Did cheat codes ruin your experience of playing Keen?

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Hisymak
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Did cheat codes ruin your experience of playing Keen?

Post by Hisymak »

After I started playing computer games, for many years I had absolutely no idea about cheat codes. I simply did not know there was a possibility to be immortal, walk through walls, or get all weapons, ammo and keys in the games, because I simply never heard about it before. So I always played games "in the right way" without cheats, and playing games was really lot of fun and experience for me. There were tough or hard places which I could not pass for some time (and which would be really easy to pass with cheats), and I felt really satisfied when I finally finished them.
But once me and my parents were visiting some people with children, who also owned a computer and were playing games on it. I went to play with them, of course. And that was the time when my life was totally changed. They showed me what cheat codes are - how they work and what they can do. I was mindblown. I remember the first game they showed me cheats for was Duke Nukem 3D - DNKROZ, DNWEAPONS, DNCLIP etc. Later I easily found cheats for other games I was playing, including Commander Keen. Mostly I asked my shoolmates (because I knew what cheats were and what exactly should I ask) and found a program with cheat database for many games.
And that's how my "playing-games-with-cheats" era has started. I often played games with cheats, with god mode turned on and equipped with all weapons and items from the start of game. For example I got a full version of Keen 6 when I already knew about cheats, so I played through it using Warp cheat and other cheats. Or in Keen 5, I always used F10+Y cheat which helped me find all of the numerous secrets in walls, eventually also the way to the secret level.
However later I started to realize that playing games with cheats is really tedious and uninteresting and I totally lose all that experience I used to have. Also progressing through the game and discovering new and new levels was really lot of fun, because I never knew what the later levels would be and what I can expect. Finding secret areas by myself was kind of mystery I liked. On the other hand, with cheats, I could simply skip levels and look how the later levels would look like, even if I had not finished the earlier levels, and easily find all secrets without any effort. That's exactly what happened in Keen 5 and 6 for me and what was probably the biggest drawback of cheats, totally killing the feeling and enjoyment from playing them.
Nowdays I avoid using cheats at all, trying again to play games how they are intended to be played and not breaking the experience. I'm actually realizing how thankful am I for knowing about cheats so late. Without cheats I could actually become good at games and greatly build and improve my skills even during my early childhood. I'm so happy I actually finished whole Keen 4 within my no-cheats era. I cannot imagine how my childhood would be like if I knew about cheats from the early time. But it would have been... probably worse, I definitely wouldn't have so good memories.
So what about you? Did cheats change or ruin your experience of playing Keen or other games? When and how you first discovered cheats?
Last edited by Hisymak on Sun Oct 16, 2016 20:48, edited 1 time in total.
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MoffD
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Post by MoffD »

In my case, cheats made non-multiplayer games playable. Before I could really read, I enjoyed playing Keen thanks to my siblings showing me how to enter the cheat codes so I only had to worry about finding keys and exiting.

Now I play without because of the challenge and enjoyment from it.
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

As far as Keen goes - No. When I played it, I didn't knew any cheats back then. And when I found out about the cheats, it got even more interesting because I was finally be able to explore and see the whole world maps and levels, for example. Nowdays I find these cheats as a good tool for developers/level designers to test things faster.
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Post by chrissifniotis »

Yes, I think cheat codes changed my experience playing Keen, but it didn't ruin it. As a kid me and my brother both dived head long into playing the games, my brother was always much better at 'Keen-ing' than me. I forget when but after a few years later he found out about the cheat codes and being as he was he didn't share them, I found out some time later when he used F10+Y in Keen 4.

I kept losing, especially at Crystalus, so I didn't have a problem with cheating. We both used the big three; F10+G, F10+J and F10+Y - I called it turning Keen into a superhero. It was a lot of fun flying around, zapping endlessly and discovering hidden pathways, and discovering that god mode isn't really god mode. :lol But no, if anything the cheat codes to me made the game more entertaining, until you grow up a bit and start wanting the challenge more than the win.
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Nisaba
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Re: Did cheat codes ruin your experience of playing Keen?

Post by Nisaba »

Hisymak wrote:[...] later I started to realize that playing games with cheats is really tedious and uninteresting and I totally lose all that experience I used to have.
Playing tedious and uninteresting games which provide less and less worthy experiences make me wanna cheat.
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Levellass
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Post by Levellass »

In the end this comes down to how you handle the codes and what your aim is with the game.

The standard way of looking at cheat codes, from debugging to Game Shark is that they're there to eliminate difficulty, to make a game simpler and easier to play and as such remove the actual achievement of beating the game. The game then theoretically becomes bland and empty. If everyone wins, nobody does.

But there's a fallacy there. If that is all that matters then games become nothing more than difficulty. Playing Keen becomes equivalent to doing your math homework, both present an equally difficult challenge that you should feel good about completing. And this is not untrue, anyone who saw Markiplier beat 20/20/20/20 night on FNAF after hours of grueling attempts can attest to the elation that comes from achieving the nearly impossible.

But games are far more than that, they must be or they wouldn't exist. So cheat codes, if done well and used well can be fun, even an important part of gameplay.

Firstly they can get a less capable player through the game, or open up no areas and experiences for them. Cheats can let them do things that their limited skills (Or desire to invest in the game) would render impossible. The best games even tip their hats to this. ('You shouldn't be here' DN3D development team)

Secondly there's the escapism. Games have rules and cheats subvert those rules. But games by their nature subvert the rules of our world. So cheating can let you play the game in a whole new way. What was originally something that required lots of quick movement and good timing can become a leisurely point gathering game. A strategic shooter just a blast 'em up bloodbath. Which relates to...

...Power. One of the great things about games is the power. Grinding up from level zero is fine, but sometimes you just want to rush in, guns blasting and blast your foes away in a storm of bullets. Cheats can give you that power, allowing you to blaze through a constructed world crushing all before you or just sowing confusion with your godlike powers.

There are few bad cheats, there are many bad players.
What you really need, not what you think you ought to want.
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Post by Commander Spleen »

I didn't really have particularly good platform game skills for a long time. Especially when it came to games that didn't allow mid-level saving. Cheats allowed me to experience the entire story arc of the Keen series, which was a more important factor in my appreciation of the Keen world. In the process I experienced a somewhat mystical experience transcending the rules of the game world which, given my age and imaginative capacity at the time, amounted almost as much to transcending those rules in real life, like a waking lucid dream.

In many ways the cheats gave me a much deeper appreciation of the game engines themselves: flying around all corners of a level with jump cheat, hovering over spikes in god mode, seeing the clipping overlays (and being introduced to the concept of clipping itself), accessing the high score table via the warp cheat, recording demos in god mode and watching them glitch out when played back normally, the various exceptions to some cheats such as the vorticon children still being able to stun you in god mode. There was a certain magic to this experience as well, seeing deeper in to a computer system than other avenues could afford me at the time.

Later on my skills improved and I was able to play more games through in the manner they were intended and was able to enjoy the Keen series on a different level which didn't seem to be negatively impacted by earlier use of cheats.
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