Why I Cheat In Single Player Games

Only Single Player, I'm not a monster.

Sorry for the use of a meme but I felt this was applicable.

First off, I have not cheated and will not cheat in any multiplayer game. That is a really shit thing to do and when I played Destiny I

always hated those fucking hackers. That's for multiplayer games though. For Single player games, it's a completely different story.

Anyone that has been reading my stuff for a while will likely have come across me mentioning I've cheated in some of the games I've played/reviewed. Many people adhere to this idea that to cheat in a game is to miss large portions of it, or to simply not EARN the outcome of the cheat. So today I decide to go into a bit of detail about why I cheat at some Single Player games.

Get gud? Get fun.

When I think of games I think of fun, in my mind, fun is the most important part of a game. I literally designed my ratings system around it. Fun for me though is a bit different than others. Many think souls games are fun because of how challenging they are. Not me though. What makes a game fun for me is feeling powerful and a good story. I think this way when I play games and when I design and develop games. Fun is key. Which means that when I find myself playing a game that provides significant frustration, that makes me feel like a weakling, I instantly want to put it down and never go back. I have enough issues and frustration in the real life, I don't need to add annoyances from a digital world onto that.

Cheating in this case is usually making me immortal. It's making me kill enemies in one hit. This is done with a simple cheat client, Wemod, or just Cheat Engine, since I've switched to Linux, and that is easier to get working. It's a great little program for all your single player cheating needs. Wemod allows me to play games that I usually wouldn't have been able to play otherwise. It allows me to feel like a fucking God in God of War Ragnarok. It allows me to not get annoyed as fuck with the frustrating turn based combat in the two Yakuza games I've played. It allows me to not feel like doing normal combat is a fucking grind. It allows me to not be super annoyed and bored with the balancing requirements in Death Stranding which frees me up to enjoy the game as a whole. I like playing games, I don't like having to constantly die and reload over and over again.

I hated this balancing mechanic. It was awful. But cheating allowed me to get rid of it. Still didn’t finish the game but the time I did have with it was much more fun!

I just don't enjoy having to feel powerless. Having to fight a boss 100 times to get it just right. What I enjoy is wrecking some shit. Cheating allows me to do this. There are some games I haven't had to cheat in because they have accessibility settings that take care of what I want out of a game. Control and Dragon Age: The Veilguard both have no death settings that are amazing. Control though, was something special. It allows you to be immortal, one hit enemies, and have whenever you aim go to an enemy and when that one's dead immediately cycle to the next enemy. This made the game feel like I was playing John Wick but with powers. It was fucking stunning.

Important! Easy mode isn't cheating

Something I see in a lot of gaming circles is this idea that cheating isn't just using actual cheats, it's playing in easy mode. There's this idea of purity. This idea of being above others, that because you beat a game on Hard or even just Normal that means you are better than someone who beat it on easy or the story levels that exist in a lot of games nowadays. This is stupid. Easy mode is playing by the rules, is playing in a way that makes it fun for you. Games are supposed to be fun, not annoying. If that means playing games on easy is fun for you you should do it.

What IS cheating is what I sometimes do by using cheat clients. That's breaking the rules because it makes it more fun. I break the rules because I think rules are designed to be broken. It's just a question of the situation you break them in. For instance, using immortality in a game like Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth makes the game easier and the dungeons less of a slog. It's beneficial for the experience. but using immortality in a game like Destiny is breaking the rules in a way that impacts others. When I break the rules to beat a game, usually faster than the developers meant because I was cheating, it impacts noone except me by taking away stress. If cheating impacts others, doing it is shitty.

This, from Control, isn’t cheating and it’s so nice to be able to do it.

Easy mode is a good thing in games because it allows for more people to experience a game, people who wouldn't enjoy playing them otherwise. This should be extended to the cheats I use. Specifically, there should be more accessibility settings in games to allow people like me, who have stressful enough lives, to not have to use cheat clients.

More games need easy mode, Souls-like games need easy modes. I love multiple aspects of those games but because I am, at the end of the day, pretty bad at them. I can't play all of them. I have gotten furthest in Bloodborne and Elden Ring, but I wish I had been able to finish those with an easy mode. I could go back to beat at least Elden Ring with cheats but, eh. I had my fill dying so much.

But this? This is cheating. I wish I didn’t have to use it but damn was this useful.

Not all games are made for everyone - Difficulty Edition

I've talked about this already but what makes a game a worthy experience is fun. It's different for everyone, so shouldn't games be more accessible for people? Then comes the natural response to this point "Not all games are made for everyone." This isn't inherently a bad point, but let's think about this for a second. Gaming is the biggest entertainment industry in the world. We, as developers, try to be as welcoming to our players as we can. Why is it bad to have settings that allow more people to play the game? Why is it a problem that more people get to experience the game that developers are pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into?

My response to my question is the same thing I mentioned at the start of this, people want to feel superior. But you beating a game that's hard or on a higher difficulty doesn't make you better than people who just didn't want to go through the hassle.

Which brings me to my whole point, games should be made for the most amount of people possible (except bigoted assholes). We, as developers and gamers, should want people to experience our games and the games we like. I want to be able to talk to my friends about a game I love and not have them go "sorry, I don't know what you're talking about, I'm not able to beat that game". Now this does have a certain limitation. Some games have their own shtick that not everyone enjoys, but that's opinion based as opposed to difficulty.

The statistic for how many steam players beat the final boss in Elden Ring. So assuming 22 million on steam, which is very generous and assuming only 7 or so million on consoles, that means only 9.3 million people beat the final boss. That’s still a lot of people but I’d argue, it should be more. The majority of games should be completed. This is also relatively high for most games nowadays. Most don’t break 50% or even 40%. But shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t we want people to complete our games and see what we, as devs, have poured into it? If we made more games have an easy mode then that would happen. The reason Elden ring had the highest clear rate among the Souls-borne games is because it was easier to grind levels and be more overpowered, but what if it had that and also an easy mode? How many more people would have completed it if it did both? I’d say it’d at least be a lot closer to 50%, so maybe at least another million people. Sorry for the long caption.

I should be able to not have to cheat. I should be able to just play the game and have a good time without annoyance and without stress that isn't necessary.

The Conclusion

I cheat because I won't be able to finish a game I want to finish, and enjoy the concept of, unless I cheat. I love games, I love stories, I love fun and different experiences. I love to feel powerful and escape from my frustrating life. Games should be made for as many people as possible, should have accessibility features to help people be able to finish their games without getting furious.

Games can still have difficult in them, you can still play games that are meant to beat your ass into the dirt if that's fun for you. But people who don't want to have to go through that should be able to play them too. And remember that if you want to feel powerful, and want to not get pissed at single player games. It's okay to cheat and it's okay to, in the games that have them, use the accessibility features that make the game more fun for you.

Personally, until it's more common in games to have the Veilguard and Control like accessibility features, I'm still gonna cheat in games that I don't want to deal with the difficulty of. And I'm not ashamed of that.

Meow,

Cat