I agree entirely! There was at least one occassion where I went through a process more or less identical to that which you describe above.

Another good example, I think, is where one simple cheat not only changes the whole game, but changes it for the BETTER:
For instance, the PS2 game Superman: Shadow of Apokolips- overall, quite a good game. However, put on the Invulnerability mode and suddenly it’s a GREAT game! Most enemies can’t hurt Superman, but are a threat to civilians you’re trying to save; enemies with heavy attacks (rockets, Livewire’s lightning blasts, Metallo throwing a car at you, etc.) will knock Superman down, costing you vital time you need to rescue people and otherwise pursue mission goals.
With one simple cheat code, the gameplay is made far truer to its story and far more fun to play to boot.

Clearly the people who made the recent Superman Returns game realised this, as Superman has no Health bar or whathaveyou in that game.
Sadly, it’s basically the only really good thing about that game, but that’s beyond the scope of my point.

@Jakob: The XBox thing is absolutely correct. I should not be eligible for an “achievement” if I use cheats. Those who want to use cheats to simply improve their gameplay experience usually won’t care about this. People who do care about them won’t be able to exploit the cheats to artificially inflate their score and won’t get the bragging rights. Everyone wins.

@Luke Maciak: I agree :) Truth be told, I have no idea why people resist cheats in singleplayer games. I know some xbox games who has cheats in them, and if the player anables them, they loose the rights for achivements while they are active, thereby not grating bragging rights.

@Luke Maciak: I’m pretty sure that in GTA:SA they will send tanks after you. I’ve seen it. You may have to in the desert for them to do it however.

@Ben: Interesting, but that sort of makes the cheats as part of the gameplay. They become part of your strategy which I don’t necessarily like. I’d prefer to keep them separate.

Besides, making cheats depend on a renewable resource makes them less useful – you can’t go all out and ruin the game for yourself just for shits and giggles. The designers feel that they need to hold your hand even when you are cheating.

@Jakob: Well, when I think “fairness” I think about competition. If I’m not competing with anyone but just “messing around” with a game for my own amusement then I don’t really know how to gauge fairness.

Unless we assume that I’m playing for bragging rights – so that I can show off my high score, or the pimped out character and uber gear I collected. Even then, if you get these things via a cheat you lose the bragging rights and get no respect from your pears. So it is still sort of fair. Those who want to compete will need to do it the hard way. Those who just want to have fun, can use the cheats in the amount and capacity that suits them.

@Luke Maciak: But the concept of fairness might explain why some are don’t want cheats and console commands in their games, even if it is singleplayer. But it is rather silly not to have them in, since the only one to be affected by the cheat is the “cheater” himself.

Space Rangers 2 has a neat approach to cheats. Each turn you gain 1 point, and each cheat code costs a certain number of points. So you are motivated a bit to spend some time finding a solution, but if you’re really stuck for a while, you can get out of it. I found the costs reasonable and the approach was different enough to be interesting. Also, I loved the game, so I’m biased.

@Jakob: Yeah, it isn’t fair but if you are playing a single player game that doesn’t really matter. In the best case it will mean more fun. In the worst case, it will ruin the game.

I don’t use stuff like god mode or unlimited ammo cheats because these things tend to take out all the excitement from combat turning it into a repetitive chore.

@IceBrain: Heh, I never actually used the Jet one. I used to just give myself all weapons, then stand in the middle of the street and shoot the minigun to see how long I would last. It was disappointing to see that SWAT teams were the best thing the game would throw at me.

Anyone remembers the original GTA? Heh, that game would eventually escalate to military so you would have barricades made out of tanks at each intersection. Fun times!

↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A :P

I usually don’t care for reducing difficulty cheats, but on the other hand I don’t usually play RPGs and such, I play mostly games with a fixed sequence of objectives. But I do like having the console when I just want to goof around the game world.

Oh, but I remember a cheat I always used to skip annoying parts: the key combination to spawn a jet in GTA:SA. Why should I spend 10 minutes just driving from one city to another?

As a console gamer myself, I surely miss the console commands. Sometimes, I want to play around and have fun.

The console commands will, granted, allow gamers to do unintended stuff in the games (such as getting 50 lockpicks) when they are broke. They bascily cheat and cheat isn’t fair. But I myself care not for cheats in a singleplayer enviorment. It is one player who ends up affecting him alone. How does is affect my game that you added a legendary weapon to your inventory? It doesn’t.

Cheating can grealty enhance the experience a player gets. Sometimes, one would like to see how it is to be a mighty brawler or the shadow itself, without pouring many hours into achiveing this. And it helps to avoid tidious parts of the game as you noted.

In summary, I fully support console commands. I just wished I learned about them earlier in my gaming career :)