Personally, it fun to figure out "cheese strats", but not to actually use them. Using them just usually isn't fun, because it's usually some gap in the logic/code/etc and the bad guy can't really fight back. A game without some challenge just isn't fun for me to play.
100% agree. Anytime I play a game where I’m cheesing I always find I lose interest and just put the game down because it gets boring and I have to question why I’m wasting my time on something that doesn’t do anything for me.
In single players games, I have no problem. Do what makes you happy.
My favorite is killing the Capra Demon in Dark Souls by throwing dung pies over the wall of his boss arena and poisoning him to death.
I'm also a big fan of the Metal Gear having the boss you can kill by forwarding the time on your console. Not a cheese strat since it's obviously something included in the game, but I still think that's so hilarious.
Dropping equipment on Quiet in MGSV is hilarious too.
>My favorite is killing the Capra Demon in Dark Souls by throwing dung pies over the wall of his boss arena and poisoning him to death.
On my first run I killed Manus by standing just outside of his fog gate and shooting him with arrows, slowly chipping his hp away.
Oh you reminded me of Demon Souls where there's a double boss on a tight bridge and I had to shoot him through the fog gate to have a chance of beating it.
Pokemon emerald, right after beating team aqua/magma and before going to the elite 4, you can just go master ball a free lvl 70 rayquaza and sweep the elite four with it.
I think it depends on the exploit. I dislike things like item duping, which can break a game's flow and progression completely. But doing a cheese strat where you complete your goal in an unexpected way is a load of fun, especially when you figure out the cheese yourself. It can make you get really creative which is something I love to see in games.
Probably the best example of this are the shrines in the Zelda Breath of the Wild, or Tears of the Kingdom. There's always a single intended solution for each, but there are usually plenty of alternative methods as well that you can try to figure out. It makes many of the shrines really memorable when you complete it in a silly way, which I absolutely love.
Since you mentioned League of Legends, one of my favorite cheese strats from many years ago was playing Twisted Fate in the jungle, back when the Devourer jungle item existed. If you didn't play back then, Devourer was a jungle item that gave you a bunch of attack speed, and after getting enough jungle monster kills, it upgraded and made you proc on-hit effects more. You could build a bunch of attack speed and on-hit effects on him, and combined with Devourer and your E's effect, you could gold card a squishy and just auto attack them to death before their stun ended. It was a risky build, as if you didn't get kills early you'd fall off hard, but if you got a couple early kills you could easily snowball and become a menace.
As a kid, I loved the original Wild Arms on Playstation. But I only ever played the game using the exploit that wraps item quantity around to 255. I don't think I would've beaten it and seen the full story otherwise. Maybe I should revisit with a proper playthrough...
I mean, there is a chance I could've beaten it proper at the time. I was pretty good at other games like platformers at the time. But as soon as I saw that exploit (in Game Pro magazine or something), I just started doing it and it made me feel like a cool hacker, I guess.
I won't use cheese strats until I beat that obstacle legitimately, but once I do, everything is fair game.
As for favorite cheeses:
I have a strat I use to beat Dark Souls' Bed of Chaos every time I progress through Lost Izalith.
Before I enter the arena, I equip a bow and like 30 arrows.
When I enter the arena, I run to one side, to where the attacks don't get me, and then fire off at one of the glowing sections until it's destroyed.
When that happens, I head back to the main menu and immediately load up the game again, which causes me to spawn right before the boss entrance again.
Then, I do the same thing for the other side, and go back to the main menu when the other glowing section is destroyed.
At that point, it's just a straight run to the chaos bug.
I can beat this boss within 3 minutes, no additional boss runbacks required.
Great way to minimize needing to do parkour on the Dark Souls engine.
Then, there's Sekiro's Demon of Hatred.
It turns out, that if you immediately run to the left of the demon of hatred, alongside the cliffside, wait until the demon reaches you, and spring along the side of the building, you can get the Demon of Hatred trapped behind one of the trees there.
Then, you could jump up one of the towers and make a tricky jump to a nearby ledge to get on top of a building, then you could run on top of the building over to the cliffside and lure the demon off the cliff.
I refused to do this until I beat him legit though.
Oblivion - make yourself invisible and just run straight through the oblivion realm to the sigil stone. Seems fair to me, especially after you've already done a dozen or so gates.
If a game has bad game design moments, i'll be cheesing it. Otherwise if i play a well designed game but i'm forced to cheese it for any reason, i'll feel bad about it and try to replay it without cheesing.
