Your video gaming habits? Use of walkthroughs, tutorials, cheat codes, etc

The Game Room
1

Just a little gaming history about me-- I got into gaming later in life (well, arcade games in the 80s, then nothing at all until just a couple years ago). I’m just wondering what other players’ strategies are for getting help when playing. I used to think I relied on internet help a little too much, but now I think maybe I’m being too hard on myself.

My first time playing a game ever, I go into it cold, not having any idea about gameplay, to see how well I can pick up instructions from the game itself, or from context. But after an hour or two if I can’t figure something out, or if I think my strategy is totally off, I’m not above looking up a tutorial or a “(X) things you should know before starting game (Y)” type video. I don’t want to get 15 hours into a game and then realize I’ve botched up so much I need to start over.

My first time playing a certain part of a game, I try to get through it with no help whatsoever. If I get really stuck on what to do at any certain point, or if I just keep getting clobbered by a boss or bunch of enemies, I might resort to a walkthrough or google an answer, but I try to only use it as a last resort. I’m currently playing Black Mesa, and I found an entertaining 100% walkthrough of it, but I only use the walkthrough for a spoiler if I’m so stuck I have no idea where to go or what to do next, which is rare. Mostly, I like to watch the part of the walkthrough I’ve already successfully beaten just to see how the more experienced player handled it. Sometimes even (very rarely) I’m happy to see I came up with a more clever solution to an attack or puzzle than them.

When I was playing Fallout, I’d rely on the Fallout wiki sometimes, but mostly only after, say, getting though a site I discovered and thought I thoroughly cleared, just to see if I missed any scrap of good loot (Fallout really brought out my worst hoarder impulses). Sometimes I’d use the wiki to help understand a particularly confusing quest, but again, pretty rarely.

I’ve never used a cheat code, except to reset or bypass a glitchy part, or to visit hidden undeveloped parts of the game out of curiosity. It would seem like cheating at Solitaire-- what’s the point of even playing? I understand some players who are doing a replay might want to use cheat codes to skip parts they find boring or tedious, or employ ‘God Mode’ just for fun, but I haven’t (at least not yet) done entire game replays.

Finally, do you switch around from game to game, or do you stick with one game exclusively until you beat it before moving on to the next game? If I buy a few games at once, say in a Steam sale, I usually switch around between them early on until I find one that really grabs me, and then I stick to that one exclusively until I’m done with it.

2

I typically don’t go seeking tutorials or guides though that’s partially because I just don’t want to watch someone’s rambling 30min video on what I need to know to start playing. Once I’m actively playing I might check out the game’s subreddit and pick up on some tips and tricks. If there’s a puzzle I need to solve, I have zero bad feelings about looking up the solution. I’ve never played a game in my life where the experience was enhanced by adjusting fluid levels in tubes or shuffling characters onto platforms for twenty minutes before I could get back into the game.

I rarely mod games or use “cheats” but I will do it sometimes for stuff that’s just time sinks. Trading Card Game Store Sim had you opening packs of cards at a somewhat glacial pace and I could set a weight on my mouse button and ignore the screen until I stopped hearing pack-opening noises. That’s… not game play. Modding it to 20x speed just meant I was spending more time playing the game and less time browsing Discord on another device. I don’t want to make myself bulletproof or clip through walls, etc but I also don’t see the point in wasting my gaming time on nonsense padding that doesn’t add anything to the core game.

3

This about sums it up for me.

If I get really stuck on a game, I’ll give it up completely and maybe come back to it years later. That’s what happened with GTA San Andreas, for instance; I failed at the final mission a bunch of times and then tried it years later and had no problem with it. I’ve also put aside Dark Souls for multiple years and come back to it, but still haven’t got much further than I did the first time.

4

Yeah, there’s an active thread right now about Control being one of the best games ever, which reminded me it was the first “modern” game, as in later than 80s arcade games, I ever played. I was enjoying it, but got maybe 2/3 through and was so stuck at one point I switched to another game out of frustration, and never went back. Now that I’m more experienced at gaming in general I want to do another playthrough and see how much better I do at the game in general.

