Do you ever "cheese it"?

[mainer]

No, I don't mean these:

Apparently, "cheesing it" is a gaming slang for cheating in a game to get through a boss encounter or difficult battle, though I think a more appropriate meaning would be exploiting a games mechanics, AI, or environment to defeat that boss (or any difficult battle).

No mods, no downloadable cheats, no console commands like infinite ammo or god mode. Just taking advantage of a game's quirks, mechanics, or AI, to get through a particularly tough battle. A lot depends on the game, or type of game. For example, maybe a boss gets stuck on/in a part of the environment and can't move or attack and you can smite it at your leisure. Or maybe there's a certain area, position, or angle you can take that limits, or eliminates, a boss's ability to attack.

One personal example for me would be killing the Adra Dragon at the bottom level of the 15 level dungeon, Endless Paths of Od Nua from the 1st Pillars of Eternity game. I battled for hours through those 15 levels, only to be stonewalled by that final encounter. I don't know how many times I tried, but I just couldn't defeat that Adra Dragon and all the minions it summoned. I finally Googled that battle, and found that if you stay at the top of the stairs and hit it with AOE spells, then ranged weapons that you can kill everything. You miss the conversation with the Dragon, but can easily defeat it. Definition of "cheese it".

A big thank-you to @Pifanjr for his post, Don't Trigger It, and this quote which gave me the idea:

Another example is that it's possible to kill the Capra Demon from Dark Souls by throwing dung piles or firebombs into the boss arena without going through the fog barrier. By preventing the trigger that starts the boss fight, you can kill it before it can attack you.

So what about the rest of you? I'd love to hear about your cheesing experiences.

 

[Brian Boru]

Just taking advantage of a game's quirks, mechanics, or AI

That would apply to Civ4 play at the 2 highest difficulties, Immortal and Deity. You have to play knowing how the AI will play, rather than playing to suit your own circumstances. For example, pursuing a research path which you know the AI won't prioritize, so that you will have in-demand techs to trade with most of the opponents, which will enable you to backfill all the techs you need but had to ignore up to then.

Another one would be provoking a guy you want to attack so that he attacks you first—thereby avoiding warmonger diplomatic penalties with the other civs.

In C&C you can build walls around your base. In one or more of the games there was an exploit where you could build a wall across the map and then plonk down defensive structures to block off the AI—this got around the building constraint that a new structure had to be within a few squares of an existing building.

Another wall one was building it 5-6 layers deep across a narrow entrance to your base. Enemy armor and infantry had to carve a hole in each layer to advance—meanwhile your ranged defensive forces and structures could chip away at them without taking damage. Similar idea was to leave just one channel open which the enemy had to single-file thru while you took each unit out in turn.

 

[Pifanjr]

Lately I've been specifically trying to avoid cheesing in Warhammer 2. The AI is by far the weakest part of the game and there's many ways to exploit it, but doing so takes a lot of fun out of the battles, at least for me. Though it is sometimes fun to see videos of pro players taking out entire armies with just one or two characters.

There was a weekend question about cheesing. specifically for boss battles, here (link to the article) where I answered this question as well.

I also found another weekly question about exploits in general.

 

[Zloth]

Well, "cheese" is a matter of opinion sometimes. If you find a little ledge you can perch on and take down a melee-only enemy with ranged weapons, that seems like fair game to me. If you find a hole in the geometry that lets you shoot from the other side of a wall without reprisal, though, not so much.

I don't cheese very often, IMHO. Every once in a while, an enemy will get stuck somehow, in which case I'm not likely to stop the fight and restart the whole battle.

P.S. How did 'cheese' ever come to mean something bad!?

P.P.S. I tried that Adra dragon once and it defeated me easily. However, it's stuck at the bottom of a dungeon with stairs WAY too small for it to use, so I just left the dragon down there to slowly starve to death.

 

[Lutfij]

I came to this thread expecting a topic on food, thank you for ruining my expectations and also leaving me walking away hungry in search of something to divert my mind!