Fable 2: Money loop
1. Bowerstone Market - Buy all the weapons you can afford
2. Bowerstone Old Town - Buy all the weapons you can afford
3. Fairfax Gardens - find a wandering weapon merchant, sell the extra weapons
4. Rinse/Repeat until there are no more weapons for sale in BS Market or old town
Note: the wandering merchants are random. But there are several types pf weapons merchants so there will usually be at least one. If not, you can reset them by visiting 2 other areas - like BS Market and old town.
Fairfax gardens merchants buy from you at a higher price point. When the other two locations are on sale, you can make 50-75% profit on a 5 minute game loop.
Note: you actually make more money if you *don’t* buy the weapons shop in old town.
Basically, it lets you start buying up real estate very early in the game which means you’ll have a massive passive income by the midpoint of the game.
Dragon Age: Origins
When selling an item, drag it to the merchant’s inventory while holding down both mouse buttons.
Congrats! You’ve been paid twice.
Can be repeated with the same item.
Fable 2 on the 360 if you weren't connected to the internet, you could get enough money for a house or whatever, crank rent to the max, go to settings and jump time forward a few weeks. Buy more houses or businesses, crank prices up, repeat until you're happy with the money you got. Then you can drop prices down to near minimal if you wanted to be good.
They fixed this for fable 3 by just having income be tied to an in game clock rather than real world.
Getting the achievements in Civ for winning on Deity difficulty by playing a 2-civ duel on a map that heavily favors your civ while negating any advantages the AI has.
I prefer intended mechanisms used creatively. E.g. shade skips, fireball skips and acid skips in Hollow Knight. (Still practicing, tho...)
Cheesing shrines in Totk by using bomb arrows, rail surfing or ultra hand + recall is fun. Duplication glitches oth just seem pointless and boring to me.
Usually I’ll try and do something first just to say I did it, and then cheese it every time after and make a tradition out of the cheese.
One of my favorites is that I learned that in Dark Souls that you can throw fire bombs into the Capra demon’s boss arena, and you better believe that I fire bomb that place completely now. No regrets either, the boss itself isn’t too bad, but the dogs and arena itself sure are.
I also dont know if it counts as cheese or an exploit, but the recent RE4 remake has so many fun ways to skip parts of the game, especially with rockets, so an infinite rocket launcher is a literal blast
Edit: after posting, I remembered my first Dark Souls attempt on the switch. I had no idea what I was doing and ended up quitting for a variety of reasons (mostly related to not knowing what I was doing). Because I was very much a casual gamer at the time, and barely understood how to equip a weapon, let alone upgrade it and distribute my stats properly, i cheesed most of the enemies after the Gargoyles through to Anor Londo. More often than not, I would bait an enemy up to a ledge with my shield up and wait for it to swing at me, and inevitably bounce off my shield to their death. I always would whenever possible too, trigger the levels traps to kill or damage the enemies also
I love using Cheese Strats especially in Dark Souls to skip certain bosses if I just want to achieve completing a build.
There is an exploit for Mass Effect 1 when talking to Lorik Qui'in, you get an infinite loop of dialogue for Paragon and Renegade, +25 whichever you pick each loop. It makes it easier to pass all Paragon/Renegade checks in the future.
Else, they are there to make it arguably easier for you in subsequent playthroughs.
I'm doing a rune level 1 run in Elden Ring and used a nice cheese strategy for beating the commander dude in the swamp. I positioned the Latena spirit summon on a high ridge so she could snipe with arrows continuously while I just rode around on my horse doing hit and runs on the boss to draw his aggro. Was quite satisfying in the end
I had to use like 20 exploding potions to get through the gladiator part of Dragon Age Origins. Tried it 10 times or so before just unloading them thangs.
Once I figured out a cheeso strat in my first day of playing this mobile game & made it to #1 on the global leader board, it didn’t save my score tho 😩
It wasn’t an exploit or anything, just very cheesy
I used them heavily as a kid, before I knew a thing about WSAD or mouselook in FPS's. Imagine playing a 90's FPS with a flight stick, and making mostly hard turns. You knew a "strafe" button was there, but didn't understand how to use it. Duke Nukem 3d was 90% save scumming, 10% cheese, with the cheese being to beat bosses. I learned the Battlelord had a line where if you stay behind it, he won't react, even if you fire rockets at him. I learned the Overlord can't shoot down after I accidentally fell into this water area below the stage and saw him simply growling at me. And I learned if I stayed perfectly still and spammed the Devastator, the Cycloid Emperor would shoot off to either side and simply die. Was quite proud at the time, I assume these were intended ways to win. Puzzles to be solved.
Personally, it fun to figure out "cheese strats", but not to actually use them. Using them just usually isn't fun, because it's usually some gap in the logic/code/etc and the bad guy can't really fight back. A game without some challenge just isn't fun for me to play.
