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Let's Play
alt title(s): Lets Play
We play games so you don't have to.

Let's Play is a relatively recent gaming phenomenon, which became mainstream (for a certain value of mainstream) due to the Something Awful forums (and since branched out to independent players on You Tube) but has been around for quite a while longer. Essentially, it's a screenshot or video Walkthrough with (often hilarious) commentary; the goal generally isn't to Speed Run through it, but to show off how the player proper plays the game normally.

Suggestions from viewers are accepted. Epic failure and multiple deaths are not cut out, for sake of the funny. However, if the Rule Of Funny fails, it makes for boring videos, so better LPers will edit around un-funny screwups.

The tone and style will vary greatly with the nature of the game and those playing them. Some use screenshots and captions, while others use videos, or a mix of both. Some of those videos have voice commentary, and some use subtitles. And depending on the quality and style of the game, the LP may be in-character Fan Fic of sort, or closer to a MST, the latter especially common if there's multiple commentators involved. And often they have some degree of fan input; the commentors may submit their own side material, or vote on a certain course of action to take.

Emulation and heavy use of save-states is often 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. On the other hand, some LPs embrace cheats and hacks as their gimmick to mix things up.

Computers love to attempt suicide by any means possible partway though. Sturgeons Law is in effect of course, and many Lets Plays don't last long if they're not gripping. (of course, some are sadly Too Good To Last)

Some recommendations from the LP Archive:
  • Schildkrote's play-through of Persona 3 shows the game as the records of the Livejournal pages of the main character (with occasional uses of comments and/or blog pages of other characters), adding large amounts of Character Development to the Heroic Mime, who is portrayed as a Deadpan Snarker Emo Teen (particularly in music taste) both frustrated and bemused by the characters and events of his life, making jokes about the Level Up At Intimacy 5 system and the people around him, it gets much more dramatic as it goes on, as the main character gets closer to The End Of The World As We Know It and his eventual Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Schildkrote also did a live, streaming Let's Play of La Mulana that was quite fun while it lasted.
  • The LP of God Hand by Kung-Fu Jesus, is one of the best this troper has ever seen. The game itself is generally funny, and the commentary from Kung-Fu Jesus along with several guest stars per level makes it even better.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 LP by pokecapn, Medibot, Kung-Fu Jesus, IlluminatusVespucci and Kaz is probably the best LP this troper has seen yet. Picture four friends coming together to rent a copy of this game and co-operatively playing the whole thing from start to finish in a single sitting. They clocked in a total of just over twenty hours of gameplay. (Of which over two hours were spent staring at loading screens).
    • The main reason this LP is so hilarious is because you can literally HEAR the game eroding at their sanity. As the hours drag on, their comments and arguments become more and more disjointed and their jokes become more and more surreal. It's hilariously tragic Schadenfreude at its finest.
      • This troper went to high school with at least two of them. Let me assure you they were plenty insane to begin with.
    • And they are currently doing it again for Sonic Unleashed. Which is at least a better game, but has plenty of humor despite it, such as the sole piece of combat music, a jazz tune, being used OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER...
      • Not to mention Medibot giving a description to EVERY SINGLE PICKUP ITEM and trying not to repeat himself.
      • Extra points for the occasional embittered reference back to Sonic '06: "Remember when running into walls like this would kill you?" "NO."
    • Sir Pokecapn's band also did a LP of Sonic and the Black Knight soon after.
  • Daikatana is much the same kind of fare as the above. Proteus4994 and Suspicious, along with several hapless guests, are made John Romero's collective bitch as they delve, Dante's Inferno-esque, into this infamously terrible first-person shooter. Terrible weapons that hurt the player more often than the target, map design ranging from bland to outright malevolent and broken, an atrocious anime fanfic of a story, and gameplay that would (and did) make a grown man cry are all punctuated by glitch after hysterical glitch. Bring popcorn.
  • 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.
  • 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 walks home from hell. Shame that the gods kinda frown upon Gendo's ward committing regicide, then proceeding to marry and usurp the Devil, though.
    • Also, Gendo, with breasts
      • Also also, Gendo trying his hand at Shinji Ikari Raising Project while Lizzie is dead and epically failing to get a non-Kaowru ending.
