Decline "Cheating"? Discuss.

[Alex]

You should only check a guide if the game is so bad that you give up not only trying to solve the puzzle, but also any expectation that the answer is worth figuring out. Now, there are plenty of bad adventure games like that out there, but if you haven't given up hope on the game itself, you should always just wait and come back later. Makes adventure games last a whole lot more too.

 

[Anthedon]

It's ok, in moderation. For me it's usually missed pixels these days. Adventures are funny like that. You can try hard fights in RPGs as often as you like and figure out a strategy that works, make progress over time. If you overlook an item in an adventure you are usually shit out of luck.

 

[Alex]

It's ok, in moderation. For me it's usually missed pixels these days. Adventures are funny like that. You can try hard fights in RPGs as often as you like and figure out a strategy that works, make progress over time. If you overlook an item in an adventure you are usually shit out of luck.

These are pretty annoying, I agree. But if you take a week out and try revisiting all the areas again, or restarting if you prefer (or if the game has dead-ends), you get a real second chance.

 

[Explorerbc]

The day I discovered there are walkthroughs on the internet was the day adventure games were almost ruined for me when younger.

Not that I was a pro player or anything. I remember playing Amerzone on the playstation as a kid. I played every day for two weeks trying to finish it, and I would get stuck a lot. But when I progressed it felt amazing.
I was stuck near the end for 2 days and one morning I woke up to find out that my father, who never liked videogames, had found the solution and finished it without me.
And then at some point I learned about walkthroughs on the internet and stopped being so patient, to the point where I would constantly look up everything even slightly not obvious.

I started playing adventures again years later, and I generally try to avoid walkthroughs as much as possible.

The problem is that nowdays I can't afford to get stuck for a long time on a single game so if I spent like 3 hours without progress or if I'm very curious about the conclusion of the story or something I'll look some stuff up, though I will always feel like I let myself down a bit.
On the positive side, I am a much more experienced player now, so I can usually figure out the majority of the puzzles with some effort.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I don't think there's anything wrong with having a progressive hint system in games a la the old UHS hints. It's up to the player to exercise some restraint and not spoil everything for themselves, but up to a point it can be beneficial to have something that allows a player to become unstuck at a particular part of the game without feeling like a complete imbecile.

 

[Sceptic]

Hints are OK if you get really stuck. Especially with good games, I've always asked friends to not look up the solution and get more subtle hints from me. I don't see the point of a walkthrough though. I don't particularly care what others do, it's your life and I assume you're an adult and can make your own choices (and if you're not then I assume you have some adult within less than a mile that's responsible for you) but as someone mentioned already you might as well just watch a Let's Play if you're going that route. It's like trying to "watch" a movie by closing your eyes and only listening to the sound.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I agree with Sceptic on "assuming you're an adult and can make your own choices" thing, and I can understand those that don't want to be spoiled but want/need help with their game (and I try to help those when I can)...but as far as I'm personally concerned, I don't give a shit. I spent the occasional moment of free time for more than NINE YEARS to try solve a riddle in an RPG, and eventually I had to look it up online...and found that the answer didn't make much sense. A few years later I get the word that the "problem" was due to a bad translation job - the riddle makes sense in its original langauge but in English it's a stretch, at best.

Goes without saying that this single event kinda killed the whole "figure it out for yourself" idea for me. I'm not gonna state that I'm stupid (quite the opposite, in fact) but if I get frustrated or annoyed by a puzzle in a game, regardless of genre - I will look that shit up online. No exceptions. I don't have time for this crap. (Don't summon him.) The only "saving grace" I have in this regard for some of you is that I took the time 10 years ago to amass a decent collection of cluebooks, strategy guides and "cheat sheets" for various games...and I'm pretty certain some of this stuff isn't in the easy-to-find parts of the Internet.

The world is spinning ever faster today than it did before. Whatever choice you make...live with it.

 

[Zombra]

The entire genre is defined by "Figure out the ONE EXACT THING that some asshole wrote as the solution". You can tie cloth to a stick and light it with matches, but it won't burn properly unless you smear it with axle grease from the wheels of a train. There's no way to go around those thorn bushes or cut through them; you have to pour apple juice on them so that a nearby goat will eat them to clear the path. When I was a kid I could try every permutation of items and environmental hotspots and it was fun because it was the only game in town. Use panties on pencil. Nothing happens. Use panties on canteen. Nothing happens. Use pencil on canteen. Good job! Today I recognize this "gameplay" as the garbage that it is.

