The Enhanced Games Are Basically Sports With Cheat Codes Turned On

Holding its first event on May 24, Enhanced Games seeks to represent a new era in sports competition that embraces science, aka no drug tests. While a few restrictions should be in place to avoid situations where one participant shows up looking like Bane, these events allow PEDs, as long as they are approved by the FDA. Coming to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Enhanced proves to be controversial, although an argument could be made that if everybody dopes, then nobody cheats.

Naturally, gaming and sports share quite a few parallels, and Enhanced Games perfectly replicates that side of gaming that encourages players to break the rules and, well, cheat. Gaming with cheat codes enabled might as well be called “enhanced gaming.” Both sides seek to remove restrictions and reach maximum performance, something gamers achieve in many ways. Let’s go over them.

Put the consoles in the correct order.

Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)Start

Run Forever

• Examples of games with infinite stamina mods or cheats: Peak, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Monster Hunter World, Skyrim, Crimson Desert, Dying Light 2, Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild, etc

Some games let you run forever; others build their challenge around managing stamina, requiring players to manage their attack and defenses. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 99% of Soulslikes serve as prime examples, but stamina’s presence extends far beyond one genre or franchise. If a PC game comes with a stamina meter, a mod exists to remove that entirely. That’s simply the circle of life, and these mods warrant their existence by simply providing a different way to interact with the game. In some instances, like Dark Souls, players would need to use a Cheat Engine to change some metrics to trigger infinite stamina, which turns the game into more of a hack-and-slash.

Rather than managing fatigue, you become immune to it. You can attack endlessly, defend endlessly, and run without needing to catch your breath every 5 steps. Enhanced Games reduce this fundamental obstacle through EPOs or stimulants that allow participants to maintain a staple hormone level, along with speeding up recovery. Naturally, you cannot completely remove fatigue in real life, but it can make a huge difference.

Anabolics & Growth Hormones: Level-Cap Bypass To Achieve Max Stats Quickly

Bulk Forever

• Examples of games with Max Stats mods: The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Cyberpunk 2077, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Final Fantasy 7 Remake
• Examples of games with Level Cap mods: The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Dragon Age

This goes for most genres, but long-haul games with in-depth progression systems typically want players to steadily build up their stats to provide a more consistent journey and maintain some level of challenge. Level caps also exist in many RPGs to limit just how godly you can become, especially if their endgame comes with an online component that needs to have opponents at a somewhat level playing field. Still, plenty of mods, cheats, or developer tools can be used to supercharge a character, maxing out all their stats before they even leave the tutorial stage.

HGH and testosterone esters are the equivalent of a level-cap bypass. Human bodies have natural diminishing returns on muscle growth and recovery. By overriding those safety limiters, these athletes are walking around with stats that shouldn’t be mathematically possible within the game’s normal code.

High-Tech Suits & Equipments: Pay-To-Win Skins & Hardware Exploits

Become One With The Darkness

• Gaming examples: Snap Tap keys, skins that provide heightened camouflage (Fortnite​​​​​’s Boundless Set, for instance)

Oh, yeah, enhancements go beyond just PEDs. The Enhanced Games permit swimmers to use polyurethane swimsuits, aka Super Suits, that were banned in 2010 because they were breaking all-around records. At the top of the game, the margin between first and last is minuscule, and an edge in clothing and hardware makes an insurmountable difference.

Gaming, naturally, covers this aspect as well, including incidents that completely threw off the balance in PvP games. Legendarily, Call of Duty: Warzone‘s Roze skin became “pay-to-win” since it allowed the player to blend seamlessly into shadows or dark corners, making them effectively invisible. Snap Tap mechanical keyboards also provide an edge in games like Apex Legends or Counter-Strike 2.0, as they instantly cut off the previous directional input, granting players robot-like perfection. Valve even banned these keyboards in competitive matches.

Medical Oversight To Ensure Athlete Safety: God Mode

The Ultimate Safety Net

• Examples in games: IDDQD Code in Doom, Invincibility Codes in GTA: San Andreas, Minecraft‘s Creative Mode

The ban on steroid use goes beyond preserving the sanctity of fair competition and ensuring the safety of non-doping athletes, as it also exists to try to protect users from long-term damage that arises from living in Super Saiyan mode 24/7. Enhanced Games seeks to put these worries to rest through an Independent Medical Commission designed to keep the health and safety of athletes as the top priority.

I’m not qualified to speak on the legitimacy of these practices, but it sounds kind of like playing a game at full blast, no brakes, while activating “god mode” to avoid receiving any damage. Whether the “no damage” part proves to be the case in the long term remains to be seen, and the Enhanced Games might as well be a live beta designed to push these mechanics to their limits.

Breaking All The Universal Records: Any % Glitch-Allowed Speedruns

Break The Game

• Many games have Any % speedruns, with Ocarina of Time, Pokemon Red & Blue, and Portal being among the most famous

In theory, the Enhanced Games should break all sorts of records, but that wasn’t really the case during the original event. Only Kristian Gkolomeev set a new world record, and a few unenhanced athletes even outranked their powered-up competitors, so the results were pretty interesting. Still, in theory, the Enhanced Games should set new world-best runs consistently, although they won’t be recognized by governing bodies like the WADA.

Effectively, these events echo video game speedruns that permit the use of any possible glitch, intending to break rather than beat the game. As awesome as these achievements are, they exist in their own category, separate from glitchless runs, and the latter tend to be held in slightly higher esteem.