Why the Hell Would I Play a Game Without Cheats?
Why play a game without cheats?
When someone skips the tutorial and jumps straight into cheats, the common reaction is always the same.
“If you’re going to start with cheats, why even play the game? What’s the point?”
I can answer that question completely without hesitation.
“Yeah. It’s insanely fun.”
Normally people talk about soul-like games or hardcore difficulty, dying hundreds of times just to get that sense of achievement.
But that’s the exact opposite of what I do.
Come on, I’m not some time-traveling Bill Gates. Why would I spend tens of hours grinding through a guide to 1% completion just to fight a boss? It doesn’t make sense.
More importantly, Koreans’ biggest virtue is “do it quickly.”
I can’t stand anything that drags on.
If I’m impatient, I can’t even die properly. That’s just who I am.
So when I start a game, the route is always the same.
First playthrough is EASY—super coward mode, just cruising through like a sightseeing trip.
Second time around I slowly raise the difficulty until I think, “If I push it just a little more this thing is going to be total shit,” then I delete it right away.
After that I buy a brand new game because I had so much fun.
That’s my gamer philosophy and hobby.
…Of course, if I posted my play records like that on the gallery, the responses were always the same.
Hanamja?
Daring to call the guy who leaves the most reviews in the game gallery, buys the game, then immediately refunds a newbie that’s produced tens of people?
Yeah, I’ll admit it!
I am Hanamja.
Well, that makes sense because when you buy any zombie game, the first thing you install is the infinite ammo mode that doesn’t require reloading.
From the very beginning you grab an RPG and spam bullets, wiping out not just zombies but NPCs who should have survived the story too.
Event allies who came to help also get blown to pieces by your grenades and scatter like confetti—right?
My screen turns into a simple “apocalypse → slaughter simulator.”
Of course when such progress is shown on the gallery, the replies are always “are you fucking retarded?”
I didn’t bother denying it.
In fact I nodded while saying it’s true.
I am that kind of Hanamja.
But there was one reply I couldn’t ignore at all.
I stared at my monitor and shouted,
“Agh, installing modes makes it fun! It feels so cozy like a defense game because it’s safe!”
So why do everyone complain that modes kill the fun?
Yeah, honestly the tension does disappear a little.
But in exchange there’s something else.
The ultimate pleasure of becoming the strongest in the world.
And when weak NPCs rely on me completely, I become the invincible hero protecting everyone by taking bullets to the body.
Compared to the tension of memorizing patterns while sweating, playing the “invincible hero” is way sweeter.
But despite owning more than a thousand AAA-class games, I still couldn’t push playtime past ten hours.
That day on the gallery I was just enduring being called a cheat evangelist and ignored.
Then one day a post appeared.
The gallery comments were merciless as always.
“Agh, I’m starting to want to play something else… but there’s nothing.”
White Soul?
The god-tier hell game where only one in a thousand users finishes the ending.
I had installed every cheat imaginable—invincible mode, infinite ammo, Thanos snap mode, enemy regen deletion mode—and cleared it ten times.
Of course I was sick of it.
So today I was just browsing the gallery as usual, looking for a new game.
I skipped anything that said “stop installing modes and just play.”
That was when it happened.
Honestly it felt a bit suspicious, but I had already played every AAA-class game and needed something new.
I clicked on the gallery he mentioned, thinking I was being scammed.
And the real hardcore veterans were replying in one second.
It was like an oasis in the desert, pouring out insane enthusiasm for newbies while still smelling of rotten water.
It was completely to my liking.
Even the mode installation was encouraged by the game.
“This is a game made exactly for me, right?”
Immediately the explanations from the veteran oil-smelling guys came pouring out like a waterfall.
The obsession of not missing a single newbie was insane.
The veterans’ explanations were thorough and detailed.
And they even shared combined packs so easy to install modes one by one…!
“Wow… so that means becoming a dating-sim-level munchkin?”
I never thought of dating sims as a genre that needed modes, so I had never tried it.
But in this monster world it was said that relationships were extremely tangled… every time I could see their inner thoughts it was just one skip.
Raising heroine affection and eating monsters?
This was honey.
Shaman mode?
Opening the image showed a Joseon dynasty general in a gat hat holding a talisman, and… honestly it was insanely cool.
Plus in the middle of monster panels you could skip annoying civilian rescue plays and just aggro everything and fight only monsters.
This had to be installed.
Plus auto pickup mode, slow motion mode, underwater breathing mode, everything.
Thanks to the veteran hyungs I got the combined pack in just a few hours.
Just as I was about to leave, another reply came.
Thinking back, the reason I only picked hard games before was simple.
Even with cheats installed, they made it subtly difficult, the sweet spot where everyone else struggles and I get to be comfortable.
Just super easy games?
Then I would just turn on invincibility and tour the map and quit.
But there was a reason I replayed with the mode pack.
“Um… still, I want to start feeling like a rookie among companions….”
“…Fuck, thanks veterans.”
Thanks to the veterans skipping the “forced dick-measuring contest,” I finally bought the game through the address on the notice board.
After installing the modes, I pressed the play button without thinking—
WHAAAAAAAAA!
“Huh?”
I thought it was the usual gaming sound effect.
But it wasn’t.
A realistic air raid siren shook the entire apartment.
Windows rattled, distant ambulance and police sirens wailed together.
And.
SCREEEEEEECH!
“…Eh?”
A scream-like sound.
I reflexively looked out the window.
Our apartment was on the 10th floor.
Usually birds didn’t come that high.
But what was flying toward us couldn’t even be called a bird.
Torn bat wings.
Three eyes.
A beak sharp enough to swallow steel whole.
And most of all its size.
A giant monster that could cover an entire apartment floor.
“T-that’s… what is that…?”
The monster let out a scream and dove straight at our apartment.
BOOOOOOOOM—!