GAMERTAG: WeakSauce

typed for your pleasure on 1 December 2004, at 11.34 pm

Dear so-called ‘hardcore’ gamers that think that cheat codes are for ‘pussies’: Fuck you. I love cheat codes. I heartily approve of cheat codes. All videogames need cheat codes. I look at it this way: If I pay $50 for a game, I want to be able to enjoy it as much as I can, in order to get the most for my dollar. That means unlocking every mission, getting every weapon, acquiring all outfits, rolling up every object, etc; or, at the very least, the ability to squeeze a lot of enjoyable replay out of it. Sometimes — not all the time, but sometimes — I require a little extra help to reach that goal of Game Satisfaction, and if that help comes in the form of a cheat code, then so be it.

At the time of this writing, I own thirty PS2 games, two PC games (American McGee’s Alice and No one lives forever), between ten and twelve PSX games, and my beloved copy of Tekki/Steel battalion. Concentrating on the PS2 games, out of thirty of those, I’ve finished about twenty-one. ‘Finished’, in my definition, means seeing the ending credits. Now, as all gamers know, just because you’ve seen the credits roll doesn’t mean that’s it for the game — that’s why I say ‘finished’, and not ‘completed’, as there may be items to obtain, or extra areas to clear or what have you, that I’ve not accomplished yet. My tally of completed PS2 games is about four. That’s not something I’m entirely proud of.
SoulCalibur 2, for instance, has a clock feature that enables you to see, in real-time, how many hours you’ve logged in on that game; mine reads somewhere around fifty hours, and I still have yet to unlock Lizardman, and I’m missing a bunch of art cards & weapons. GunGriffon Blaze, the second game I ever bought for my system back in 2001, remains two stages away from completion. And I still haven’t gotten all the feckin’ compasses in Disaster report, and I’ve finished the game three times. I’ve clocked hundreds of hours with these games, but despite that, Total Completion continues to elude me.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not as if I view these games as a chore to play, otherwise I’d have sold them a long time ago. I’ll still fire up my older games every now and again, and play them for hours on end. So why bother with cheat codes, you say? Well, just because I’m still playing these games doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve gotten any further on some of them — I’m content to play the opened/finished stages over and over again. But if I keep hitting a dead end where I can’t progress past this or that level, to me that means I’ve not gotten my full money’s worth. If I had the kind of free time where I could afford to spend six hours every day of the week attempting to take out Nine breaker, that’d be great, but I have other things I have to do. But I won’t feel fulfilled if I don’t see what else there is of the game past Nine breaker’s demise, or whatever.
Good example: I paid $150 for my copy of Tekki/Steel battalion. (yes, one hundred and fifty US dollars.) The game contains 23 missions total. I’ve finished five. Did I get my money’s worth there? I mean, I love playing the game, as it’s fun as hell, but I’d like to at least finish the initial 12 stages..

So, yeah! Cheat codes are the solution. And no, I don’t entertain any thoughts such as ‘if you use cheats, there’s no challenge’. Bullshit. BloodRayne 1 and 2 have built-in cheat codes, and even with them in use, they’re still difficult games. You can still very easily get killed in Way of the samurai even if you use the ‘Restore life’ cheat. And don’t even talk to me about Grand theft auto.
So I have absolutely no qualms about using cheat codes in difficult areas, and as far as those games that really don’t have any helpful codes to speak of, I’ll be investing in a GameShark sometime later this month. It’s not as if I’ll stop playing my collection once I have Everything, but having Everything will definitely increase the enjoyment of my games

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

On Summer on June 8th, 2008

At the bedside of Mistress English Language, holding her hand as she wastes away on August 7th, 2005

2 have spoken to “GAMERTAG: WeakSauce”

  1. Patrick writes:

    Or you can just do what I do, play just old freggin games 😉 Cheat codes need not apply.

  2. Davecat writes:

    One old-school game I’d love to play again would be Berzerk for the Atari 2600. ‘COME BACK HUMAN FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT’ etc.
    Back in those days, you basically played the damn game until your character died, or *you* died of exhaustion, cos there wasn’t any ending to speak of..

    Videogames like that made us what we are — whatever that may be. 😉

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