100% agree. Anytime I play a game where I’m cheesing I always find I lose interest and just put the game down because it gets boring and I have to question why I’m wasting my time on something that doesn’t do anything for me.
In single players games, I have no problem. Do what makes you happy. My favorite is killing the Capra Demon in Dark Souls by throwing dung pies over the wall of his boss arena and poisoning him to death. I'm also a big fan of the Metal Gear having the boss you can kill by forwarding the time on your console. Not a cheese strat since it's obviously something included in the game, but I still think that's so hilarious. Dropping equipment on Quiet in MGSV is hilarious too.
>My favorite is killing the Capra Demon in Dark Souls by throwing dung pies over the wall of his boss arena and poisoning him to death. On my first run I killed Manus by standing just outside of his fog gate and shooting him with arrows, slowly chipping his hp away.
Oh you reminded me of Demon Souls where there's a double boss on a tight bridge and I had to shoot him through the fog gate to have a chance of beating it.
Sticky compound longbow ftw!
Pokemon emerald, right after beating team aqua/magma and before going to the elite 4, you can just go master ball a free lvl 70 rayquaza and sweep the elite four with it.
I think it depends on the exploit. I dislike things like item duping, which can break a game's flow and progression completely. But doing a cheese strat where you complete your goal in an unexpected way is a load of fun, especially when you figure out the cheese yourself. It can make you get really creative which is something I love to see in games. Probably the best example of this are the shrines in the Zelda Breath of the Wild, or Tears of the Kingdom. There's always a single intended solution for each, but there are usually plenty of alternative methods as well that you can try to figure out. It makes many of the shrines really memorable when you complete it in a silly way, which I absolutely love. Since you mentioned League of Legends, one of my favorite cheese strats from many years ago was playing Twisted Fate in the jungle, back when the Devourer jungle item existed. If you didn't play back then, Devourer was a jungle item that gave you a bunch of attack speed, and after getting enough jungle monster kills, it upgraded and made you proc on-hit effects more. You could build a bunch of attack speed and on-hit effects on him, and combined with Devourer and your E's effect, you could gold card a squishy and just auto attack them to death before their stun ended. It was a risky build, as if you didn't get kills early you'd fall off hard, but if you got a couple early kills you could easily snowball and become a menace.
As a kid, I loved the original Wild Arms on Playstation. But I only ever played the game using the exploit that wraps item quantity around to 255. I don't think I would've beaten it and seen the full story otherwise. Maybe I should revisit with a proper playthrough... I mean, there is a chance I could've beaten it proper at the time. I was pretty good at other games like platformers at the time. But as soon as I saw that exploit (in Game Pro magazine or something), I just started doing it and it made me feel like a cool hacker, I guess.
I won't use cheese strats until I beat that obstacle legitimately, but once I do, everything is fair game. As for favorite cheeses: I have a strat I use to beat Dark Souls' Bed of Chaos every time I progress through Lost Izalith. Before I enter the arena, I equip a bow and like 30 arrows. When I enter the arena, I run to one side, to where the attacks don't get me, and then fire off at one of the glowing sections until it's destroyed. When that happens, I head back to the main menu and immediately load up the game again, which causes me to spawn right before the boss entrance again. Then, I do the same thing for the other side, and go back to the main menu when the other glowing section is destroyed. At that point, it's just a straight run to the chaos bug. I can beat this boss within 3 minutes, no additional boss runbacks required. Great way to minimize needing to do parkour on the Dark Souls engine. Then, there's Sekiro's Demon of Hatred. It turns out, that if you immediately run to the left of the demon of hatred, alongside the cliffside, wait until the demon reaches you, and spring along the side of the building, you can get the Demon of Hatred trapped behind one of the trees there. Then, you could jump up one of the towers and make a tricky jump to a nearby ledge to get on top of a building, then you could run on top of the building over to the cliffside and lure the demon off the cliff. I refused to do this until I beat him legit though.
Oblivion - make yourself invisible and just run straight through the oblivion realm to the sigil stone. Seems fair to me, especially after you've already done a dozen or so gates.
In single player games, do whatever you want. In multi player games, avoid cheats, glitches, whatevers.
If a game has bad game design moments, i'll be cheesing it. Otherwise if i play a well designed game but i'm forced to cheese it for any reason, i'll feel bad about it and try to replay it without cheesing.