I think I've cheese'd it, when playing Stronghold Crusader 2's Skirmish trails - one where you're pinned against the Caliph, the Sultana and the Wolf, mission name is Hell's Teeth: To the Summit. Where you're assigned, if you get a couple of trebuchet's close to the base of the summit, you can deploy them and then rain chaos atop the Wolf's keep...with an assortment of chemical and stone warfare, until he perishes, bringing up the troop count and removing one foe from the to-do list. Mind you, all my troops are actually focusing on defending my base from the other two while the Wolf can't get a sizeable army to attack me since the trebuchet's are dismantling his resources.

I can't do the same thing on the DLC's though :/

Also, thank you for the amazing topics, fella's!!!

 

[Withywarlock]

I cheese when I'm struggling, and I don't mind saying that's quite often. I'd rather cheese than use a cheat engine, because it's still within the rules of the game, whether or not Blizzard like it (see their commitment, or lack thereof, for "clever use of game mechanics.")

One such example is in Lords of the Fallen. It's not a good game, but it's made decent by the means you can cheese it: heavy armour, shield, the healing cooldown, and a lot of spare time. You can beat the game and New Game+ with this, but it's going to take more time than it's worth. It's the only way you'd catch me playing the game because it's controls are naff and hitboxes are conservative.

 

[DXCHASE]

I do cheese when the RNG is poor. Take for example DESTINY 2. When you have a system set up where you get an awesome exotic weapon or piece of armor after running a 6-man raid based on the fact that you may or may not be rewarded with after completing the raid (thats getting all 6 players together and getting all 6 to work together through the whole raid), you tend to find ways to cheese the boss so that it dies quicker or cheese the raid steps to move through the raid quicker if you can.

It gets frustrating doing boss phases 20,30,40+ times without getting the 1 or 2 exotics that the raid provides, let alone doing the whole raid beforehand (in D2 "cheesing" is considered loading into boss fights just to kill the boss to see if you get rewarded the exotic). I see nothing wrong with "cheesing" in this situation.

 

[ZedClampet]

I don't consider cheesing to be cheating, and if I discover a way to cheese, I'll do it as much as possible. It's me against the developers, and they left me an opening. That's the way I see it.

The first time I remember cheesing was in Castle Wolfenstein 3D. If you peeked around a corner to where you could just see an enemy's arm, you could shoot his arm a few times and kill him without even triggering him to come after you. It made me happy, so I kept doing it.

As much as I enjoy cheesing, I don't actively seek it out most of the time. But if I can get a boss stuck somewhere, you better believe I'm getting him stuck. The most recent example of that was the final boss of The Forest. She was kicking my butt until I lured her into this depression she couldn't get out of. Then I just stood there and threw sticks of dynamite at her. As long as I still enjoyed it (and I assure you I did), then I saw no problems with cheesing that boss fight, and if I ever replay, I'll get her stuck again.

 

[Lutfij]

Cheats and cheese aren't far off vocabulary and phonetics wise, much like bro>bruh>bra.... yes I had to go there.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

If you're not using console commands, and you're just using things that are built into the game, I don't consider that a bad thing. In fact, I think the developers of Breath of the Wild had it right when they intentionally built a lot of physics into the game and told their players to try to dream up ways to accomplish things. If you can do it, there is no wrong way. In my opinion, that's how gameplay should be.

But as far as exploiting a game, I don't cheat. Except for in one circumstance. In Skyrim, I used the console to give one or two of the fence's a lot of money. If I have the items to sell, I want to be able to sell them. I didn't even just give myself money. I just wanted to be able to sell stuff.

Other than that, I haven't really cheated. I would definitely use unconventional ways to beat enemies if I could, though.

 

[ZedClampet]

If you're not using console commands, and you're just using things that are built into the game, I don't consider that a bad thing. In fact, I think the developers of Breath of the Wild had it right when they intentionally built a lot of physics into the game and told their players to try to dream up ways to accomplish things. If you can do it, there is no wrong way. In my opinion, that's how gameplay should be.

But as far as exploiting a game, I don't cheat. Except for in one circumstance. In Skyrim, I used the console to give one or two of the fence's a lot of money. If I have the items to sell, I want to be able to sell them. I didn't even just give myself money. I just wanted to be able to sell stuff.

Other than that, I haven't really cheated. I would definitely use unconventional ways to beat enemies if I could, though.

