Internet Sites Help You Beat Tough Games
Cheat at computer games? Moi? Never!
And if you believe that, I’d like to sell you some stock in Commodore Business Machines.
The stock is worthless and so are bromides about the evils of cheating at computer games.
Befuddled by mind-bending puzzles designed to extend game play and stymied by increasingly complex action scenarios, for many cyberplayers it’s no longer a question of if they should cheat, but when.
And consider the bottom line.
“You might pay $60 for a game, you don’t want to end up feeling that there’s no way to finish it,” said Tabitha Tosti, supervisor of the game-hint hotline at LucasArts.
Software manufacturers with their pay-as-you-go hotlines (LucaswArts’ charge of 75 cents a minute is typical) are just part of an extensive cheaters’ infrastructure.
Most of the major game-makers sell hint books - sometimes retail, but mostly through the mail. At $20 apiece and more they’re a pricey way to, say, get past the spiders on the 12th level of Dungeon Master. Some manufacturers include hint books right in their games (Return to Zork, Sam and Max Hit the Road), and with the rise of CD-ROM some game-makers have even included on-board hints that can be accessed during play.
Commercial online services such as Compuserve, Prodigy and America Online have software collections where you can download programs and information to assure your chances of victory.
But the real boon for cheaters is the Internet. There are dozens of sites crammed with hints, walk-throughs (step-by-step instructions on how to complete a given adventure game) and codes (secret numbers or words that were used by the game’s programmers to help produce certain effects, such as enhancing a character’s powers).
Some of the information is leaked by game manufacturers who have an interest in seeing that players get the most out of their expensive product, but a lot of it comes from hackers or experienced users who figured out how to win through nothing but luck and hard effort.
Like everything else on the Internet the quality of the sites varies.
Douwe’s On-Line Cheating Collection (http://wwwedu.cs.utwent.nl/%7Eachterka/collection.html) carries a remarkably complete array of hints, walk-throughs and codes for DOS, Windows and Macintosh games. Some of it is wonderfully obscure (such as a nifty trick for evading attackers in Aces Over Europe) - all the better for players who buy games that aren’t produced by the major manufacturers.
The Happy Puppy Games Page (http://www.happypuppy.com/games/faqcht/index.html) has lots of hints, but requires lots of downloading. This library of text files has nice Netscape-compatible graphics, but the cute puppies and nursery school colors also slow down the access time. So if you need a hint and you need it now, the Happy Puppy may not be the happiest choice.
The Gamer’s Hole (http://www.cmact.com/ghole) may not be as complete as Douwe’s, but it is attractive, very easy to use and, for adventure gamers, the most likely users of hints and walk-throughs, it can be almost invaluable. The information is up-to-date and can be accessed using both the name of the game and its manufacturer.
Some games, including Mechwarrior II, Earthworm Jim and Warcraft II, have their own Internet sites, and they usually include cheats.
Working up codes and hints for the best-selling Doom and its many clones has nearly become a cottage industry.
The Romad Doom Page (http://www.megsinet.net/barr/Doom.html) is a nicely crafted site containing a wide-ranging assortment of cheats for Doom, Doom II, Dark Forces, Heretic, Rise of the Triad, Hexen and other first-person walk-and-shoot games. Incidentally, the site includes a newsgroup where you can post your own cheats.
This would seem an ideal site for my Doomophile sons, Nick, 17 and Chris, 15, but they won’t go near it. They say that cheating undermines the fun of gaming, that it is a cheap cop-out for losers without the brains to find their own solutions.
They went ballistic a few months ago when they found me with a walkthrough for Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within. I told them that I needed to cheat to finish the game quickly and write a review.
They walked out in disgust. Apparently for some players the question still isn’t when to cheat, but if to cheat.
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