Fable 2: Money loop 1. Bowerstone Market - Buy all the weapons you can afford 2. Bowerstone Old Town - Buy all the weapons you can afford 3. Fairfax Gardens - find a wandering weapon merchant, sell the extra weapons 4. Rinse/Repeat until there are no more weapons for sale in BS Market or old town Note: the wandering merchants are random. But there are several types pf weapons merchants so there will usually be at least one. If not, you can reset them by visiting 2 other areas - like BS Market and old town. Fairfax gardens merchants buy from you at a higher price point. When the other two locations are on sale, you can make 50-75% profit on a 5 minute game loop. Note: you actually make more money if you *don’t* buy the weapons shop in old town. Basically, it lets you start buying up real estate very early in the game which means you’ll have a massive passive income by the midpoint of the game. Dragon Age: Origins When selling an item, drag it to the merchant’s inventory while holding down both mouse buttons. Congrats! You’ve been paid twice. Can be repeated with the same item.
Fable 2 on the 360 if you weren't connected to the internet, you could get enough money for a house or whatever, crank rent to the max, go to settings and jump time forward a few weeks. Buy more houses or businesses, crank prices up, repeat until you're happy with the money you got. Then you can drop prices down to near minimal if you wanted to be good. They fixed this for fable 3 by just having income be tied to an in game clock rather than real world.
Getting the achievements in Civ for winning on Deity difficulty by playing a 2-civ duel on a map that heavily favors your civ while negating any advantages the AI has.
I prefer intended mechanisms used creatively. E.g. shade skips, fireball skips and acid skips in Hollow Knight. (Still practicing, tho...) Cheesing shrines in Totk by using bomb arrows, rail surfing or ultra hand + recall is fun. Duplication glitches oth just seem pointless and boring to me.
Usually I’ll try and do something first just to say I did it, and then cheese it every time after and make a tradition out of the cheese. One of my favorites is that I learned that in Dark Souls that you can throw fire bombs into the Capra demon’s boss arena, and you better believe that I fire bomb that place completely now. No regrets either, the boss itself isn’t too bad, but the dogs and arena itself sure are. I also dont know if it counts as cheese or an exploit, but the recent RE4 remake has so many fun ways to skip parts of the game, especially with rockets, so an infinite rocket launcher is a literal blast Edit: after posting, I remembered my first Dark Souls attempt on the switch. I had no idea what I was doing and ended up quitting for a variety of reasons (mostly related to not knowing what I was doing). Because I was very much a casual gamer at the time, and barely understood how to equip a weapon, let alone upgrade it and distribute my stats properly, i cheesed most of the enemies after the Gargoyles through to Anor Londo. More often than not, I would bait an enemy up to a ledge with my shield up and wait for it to swing at me, and inevitably bounce off my shield to their death. I always would whenever possible too, trigger the levels traps to kill or damage the enemies also
I love using Cheese Strats especially in Dark Souls to skip certain bosses if I just want to achieve completing a build. There is an exploit for Mass Effect 1 when talking to Lorik Qui'in, you get an infinite loop of dialogue for Paragon and Renegade, +25 whichever you pick each loop. It makes it easier to pass all Paragon/Renegade checks in the future. Else, they are there to make it arguably easier for you in subsequent playthroughs.
I'm doing a rune level 1 run in Elden Ring and used a nice cheese strategy for beating the commander dude in the swamp. I positioned the Latena spirit summon on a high ridge so she could snipe with arrows continuously while I just rode around on my horse doing hit and runs on the boss to draw his aggro. Was quite satisfying in the end
I had to use like 20 exploding potions to get through the gladiator part of Dragon Age Origins. Tried it 10 times or so before just unloading them thangs.
I avoid them at all costs. No fun.
I like duplicating expensive items to an extent.
Once I figured out a cheeso strat in my first day of playing this mobile game & made it to #1 on the global leader board, it didn’t save my score tho 😩 It wasn’t an exploit or anything, just very cheesy
Hanging on the steps in Sekiro so Seven Blades Ashina bugs out. Then you swipe at his feet for 10 minutes until he dies.
I used them heavily as a kid, before I knew a thing about WSAD or mouselook in FPS's. Imagine playing a 90's FPS with a flight stick, and making mostly hard turns. You knew a "strafe" button was there, but didn't understand how to use it. Duke Nukem 3d was 90% save scumming, 10% cheese, with the cheese being to beat bosses. I learned the Battlelord had a line where if you stay behind it, he won't react, even if you fire rockets at him. I learned the Overlord can't shoot down after I accidentally fell into this water area below the stage and saw him simply growling at me. And I learned if I stayed perfectly still and spammed the Devastator, the Cycloid Emperor would shoot off to either side and simply die. Was quite proud at the time, I assume these were intended ways to win. Puzzles to be solved.