Here's a pretty fascinating story for you. Returnal, the excellent arcade shooter rogue-like from Housemarque, is generally resonating well among players, but there are some struggling with the difficulty and its perma-death structure. If you're in that camp, and wish there was a way to make things a little easier for yourself, you may be in luck — if you're quick.
YouTube user TheRandomiser has made a very interesting discovery about the PlayStation 5 exclusive. If you plug a USB keyboard into your console, you will be able to access a few developer cheat commands. Presumably left in the retail build of the game by accident, these will give you a significant leg up.
We won't spell out all the button commands here, but they're listed in the description for the video. So, what can you do with these? One of these cheats allows you to spawn any weapon at your current weapon proficiency level. In other words, using this exploit, you can start your run with a more preferable gun, rather than the default pistol. You can also instantly travel to the start of the third biome with whatever you have equipped, and you can also set yourself back to the crash site in biome one — again, keeping everything you had on you before the cheat. Using these, you can seriously power yourself up to a laughable degree. It's ridiculous, as shown in the aforementioned video.
Now, there are a few things to note here. Firstly, this is likely going to be patched out very soon (a patch is incoming later today, in fact). Secondly, these cheats do not affect Trophies. Also, there aren't any cheats that will make you invincible, or give you max integrity, or anything like that. With these active, you're still going to have to play the game more or less as intended. Still, it's pretty crazy that these developer shortcuts — presumably used for testing purposes — were inadvertently left in the code.
If you really do want to use these, the advice is to turn off auto-updates for the game (or take your PS5 offline) so they aren't patched out.
[source youtube.com, via resetera.com]
Comments 43
Cheats used to be a thing in games. You got some funny ones too. Why did they disappear?
@nessisonett because publishers figured they can charge you for them
@nessisonett In some games they are now paid for dlc, like extra finishing moves in fighting games. Not exactly cheats codes I know, but the same kind of thing. And the only thing I can think off the top of my head.
I guess this makes the physical copies more valuable in a strange way.
So the best way to get the plat is with the physical disc and no internet connection I guess. Not my type of game, but some trophy hunters will be pleased to know this.
There's only so far you'd get even with these cheats though, you'd still have to be good to complete the game. They aren't like the Subnautica ones where you can pretty much just warp around the map and finish everything in an hour.
I find games like these just too hard for me, guess I’m not that of a skilled player lol
Honestly I think games should always value your (limited) time and skill level. Things like the dev’s vision are no excuse as we can always have choices.
Hhmmm ya don’t say....
“ Quickly turns off auto update “
@Heiki I think they are improving/adding checkpoints soon in a patch?
Ooh that’s kinda cool! I’ll give this a try
@render this. Spawning a gun of your choice isn't going to finish the game for you with ease. I typically manage to find the gun I want prior to facing a boss, but unless you have health items and/or know what you're doing, you're still buggered.
@Heiki or let the developers make hardcore games for hardcore players.
@nessisonett
In part because online took off. At which point both fair competition and long term engagement became important. Cheats obviously destroy fair competition in multiplayer games, and I’d argue they also make long term engagement less likely in single player games.
Before that though, it was simply that publishers figured they could charge for them. Even to the detriment of both of the above. Because money in the hand and all that.
@thefourfoldroot CTR had cheats but they auto disabled when you click online mode. Any game dev could do that. It's more because Trophies and pay to won schemes.
@Loftimus fair enough, there’s no shortage of other games to play, I guess.
Fought the second boss last night,ixiom or something ,good god the bullets nearly gave me an fit,he had half health left and did me,just needed a health pack and wouldve had him,the game isn't impossible you know what you have to do ,but face a boss without full perks and youre knackered
@Jayofmaya
It is also easy to just disable trophies when cheats are used, and some devs do. But it’s an interesting question as to whether cheats reduce or increase engagement. For me, I’d be tempted to use cheats. I’d then finish a game faster, feel less connected to the challenge, and likely move on faster. Which is not what publishers want when they need to flog DLC. Others may play around indefinitely in a game with “fun” cheats...
@Robinsad You used to pay for them in the 90s too - the magazines and guidebooks weren't free. Same as those phone lines that gave out cheats, with the numbers printed in the manual, that were about £2 a minute.
Also, to be fair, certain things that used to be cheats are now just standard things - like level select.
@nessisonett I suspect achievements didn't help either. Initially there were a few games that had both but it got some bad press and they ended up disabling achievements on a lot of games if cheats were active, which also got bad press.
Their solution seems to be to slowly kill off cheats. A shame.
There are still games like Ark and Subnautica that have full developer consoles built in the game. A lot of fun
Still in 2nd biome, finally win against the first boss after 8 hours lol, now I'm being defeated by living sentinel on 2nd biomes, I don't think that's a boss though. My favs weapon is the carbine, it's especially devastating at higher proficiency.