  • Feinne's LP of the original PS 2 release of the Disgaea Hour Of Darkness isn't anything special, and is in fact incomplete BUT its entry on fighting Prier serves as a lead in for...
  • 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. But be warned...
    • 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.
      • Jade Star has FINALLY finished playing through UFO: Aftershock, and the thread has reached unprecedented levels of sheer insanity. It's all the better for it. During the course of it, his computer issues have reached the point of 'Three Stooges Syndrome' where they cancel each other out.
  • 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! But for some strange reason, he is not very popular on the Let's Play Forum...
    That's cause he has a Small Name Big Ego
    • Let us not forget his LP of Cocoron, featuring Singing Ninja Tank!
      • Deceased Crab would also co-star with Madam Luna in some of her playthroughs as well.
    • Especially gut-wrenchingly hilarious is a Let's Play he does of a Barbie game... While on pain killers... because he's just had his wisdom teeth out... While Man'O'War plays in the background. Especially interesting because, as he notes, the gameplay of the game isn't THAT bad.
  • Cybershell's Half-Life 2 LP, which is totally not the original Half-Life, honest, in which, amongst other things, Cybershell keeps on updating through a power outage by drawing pictures of the game from Gordon's perspective and taping them to his monitor.
    • Cybershell has also done Let's Plays of Sonics 1, 2, and 3/Knuckles (available here), including his opinion of the latter's infamous Guide Dang It: He thinks you're mentally retarded if you took more than a minute to figure it out.
  • 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.
  • Raocow. Just... Raocow.
    • A goon has mentioned that this sounds like creepy raocow fanboyism. I would like to mention that it is not; I merely couldn't think of a satisfactory way to describe raocow's surreal stream-of-consciousness commentary. I guess that's a way.
  • Oyster's LP of the original Mega Man, with the suggestions of maniacal contributor Diabetus, goes from providing fun facts about the series to reciting Slash Fic during a level playthrough to turning Elec Man into Nightmare Fuel.
    • Oyster has also contributed as a player in several Let's All Plays of various Mega Man games. Expect loads of Carpet F-Bombing whenever he dies due to user-imposed challenges, though.
  • Research_Indicates's LP of Trespasser is arguably the best video LP ever conducted, with a laconic Southern-ness that eases the pain of lampooning one of the quirkiest of Jurassic Park games.
  • Zoolooman's 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 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gives us In-Depth Carl Johnson and justifications for all the crazy stuff he can get despite his gangsta status...
    • ...while his Medieval 2: Total War: A Scotsman In Egypt weaves a tale of two disillusioned Scottish princes who conquer Egypt in a fit of drunken ambition and proceed to craft a Scottish Empire that retakes Jerusalem in the Crusades with a degree of permanence, unites the British Isles under Scottish rule halfway by accident, and routs the Mongol Hordes with horrifying results. And we haven't even gotten into the second half and its magnificent forgery of a Downer Ending. (NOTE: Not to be confused with its considerably shorter prequel, Rome Total Realism: An Egyptian In Scotland by Porkness.)
  • The Resident Evil LPs by The Dark Id. He spends 50% of them tearing apart Umbrella, the various Soup Cans of the series (especially how stupid Umbrella would have to be to make them), and the multiple plot holes, and the remaining 50% photoshopping in new and hilarious scenery, bit pieces, and writing new and hilarous lines for the characters. And it is hilarious. Oh, and at some points he also plays the games. In order of LP creation:
    • Resident Evil 4: 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 siege as a horrific Civil War battle... And that's before they even get to the castle.
    • Resident Evil: Code Veronica X: Puts makeup on Alfred Ashford. Gives Wesker multiple silly sunglasses, hates Steve with all his guts.
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is turned into a Pimp, the T-800 and a Super Saiyan.
    • Resident Evil 2: Mr X becomes Senior X. Leon is a racially insensitive dick. Sherry Birkin is traumatised. Claire gets trapped in the Jersey turnpike.
    • Resident Evil: Dead Aim: Has a priceless reaction to Tyrant Morpheus.
    • Resident Evil 0: Turns Billy (FUCKING) Coen into an evil bastard. Abuses Rebecca at every oppotunity. The T-001 is a drunkard. Billy is killed in the end.
    • Resident Evil 1 (Remake): Chris goes through multiple hallucinations. Billy Coen's ghost haunts Rebecca, and causes Richard's death.
