Using "cheesy tactics" to win

Question

I'm a huge fan of the computer game HoMaM4 and I watch videos on YouTube by other players, walking through the campaigns. The goal for me is to have fun, learn new strategies, gain new moves practices, etc. While the gamer is fighting the battles, he's commenting on some of his tactics/moves and explains why he does these moves and what's their benefit. One of the comments was:

This battle can be fairly easily won, but we use more cheesy tactics to avoid any losses.

The gamer was using a tactic that includes only one creature in the battle (and letting the other creatures stay in the back) because this creature has a special ability which prevents the attacked opponent from returning the attack. Using this tactic, the battle took longer, but the result was that other creatures were not hurt and it was a flawless victory – no losses or damage taken from the opponent. The other way of winning this battle and make it shorter (duration) would be to use all creatures to attack the opponent, but there would be losses, although small.

I do understand approximate meaning of this expression, but I'm wondering about three things:

• What is the exact meaning of this expression?
• Where does this expression come from?
• Is this expression used only in war/battle/games language (Google associated this expression with games) or can it be used also in different situation?

Answer 1

Cheesy from Urban Dictionary

Low quality, cheap, inauthentic, crappy; fake. From cheese cloth, the thin cheap fabric used to drain cheese curd, and in the past sometimes used instead for proper cloth in cheap clothing.

In this context, the "cheesy tactics" are most likely inauthentic tactics (i.e. not ones that would typically be used on a real battlefield and possibly exploiting weaknesses in the game mechanics) aimed at reducing the players loses.

Cheesy can also be applied to other things, such as cheesy music or cheesy jokes, where it generally means low quality.

Answer 2

Cheesy also has a meaning of "corny" - something that might be clichéd, embarrassing or liable to make you or others cringe, so the opposite of "cool" or "hip". Such as "I know it's cheesy, but we did let our parents take us to Disney World, and we liked it."

So in the game context, I expect they mean embarrassing, in the sense that they played at a very average or uninspired level, while suggesting they could play at a more sophisticated (but higher-risk) level if they chose to.