It's annoying that I have to put ps5 in rest mode while playing, sometime I got a good run and there isn't "save & quit" option like others rogue lite games.
@nessisonett I think because trophy, but devs can auto disable trophy when players using cheat code.
Well, looks like I’m asking my better half to disable the internet connection on the PS5 today, so I can give this a shot! Did a good play last night on it, but I’ll take the help!
@Robinsad My first reaction was to laugh at your whit but then the truth cut so deep I felt like crying
@deathaxe I don't go to the yellow door with star anymore, 1 time is enough for me 😂. I defeat the first boss with only 1 health left, I even take the maligned health after defeating the boss because I don't want to be killed before activating the transporter (to biome 2), it's a really close victory lol.
The second biome run is easier because I only focus on finding the carbine on biome one and transport to biome 2. The living sentient there kick me back to biome 1 though lol.
About the parasites and maligned items, the worse my runs, the more I prefer taking the "bad stuff", but if have good runs (big health, great weapon, and useful artifact), I usually ignored the maligned stuff.
@render exsqueeze me? There are cheats in SUbnautica that let you warp about the map?? Are you freaking kidding me. LOLOL I just finished the plat for it last week and had to say found the game geniunly terrifying at bits. Me no like deep water it seems.
Now I’ll play it 😀
@Iroha Ha ha yep I know, that was my reaction too. I think I sunk something like 50-60 hours into this game, and like you say there are some really terrifying bits that you have to work through, only to go and find out afterwards that I could have done it all in 1 hour!! I wouldn't have had so much fun that way though.
@deathaxe I got the house keys early in the game, I didn't find the parasyte that gave regenerated health yet, that's seems very useful, I know about the glowing eyes statue. After defeating the first boss and die on the 2nd biomes, I can go into the house again but I didn't collect the weird dice because after reading the rejection letter selene pass out and waking up out of the house, I only get resurrected once on the first boss and never get resurrected again. It seems there's still a lot of mystery in the game.
This thumbnail is almost a straight copy of the Flashback thumbnail a few articles down 😂
@thefourfoldroot Well, I'm playing through Final Fantasy 8 for the first time right now with the use of cheats. The system in it is quite convoluted and long, so I can't be bothered to learn it. The environments and story still hold it up and I'm having fun even when I find a battle to tough and just cheat my way through. However, I have played games that are really easy and it definitely is less memorable. I think there's a balance there for me, because I don't want to spend 3 hours trying to master one battle in a game like Sekiro tbh, but I don't want to breeze through everything instantly.
The new update is killing folks save data. Happened to me. Whilst playing a pop up error kept appearing so quit. Checked save data and it is gone.
The new update just got installed and now the game won't start. At all. Error CE-107622-8. Gonna have to reinstall.
@PossibLeigh The new update is causing all sorts of problems for everyone.
@Amin1998 omg thanks god I haven’t downloaded it! I am in the second biome with a very good run atm, I disabled auto updates because I feared they could kill my run...
Avoid it like the plagas until further notice!
@Feena the furthest I got was to the third biome a few days ago but had to end my run because the doors wouldn’t open because of lockdown even though all the enemies were dead. Yesterday the game crashed and cba starting again and today a good run ended because this save bug kept popping up. And now I have to redownload and all the progress is gone. Can’t help feeling the game needed a bit more polish before release.
@Amin1998 oh wow that’s just terrible, isn’t it. I am LOVING the game but surely it has some (fixable) problems...I hope you get a lucky run next time
@Amin1998 No sh*t, Sherlock. You just won a 'most pointless comment' award! 🤪
@PossibLeigh WTF are you on about???
Up down left right A and Start. Ahh how I miss those days.
@Loftimus Choices are always a good thing in games and with the world being such a busy place all the time people don't always have time for such things. An option to make the game easier doesn't have to be enabled if it bothers you that much.
@Amin1998 I commented with the issues I've had, you tell me they are affecting everyone. Pointless as I know that already. Maybe it wasn't your intention, but it came across as condescending.
@nessisonett and the aggressive intention to remove them, for gods sake the last of us part 2 has cheats and naughy dog doesn't care!
I should have tried this yesterday. I feel so cheated with this game. The crashes are so terrible, and the no suspend save sucks massive monkey balls when it decides it is going to crash.
I just got to the underwater area, and it freaking crashed when I was almost to the end of the act or the game or whatever. I'd have beaten this stupid game if not for these crashes and the glitch where you can't interact with stuff.
Never buying a Housemarque game ever again after this, and Sony lost a lot of my trust work these 70 dollar PS5 games. I'm not supporting devs like this.
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