Cheating is a dynamic thing for me; each game works differently.
For Pokemon games, I cheat like hell. I despise training and battling because it takes so long, and I hate losing, so EXP gain codes and inf. health codes are common. On the DS games like Pokemon Black, I'll use codes that increase walking/text speed because they don't have the best performance on my laptop and I'll be damned if I have to wait :x
For games that are primarily gaming and have a less linear and enforced storyline, like platformers and side-scrollers, I more or less don't cheat unless I just can't beat a specific part. A game that comes to mind right now is Super Princess Peach. I often lose health in that game because I just suck at it in general, so I usually use a code to give me inf. health. On a game like the Adventure Time DS Game, that one's super easy so I needed no cheats for it at all.
I personally feel like cheating can positively enhance your gaming experience as long as you use it in moderation. Ex: Whenever I play Path of the Ninja 2, I usually just hack in weapons and stuff so I can experience the storyline faster without having to worry about losing and getting sent back to a save point. For me, storyline is extremely important, and I don't like waiting around to progress through it. Games that have a lot of open time between major events that you're supposed to use for "training", like Pokemon, bug me because there's just so little chance of actually progressing unless you do the training like you're supposed to, which can take quite a while if you're like me and just don't feel like doing it. That's usually when I start cheating. Games that don't need training or have a different stat-increasing system, I love those, and rarely cheat on them because it's easier to level up and you don't need to do it to keep going forward.
So yeah, it's entirely dependent on what I play. But usually, I can make it through a game fairly.
