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(redirected from Main.LetsPlay)

We play games so you don't have to.

Let's Play is a relatively recent gaming phenomenon, originating in the Something Awful forums but since branched out to independent players on You Tube. Essentially, it's a video Walkthrough with (often hilarious) commentary; the goal isn't to Speed Run through it, but to show off how the player proper plays the game normally.

Suggestions from viewers are accepted (and are practically demanded in Something Awful to be considered a "true" Let's Play). Epic failure and multiple deaths are not cut out, for sake of the funny.

Emulation and heavy use of save-states is involved, as most of the consoles and games able to be emulated currently don't have a save or password feature. For the most part, cheating is discouraged, though doing boring parts "off-camera" is encouraged.

Recently, several well-known indie Let's Players have left, or at least put their videos on indefinite hiatus; some fans and fellow Let's Players have dubbed this the "IWBTG curse", due to the fact that several of them have either off-screened or done full Let's Plays of the indie Platform Hell game I Wanna Be The Guy.

• The Let's Play Forum
• The Let's Play Archive
• The non-SA Let's Play Forum

Some recommendations from the LP Archive:

• Schildkrote's play-through of Persona3 shows the game as the records of the Livejournal pages of the main character, adding large amounts of Character Development to the Heroic Mime. Although it starts off as something of a parody of the game, with the main character making jokes about the Level Up At Intimacy 5 system, it gets much more dramatic as it goes on, and the main character gets closer to The End Of The World As We Know It.
  • Schildkrote also did a live, streaming Let's Play of La Mulana that was quite fun while it lasted.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 LP by pokecapn, Medibot, Kung-Fu Jesus and others is probably the best LP this troper has seen yet.
• The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing as played by ChewBot, which really has to be read to be believed. It turns a game based on cute cuddly animals into a hellish nightmare that will haunt you until the end of your days. Could arguably be counted as a deconstruction of the original game.
  • Chewbot also conducted a recently archived LP of Oregon Trail, which ratchets the characterization of a pioneer family up from "Bare-Bones" to "Filling". It includes such madness as a wife with a history of sleeping around, a subplot involving disgruntled British spies, and a hideously malformed baby who happens to be the patriarch's only biological child, out of three — including "Waffles," who got his name from a childhood incident that's never fully explained).
• SimCity 2000, played by Moon Slayer and Deryl; presented as a deconstruction of the otherwise Acceptable Breaks From Reality in the game, and making "City Name" (the name chosen by consensus for the new city) look like Silent Hill.
• Fallout, played by BOrangeFury; presented as the diary of the Vault Dweller, and chronicles his evolution from wide-eyes idealist to world-weary savior in name only.
  • See also: Fallout 2 done by Breetai as a melee combat specialist with a low intelligence score.
• Flashback, played by Yahtzee, the man behind Zero Punctuation.
• Kaizo Mario World, played by Psychedelic Eyeball, Proton Jon, & Wugga; an example of sadistically Nintendo Hard ROM hacks.
• Princess Maker 2, played by SynthOrange as he raises an innocent little girl according to the whims of SA's forum. Having been produced by Gainax, the obvious choice for the father is Gendo Ikari. He ends up a much better father then you'd expect, though only really gets his act in gear when his daughter is killed by the God of War and then returns to life. Shame that the gods kinda frown upon Gendo's ward committing regicide, then proceeding to marry and usurp the Devil, though.
• X-COM: Apocalypse, a true epic played by GuavaMoment. He manages to turn an essentially plotless strategy game into a riveting tale of intergalactic war. Of course, there's a lighter side, explored when one of the soldiers suffers a psionic attack and spends his last days hallucinating an LP of X-COM: Interceptor.
  • Even more so (in both the epic and light-hearted senses) with his LP of the first game of the series, X-COM: UFO Defense, with such weirdness as an Ax Crazy scientist outfitting her cat with Powered Armor, a janitor being assigned to three parts of X-COM at once (and falling into said scientist's good graces in the process), a squad leader Expying Kamina eight years before Gurren Lagann was made, and President Andrew Jackson fighting aliens.
  • And the saga continues with Jade Star's LP of UFO: Aftermath, the first in a trilogy of Spiritual Successors to the X-COM series. Notable antics in this After The End romp include the janitorial woes of off-screen character seaborgium, the slightly off-kilter Snake Squad's first encounter with Car Crabs, research into Reticulan Burgers, and the death of Canuck and his subsequent return as Robo-Canuck. Jade and Guava actually have a pact running to LP the remaining X-COM and UFO games.
• Anything by Deceased Crab, really, especially his epic, sanity-straining LP of La Mulana. Also recommended is his LP of Cave Story, with special bonus "Balrog Story". Notable for being one of two LPers who brought Let's Play to Youtube. Huzzah!
• Cybershell's "Half-Life 2" LP.
• Slowbeef's version of Snatcher slowly decays from a straight, rather dull play-by-play into an insane roleplay, with other posters signing up as characters from the game and commenting on the action, and a final culmination into Slowbeef being killed and replaced by the Snatchers, then resurrected by a character account from a previous LP - a bizarre Let's Play version of Wiki Magic.