5

I bounce around from game to game. I have one game I play daily because my wife and I both play it (Gems of War). I have a current long term game that I’m playing. (Baldur’s Gate 3) Then I have a lot of bullet hell games that I will switch between as I feel like it. (Current are Undead Onslaught and Magicraft.) Even then, I will sometimes load up another game and play it. I’m very mercurial with my games.

It depends on the type of game. I used a cheat code early in Magicraft to see what the top buffs, at that time were. I liked them so much that I erased that game and restarted and haven’t cheated since. Balatro is another game I haven’t cheated for the reason you state. That’s the point of the game.

I used cheat mods in Baldur’s Gate 3 because of how game like this approach fighting. If there wasn’t a main character, who if they die ends the game, then I could get behind fighting and knowing I will need to recruit new people. When I have to play the same fight five, six, seven times because my main dies, I have to replay it anyway, then I want the easy mode.

In a shooter or any game that relies on hand eye coordination? In single player, give me cheat codes. I want to have fun, not feel like I suck at games. When I did multiplayer, I didn’t cheat.

Intravenous (or Party Hard or Hotline Miami) are a good example of give me cheat codes. Even with them, I die a LOT. Those are tough games. This seems to be a genre of game where the whole idea is that you don’t win on the first play through. It seems that the length of the game is based on the difficulty of the game. Sometimes I want to see if I can do it, sometimes I don’t.

I think the interesting thing I just found out was I tried a game today called Schedule I. The idea is okay, becoming a drug dealer, (I never watched BB) but it is having me do everything myself by hand. I don’t mind that sometimes but if I’m going to setup an automation, I want it more simulation play or god game type than first person. In this case, I didn’t finish the demo and didn’t get the game because I don’t want to play the game that way.

Thanks for the discussion!

6

I started gaming with Pong knock off from Radio Shack. As video games evolved, I would wait for a year when I was stuck before I looked up a solution in a hintbook. Usually this meant walking to the right section of the local bookstore, and looking it up in one of the gaming books. Then Sierra, one of my favorite game producers, started releasing games with bugs that made that impossible to win. I had to look things up (now on the early web) tio see if there was a solution I was missing, or if there was a bug.With Sierra, it usually turned out to be a bug.

Cheat codes can’t really be used in most of the games I like. OTTOMH, the Leisure Suit Larry series has only one action sequence. In #3, Patti must float down a river while avoiding obstacles. Even then, IIRC there is an onscreen message saying what to press to skip the action sequence but reminding you that if you skip it, you cannot get a 100% on the game.

I did use cheat codes on the original Doom when I was bored an just wanted to shoot things, and when I couldn’t figure out how to get somewhere and had to use the no clipping code (IIRD idspispopd)

I stick with one game until I get really stuck or beat it.

7

My video game habits have ebbed and flowed over the years. I’m now 43 and grew up with an SNES, the OG Game Boy, and some early Windows games (Wolfenstein 3D, Amazon Trail, SimCity 2000) and then starting around 2001, after I moved out of my parent’s house, I didn’t game much until recently. My kids had a Wii a decade or so when they were all the rage but I just couldn’t get into that console. I hated the controller to the point that I just gave up trying to enjoy it.

When I played the Windows games I would use cheat codes when I could, but honestly I only remember using a few like the money code for Sim City.

During Covid I bought a used Switch and, because I had nothing else to do, I played the hell out of it. I became addicted to Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing and then purchased an NSO subscription and played through all my old SNES and Game Boy classics from my teenage years. I absolutely loved those games. I tell ya, nostalgia is one helluva powerful drug.

So for my Switch games, depending on the game, I will look up a walkthrough if I get really stuck at a point that I’m no longer enjoying the game. I think I only did that once in BotW, at the beginning when I couldn’t figure out how to survive the trek up to the first snow shrine on the Great Plateau: I didn’t know Link could cook up elixirs. I’ve not had to look up any walkthroughs on any of the SNES games. I do have a copy of Stranded Deep that I’ve played very little of, mostly because I still can’t figure out the controls. Whenever I pick it up again I’m sure I’ll have to look up a few tutorials. If the OG SimCity ever comes to the e-shop I’m definitely going to use the unlimited funds cheat, if it even works for the Switch.

