2019-04-01 PC Gamer

RIGHT: Using noclip in

Metro lets you see the

ruins of Moscow

without the gas mask

obscuring your vision.

COMMAND AND CONQUEROther legendary console commands

IMPULSE 255

If god mode feels a little

too cheaty, but you’re still

stuck in the originalQuake,

this command will grant

you quad damage.

NOTARGET

Another FPS classic.

This makes you invisible

to enemies, letting you

saunter through a level

totally unhindered.

DNUNLOCK

Aconsolecommandfrom

Duke Nukem 3D.Typethis

in and every locked door

andtheforcefieldinthe

levelwillmagicallyopen.

I

n the summer of 1999
I bought a copy of
SiN, a first-person
shooter by Ritual
Entertainment that
featured a preposterous hero
named John Blade and some
brilliantly dynamic, interactive
environments. It was released a
month beforeHalf-Life, and thus
was completely overshadowed, but
Ritual did a lot of stuff Valve did in
its game – and better. I loved it, at
least until I reached a level set in
some kind of underwater facility. I
remember a lot of swimming, some
frustrating enemies, and a labyrinth
of boring corridors.

And, being a lot more impatient in
my teenage years, I decided to bypass
the entire level by activating noclip
mode. Noclip, as PC gamers of a
certain age will know, is a console
command that lets you fly around the
level, passing through walls and
ceilings. The term was popularised
by id Software, its first-person
shooters often featured a noclip
mode – as well as many games built
on theQuakeengine including
Half-Lifeand, yes,SiN.
Teenage me was delighted,
because I was able to breeze through
that stupid underwater level. There
was an undeniable feeling of guilt, a
lurking sense that I was cheating the
game – and myself. But over the
years, in those glorious early days of
PC gaming, I used noclip regularly in
a lot of different games to get past
sections I couldn’t be bothered with
or that were too hard. I figured if the
developer put it in there, surely I
should be allowed to use it?

BUG REPORT
I don’t use noclip to cheat these days,
but it’s still, often, a very useful
console command. In buggy games
where progress can be halted by, say,
a door or set-piece not triggering, it’s
invaluable. More than once I’ve used
the tcl (short for ‘toggle collision’)
command in Bethesda RPGs such as
Fallout and Skyrim to bypass broken
sections of a level. An inelegant

solution, and I really shouldn’t have

to in the first place, but at least we

have the option, unlike console

players who can end up stuck.

But my favourite use for noclip is

peeking behind the Wizard of Oz’s

curtain. I spend a lot of time

exploring videogame environments,

taking screenshots, making videos,

and generally admiring the art. It’s a

part of game design that has always

fascinated me. Which is why, when a

game has a noclip mode, I always

take the opportunity to escape the

bounds of the level and get an idea of

how it was built. Even if a game

doesn’t have a noclip command, it’s

usually possible to hack one in using

a tool such as Cheat Engine.

One of the first times I did this

was in the original BioShock. Its

equivalent of noclip is using the ghost

and fly commands, and doing so gives

you a fascinating glimpse at how

Irrational built the stricken city of

Rapture. During the opening

bathysphere descent I flew out of the

pod, soaring above the entire

sequence, getting a bird’s eye view of

it. And it was surprisingly beautiful,

even when viewed from angles a

player was never meant to see.

And it was possible to see how the

developers had pieced it together.

That whale that swims by waits

patiently off-screen until the

bathysphere passes it, like an actor

waiting for their cue to go on stage.

The amazing Rapture skyline, with

its blinking neon signs, is mostly just

flat images. You’d never know in the

bathysphere, of course. But when you

get up close, it’s like one of those

towns in an old western where the

buildings are all thin plywood

facades. This does ruin the magic

somewhat, but even knowing the

truth, that sequence still gives me

goose bumps every time I play it.

Recently I used a camera hack to

access a noclip mode inHitman 2.I

already knew IO Interactive had

some of the best environment

designers in the business, but being

able to move around those levels

freely made me appreciate their

talent even more. I don’t know how

developers feel about people poking

around like this, and I’m sure some of

them are mortified by people seeing

assets that were only ever meant to

be seen from afar up close. In any

game with a large, distant group of

people – the crowd in a racing game,

perhaps – noclip lets you see the ugly

truth. Weird, polygonal mutants that

were only ever designed to give the

suggestion of a person from far away,

who you half expect to say “Kill me!”

in a mournful voice. But for me it’s a

way to appreciate their work on a

deeper level. And if I ever replaySiN,

I’ll be using noclip to skip that damn

underwater level again.

IALWAYSTAKETHE

OPPORTUNITY TO ESCAPE

THE BOUNDS OF THE LEVEL

GOD

It’s called a ‘console

command’ but let’s be

honest, it’s a straight-up

cheat, and I admit to using

it many times in the past.

NOW PLAYING I MOD SPOTLIGHT I HOW TOI DIARYI REINSTALL I WHY I LOVE (^) I M U S T P L A Y
EXTRA LIFE