game_genie_pkg_fv_m_6530CHEATS – The Gamer’s Moral Compass

Up, Up, Down, Down, Up, Up, Up, Up.  And all of a sudden, I can level select in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on my Sega Genesis.  So what if I don’t earn my way to the Ice Cap Zone?  I’ve played this game 50 times already – it’s been done.  But you’d never catch me sprinting through GoldenEye or Quake with God Mode on – ruins the game for me.  So my cheating in games is based on convenience and sportsmanship (after a fashion).   But am I the rule, or the exception to it?

Cheats and secrets have been around in games since 8-bit systems.  I really wouldn’t be surprised if there was a cheat to make your Pong paddle bigger (and I’m not referencing the herbal medicine junk email we get every day).  Back on the Genesis and NES/SNES, we had Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat codes to unlock characters, and Battletoads, Sonic and many other codes for level selection.  Later, on platforms like the N64, Playstation and PS2, codes became a way to unlock secret features of the game, features that you couldn’t unlock without the codes.  A great example of this is Star Wars: Rogue Squadron for the N64, which had a code to unlock the Naboo starfighter from Episode I.  However, LucasArts only released the code after the movie had been released in theatres – so noone was unlocking that baby by accident a few days before opening weekend at the box office.  Cheats and secrets are still a big part of games, but as the core gamer demographic grows out of the desire for codes (and more importantly, grows out of hard-core gaming into casual gaming), these become more rewards than hustles.

Not many games offer the good old codes and secrets these days – everything is either unlockable or achievements.  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against unlockable secrets.  It’s probably the best way to give the cheats but still ensure the player gets the full experience of the game.  Beating every level in the game then being able to level select from the main menu is a perfect example of this.  Or like Metal Gear Solid 4, where you earn the infinite ammo bandanna only after sneaking through the game without a single kill (or acquiring 5,000,000 Drebin Points, which requires mass murder – a challenge in and of itself) and the stealth camouflage if you can get through the game without being seen.

I suppose that the point I’m trying to make is that older platform games seem to endorse the childlike desire to just get everything at once, regardless of losing out on the real gameplay value.  I wouldn’t enjoy a game of Monopoly if I stole a bunch of cash when noone was looking.  Newer games reward skill and persistence with achievements, and the occasional secret.  But it seems that the unlockables are fading away.  Why is that?

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Sometimes it ain't easy being a plumber in the Mushroom Kingdom

Well, one big example is that games aren’t as hard as they used to be.  Hear me out!  Most games now don’t have a finite health bar, like older games like… well every older game.  Newer games like Resistance, Call of Duty, inFAMOUS, the latest in the Rainbow Six series and others have a replenishing health system where you might get hit a few times, but you’ll heal that damage as long as you stay out of harm’s way for 30-40 seconds.  Try that tactic in Super Mario Bros. or Quake II.  But those games had power-ups like health packs and invulnerability, which tended to compensate for the ease in which you could expire.  Newer games make it harder for the player to die, which really does fit in with the changing demographic of young gamers growing up into more casual gamers.  I don’t want to sit down in front of my PS3 and have to learn for an hour how this game works – I want it intuitive and fun.  So that’s what we get.  Games that don’t have the same depth as they used to (with some exception); so why would game designers bother with unlockables and codes and secrets that the average casual gamer won’t bother to unlock anyway?  Answer: they don’t.

This, I think, is the major reason behind the achievements and trophies systems seen on the XBox 360 and PS3 consoles.  An easy way to have a rewards system in place that doesn’t demand that the gamer in question lose their entire social life by trying to get through the game in under 6 hours without dying once or firing a shot standing on their head blindfolded (I’m looking at you, Metal Gear).  So while I rue the loss of the symbiote suit and others we saw on the Playstation Spider-Man game, or the Naboo starfighter from Rogue Squadron on the N64, I find that my lifestyle lends itself better to the little pop-up at the bottom of my screen that tells me I just earned the trophy for 100 headshots (I mean, it was bound to happen eventually).

Until next time,

Cheers.






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