  • And he winds up carrying that spoilered part into the LP of SD Snatcher, itself a Genre Shifted gold mine of Hideo Kojima nutjobbery portrayed with Super Deformed versions of the main characters.
  • Slowbeef also has another famous LP of the rather poor Dating Sim Sprung, told in the viewpoints (in separate SA topics, even) of the pepper-spray happy dumb as a box of hair hero Brett, and the Yandere face-punching Becky. Apparently, it's deep enough to merit the forumers Photoshopping together such homages as Phoenix Wright-esque screenshots and a mock "Snatcher 2" cover based on the box art.
• Raocow. Just... Raocow.
• Oyster's LP of the original Mega Man, with the suggestions of maniacal contributor Diabeetus, goes from providing fun facts about the series to reciting Slash Fic during a level playthrough to turning Elec Man into Nightmare Fuel.
• Research_Indicates's LP of Trespasser is arguably the best video LP ever conducted.
• Zoolooman's as-of-yet-abandoned LP of Civilization IV takes the series's penchant for revisionist history to its logical extremes, chronicling the rise of a Russian World State through such trials as the assimilation of Indian and Chinese cultures, a brief holy war with Spain, and Archimedes blowing Lenin's hand off with a prototype hand cannon. Further Four X forays can be found in the multi-user LP of the original Civilization (spearheaded by DeceasedCrab) and Fangz's take on Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri.
• Jerusalem's Let's Play of GTA San Andreas and Total War 2: Featuring In-Depth Carl Johnson, and two Scottish nobles who get drunk and decide to conquer Egypt.
  • He does well to establish how Carl gets all the cool stuff like buyable safehouses despite being a two-bit criminal thanks to a politician to getting a gun license
• This Let's Play of Resident Evil 4 had this troper in stitches, with Guns N' Roses Ganados, a hilarious deconstruction of what had to be going through Leon's mind when he killed the first Ganado, Chief Bitores Mendez running around in a Packers cheese hat, and depicting the cabin seige as a horrific Civil War battle....and that's before they even get to the castle.
• Pesmerga's Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines LP, which is wonderfully roleplayed from the point of view of the (customizable) main character.
  • Ditto Seorin's Arcanum, who uses the customizable aspect of the game to craft an epic tale of tragedy and redemption.
• What Nakar has done to the majority of the Ultima series is nothing short of madness. Our female protagonist Steve conducts herself in a very un-Avatarlike manner, with such actions as killing Lord British a couple times, killing Iolo in Ultima V so he can be rebuilt as a robot and fitted with the Cheat Menu for Ultima VI, conducting mass murder in U6 with the help of "Death Cannon," and wrecking the economy of Serpent Isle with a few (dozen, maybe hundred) well-placed castings of False Coin.
  • And let's not forget Martian Dreams, where she takes every opportunity to insult Iolo, Shamino, and Dupre's Expys whilst kicking ass and taking names accompanied by such Victorian figures as Nellie Bly and Sigmund Freud. Not to mention a Martian fembot. And the Beefeater-looking chap with the hots for said Martian fembot.
  • Skara Brae, twice. Already been mentioned, but it deserves all the accolades we can give that little expedition.
• Any and all Pokemon Let's Plays by RedChocobo. Utterly hilarious commentary from a character POV, supported by little sidestories and excellent artwork, not to mention the most effective use of smilies ever.
  • Relatedly, there's the Let's Play of a So Bad Its Good Game Mod known as Pokemon Quartz, complete with input from Redchocobo himself and commentary from the creator.
  • New to the pantheon is FredMSloniker's LP of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, chronicling Jake the Meowth's quest to hug 'em all. The normally hum-drum missions are spiced up by fellow Goons using the Wonder Mail Generator to hand out awesome post-game TMs and items as rewards, and This Troper has a personal soft spot for whoever started giving Team Hugs recruits names from Super Robot Wars.
    • A LP for the sequel was planned with an interesting player character twist, but Slowbeef decided to put an early end to it to prevent Self Insert Fic and Rule Thirty Nine abuse. It didn't help that Pokemon seems to be less than popular there...
• Fintilgin's LP of Paradox games follows the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1187 to 1940. In real life, this Crusader kingdom fell in 1291 after spending the last 100 years of its history as a minor city-state that didn't even control Jerusalem. In this LP, the Ko J ended up conquering everything from India to Asia Minor, most of Africa, as well as significant colonial holdings and virtually exterminating Islam and Protestantism.
• The group effort/succession game Let's Play of Dwarf Fortress tells the tale of Boatmurdered from the point of view of its succession of overseers, their crusades against bloodthirsty and vengeful elephants, and the use of levers as doomsday devices. Must be read to be believed.
• The Taxman's Oregon Trail 2 LP is a hilarious showing of how badly Goons would do if they were allowed to direct a wagon party, notable for the strange persistance of Fording things despite Violation of Common Sense, and classic lines such as "We Lost Bacon You dicks!"
• Retsupurae (it's Engrish for "Let's Play") is a collection of hilarious videos of commentary over terrible LPs.
• And finally, Travis343's LP of EarthBound for its narration of the game story from Ness's perspective, as well as characterizing Captain Strong as a more serious character, even going as far as to have him run Ness out of Onett.

