5 Video Games That Let You Cheat To Win

If you've grown up playing games, you'll probably be familiar with the idea of ​​cheat codes. These are button combinations or lines of text to input that have a wide range of different effects, from invincibility to infinite ammo and classics like Big Head Mode. Some titles still have them, but they're not nearly as prominent as they used to be. Fortunately for the sneaky and deceptive players among us, there are still plenty of games that have cheating mechanics built into them.

Between them, these titles encourage you to stack the deck in your favor (literally), slash the HP of tricky enemies, and even visit the Cheat Shop to give your characters a handy boost or five. The things we will do in the name of victory.

5

Balatro

Some of these jokers are really a joke

Now you don't have to be an experienced poker player to enjoy Balatro. In fact, it might even help if you haven't played before, because beyond the basics of the different hands, this really isn't the iconic card game that you might know it to be. It's more about taking the essence of poker and tearing it apart.

Absurd combos and amazing joker effects are what Balatro is about. Familiar hands like suits, straights and jacks are available to make, but you'll have jokers to boost them, planet cards to increase their score multipliers. Another joker can then multiply the effect of the previous one, and you can use tarot or spectral cards to, for example, change the suit of a given card or turn it into a high-scoring glass card that risks shattering permanently when played. There's such a wide variety of different card effects, and they can all be so powerful that it's a joy to experiment and watch your score climb into the multi-millions (and well beyond). Box art blurb consider Balatro “a hypnotically satisfying deck builder where you play illegal poker hands,” and that's exactly what it is. It's an excellent deck builder that's fairly beginner friendly.

4

Rogue Lords

Cut enemies down a peg or two

Rogue Lords is a horror-themed roguelite where the player, as the Devil, commands minions including The Headless Horseman of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow fame, Hecate and Dracula. The goal is to destroy the forces of good that rise against you, using a party of up to three party members to engage in combat. They fight directly for you with the player choosing the skills used, balancing attack, defense and supporting techniques as needed.

Traveling across the map, visiting locations and participating in random events are standard fare that genre fans will love, as is the increasingly challenging nature of combat. Fortunately, that's where Devil Mode comes in. You, as the devil, have an HP meter, and you can spend some of it to essentially pause a battle and cheat in various ways. You can move a troublesome status from an ally to an enemy or steal a bonus they may have buffed themselves with. You can heal a party member or cut an opponent's current HP. This even allows you to remove the cooldown of a key ability. It's a sophisticated system because you pay the cost in increments, meaning that instead of small refills, you can fully heal a team member or instantly remove a key enemy from the fight if you can pay the cost. At the same time, it must be used strategically, as it is an instant game over if your HP is completely depleted. Beginners should keep some tricky things in mind.

3

Card shark

How many ways are there to cheat at cards?

Card shark caught the eye of many upon first review for its gorgeous, painterly aesthetic. More importantly though, it has gameplay that is as unique and varied as its story. “It all began on a foggy morning in 1743 near Pau, in the south of France.” the intro tells us, before immediately stepping into the shoes of a young man who works at Ms. Porterhouse's Tavern. That day he serves the Comte de Saint-Germaine a drink. The player does it manually, taking care not to overfill the glass, and it's the perfect introduction to the game and how it will play out.

Comte takes a liking to the young man and invites him to become a sort of accomplice in his cunning plans to get rich(er) by cheating at card games. He explains techniques, such as peeking while serving the table's drinks and then wiping the table in a pattern that matches the suit of cards the opponent has the most of. Other tricks, such as dealing while using a mirror surface on the table to provide a quick view of each card, are added later. Each of these cheating moves plays out as a mini-game, furthering the story of the Comte de Saint-Germaine and his companions' journey. It's a journey with wickedly witty dialogue and some surprising twists.

2

The Disgaea series

A quick stop at the Cheat Shop

Disgaea is a series that isn't afraid to be theatrical, from its hugely inflated damage numbers to its incredible character designs and other crazy ideas. As a JRPG, it's also home to an awful lot of grinding, which can be a bit of a pain. Fortunately, though, that's where one of its more unique (and absolutely welcome) concepts comes in: The Cheat Shop.

Starting with Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darknessthis fine facility would become a mainstay in the series and has something to offer players of all skill levels. It offers a variety of effects, from increasing weapon mastery to buffing the Mana you gain. You can even make enemies more powerful if you fancy an extra challenge. It works on a simple slider basis, but there's a bit more to it than that, as you usually need to decrease one of these multipliers to increase something else. This is usually the kind of thing you'd find in a game's debug menu, but the Disgaea titles really seem to want players to manipulate their parameters as they please.

1

Screen cheat

The oldest cheating technique in the book

During an old-fashioned split-screen collaboration session, it usually doesn't take long for someone to be accused of looking at screens. If a player has a reputation for hiding in a sneaky place and sniping in an FPS, for example, this is a pretty effective way to expose them. It might not be particularly sporty, but there's no doubt that it's just part of playing this way. You can't be expected to never look away from your allotted quarter of the TV screen, so why not embrace the cheat? That's what Screen cheat is about.

You can't see your opponents, but you can tell where they are by watching their movements. You can also see what weapon they are using as it is fired/struck/thrown. There's also a ridiculous selection, from the bear bomb to the hobby horse and candelabra. It all looks completely silly, but that's not to say it's just a one-off game. You can perform all kinds of fun tricks, and each mode is so different. There's a pretty standard deathmatch, but there's also ones like One Shot, where you literally only have one and can only reload when everyone else has used theirs too.