I do usually give it some time if I'm stuck, like I'll put the game down and come back next day; this often works when a solution is actually reasonable. But I've seen too many off-the-wall, impossible to guess solutions to have much faith that any adventure game is playable with reason alone. Reason usually helps, but more often than not combo grinding is required. In those situations, just look up the stupid answer and move on.

I recently played some of the remastered Broken Sword games and they had a built-in progressive hint system, no looking shit up online necessary. I think this is the way all adventures of this type should go.

 

[Great Deceiver]

In-game progressive hint systems were in adventure games as far back as Under a Killing Moon, which deducted points based on how many hints you looked up. It's a great solution.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Hints are great. I have the King's Quest VI hint book and I treasure it to this day. Of course, if you are really really stuck, you have no choice but to cheat. But I usually gave a puzzle a few days of thinking and experimenting in the good old days.

The PC doesn't care, but my consciousness and sense of achievement cares.

 

[hereticclub]

When I was younger I would cheat to all hell, having piles of printed walkthroughs to slough through behind me. I was a total storyfag who didn't give a shit about solving the puzzles.

Now that I'm older, I rarely play many adventure games any more outside of Telltale, which most of theirs already have a hint system in place thus making the need for a walkthrough not necessary.

 

[Aeschylus]

When I was younger I would cheat to all hell, having piles of printed walkthroughs to slough through behind me. I was a total storyfag who didn't give a shit about solving the puzzles.

Now that I'm older, I rarely play many adventure games any more outside of Telltale, which most of theirs already have a hint system in place thus making the need for a walkthrough not necessary.

You are the worst.

 

[polo]

I remember checking for the rubber duck, magnet shit stuff in the longest journey. Those kind of puzzles which don't make much sense make me feel good over my decision of looking it up.

 

[groke]

Walkthroughs/save editing/exploits are all kosher traditions of computer games. Save states are the true modern demon of convenience.

 

[ReneRene]

I cannot vote some reason but I wanted to say that it's perfectly acceptable if I'm playing for the story.

 

[Boleskine]

When I was younger I would cheat to all hell, having piles of printed walkthroughs to slough through behind me. I was a total storyfag who didn't give a shit about solving the puzzles.

Now that I'm older, I rarely play many adventure games any more outside of Telltale, which most of theirs already have a hint system in place thus making the need for a walkthrough not necessary.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Yeah, that was a really bad post.

 

[ReneRene]

Walkthroughs/save editing/exploits are all kosher traditions of computer games. Save states are the true modern demon of convenience.

They are nit really modern, by the way. I remember seeing "saves" on the cheat sites 5 and more years ago.

 

[commie]

When I checked up on old sierra games I never played before and some others I have to admit I used walkthroughs, albeit sparingly most of the times. You have to at least check out ways to avoid the dreadful dead ends, otherwise you are bound to have to start the game all over again after failing at some point. Although intentional, those were design flaws I think. It is quite fucked up to force the player to track back hours of gameplay for missing something. Worst is that some dead ends you would only find out about near the end of the game if your were playing without a guide(The "conquest" series, for instance).

For most adventures I don't see the point of using a walkthrough though. Unless off course you are completely stumped. Some old adventurers have silly "pixel hunting" moments for instance.

Leisure Suit Larry 2 when you leave the ship in the life boat....fuck me the reloading I did for that cause I didn't keep or pick up this or that at the start!

I do cheat only when the solution is utterly random or unintuitive. Usually those are quite obvious when you 'know' a solution and it doesn't work no matter how logically you approach it where even the item descriptions give no hints through puns etc that you would get in older Sierra or Lucasfilm games for example. In the past you would leave a game and come back and figure shit out but in the 2000's there were a horde of shitty puzzles in adventure games, that I would use a walkthrough to at least get past the first fucked puzzle, just to get an idea of the kind of thinking required to work it out. Often this would act as a 'hint' as to how to overcome the nonsensical subsequent puzzles.