calling it "cheating" may have just been a convenient label. I certainly don't consider it cheating to look up what level Pikachu learns Thunderbolt at because trying to remember 490+ different leveling gains is freaking impossible.

I agree with you, actually. Cooperating with others isn't cheating, unless the rules specifically forbid it, and typically only carriers of online accounts mess with that (how many people have access to your account, and such).

So the question isn't exactly like wondering who cheated on their last math test, it's just wondering what you've done all on your own, what you feel bad for needing help with, and what you feel absolutely nothing negative (or maybe even you feel positively) for needing help with.

For the purposes of this thread, I'm only *calling* it cheating to need someone's help other than your own... but it certainly doesn't apply in the real world. If we stopped helping each other, the human race would have numbered days. I'm a survivor! =)

Arcadia2000:

Altorin:
I don't agree with your definition of cheating...

Guides don't count as cheating, neither does getting help from someone as long as you're still playing the game.

And this is a prime example of why humans as a species are at the top of the pyramid - we cooperate. I knew someone was going to come out and finally say, "I disagree." I was actually surprised it wasn't in the first 3 posts. Bravo!

So do we revamp the definition to write out strategy guides? Or are we talking about a whole different question here?

Because the original point was to determine what you've managed to accomplish on your own without help. Calling it "cheating" may have just been a convenient label. I certainly don't consider it cheating to look up what level Pikachu learns Thunderbolt at because trying to remember 490+ different leveling gains is freaking impossible.

I agree with you, actually. Cooperating with others isn't cheating, unless the rules specifically forbid it, and typically only carriers of online accounts mess with that (how many people have access to your account, and such).

So the question isn't exactly like wondering who cheated on their last math test, it's just wondering what you've done all on your own, what you feel bad for needing help with, and what you feel absolutely nothing negative (or maybe even you feel positively) for needing help with.

For the purposes of this thread, I'm only *calling* it cheating to need someone's help other than your own... but it certainly doesn't apply in the real world. If we stopped helping each other, the human race would have numbered days. I'm a survivor! =)

I agree with most of this, although I may be inclined to disagree for Adventure games.

Arcadia2000:

Altorin:
I don't agree with your definition of cheating...

Guides don't count as cheating, neither does getting help from someone as long as you're still playing the game.

And this is a prime example of why humans as a species are at the top of the pyramid - we cooperate. I knew someone was going to come out and finally say, "I disagree." I was actually surprised it wasn't in the first 3 posts. Bravo!

So do we revamp the definition to write out strategy guides? Or are we talking about a whole different question here?

Because the original point was to determine what you've managed to accomplish on your own without help. Calling it "cheating" may have just been a convenient label. I certainly don't consider it cheating to look up what level Pikachu learns Thunderbolt at because trying to remember 490+ different leveling gains is freaking impossible.

I agree with you, actually. Cooperating with others isn't cheating, unless the rules specifically forbid it, and typically only carriers of online accounts mess with that (how many people have access to your account, and such).

So the question isn't exactly like wondering who cheated on their last math test, it's just wondering what you've done all on your own, what you feel bad for needing help with, and what you feel absolutely nothing negative (or maybe even you feel positively) for needing help with.

For the purposes of this thread, I'm only *calling* it cheating to need someone's help other than your own... but it certainly doesn't apply in the real world. If we stopped helping each other, the human race would have numbered days. I'm a survivor! =)

If you don't do it yourself it's cheating. You may call it "cooperation" to help you sleep at night, or to not feel like your "great accomplishment of 100%" or whatever is completely moot and worthless cause you didn't do it yourself, thus it could have just as easily been accomplished by anything with motor functions and enough IQ to barely function.

If you don't do the thinking yourself it's cheating, because YOU'RE NOT DOING IT YOURSELF, you have no merit in it. Try using that logic in college. "I didn't cheat on my test! I was merely cooperating with my fellow mate in order to learn the answer to the question"... Yeah, that'll work.

As for when I personally "cheat" in a game, 2 occasions:

1 - When the game developers pull one of those "dick moves" I consider a cardinal sin in gaming: "You have 1 chance to acquire this super rare and awesome item/whatever. We give you no clues whatsoever, and if you fuck it up, you gotta restart the whole game".

2 - To bypass the stupid arbitrary gameplay lengthening grind quests and/or moon logic puzzles. A good example are those "Erm... So I have to blink this light at that spot on the wall that looks like....the rest of the wall....3 times, then go talk with that guy I saw 2 hours ago, spin in place once in each direction and then fight the monster...right... None of this was even referred to before..." kind of quests, and pointless stuff like "collect the 100 hidden packages" in GTAs long after I finished the game and collected most of them.

I almost never play a game without cheating.
I play games to enjoy myself, not to be challenged.(I do complete missions without cheats, but only when I can be bothered to retry some sections multiple times)

I play RPGs with a guide.
I play every game with god mode(except RPGs, those are easy enough) active.
I will, at times, use a trainer for infinite ammo in an FPS, but never before I've completed the game at least once.