Editor's note: I started cheating early, with an InvisiClues hint book for the original Zork. (The cheats were written in invisible ink!) And I don't regret it, because I don't think I would have gotten past the Cyclops without it. Ultimately, I went on to actually write a few strategy guides for Prima, so I never quite left cheating behind. But it's interesting to hear about the self-imposed rules gamers create for themselves, and the guilt associated with breaking them. -Demian
Let me clear something up right away: I'm fairly anti-guide. When I'm stuck in the Water Temple in Zelda or I can't figure out how the hell anyone is supposed to beat Call of Duty on veteran, I don't check gamefaqs and I don't rush out and buy a guide. When I heard about some people looking up ways to solve Braid — a game that is predicated on its mind-bending puzzles and the sensational feeling of solving a tricky one for yourself — I was appalled. (That is, of course, unless they were using the fantastic official guide.) I never use cheats in a game to further the story and I figure things out for myself because there's a certain pride that comes along with crossing the finish line knowing nobody held your hand. My friends, more or less, share the same beliefs.
So when I broke out the (extremely awesome) Mass Effect Wiki the other day to get some help, my roommate gave me crap. For those who haven't played Mass Effect, quite a few quests have you scouring largely deserted, bland, rocky planets for a staggering amount of hidden artifacts and resources, which require aimless driving around until a marker appears on your mini-map. They're fetch-quests, in the purest form, and they suck. Don't get me wrong, Mass Effect is a tremendous game and I am loving it, but these quests, while optional, severely hamper the pace of a game. So, in an effort to both satisfy my insistent completionist impulse and to hurry things up so that I could get back to the good stuff, I used a guide.
Great — another totally exciting planet to explore!
This reasoning wasn't really enough to convince my roommate (although it's likely he just enjoys crap-giving), so it made me consider if and when "cheating" (loosely defined here as either using cheats or a guide) is ever acceptable in gaming culture. Never? It seems to me that the black and white approach of never or always here is as hard-headed as the stubborn husband who won't stop and ask for directions. You might argue it's a matter of pride, but let's be honest with ourselves here — it'd be a lot less painful to just stop, ask for a bit of help, and start having fun with the road trip or the videogame.
Because that's what videogames are about, right? Sometimes we forget that the reason we play games in the first place is because we find them enjoyable and fun (at least that's the reason you should be playing). So I propose a simple definition for when using a guide is acceptable: If solving the current situation you are in will provide you with no self-satisfaction and the process of doing so will not be any fun whatsoever, using a guide is acceptable.
So no — you can't use a guide to figure out where the hell to go in the Water Temple. Because once you figure it out, you'll undeniably feel gratification (come on, it's Zelda). Beating Call of Duty on veteran is a tremendous feat, and one that (although hatred-inducing) is probably a lot of fun and extremely satisfying. Will collecting six noble gasses in Mass Effect make me feel any smarter, and will I feel pretty good about myself when I do it? Nope, it just bugs the hell out of me to see it still sitting in my quest log. Time to get the guide.
This guy is all the guide you need in Call of Duty.
I should, of course, note that once you beat a game, using a guide is usually OK if you want to go back and get absolutely everything. The true hardcore might try and do this without a guide, but again — what fun is that? Sometimes you just want to see every little item the developers packed onto a CD and a guide is the most reasonable way to do it, without wasting enough of your life that your girlfriend leaves you and eating no longer seems as important as it used to. Not that I speak from experience or anything.
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OK, it is entirely possible that this whole article is a selfish denial that using a guide in Mass Effect wasn't cheating, and a defense against ridicule from the gaming community as a whole. I'm curious as to where other gamers stand on the issue — when does pride trump recreation? There's got to be a line to be drawn somewhere, but where? In the end, though, I'll continue to use guides following my rule of thumb — whether my roommates like it or not.