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Mario Kart 64 is probably the best example I’ve seen of this. Have you noticed that when you use a mushroom or a golden mushroom, that you don’t get very far away from the computer players. If you haven’t noticed, go and play and see for yourself. You seen that? Good. Now there are two sides to this argument so I’m going to express both of them.
Firstly I could argue that this is extremely annoying. Which it is. The fact that you use a turbo boost only to get nowhere is extremely tiresome. I know it frustrates me greatly, it frustrates my sister as well when she plays on it.
But then again I could argue that the game only does this to add an extra incentive to the game. To make it more challenging. Which, of course, it does. If and when you win the race you feel a little bit better because you won even though the computer was cheating. In this sense it’s a good thing, but the fact is that the computers cheating.
You think this is the only time it happens? MK64 again, if the computer player gets hit with something they get blown up like you do, but then they speed off at full speed without needing to build it up at all. Whereas you have to build up your speed until it peaks again. This is VERY annoying to me.
It’s not only in Mario Kart that cheating occurs. In the original Excitebike on the NES, when you crash your rider gets flung from the bike and so has to leg it back and jump on again. When the computer players crash though, they stay on their bike and resume driving immediately. It’s quite disturbing to see cheating like this so early on the life of video games.
As I’ve said. This can sometimes be good, because it makes it tougher and so prolongs the lastability. But surely cheating’s wrong, I mean weren’t you told by your parents that cheating is bad and immoral when you were young? I was.
So why is it there? Do the developers and creators of the games put this in on purpose? Do they intentionally frustrate people by allowing certain privileges to computer controlled characters? Or is it merely a bug?
RBS
Mario Kart 64 is probably the best example I’ve seen of this. Have you noticed that when you use a mushroom or a golden mushroom, that you don’t get very far away from the computer players. If you haven’t noticed, go and play and see for yourself. You seen that? Good. Now there are two sides to this argument so I’m going to express both of them.
Firstly I could argue that this is extremely annoying. Which it is. The fact that you use a turbo boost only to get nowhere is extremely tiresome. I know it frustrates me greatly, it frustrates my sister as well when she plays on it.
But then again I could argue that the game only does this to add an extra incentive to the game. To make it more challenging. Which, of course, it does. If and when you win the race you feel a little bit better because you won even though the computer was cheating. In this sense it’s a good thing, but the fact is that the computers cheating.
You think this is the only time it happens? MK64 again, if the computer player gets hit with something they get blown up like you do, but then they speed off at full speed without needing to build it up at all. Whereas you have to build up your speed until it peaks again. This is VERY annoying to me.
It’s not only in Mario Kart that cheating occurs. In the original Excitebike on the NES, when you crash your rider gets flung from the bike and so has to leg it back and jump on again. When the computer players crash though, they stay on their bike and resume driving immediately. It’s quite disturbing to see cheating like this so early on the life of video games.
As I’ve said. This can sometimes be good, because it makes it tougher and so prolongs the lastability. But surely cheating’s wrong, I mean weren’t you told by your parents that cheating is bad and immoral when you were young? I was.
So why is it there? Do the developers and creators of the games put this in on purpose? Do they intentionally frustrate people by allowing certain privileges to computer controlled characters? Or is it merely a bug?
RBS
This was annoying in the Snes version, but tollerable...the N64 version however was an annoyance to far!
The right balance between being fair and cheating has to be made in games...
Thats why Zangief was so strong in SuperStreetFighter2...only the computer could pull off his moves!
Thats why Zangief was so strong in
> SuperStreetFighter2...only the computer could pull off his moves!
I could do them no probem! I was a master at his spinning piledriver.
Of course, on a PC, unlike a console, you can change these, but I've never felt the need to (possibly because the CPU opponents on age2 tend to resign within 10 minutes on anything below hard anyway). If you think about it, the competition between you and a computer is very unfair - a computer has to strictly follow specified sets of instructions, without the capability of making spontaneous descisions to the level that a human can. It's completely reliant on the instructions the programmers give it.
While this should give humans the advantage, we're still limited by what it's physically possible to do. You could argue that all strategy games are unfair, as the computer opponent is capable of making descisions all over the map simeltaneously, while a human can only change what is on the screen at a certain time, and even then it takes a few clicks tomake anything happen.
So while we're capable of making a much wider range of complex descisions, actually pulling them off is much easier for a computer. So why should it need to cheat to be able to do these operations faster? I think that really, it has to, as all we try to do through having computer opponents is emulate playing against another human. AI isn't currently at the level where it can achieve this accurately, allowing for human indescision, hesitation, and miscalculation (although some of these are achieved through programming faults..)
However, while this may be true, it's not an excuse for computers to adhere to a different set of rules when playing a game. The only feasable reason I can see for this is adjusting difficulty levels - these Age2 clauses don't enter in to play until the higher difficulty levels, and I think that often, the only way a computer can match up to the greater levels of skill that a human is capable of, is cheating. While technically, they're more capable of pulling off moves, programmers can't allow for every eventuality in the game.
That's another thing that can make it look like the ocmputer is cheating - pulling off moves and maneuvers more complex than most people can handle, as there are no physical or mental limits for them. This can be immensely annoying, as a computer can breeze through a fight/race while you struggle to keep up, simply because it doesn't have to worry about reactions and combinations of buttons - it can manage all of thesealmost instantaneously.
Personally, I don't mind computers cheating to a degree - I think it's nescessary to keep challenging us, but it's nice to be able to stop them when they keep doing it to the point that it just gets annoying and a chore to keep playing.
When I first became a gamer, which long ago, I didn’t use the Internet much so my only source of cheats was to buy magazine, which ripped you off by saying “comes free with a cheat book containing 1,000 cheats. This was a good sign and so I brought the five pound mag only to find that there was only two cheats in the entire book that I needed and then I found out they didn’t work that well. I once tried the hotline cheat company ‘cheats unlimited’ this worked brilliantly and then came the phone bill, which showed the four-minute calls charged at a pound a minute. Grounded for a week, big shame, so when the Internet came along I was over the moon, finally an enormous selection of cheats at my computer, I was in heaven.
So until then I never used cheats, as I couldn’t get a hold of them. Now I have a chance to use any cheat I want and have the chance to complete even the hardest of games. Great, or is it. Like most of you have said already that it depends were you are in the game, or how hard it is. I mean who needs to cheat at THPS2 to unlock everything. What’s the point, however being able to get big heads in Perfect Dark is a different story as it bring a new chance of great snipping when the poor sod thinks he’s hidden behind the corner. So you can use cheats to have fun, or you can use them if you’re impossibly stuck in place. On the other hand should you need to cheat to get you out of trouble, I mean do the game producers make it so the only way to finish is by cheating, I think not.
I haven’t really answered the topic question, but I think you get my point. If not say so and I’ll try to word it differently.
Yours respectively
Frogman
The computer players just had an unfair advantage, starting at the front of the pack.
Mario Kart 64?
Players caught up using the powerslide and tailing boost techniques.
It's not always obvious until you learn these techniques for yourself.
Anyway, you have an unfair advantage, the ability to think and plan and sceme.
The ability to work out that if you bullie your rival in the scores table then you can win without doing the perfect race...