My philosophy is that there's no way to cheat in a single player game. It's my game, and no one else is involved at all. I can do whatever I want to do: add mods, use console commands, etc.

Now, of course, you could be Catholic, in which case not playing in the exact way intended by the developer causes you to feel guilt and be less happy. I can't help you there. Might want to call Martin Luther

 

[WoodenSaucer]

My philosophy is that there's no way to cheat in a single player game. It's my game, and no one else is involved at all. I can do whatever I want to do: add mods, use console commands, etc.

Now, of course, you could be Catholic, in which case not playing in the exact way intended by the developer causes you to feel guilt and be less happy. I can't help you there. Might want to call Martin Luther

I've mentioned it before, but I only play single player games. My mind doesn't even think in terms of multiplayer. So I didn't even consider that people in this thread were probably thinking about cheating in multiplayer. Yeah, even though I don't play multiplayer games, I hate it when people hack the system to cheat against other players. Those guys really ruin it for everyone else.

 

[McStabStab]

Oh yeah, I cheese games all the time without using cheats or console commands. I posted recently about killing the first boss in Valheim cause he was stuck on the shoreline. I could have easily gotten him out to fight fair but I shot arrows at him from afar until it was done.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is another game that’s pretty much built to be cheesed. All the systems there beg you to surround an opponent with explosive barrels before a fight. I think there was an article about the developers reacting to people finding in-game exploits and they found almost all of them amusing.

Beating the game at its own… game… is sometimes more gratifying than doing it the prescribed way. Cheese away, gamers!

 

[Zloth]

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic famously (in the "I knew about it before this topic started" sense) has an exploit with its final boss fight. The boss won't attack until you close with it and have a little conversation. This allows you drop mines as soon as you see him. Furthermore, mines can be stacked, so you can just drop as many as you like in one spot. So simply spend about a minute making a pile of mines, go have the conversation, do a few other things the battle requires, then run back over to the mines. The boss will follow, hit what amounts to a tactical nuke, and you win!

 

[Pifanjr]

Beating the game at its own… game… is sometimes more gratifying than doing it the prescribed way. Cheese away, gamers!

I agree, especially with the "sometimes" part. Sometimes it's just a way to get past an annoying part, usually a boss battle. Which only goes to show how a lot of boss battles are poorly made.

And even if it is gratifying in the moment to shoot a boss full of arrows/blast it with spells while it can't reach you, it's not exactly good gameplay.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic famously (in the "I knew about it before this topic started" sense) has an exploit with its final boss fight. The boss won't attack until you close with it and have a little conversation. This allows you drop mines as soon as you see him. Furthermore, mines can be stacked, so you can just drop as many as you like in one spot. So simply spend about a minute making a pile of mines, go have the conversation, do a few other things the battle requires, then run back over to the mines. The boss will follow, hit what amounts to a tactical nuke, and you win!

This is exactly the kind of stuff I was referring to here: https://forums.pcgamer.com/threads/dont-trigger-it.122246/

 

[WoodenSaucer]

By the way, the white cheddar Cheez-Its are the best, by far. I need to go buy a box now.

 

[Frindis]

I like to play the game the way I want it to be played. That means do whatever comes into mind, including some of that cheesiness. Take my recent experience in Outward: I went to a cave with pretty nasty mobs. Got hit in the head and thankfully did not permanently die, just got a little woozy. Went back again, started to fiddle with some neurons and I designed the perfect plan: I'm just going to run past all of the nasty guards, pick up loot and when I get aggro, I'm going to run again and hide. That is what I did and it worked like a charm. I guess my words of wisdom are this: cheese is good as long as you don't smear it on too much.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cgRd2WJXpo

 

[Furr_Man]

I had to resort to cheese to get past the final room of the Dimension of the Past Quake mission pack recently. Low on health and ammo and 2 shamblers and a vore between myself and the final slipgate. I ran under the bridge where the shamblers pathfinding would break and they would stay above me and infight with the vore while I peppered them with shotgun from below until they eventually died (I only had 3 shells left lol). I think it was developed intended cheese though, since they put a healthkit and box of shells down there.

