do you consider this cheat?
 

Yo, in almost every adventure game there is a button you press which shows every item there is on the screen... do you consider this cheat? if so then why?


thanks!

I don't think it's a cheat, I think it's a blessing. Adventuring/puzzle-solving should have nothing to do with scanning each screen with a cursor. It's painful and I hate it.

That's exactly what I thought about it but i'd like to hear more opinions :)

If its part of the game design then its not cheating. In those cases the devs made the game assuming youd use that button.
But then most older games (and some new) dont have that button.

Alright thanks you 2, I just wanted to make sure.

Yes and No. It isn't "cheating" since it's included in the game. However, you could be "cheating" yourself.

It would be too conservative to say we don't need "Show all Hotspots" option. However, if you're scanning each screen first thing you enter it, you could be losing on some satisfactory moments. Part of the fun and even part of the puzzle IS deducing important things on screen. Overdo it, and you get hidden-object games. When it's a sloppy work, we get pixel-hunting. So it really depends on the game. What i try to do is not use the option until i feel stuck or to double-check whether i fully inspected a location the first time.

It's not cheating but it is a little cheap :)

I use it all the time but I feel dirty doing it lol.

It can't be cheating when it's included in a game. I just don't like it. Finding the items necessary is sort of a puzzle. And it's more fun to find them on your own than your have them highlighted: 'here we are'!
I really like how Manny in G.F gently nods at the items you can pick up. Subtle and elegant!

I can't argue with the concept that it can't be cheating if it's included in the game.

However, my wife is a big fan of 'casual games', and most puzzles in those games come with a Skip button. She uses them all the time. I like them, casual games, as well, but rarely use the Skip button. My question to her is "Why spend the money on a game if you don't intend to experience the challenges the game offers?" Her response is usually along the lines of "If they didn't want me to use the Skip button, they wouldn't have put it in the game!"

Pros and cons to both arguments.

It ended pixel hunting, so I just consider it a plus.
It saves me a lot of frustration and helps move the game forward a bit faster.

I personally think it's one of the best things to come to adventure games in recent years.

If you feel it's cheating: don't use it! If you don't: knock yourself out!

The idea that one can “cheat” in a single player game is absurd to me. Cheating is something that only applies to group dynamics. Unless there is more than one of you, who exactly is cheating whom?

Even if I accept the metaphor of “cheating oneself” (do I have a split personality?), there is no cheating going on. Why?

Because the person who plays the game has their own “rules” of enjoyment and those rules trump all others. If anything, they would be “cheating themselves” if out of insecurity due to social tyranny they put up with a bunch of pointless and/or frustrating game mechanics that lower their enjoyment of the game just so they can “beat” it and acquire a false sense of self-worth through the approbation of others.

That is actually what the cheating oneself metaphor is really about. It's about a negative mental state that arises from a failure to meet external expectations. It has nothing whatsoever to do with you individually. Absent the thuggish competitive society we live in such a concept would never arise internally.

Single player games still have rules. If you use codes/mods to bypass the rules that the developers intended the game to be played with, then you are cheating.
That doesnt mean you have to feel bad about it. But it is what it is.
Your logic does amount to "it isnt a crime if nobodies hurt" ;)

I think it depends on what a player thinks. Some people hate using walkthroughs and think it's cheating, while others don't mind. As sometimes in games, pixel hunting can really frustrate players, and it's nice to have this option.

An item that should stand out to the protagonist might not stand out to the player. A dime on the floor might be two pixels wide on the screen, given the camera angle, and easy to miss. But would a good detective, even one who just gave the floor a cursory scan, miss it? I don't think so.

Eliminating pixel hunting removes a gap between the player and the protagonist and, as such, is a Good Thing.

What is not a good thing is if only super-important items are highlighted. There ought to be red herrings, too. The main character shouldn't be given a supernatural sense of what is important and what is irrelevant, beyond that which they're usually given by default. (It's bad enough that adventure game heroes can tell that they'll need the rubber chicken later, but not the car tire in the background.)