I've given it some more thought and I've discovered something...
God mode is a failure.
It's not my failure, however, rather it's a failure of the game's design.
It's not like I buy a game and within 5 minutes I'm looking for the console commands to cheat; I don't.
I have this foolish hope that I can actually play a game "straight up" and still enjoy it without having to resort to such measures.
Unfortunately, I only get my wish about half the time.
Here's a list of games I've recently played that I haven't cheated on.
Borderlands
Killing Floor
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Need for Speed: Shift 2 (no cheat could possibly help me)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Black ops
Battlefield Bad Company 2 (although I wanted to but the game doesn't really allow it)
Test Drive Unlimited 2 (Not even worth the trouble)
Dirt 2
Now that doesn't mean I'm grand champion or have even finished these games, I just enjoy them without having to resort to cheats.
Now the list that I have used God Mode or some kind of cheat on...
Half Life 2 + DLC packs (got tired of getting killed every 30 seconds)
Dragon Age Origins + DLC packs (Ditto above)
Portal ( only two maps - see my portal review earlier in blog posts)
Portal 2 (If watching a YouTube video play through counts but again for only a few maps)
Fallout 3 (see Half Life 2)
Fallout:New Vegas (see Half Life 2)
Dungeon Siege 2 (For some maps or for level ups)
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (Died every battle and like the naked girl mod)
Ok, so I have some kind of justification for my evils after most of those but if you look at the two lists I think a pattern develops.
First of all it would appear that my preference is for games that don't involve devoting a major portion of my life to. Hey, it's a game not a vocation if I devote major time without major reward I'm out.
Something that only I could notice is that the list of games I've used cheats on I haven't really enjoyed that much excluding the Portal series and Dungeon Siege 2 Co-op play.
If I resort to a cheat it generally means I'm getting bored of being stuck and I'm about ready to give up on it. My depression era upbringing (my grandmother's complex if you must know) won't allow me to discard something I paid hard earned money for without exploring every angle first. It may have cost $10 but I'm going to see the end credits one way or another by god!
A lot of those games are RPG's as well which rarely hold my interest if I have to traipse all over the map to accomplish part 1 of 10 quest components.
* Please note: "traipse" is my word of the week or so it seems..
As sad as my life is; devoting it to an unfullfilling game experience would just make it sadder. So I try to get to the good parts and have some fun blowing stuff up if I can.
Oh yeah and about that. Hey Bethesda ( Fallout series) Since when does a Flamethrower cause the enemy to burst into chunks?? I swear I saw chunks that looked ready for packaging in the butcher's case at the supermarket. I've never flame broiled anything organic that blew up in chunks. It just burned and eventually turned to ash.
The choice to run a cheat is of course a personal one. You take the risks since most PC games are so badly coded that using a cheat to make them run right gives you a 50/50 chance of the game crashing. kind of like everyone in your neighborhood using 20Mbits of Bandwidth on their cable modems at the same time (see earlier post about over committed broadband)
Still, I think of it as a failure on the developer's part. If I can't enjoy a game straight up without a cheat and I have a history of playing games without resorting to such tactics then you've ultimately failed me. I'm not alone either.
Cheats for games show up literally within minutes of release these days.
Now some people are just the type that read the end of the book first but I doubt it's that large a list or else gaming would have been dead back in the Galaga days.
So the bottom line is; If I feel the need to enable a cheat just to try to enjoy your game then it's not my failure it's the creator's.
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