Some recommendations from the non SA-affiliated Let's Play Forum:

• UltraJMan, his entire collection, though his run of IWBTG is a must-see.
• Same goes with Rainiac666, though without IWBTG.
• SilentPhil2, a morbid little Brit on You Tube with a penchant for playing violent, Kill Em All video games, or games with a Karma Meter that he can shove all the way to the extreme side of "evil as sin".

Other examples:

• http://www.it-he.org has several game guides in a Let's Play-style. However, these guides are based more around beating the game in the strangest ways possible, often by exploiting glitches and killing off friendly NPCs.
• A user on the GameFAQs message boards, TheSwordEmperor, has attracted a following by posting "logs" of his plays through various games, usually RPGs. After getting Hundred Percent Completion, he lets the readers choose what game he will play next.
• Let's play the infamous Limbo Of The Lost at rpg.net!
  • From the same message board comes a Let's Play of another not-so-good game, Quest 64, which takes an otherwise limp story and grows it into a great narrative rivaling Tolkien in its world-building. Definitely a must-read.
• The LJ community Screencap Adventures, which focuses more on illustrating progress through various (mostly classic) games using screenshots.
• The Forum Let's Play Already, not related with the SA one.
• Youtube legend Cloud8745 with his hilarious collection of gaming walk throughs, which include such games as Fatal Frame, the Silent Hill series, Condemned, the obscure Gregory Horror Show, freeware game Cavestory, Shadow of Colossus, and many more. Here's his page on Youtube.
  • Cloud has recently closed his account, and removed most of his old videos. He isn't gone, however, and his new account is called NaturalBornGamers, and his webpage on youtube is located here.
• The ClubFloyd archive is basically a collection of blind LPs of various Interactive Fiction.
• Let's Play Banjo-Tooie, by Cypheron48. Notable for the occasional appearance of sudden clips and pictures that loosely relate to the situation. A clip of the Cluster F Bomb scene from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is even reprised at the very end of the same video it was featured in.
• Anything from HCBaily. Just a guy who really loves Final Fantasy and other RP Gs, and has a lot of fun playing them with great info along the way. The highlight so far would probably be Final Fantasy IV, and his increasingly incredulous reactions to things the characters are able to survive.

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