as long as it doesn't influence other people's game (online suckers), I don't see the issue.

I have used guides to see if I'm not leaving stuff behind in certain games, and 90% of the times I played SimCity 3000, I was weak and I gave power to the masses too ;) I'd rather see my city growing than getting my way out of a huge debt.

but I hadn't used "god mode" for a long time until I played Dark Messiah of M&M, there were so many spiders in that game and I hated spiders, so I played through half the game invincible :P

Atleast I won't get this yet.

For most games i tend to avoid guides if i can help it, and if i need assistance i'll try to find it online. There is a core group of 4 franchises that i buy guides for: 3D Mario, console Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon. I buy them for the same reasons some people still bother to buy game magazines: the feel of something physical is superior to webpages and printouts.

for ffxiii i used the guide to choose which weapons i wanted to upgrade.

and like someone else said, guides are also a great item to buy along a game you really like if it has print quality, since it includes artwork and maybe characters bios. that kind of stuff

Most of the physical strategy guides I used to buy were either because they were very damn good (Versus and DoubleJump are two), or because it had awesome artwork (there was one Ocarina of Time guide I bought because of the artwork).

Pah!

Cheats can be fun in
- games you love but already finished and just want to have some quick fun with
- games you don't really like and never intended to play or finish the normal way anyway (like - in my case - FPS, a genre that only interested me for a few years in the mid 90s for its then new and impressive 3D graphics, but not for its gameplay, i.e. I always run through FPS games with god mode on which I called sightseeing mode).

Some old favorites:
- PHOTON MAN (laser guy in Age of Empires)
- TIGERLILY (level select master code in WarCraft 2)
- MIKES TEAM (full money, all missions selectable in Syndicate)
- IDDQD (god mode in Doom)
- GOD (god mode in Unreal)
- ROSEBUD (money cheat in Sims)