      • Indeed, most of his commentary mocks Umbrella's business practices and he comes to the conclusion that Umbrella's higher ups are way too obsessed with their precious mutating viruses (and one guy just loves his leeches way too much) and just don't give a shit about running a real corporation and actually earning profits. An in-game file (the author has a lot to say about those too) in Resident Evil 5 actually confirms this: Ozwell Spencer, the head honcho of Umbrella, never gave a shit about Umbrella and only saw it as another tool to facilitate his ambitions for godhood.
    • The author's most recent LP is Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. Where he utterly SUFFERS through playing the game and comically rips it apart for all it's plot holes, bad gameplay designs and insane character design. His closing thoughts consisted of a Cluster F Bomb directed at everyone involved in its creation.
      • He also whines endlessly about the rest of the compilation, including Crisis Core of all things.
      • Well, he did mention that Crisis Core was actually a fun game in its own right, minor retconning aside.
      • Save for Cid and to a lesser extent Barret who can do no wrong and he allows to voice his own thoughts on things.
    • He's also done a playthrough on the first Onimusha game, with the only good thing he has to say about it being Nobunaga's bitchin' mustache (and is working on the third game, which is even worse).
    • He's also done one on Clock Tower 3. Before he went through it, he considered Resident Evil: Dead Aim to be the worst game ever. Not anymore.
  • Pesmerga's Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines LP, which is 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.
      • Seorin also provided a Lets Play for Tsukihime. Worth reading if you never played the game, and for the absolutely hilarious "censorship" of the ero scenes by replacing the more objectionable language with names of; cookies, breakfast cereals, ice cream flavors, and other nouns completely unrelated to the act which is ocuring.
      • Seorin is also doing a (currently ongoing) LP of Fate/Stay Night, which is arguably better than his Tsukihime LP. The sex scenes are skipped (except for " highlights" where he mocks what he considers the worst parts). Also, Shirou is GAR for Archer.
      • Screw Yourself much?
      • Then again, the gay jokes get pretty tiring, even as far back as the Tsukihime LP (where his targets were Shiki and Arihiko). He's pretty consistently funny otherwise though, and likes to show off little bits of hidden codes in the games. He's also done Tsukihime's sequel Kagetsu Tohya, and has stated that he MAY do Fate Stay Nights equivalent sequel Hollow Ataraxia by translating it as he L Ps it.
  • 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, what with 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. It deserves all the accolades we can give the expeditions, because it involves killing all the inhabitants. Twice. The second time around, they're all ghosts and Steve still manages to pull it off. And completely wipe the island off the face of the map with a few hundred thousand pounds of explosives.
      Steve: There, now we can NEVER go back to Skara Brae. Nobody can go back to Skara Brae. Ever Again.
  • 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 and furry fic abuse. It didn't help that Pokemon seems to be less than popular there...
      • Unfortunately, LPs of Pokèmon games are currently banned on the forums due to overuse of the character POV, with the exception of an ongoing LP of Pokemon Colosseum by Lorak. Slowbeef stated in the LP rules that he's letting it go on a "trial basis," due to its third-person focus on gameplay mechanics.
  • 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 KoJ ended up conquering everything from India to Asia Minor, most of Africa, as well as significant colonial holdings and virtually exterminating Islam and Protestantism.
    • Uh, I can't find it. Could someone provide a link?
      • The link is here, but you need to have a Something Awful membership and get archives access. That said, if you want Paradox playthroughs, read the After Action Reports sections on their official forums. Not all of them are written to be funny, but a good number are L Ps in all but name.
  • 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.
    • Many have tried, but it seems one LP has risen to the task of being a worthy successor to Boatmurdered, it's the ongoing, epic saga of death, madness and fire (lots of fire) that is Headshoots.
  • 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!"
    • Indeed, the "fording" joke seems to recur in almost every Oregon Trail LP since.
    • Not to mention they've actually managed to go east.
  • Retsupurae (it's Engrish for "Let's Play") is a collection of videos of commentary over what Slowbeef and Diabetus views as terrible LPs.
  • 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.
  • Zutaten's MSTing of Xenosaga: Episode I.
  • Kem Rixen is known for his hilarious Tycoon/Economic Managment games such as Zoo Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon. Business with a side of hilarity to it.
