re: You're a Filthy Cheater! ...Right?

AbsolutelyNot — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:43:17 GMT

You're a filthy cheater!

My personal feelings on cheat codes, is that they shouldn't be used until you have beaten the game the normal way. Of course, if you're truly stuck then it's okay, but then you run into the problem of, "Well, I've looking at this puzzle for a whole 30 seconds, time to skip it," or "I'm too low level to kill the final boss, but instead of grinding a level, I'll just become invincible."

Cheating always allows me an extra replay just to see how it affects the game, so it's nice if they're there, but so many people look up that stuff on the internet that devs don't want the players spoiling the game anymore.

Snaking: since it's in the game, I don't consider it cheating, and also because of the whole "blue shell effect," having a skill-based method for winning means that those who are skilled are rewarded. BUT that doesn't stop snaking from being incredibly stupid. In terms of game design, snaking promotes the worst kind of skill development; there is no high level strategy, just patterned button-mashing. I would compare it to a fighter where a character just uses one move over and over. Whoever is faster wins, not whoever has mastered all the moves. The comparison falls short, because in a fighter, doing one move will eventually be countered, but not in MK. And it hurts my hand when I do competitive snaking, that's really fun.