 

[Sarafan]

Cheesing feels like cheating to me. Of course I have nothing against those who use similar tactics, but almost every time I try to do something like that I feel guilt that the run won't be properly done. And I load the game afterwards. It's just similar to typing a code for invulnerability for my brain.

BTW Sorry that I wasn't active in the past few weeks guys, but I had a lot of work lately and just didn't have the time to participate actively on the forums. But now I'm back!

 

[WoodenSaucer]

BTW Sorry that I wasn't active in the past few weeks guys, but I had a lot of work lately and just didn't have the time to participate actively on the forums. But now I'm back!

No call, no show. You're fired from the forums!

(Just joking)

 

[ZedClampet]

The way to cheese in Forza Horizon is to make your car really fast but handle somewhat poorly. To create the AI that you are going to face, the game simulates your vehicle. If it thinks it's likely to spin out or just get very loose in the corners, it will make the AI slower. Of course, the car needs to actually be drivable, so it's difficult to hit it just right, but the AI doesn't take any tuning into account, just upgrades, which leads to a more reliable cheese, which is that you add spoilers to your car, front and back, and then go into tuning and adjust them so that they don't slow you down. Neither of these cheeses make the game easy on higher difficulties, just a small amount easier.

 

[Johnway]

I certainly employ cheese if i need to grind for leveling up or an especially difficult part in the game (ie - a boss fight). Recently it was shadowrun on the snes. I needed to get exp and i spent much of my time in the dark blade crypt shooting ghouls.

Stand in the right spot and the fast moving/ attacking ghouls get stuck and you're free to shoot them and as they all spawn in they'll get stuck in the same location. Sit back and blast them for huge karma points. The only thing stopping me from just walking away is that sometimes the ghouls do get through so i have to take control and every so often save and recover.

 

[Brian Boru]

Stand in the right spot and the fast moving/ attacking ghouls get stuck and you're free to shoot them and as they all spawn in they'll get stuck in the same location. Sit back and blast them for huge karma points

Oh that reminds me, a great way to get money in Far Cry 4—and other FCs too, of course. Pick a high spot and throw bait, wait for the predator to appear, arrow for double skins—rinse repeat until loot bag full.

Does playing the game's mechanics—rather than natural game objectives—count as cheese? Civ4 at top 2 difficulties—Immortal and Deity—comes to mind. Eg you had to research Alphabet asap—even tho your situation might 'need' other techs more—just so you could trade with AI for all the smaller techs you needed but had skipped. Of course, you also had to have researched some other techs to trade, techs you knew from experience that the AI wouldn't prioritize.

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh that reminds me, a great way to get money in Far Cry 4—and other FCs too, of course. Pick a high spot and throw bait, wait for the predator to appear, arrow for double skins—rinse repeat until loot bag full.

Does playing the game's mechanics—rather than natural game objectives—count as cheese? Civ4 at top 2 difficulties—Immortal and Deity—comes to mind. Eg you had to research Alphabet asap—even tho your situation might 'need' other techs more—just so you could trade with AI for all the smaller techs you needed but had skipped. Of course, you also had to have researched some other techs to trade, techs you knew from experience that the AI wouldn't prioritize.

I'm not sure either of those qualify as fromage since the developer planned for you to do them. I could be wrong though. Cheese, by my definition, might be if you found a way to lure two predators with one bait. or in Civilization if you discovered that the AI would always do the same thing under certain conditions, so you kept repeating those conditions over and over to your advantage. But maybe I don't know what I'm yapping on about. By my definition, I'm having a hard time thinking of cheese from either of those games. They are pretty tight. Edit: No, I thought of some Far Cry cheese. Get a friend who's already finished the game to join your game and give you all his end-game weapons since you get to keep anything you pick up. I did that for Guido in FC4.

 

[Brian Boru]

Cheese, by my definition

Yeah, I see your point and agree. But mine conform to the OP, so I'm happy with 'em.

I think a more appropriate meaning would be exploiting a games mechanics, AI, or environment … Just taking advantage of a game's quirks, mechanics, or AI

Yes, I know I'm taking advantage of the thread's mechanics and OP's quirks to defeat your response—if you don't like that, brie it on!