I’ve been playing Hogwarts Legacy and am mostly finished with it. I haven’t had to use a walkthrough on it, even though there’s a few puzzles and items I haven’t been able to figure out or find yet.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I do have the remastered Tomb Raider games (1-3) on my Switch and I’ve used the maximum weapons & gear cheat on them, at least I did for TR3. It makes playing each level much more enjoyable.

So I’ll use a walkthrough or cheat code if not using it means I’m not enjoying or simply getting frustrated by the game.

8

I forgot-

I allways needed to have a friend help me with the music puzzle in Myst. To open one of the worlds, you need to adjust sliding controls to reproduce a series of notes. I always thought this puzzle was terribly designed. You must slide the controls with your mouse. There should be buttons at the top and bottom of the console to move each slider up or down a step. There should be some kind of closed captioning to make the audio puzzles accessibel to the hearing impaired. I hear just fine. But-

In the tree house world, the sound of flowing water is important.
On the starting world- you need to listen to a speech that is not captioned.
On the starting world- you need to listen to the sound of the tree rising, falling and stopping
The world you get to by solving the musical puzzle I mentioned is based entirely on sound.

Shivers was a Myst knock off by Sierra. It did have closed captioning. I had to turn that on to solve a musical puzzle as I have no musical ability and would never have been able to play the correct notes. I did need to print out a solution to one of the puzzles. It is the classic plus sign board with a bunch of marbles and one empty spot in the middle. To solve it, you must leave only one marble and it has to be in the center spot. The other puzzles I solved on my own. The marble puzzle solution is lengthy and difficult.

I also printed out a solution to a musical puzzle in Shadowgate Trial Of The Towers.You need to reproduce a song by lifting either the left or right wing of a bunch of randomly placed statues in the correct order to play a song. I knew what song I was supposed to play. I have no musical ability and might not be able to recognize the song even if I played it correctly. The rest of the game I beat on my own.

9

I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) for over 15 years. :astonished:

I’ve completed over 7,500 quests and reached the current highest level (150.)

I reckon I’ve completed about 80% of the game (they keep adding areas!)

If a quest is troublesome I use the following:

  • ask in the online chat
  • check on the Internet
  • ask a Game Moderator for help
10

As a general rule I try to go in blind, but if I get stuck I will look for a wiki with little hesitation.

I don’t like using cheats or mods, but I do like creative mode in survival games for designing my base. Typically I will wait until I’ve gotten pretty far into the game before switching to creative mode for base design so that I’m not spoiling myself on all the advanced devices.

I play one game at a time until I’m satisfied with it, which doesn’t necessarily mean beating the game. (eg: Cities Skylines, where I spent 800 hours perfecting my one city and then called it good.)

I don’t care at all about achievements. The only game where I have completed all achievements was Planet Crafter, and that was only because when I finished playing, there was only one achievement left to do: getting hurt or killed by lava. So I just jumped in some lava to complete those achievements. Otherwise I don’t even look at achievements at all.

Regarding walkthroughs, generally I prefer writing them rather than following them. Or recording them, now that modern technology makes it so easy. Back in the day YouTube had pretty restrictive limitations on both file size and length of what video files you could upload. Nowadays YouTube happily accepts hours-long raw game footage in a single file with no conversion / compression necessary at all. (There are still limitations, but they are wildly larger than I need for my little 1080p videos.)

11

I game for escapism, not for the challenge. So I use cheat codes, trainers and mods regularly; even on a first play-through. I am not ashamed about it at all and people who get twisted about it are lame.

Yes, I like being over powered and running through enemies, using skills or spells that you normally can’t have. That and the story are how I have fun. Am I having less fun for cheating? No. I am having a grand time.

