This trope does not include 'fair challenges' of the game (wide pits, powerful / numerous enemies, etc.) those are Real Difficulty. Known side effects include thrown controllers, frothing at the mouth, F-Bombs, and the worst case scenario: Explaining to your parents just why their new television is pulverized.

Where a character (generally in a Fighting Game) has some crazy move when played by the computer which human players can't do.Ī boss who actively breaks the established rules and mechanics of a competitive game just to be more challenging. In strategy games, the game compensates for the player's intelligence by giving enemies unfair abilities to gain or gather resources. Where the AI players break the explicitly laid-out rules of the game. Naturally, this is not cheating in games that also give the player ways to attain immunity to such attacks. Where the computer's AI has information that the player is either always denied, or denied at that level.Īny overpowered, One-Hit Kill, or potent ailment-inflicting skill will be useless on big bosses. In fact, some games deliberately manipulate the RNG in the player's favor just to avoid the appearance of cheating. Ironically, players often think the AI is cheating when it isn't, such as strings of good luck from an RNG that is actually perfectly fair, while not noticing at all the subtle and behind-the-scenes ways that the computer is actually cheating. In order to make up the gap and still present a challenge, cheating is required. Computers are often prevented from using certain tactics that are open to the player, either because it's 'cheap' when your enemies do it or there's no freaking way that a computer could manage to pull it off at a crucial moment. Sometimes this is justified due to the Rule of Fun. If the game looks at the way your characters have been customized and the AI is then given strategies or abilities specifically designed to counter yours, that's not impossible, per se (it's entirely possible that you could encounter a human player with a team that counters yours perfectly!), but it's something that was specifically given to the computer as an advantage over the player, rather than random chance. Though this trope generally applies to impossibilities (things that the player literally cannot do no matter how well they play and no matter how many things they've unlocked in the game at that point, the computer will just have extra resources or abilities), it can also just apply to more conventional cheating. Conversely, arcade versions of games ('quarter munchers') often cheat more than home console versions.

Some games have even used the fact that their AI is not a cheating bastard as a selling point. In ZX Spectrum forums such as, this phenomenon (real or imagined) is known as 'cheatingbastness'. This can be a quick-and-dirty method of achieving a 'level' playing field against a skilled human player (especially in older games, where hardware and AI capabilities were limited and prone to Artificial Stupidity), but can also create Fake Difficulty when the computer has access to moves that a human player (in the same context) clearly does not. The computer player is a cheating bastard whenever the 'rules' differ between you and Video Game A.I.-controlled opponents. Jonny Ebert, lead designer of Dawn of War II on video game A.I.

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