Random Video Games That Secretly Reward You For Cheating (13 items)

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  (#11) Dark Souls

  • 2011

  The Demon Ruins of Dark Souls can be a nightmare. Prepare to lose thousands of souls in the lava area. However, there's a way to bypass it entirely. If you belong to the Chaos Serpent covenant, a shortcut will open up just before the Firesage Demon boss (another character that's great to avoid), which allows you to stroll down a tree root and drop into Lost Izalith, easy peasy.

  Considering how many covenants there are, and how esoteric their rewards and functions are, it really does feel like cheating, especially if it just happens on accident. You may not even understand why you're getting a shortcut there if you come across that point for the first time as a member of the covenant. Don't ask questions - just take advantage of the situation.
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  (#3) Super Mario Bros.

  • Sep 13 1985

  Each installment of the Super Mario series allows you to warp between worlds in one form or another, and it's something they established from the very beginning. The very, very beginning. In just the second level of the original Super Mario Bros. you can reach a warp zone quite easily by riding the last rising platform up a little higher than is necessary to beat the level in the traditional route.

  That will take you to the first warp zone, where you can skip all the way ahead to the fourth world if you so choose. Once there, the second level of World 4 offers the exact same thing, this time allowing you to warp to the eighth and final world. With almost no effort, you're at Bowser's doorstep.
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  (#6) Dead Space

  • 2008

  Dead Space allows you to duplicate your items in Mission 3, effectively producing as many as you want, making the game infinitely easier. As IGN explains:

  This is one of a few places you can exploit the game's placement of items. In mission 3, you are tasked to restart the Ishimura's engines. On your way to the engine room, there is a node locked door next to a set of malfunctioning, fast shutting doors.

  Do not take items from the node locked room, but unlock the door and use the kinesis module to move the items (money, medikit, schematics, ammo) out of the secret room and leave them anywhere on the ground.

  Use stasis to bypass the fast-closing doors and go to the end of the hallway to a save point outside the engine room. You do not need to save, just touch the save point. This gets you far enough from the node locked room to duplicate the items.

  Travel back to the node locked room (past the fast closing doors) and some of the items in the secret room will be there, as well as the ones you used kinesis to move out last time.

  This exploit stops working if you take any of the items (i.e., if you take the medikit, the medikit stops respawning) or when there are too many items on the screen (about 30 or so). If you need more stasis to get by the door, use the "Restore Stasis Energy" code seen on this page.
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  (#13) Batman: Arkham City

  • 2011

  In the Catwoman DLC of Batman: Arkham City, you can allow Selina Kyle to screw Bats over at one point, just as she's done countless times in the source material. At the very end of your playthrough as Selina, you steal some jewels, but find out shortly after that Batman has been trapped under some rubble, and could possibly even be killed if you don't go rescue him.

  The game is leading you towards the "right" decision, i.e., putting aside Selina's selfish greed to go save her sometimes-lover. But there's nothing actually forcing you to do it. If you so choose, you can walk right out the door, saving yourself a ton of hassle while leaving the Caped Crusader to his fate. 
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  (#4) Mario Kart 64

  • Dec 14 1996

  Pretty much every game in the Mario Kart franchise is full of shortcuts - some by design and some unintentional - but Mario Kart 64 might take the cake with 12 of its 16 courses offering a shortcut in some form or another. On one end of the spectrum there's the relatively innocuous cave behind the waterfall on Koopa Troopa Beach, which requires using a mushroom off a conspicuously placed ramp.

  On the other hand, there's Rainbow Road, by far the longest (and arguably most treacherous) track in the game, but shortly after the beginning of the course, you can jump off the edge of the track, landing on it far below, virtually cutting out half the course. It's a risky maneuver, but if you pull it off, you pretty much can't lose.
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  (#12) Kingdom Hearts II

  • 2005

  Not a fan of the Pridelands? Could you do without Halloween Town? No problem. In Kingdom Hearts II, there are a couple worlds that you can skip entirely with no penalty (other than missing out on unique items therein). There's really not much of a trick to it, you just don't go there. A lot of people don't know that you can just opt not to go to Pridelands, Halloween Town, Atlantis, Agrabah, or Hollow Bastion. If you're on a speed run, just breeze on by those.

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