Cheating, Wikis, and Walkthroughs, oh my!

When researching a game to play for this semester I looked up "Red Faction: Guerrilla wiki" since I often find that people who've actually played the game can give more valuable insight than those who created it. Compared to other wikis I've visited during the course of their respective games, including the Dead Space Wiki and the Mass Effect Wiki, the Red Faction: Guerrilla part of the Red Faction Wiki is surprisingly primitive, although I'm not surprised considering that the game isn't very widely advertised and was only released in December of 2009.

Some may consider using wikis as cheating since it takes the effort out of figuring out how to solve a puzzle or whatever, but I say it's more of a useful tool than a violation of the "moral code of gamers", as it were. I definitely agree that reading ahead to figure out what happens in a game ruins it because then there's no suspense or surprises for the player. For games such as Freelancer which include a virtual "economy" with different planets and space stations that buy and sell different commodities at different prices, I eventually looked for guides such as this one that showed me the most profitable trade routes I could follow. I would consider this an intermediate step between playing the game legitimately and cheating, since I'm still required to travel at the maximum speed at which my ship can fly as well as being restrained by the ship's maximum cargo capacity and if I really wanted to I could fly to every single landable location and make a list of what they're buying and selling.

However, there's another way. By editing a key file which allows me to alter any number of the game's mechanics, I was able to give myself the maximum amount of money that a player can carry, the best ship with the best weaponry, and set the difficulty to 0 so that I was invincible. With these modifications, I was able to safely travel into the unpoliced areas of the game where pirates and bounty hunters lock heads. I also found some interesting spacial anomalies such as a neutron star, a red giant, and and unknown system that had two habitable planets: one with monkeys and the other with robots. Being invulnerable was fun for a little while, but quickly became boring when I had explored all the systems available in the game.

As I've mentioned before, RFG includes a number of unlockable cheats. Here's a list of the available cheats, according to Cheat Code Central:

- Cool Turrets: Blow up 100 small hydrogen tanks. When this cheat is active, turrets do not overheat.

- Free Upgrades: Successfully complete 50 Guerrilla Actions. When this cheat is active, there is no more salvage charge at the safe house.

- Max Morale: Liberate Oasis Sector. When this cheat is active, there is full morale in all sectors all the time.

- Max Technology: Liberate Mars. When this cheat is active, EDF/Guerilla/Marauder always has the best armor and weapons.

- No Green Alert: Successfully complete 25 killing sprees in Campaign mode. When this cheat is active, there are constant EDF assaults.

- Super Debris: Destroy 50 EDF owned buildings. When this cheat is active, all explosive impulses and damage from collisions are tripled.

- Super Hammer: Kill 100 EDF with a hammer. When this cheat is active, your sledgehammer is extra strong.

- Super Jetpack: Destroy 250 EDF supply crates. When this cheat is active, the jetpack recharges at twice the maximum recharge.

- Super Sprinting: Mine all ore locations. When this cheat is active, the player can sprint at 1.5x normal speed.

- Super Toughness: Locate all missing radio tags. When this cheat is active, it greatly increases the amount of damage you can take, making you harder to kill.

- Unlimited Ammo: Destroy 50 EDF flyers. When this cheat is active, you will have infinite ammunition for all weapons.

Unlike what I perceive as cheats which can be activated at any time, these require the player to engage in specific actions and, after doing so, are rewarded for their effort. This type of system makes it seem like these aren't really cheats afterall, but rather they're bonuses for accomplishing something. The game can't be saved when they're enabled, however, so players still have to play the game without them activated if they want to progress.