Lunchtime Discussion: Cheating

For the last few days I’ve been sporadically playing Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box with my girlfriend. It’s her copy really, but it’s the kind of game where everyone can easily have a go at getting the solution. I’ll admit that some of the game’s puzzles, particularly peg solitaire, have proved a bit too much for us and we’ve been forced to resort to walkthroughs to get a few more hints on how to work through the puzzles.

Here’s the issue, she hates the walkthroughs and considers them cheating. On the other hand I’m fine with them, and even a little cheating in single player games. Sure in this case, it’s her game so if she doesn’t want to use walkthroughs or cheat at all that’s fine. Personally I take the Dara Ó Briain’s stance on this, if I pay for a game I want to be able to see the ending. If I genuinely can’t beat a bit then the game should recognise that, or at least give me some way of moving on.

Obviously there should be a penalty associated, loss of experience or score for the section of the game, but I still want to be able to actually move on and get to the next chunk of game. Turning off achievements and trophies while cheats are active surely can’t be that hard, so I can’t really see those as an argument against it.

Developers really need to recognise this kind of need more. Sure we used to have cheat codes that allowed us to get extra lives, abilities or whatever, but they’ve all but disappeared in this generation. Personally it made me sad that games like GTA IV are missing the ‘spawn a tank’ cheats that were part of the fun of before. EA do still technically allow cheating, but they make you pay for it as DLC. That hardly seems fair either.

The best options I’ve seen are Nintendo’s ‘Super Guide’ feature that cropped up in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where the game plays itself until you tell it not to, and ‘Splosion Man, which allowed you to skip the level if you kept dying over and over, but punished you by making you wear a tutu on the next level.

Both of these let you carry on with the game if you really can’t make it through, and that’s all I want. I don’t mind having some punishment exacted on me, but if I can’t continue I’m just going to give up and I’ll be less attracted to future titles as well. I don’t play games because I want to feel like a failure after falling down a hole or failing at a puzzle for the hundredth time, I just want to finish it.

So are walkthroughs cheating, or do you just want to finish? What about the death of cheat codes, do you miss them like I do? Should developers give us some way of getting through a title if we get frustrated? Of course cheating online is a wholly different matter, but surely it can’t be all bad in single player?