The enhanced games are basically sports with cheat codes turned on

Holding its first event on May 24, Improved games aims to represent a new era in sports competition that embraces science, aka no drug testing. While some restrictions should be in place to avoid situations where an attendee shows up looking like Bane, these events allow PEDs, as long as they are approved by the FDA. Enhanced comes to absolutely no one's surprise and turns out to be controversial, although one could argue that if everyone is doping, no one is cheating.

Of course, gaming and sports share a lot of parallels, and Enhanced Games perfectly replicates the side of gaming that encourages players to break the rules and, well, cheat. Games with cheat codes enabled might as well be called “enhanced play”. Both sides try to remove restrictions and reach maximum performance, something players achieve in many ways. Let's go through them.

Place the brackets in the correct order.

Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)

Start

Place the brackets in the correct order.

Light (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)Start

Run Forever

• Examples of games with infinite stamina mods or cheats: Top, Dragon's Dogma 2, Monster Hunter World, Skyrim, Crimson Desert, Dying Light 2, Dark souls, Breath of the Wildetc

Some games let you run forever; others build their challenge around managing stamina, requiring players to manage their offense and defense. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 99% of Soulslikes serve as prime examples, but persistence's presence extends far beyond a genre or franchise. If a PC game comes with a stamina meter, there is a mod to remove it completely. It's simply the circle of life, and these mods warrant their existence by simply providing another way to interact with the game. In some cases, such as Dark soulswould require players to use a Cheat Engine to change certain metrics to trigger infinite stamina, making the game more of a hack-and-slash.

Instead of dealing with fatigue, you become immune to it. You can attack infinitely, defend infinitely, and run without having to catch your breath every five steps. Enhanced gaming reduces this fundamental obstacle through EPO or stimulants that allow participants to maintain a baseline hormone level, along with speeding up recovery. Of course, you can't completely eliminate fatigue in real life, but it can make a huge difference.

Anabolic and Growth Hormones: Level-Cap Bypass to achieve maximum stats quickly

Bulk Forever

• Examples of games with Max Stats mods: The Elder Scrolls, Fall-out, Cyberpunk 2077, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Final Fantasy 7 Remake

• Examples of games with Level Cap mods: The Elder Scrolls, Fall-out, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Dragon Age

This is true for most genres, but long-range games with deep progression systems usually want players to steadily build their stats to provide a more consistent journey and maintain a certain level of challenge. Level caps also exist in many RPGs to limit how godly you can get, especially if their endgame comes with an online component that must have fairly level opponents. Still, tons of mods, cheats, or dev tools can be used to supercharge a character and max out all of their stats before they even leave the tutorial stage.

HGH and testosterone esters are the equivalent of a level-cap bypass. Human bodies have naturally diminishing returns on muscle growth and recovery. By overriding these safety restraints, these athletes are running around with stats that shouldn't be mathematically possible within the game's normal code.

High Tech Suits and Gear: Pay-To-Win skins and hardware exploitation

Become one with the darkness

• Game examples: Snap Tap keys, skins that provide increased camouflage (Fortnites boundless set, for example)

Oh, yes, enhancement goes beyond just PEDs. The Enhanced Games allow swimmers to use polyurethane swimsuits, aka Super Suits, which were banned in 2010 because they broke all-around records. At the top of the game, the margin between first and last is slim, and an edge in clothing and hardware makes an insurmountable difference.

Gaming, of course, also covers this aspect, including incidents that completely threw off the balance of PvP games. legendary, Call of Duty: WarzoneRoze's skin became “pay-to-win” because it allowed the player to blend seamlessly into shadows or dark corners, effectively rendering them invisible. Snap Tap mechanical keyboards also provide an advantage in games such as Apex Legends or Counter-Strike 2.0as they immediately canceled the previous directional input, giving players robotic perfection. Valve even banned these keyboards in competitive matches.

Medical supervision to ensure the safety of athletes: Good Mode

The ultimate safety net

• Example in game: IDDQD Code in DownfallInvincibility Codes in GTA: San Andreas, Minecrafts Creative mode

The ban on steroid use goes beyond preserving fair competition and ensuring the safety of non-doping athletes, as it also exists to try to protect users from long-term damage that occurs when living in Super Saiyan mode 24/7. The Enhanced Games seeks to address these concerns through an independent medical commission designed to keep athlete health and safety as a top priority.

I'm not qualified to speak about the legitimacy of these practices, but it sounds like playing a game at full speed, no brakes, while enabling “god mode” to avoid taking damage. Whether the “no damage” part turns out to be the case in the long run remains to be seen, and the enhanced games might as well be a live beta designed to push these mechanics to their limits.

Beats all Universal Records: All % Glitch-Allowed Speedruns

Break the game

• Many games have Any % speedruns, with Ocarina of time, Pokemon Red & Blueand Portal be among the most famous

In theory, the Enhanced Games should break all sorts of records, but that wasn't quite the case during the original event. Only Kristian Gkolomeev set a new world record, and some unimproved athletes even surpassed their powerful competitors, so the results were quite interesting. Still, in theory, the improved Games should set new world best runs consistently, even if they won't be recognized by governing bodies like WADA.

Effectively, these events echo video game speedruns that allow the use of every possible glitch, intent on breaking rather than beating the game. As awesome as these performances are, they're in a category of their own, separate from flawless runs, and the latter tend to be held in slightly higher regard.