Using Online Walkthroughs to Beat Games

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

So, do you guys think this is cheating? I will sometimes look up online what to do next in a game where I'm stuck. And this is something you couldn't do back in the day, we had strategy guides instead. I know it's not really a cheat cuz it doesn't change the game, but it still feels more satisfying to complete a game with no references. Zelda games and other action puzzle games are the ones that feel the most like cheating, and I only refer to the Internet if I'm really really stuck. Am I alone here?

[ProjectCamaro]

I do see it as a cheat. Like you said we did have strategy guides back in the day but honestly how many games did you actually have them for? I won't lie and say I haven't look online for assistance but I know I enjoyed the games more when I took the time to explore more and find the answers on my own. I can't speak for anyone else but I know I don't explore every single square inch of a map like I use to and I also know I don't enjoy games as much as I use to and I think that's a major part of it. Of course now I work, have a young child, and so forth so I can't put the time into it that I use to be able to do.

[Gentlegamer]

Using a guide when you get stuck or a game doesn't explain its systems properly is one thing, using a step by step walkthrough from start to finish makes me question why you even "play" games.

[bb_hood]

I would think that if you are looking up a secret, like the location of a dungeon in Zelda then it is 'cheating'. Not that that is a bad thing, but if you cheat you cant say that you beat it without assistance. I recently beat Zelda Outlands and I tried really hard to beat it without cheating, but I had look up the location of the 7th dungeon. I spent like 3 nights bombing every wall and burning every tree but I could not find it. Finally I was like 'enough wasted time, where is this..." and then like 2 hours later I had the game beat. It was the only thing in the game I couldnt find.

Alot of times there are situations in games where you kinda do the right thing, but it doesnt trigger the next event leaving the player confused.
Currently Im playing Destiny of an Emperor, and there is a part where a guy is in jail and you have to ram the door down to get him out. I spent 20 minutes moving the guys around and running into the door (there really are no other options) and the door wont break. I knew something was fishy so I looked it up. Sure enough, you have to stand in front of the door and 'tap' up 3 times. Its kinda a stupid puzzle so Im glad I looked and diddnt waste hours looking for a different solution. So sometimes I think looking online is justified.

[Tanooki]

I used to be dead set against it, not really as a cheat unless I did it to look up cheats, but just because I had a lot of free time and could enjoy the exploration of things like RPGs and Adventure games. These days, I do not. I consider it standard fare when I get a game new or used I go right to finding the most easy to use and best explained FAQ for a game and then I back that up on my computer for later use. I will also in time copy that to my tablet too because i'll keep copies of my NES/SNES games on the tablet so the faq there is handy tabbing out. In general I'll get any FAQ for any system I have from 3DS/PS4 back to the NES. I'm not a completionist, but I loathe games that hide necessary items that'll fairly well to completely screw you later in the game as I have no patience for that fury nor the time to restart.

When I think of cheating, I think of pulling out the IDDQD, IDKFA, IDSPISPOPD codes (god, guns and no clip) for DOOM as a perfect example. No matter how damn good the DOOM guides are out there, you'll still get the shit kicked out of you if you can't handle yourself.

[celerystalker]

When the internet and GameFAQs were new to me, I dove right in and started using walkthroughs to finish some old games that I'd never put the time in to finish. I don't know that it's cheating or not, but I will say this... I enjoy games more when I don't.

It started with Legacy of the Wizard on NES. I sucked at it as a kid, as it is a fairly obtuse game. However, in my early twenties, I played it while the computer in my house wasn't working, and I had that "Aha" moment when I discovered in an area I could push down to go through a fake block in the floor onto a ladder, and it widened my perspective on approaching the game. I finished it, and the satisfaction I got from doing so was infinitely better than downloading a map or walkthrough to play other games. I had that feeling from the old days when I really enjoyed finishing games, and made me happy to take on the challenge of figuring out games for myself. A few years later I played through Game Center C-X on DS, and it really encpsulated my youthful enthusiasm for games, and looking at old magazines like Nintendo Power.

Thanks to those two experiences, I now play games as I did as a kid: I use the instruction manual, tips from guides or magazines if I own them and am stuck or looking for an excuse to get out a guide or magazine, and word of mouth from friends. It's led me to a couple of neat experiences where buddies of mine played through games at the same time, and we'd talk about them like kids at the lunch table.

That said, if it's an old cart for which I don't have the manual, I will look up instructions online if I feel I'm missing something about how to play a game, but I try to avoid spoilers. I found these two volumes of The Totally Unauthorized Guide to Nintendo games that are basically transposed compendiums of NES instructions, so I use them first when I can. I kike the enthusiasm of in-the-moment literature on the games.

[Gameguy]

It depends on the type of game whether or not it's cheating, with games with puzzles they're more like cheating but with action games even knowing what to do or where to go it can still take lots of effort or practice to get through a section. With one adventure game there was an arcade sequence added to pad it out, even knowing what to do it still took me around 40 minutes to get through that section. It was just difficult to pull off what was needed because of the timing.

I'll look up what to do when I'm stuck rather than just put a game away and forget about it. In some games I've come across bugs that made me have to start over again from the beginning, the next time I played them I looked through a Gamefaq walkthrough to find out about the bugs before I came across them again, in one case a bug was caused if you saved in the area so I had to avoid doing that there.