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Some cheats, however, aren’t designed to give players an advantage, but rather to make the game more varied, strange, or even challenging. The accepted wisdom dictates that these handy little codes make life an absolute breeze, but plug in any of these combinations and prepare for chaos, confusion, and a much, much trickier time of things.
8 GTA 3 and Vice City Let You Become Public Enemy Number 1
Even on the mean streets of Vice or Liberty City, there’s not much of a sense of danger as players explore the superbly rendered vistas of two of Rockstar’s most iconic playgrounds. Whether it’s cruising as Tommy Vercetti along the Miami-inspired beachfront at high speeds or picking random fights outside downtown bars as Claude Speed, the biggest danger in any game of GTA, is, of course, you.
Not so when NobodyLikesMe is activated. To be used with extreme caution, NobodyLikesMe turns the entire city against the player, meaning that men, women, and probably children will now hunt Claude or Tommy as though they were a vigilante mob looking to bring a notorious felon to swift justice. Whether it’s being run down in the streets by enraged motorists or getting punched in the back of the head by innocent-looking civilians, NobodyLikesMe gives players a taste of being the most hated person in the entire universe.
7 Saints Row 2 – Evil Cars Turns The Streets Upside Down
In a similar vein to GTA’s riot cheats that send the entire city into a frenzied meltdown of destruction, Evil Cars is Saints Row 2’s way of ensuring that motoring mayhem reigns supreme and chaos dominates the streets of Stilwater. Out go the discerning and polite pedestrians who once populated the city, to be replaced by leaden-footed maniacs hell-bent on sideswiping anyone who gets in their way.
If it sounds like a fun idea to have the streets of Stilwater converted into your own personal racetrack, Evil Cars ends up making the game almost unplayable for anyone actually seeking to perform missions and progress through the story. Vehicles will actively target the player with lethal intent whether not they themselves are driving or on foot, making every single journey a desperate fight for survival.
6 Age of Empires’s King Animals Turns Wildlife Into Apex Predators
Anyone who’s ever played the earlier Age of Empires games will know the almost incomparable frustration associated with losing an early age villager to a pesky predator when gathering for resources or simply exploring the map. A worker’s death at the hands of an errant alligator or pesky lion can set players badly behind in the race to reach the military ages.
Turning these animals into their “king” versions, in which the creatures become stronger, faster, and more resilient, only makes this eventuality more likely. Typing in grantlinkspence converts gazelles, lions, elephants, and alligators into their alpha forms, creating further hazards for players to deal with in the early game. For more animal-based fun from the Age of Empires series, Age of Kings offers the enjoyably pointless “Natural Wonders” code that enables players to take control of animal units only. If beating the game’s AI is tricky enough with champions and paladins, it’s the true test of a master to do it with a herd of gazelle and some wild turkeys.
5 Red Dead Redemption 2 Offers Permanently Drunken Fun
The Red Dead Redemption 2 campaign is one of the most enjoyable, if lengthy, RPG story modes in recent memory, a gargantuan epic that puts most of its AAA contemporaries firmly in the shade. There are dozens of memorable moments to choose from across Red Dead 2’s sprawling campaign, from electric train robbing sequences to John Marston’s triumphant return for vengeance at the game’s initial climax.
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In a campaign that can often be as melancholic as it is emotionally grueling, there are welcome moments of levity amid the decline and fall of the Van der Linde gang. A mission in which Lenny and Arthur get exceedingly drunk at a local watering hole leads to some heartwarming antics between the pair, a happy spot to which we all wish we could return. Thanks to the A Fool on Command cheat, however, Arthur can be made inebriated on command, transforming the game’s world from a crisp, sharp recreation of the Old West to a woozy dreamscape of undulating colors and unwanted motion. Anyone who’s had a few too many will know it’s hard enough finding your way home after a night out, let alone conquering the Wild West.
4 Goldeneye 007’s DK Mode Is Absurdly Pointless
One of the most infamous cheat codes of all time also happens to be one of the most useless. To this day, nobody can quite figure out what the staff at British developer Rare were thinking of when they decided to write the code for their now infamous “Donkey Kong” modification for the excellent FPS tie-in GoldenEye 007.
The DK Mode cheat has the effect of bestowing every NPC and enemy with an oversized cranium and extra-long arms, making everyone look like simian-human hybrids straight out of The Island of Dr. Moreau. While it doesn’t have much of an effect on the actual gameplay, it’s one hell of a distraction trying to immerse yourself into the role of the world’s most famous secret agent while wondering just what sort of horrific accident occurred to make Bond’s enemies into these bobble-headed monstrosities. An active impediment? Possibly not. Distracting? Most definitely.
3 Ecco the Dolphin’s Deadly Octopus Makes A Dangerous Foe Lethal
Games like Ecco the Dolphin don’t really get made anymore, certainly not in the mainstream market. First released on the Sega Genesis in 1992, the nautically themed hit followed the adventures of the titular Ecco as he navigates his way through the ocean and travels in time to fight off aliens threatening to harvest the Earth’s entire water supply.
Success at Ecco the Dolphin relies on avoiding the various hazards, traps, and pitfalls of the game’s beautiful but deadly nautical worlds. For players who want things to become even more hazardous, they can activate the Deadly Octopus “cheat” code that makes the large mollusk deadly to poor old Ecco. As if the ocean wasn’t scary enough.
2 Tomb Raider 2’s Exploding Lara Croft Punishes Cheats
Lara Croft is one of the most beloved and important figures in all gaming, an inspiration to young girls and still the object of desire for many young men who still hold a slightly obsessive fascination with the female Indiana Jones knockoff and one of the first faces of the original PlayStation. Seeing Lara fall to her doom or eat one too many bullets is, for some, like losing a beloved relative.
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Why anyone would want to utilize a cheat in which Lara explodes into a series of disembodied, blocky fragments for almost no apparent reason and serving no useful purpose is beyond the realms of basic human understanding. Perhaps someone on the development team disapproved of Lara’s desecration of important historical artifacts, although many fans theorize that the explosive glitch was in fact a way to discourage cheaters from even accessing the codes in the first place.
1 The Sims 4 Lets Players Experience A Volcanic Eruption
Nobody in their right mind would wish for a live volcano to start spewing molten ash and lava onto their real-life place of residence. For those thrill-seekers who want to experience natural disasters in a more controlled environment, however, there’s always The Sims 4’s volcanic cheat code to give a sense of what it would be like to experience the last days of Pompeii from the comfort of their own home.
Simply type “volcanic_eruption [small/large]” into the game’s input box and chunks of molten lava will start raining from the sky. In what is quite a natural response to the Earth spewing fire down upon its residents, people don’t tend to like being pummeled with red-hot rocks, meaning that most sims respond negatively to events of such cataclysmic magnitude.
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