I bought a lifetime subscription to Cheat Happens because they have the best trainers for the latest games and an immense catalog.

I definitely use walkthroughs if I hit a puzzle. I despise puzzles and not just because I suck at them. I remember playing most of the FF series (up to X) and other jrpgs, using walkthroughs extensively.

As far as playing games, I do switch between games and have a few never-ending ones, such as GTA Online, that I play often.

I don’t cheat in online games. I am not sure why, other than it just doesn’t seem right. Now that I think about it, I don’t really have a logical reason for it, other than not wanting to be banned.

Every now and again there is an amazing game such as BG3 or Red Dead Redemption 2 (single player) that are so good, that I will go from start to finish and play nothing else. But that is rare. You know it is a good game when you have replayed it numerous times and are not sick of it yet.

Do I cheat and mod BG3 and RDR2? Hell yes. There are some great cheats and mods for them that make things a lot more fun.

12

So very much this, if the game in question is single-player only. WeMod is also a boon for us.

For those who don’t know, WeMod is a frontend for trainer programs.

13

I usually like puzzles in games, and mostly I’m pretty good at them. But I know, sometimes they take you out of the flow of the main game.

One that comes to mind was in the Far Harbor DLC for FO4– mostly a great add-on that was a lot of fun. But the part where you have to go into the android DiMA’s memory banks for clues-- good GOD that was tedious. Suddenly you’re immersed in a completely different game, one that’s much less fun than the main game you’ve been playing; moving some stupid blocks around while trying to avoid spider bots or some shit. I found a walkthrough for that and followed it step by step with no guilt or regret. And it still seemed to take forever.

14

For my first playthrough of a game, I go in blind. If I’m replaying a game, I’ll sometimes use cheat codes as I did for Fallouts 3 & 4. I’m more likely to use a walkthrough on a game I’m replying as well. Sometimes its been so many years I’ve forgotten how to solve a puzzle and I just want to get through it ASAP, so here comes the walkthrough. Other times, like with the Arkham Batman series, I’m replaying and I want to find a hidden item or solve a puzzle and I can’t figure it out. I found all the Riddler tokens in the first Arkham game on my own.

15

My use of guides depends a lot on the type of game and type of guide. For gameplay, I usually follow the pattern of “play a section without a guide, then check the guide to see if I missed anything important enough to replay that section”. Especially with certain games like JRPGs, since they are prone to “surprise, you missed out on a character’s Ultimate Weapon because of a choice you made 40 hours ago”.

For mechanics I often just consult a guide to know what the heck I’m doing, especially for games with complicated/obscure mechanics. I just recently started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and the character creation alone was enough to get me to look online for a guide so I have some idea of what all these options do. That said, I’m generally not looking for an “optimum build”, just trying to avoid screwing up to the point of the game not being fun to play.

I almost always switch around, unless I’m feeling really enthusiastic about a particular game. I also tend to have “default games”, where if I’m bored and unsure what to do I’ll just go “I’ll just make a new character in Skyrim/Fallout: NV/Caves of Qud”. Which game is the “default” changes over time.

16

I’m kinda like @by-tor in that I frequently cheat (also using https://www.cheathappens.com/, which is really a wonderful service), or the free CheatEngine for PC or BitSlicer for Mac. These are all tools that can directly edit the game’s memory as it’s running, changing all your attributes, monies, god mode, etc.

But not to remove the challenge from games… just the unnecessary (and boring to me) “grind” that so many modern titles have. For example, I’ve played 100+ hours of Orcs Must Die: Deathtrap recently, a “tower defense” kind of game where you build mazes of traps to whittle down invading orcs. There’s a lot of creativity in a game like that because there are so many different trap options and map layouts, and I love love love experimenting with all the possibilities, both serious and funny ones. However, to unlock all the traps typically takes a dozen or two hours, which I just didn’t want to bother with. I used a trainer to unlock all of them in the first few minutes, and then spent the remaining 99+ hours experimenting with combinations instead. Still loving it!

I also play complex online action RPGs like Path of Exile, but there too the grind is a bit extreme, and I simply don’t have time for it. So I buy virtual gold from overseas sellers, and something like $10 USD gets me the amount of fake game money that would normally take probably 60-70 hours of playtime to get, for a regular player. These overseas sellers instead of employ people very low costs-of-living countries to farm gold to sell to Western gamers. I get to enjoy the game as I want to (experimenting with end-game builds and item sets), somebody abroad makes a bit of money, the game company keeps me playing (and paying them for cosmetics)… seems like a win-win. “Real money transactions” like that are technically against the game’s terms of service, but as far as I can tell, the developer and publisher just don’t care at all, because they know how much it actually contributes to the game’s longevity. Most people just don’t have that kind of time, so if spending $10 can save them entire working weeks of time… many will do it. It’s generally not a competitive game anyway, so who cares?

I don’t do this to “win” at any game; I don’t play competitively anyway and I really couldn’t care less about what my virtual game level is… it’s just some number in a database. Just been playing games since I was 5 or 6 years old, and go through dozens if not hundreds of them a year. I spend an average of maybe 30-60 min on a game (buying them on sale for a few dollars) in search of the next great addiction that can hold my attention for a few hundred hours. Usually those are games that have a combination of creativity (which I love) and grind (which I hate).

Once in a while there are amazing games that just have the creativity without the grind (like Shapez 2); there are no costs to anything, and your success is entirely dependent on your creativity. Like a challenging sandbox. Wish there were more games like that!

I used to play games for the story when I was younger and had infinite time, but not so much anymore. When I played through Baldur’s Gate 3, for example (which is an amazing title in its own right), I skipped every single line of dialogue, killed every single companion and NPC I came across (by throwing them off cliffs, usually) and had no idea what the story was about. But I still loved every minute of it just because of how open and reactive the world was, and how creative my builds could be. (Too bad “tossers of all peoples into the great black void” isn’t an official D&D class.) I beat the game without leaving anybody alive, which probably wasn’t the way it was intended to be played… all the more reason to love it, for allowing nonstandard playthroughs :slight_smile: I’d be the average game developer’s worst nightmare kind of player, but not Larian… they anticipated, allowed, and perhaps even encouraged everyone to play however they like, story or not.

17

(Considers The Dark Urge)

Well, not usually, but allowances have been made…

18

Yeah, that’s the white dragon-looking thing (by default), right? He mentioned something about feeling murdery in the first few minutes, but I didn’t listen to the entire sentence. Guess it stuck with me still. Eventually some sort of murder cult tried to recruit me but I killed them all before they finished talking. How’s that for roleplaying, eh?

19

There is a home made game Excelsior (also called Excelsior Phase One: Lysandia) from the early 90’s or so. It has some flaws. But, it is a lot of fun. With one character I decided to kill every NPC I could. The first time you attack somebdoy for no reason, the game warns you “Target is not hostile! Do you still want to attack?” I did and I killed every NPC I could find. Unfortunately, you need some NPC’s alive and capable of conversation later in the game and I had killed everybody. I had to start over from the beginning,

20

Ditto. I avoid reviews, trailers, etc. since I want to go in as cold as possible. Of course, I don’t want to waste my time or money either, but I find I can pick up the good/sucks vibe of a game by osmosis.

Second playthrough, if any, I’ll look up info. Well, at least if it hasn’t been too long. I started replaying Prey recently and it’s been long enough that I’ve forgotten decent chunks that I have to rediscover. So I’m mostly avoiding game wikis and such.

One oddball aspect of my psyche: I have a distinct sense of feeling bad if I have to resort to hints to get past a puzzle (when the puzzle is fair, at least). But sometimes, when I solve very difficult puzzles without hints, I’ll get that same feeling! And I do a mental double-take where I realize that I actually did solve it all on my own, that I came up with the key insight, and I have to “explain” to my own brain that I deserve the little dopamine hit for having done so. So strange. I think maybe it happens when the insight comes from my subconscious, and the executive part of my brain feels like it should have figured it out without my subconscious “hint system”.