  • Mr. Swoon's Let's Play Monster Rancher 1 shows us the results of a monster being raised by a drug addicted alcoholic. Let's Play Monster Rancher 2 main character is less cruel (but not by a big margin).
    • He also pulls off a fairly straightforward Parasite Eve... save for his penchant for replacing Daniel's face with those of Eddie Murphy, Samuel L Jackson, Danny Glover, and other famous black film cops in every screenshot that presents the opportunity. And be sure to pay attention to Science Time with Talking Polygon Character Heads!
  • Leovinus' Let's Play of Final Fantasy VIII is quite hilarious to read. Among his acts are turning Zell into The Scrappy (insulting and berating him at every possible opportunity, and NEVER letting him level), making a Draco In Leather Pants out of Kiros (who verbally bitchslaps anyone he lays eyes on, mostly via over-the-top accusations of Ho Yay), and giving dirty names to anything he can (this DOES result in a rather humorous moment with Rinoa's Worf's dog Angelo and one of its attacks).
    • Currently, he's doing an LP of Final Fantasy IX. Even if all the characters except Zidane are keeping their original names. Also, a large amount of Tail jokes and a few about Viewer Gender Confusion about Zidane. (Warning: There is a possible-troll in the comments, as well as lots of infighting about whether IX or VIII is the better Final Fantasy. But some of the latter is actually hilarious in its own right)
  • Docfuture, while teaching himself Adobe Premiere, took a good glance at the mysteries of Sonic The Hedgehog 2, and decide to spoof it all with a fake Sega CD 32X version. The result? Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Special Edition, definite proof that Everything's Better On Drugs.
  • Khad's Let's Play of Treasure Master would be a fairly standard Let's Play of a Nintendo Hard game... were it not for the guest commentators, particularly taxidermistpasta, who takes every chance to annoy Khad in increasingly ridiculous ways (from playing The Entertainer to reciting a walkthrough... for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
  • CapitanGarlic's Let's Play of Icewind Dale II, featuring a Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits Five Man Band (and Marty) consisting of a Ted Baxter sorcerer with an ego the size of Jupiter, a monk whose specialty is the Groin Attack, the Only Sane Man half-orc wizard, the Ralph Wiggum elven bard, a druid in a constant state of Mushroom Samba (who has a tendency to break the fourth wall), and a Heroic Sociopath barbarian of manliness +5 whose every sentence is pure gold:
    Urggzob: Urggzob is like a small country whose primary exports are PAIN and CRUSHING!
    • And it still pulls off one hell of a Tear Jerker ending.
  • Jagged Alliance as played by Karach takes a somewhat cynical look into the liberation of Arulco (examples include Ira being a Tyke Bomb) and the ending is gets rather cynical for everyone in the squad.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II by Scorchy. It's not meant to be particularly hilarious, but the commentary is often very insightful, and it shows the tons of content that was cut from the game.
  • Shugojin's LP of Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal (with mods) is notable for the inclusion (and mockery) of a So Bad Its Horrible Romance Mod, although the author does get in some great moments like this one:
    • "Why yes, yes I did just summon a Pit Fiend, cast Protection from Evil on anyone not Anomen, and then make up something completely ridiculous."
    • Though it's hard for those not in the know to tell which lines are original and which ones are an in-game result of having Minsc, Jan, and Haer'Dalis in the party.
  • Neb777's Tie Figher /Star Destroyer.
    • seconded, probs one of the best lets plays ive seen.
  • The Kirby 64 Let's Play, by Medibot, is a surprisingly soothing Let's Play, in which Medibot speaks in a soft-toned, conversational voice (what he calls his "children's show host voice" in a bonus reel) that works very well with the moderately lax style of gameplay provided by Kirby 64.
    • Although he adopts a demonic tone and starts rambling on about murder and destroying things whever he picks up an Invincible Candy. It's fairly Narm-ish, though. Lead to the memorable line of "Kirby, your mission is clear: You must destroy everything." before picking it up in one case.
  • Originating in the "Short Game Theater" posts, the 3-part "Time Truckin' Saga, by ChipCheezum and General Ironicus, sees the two unlucky LPers whisked through time, space, and the opening of House on the whims of a warp-drive-equipped big rig. It yanks them through a succession of increasingly bad games, finally ending up in the dreaded Superman 64 before taking mercy on them and dropping them in a Spider Man game. It's surreal, it's funny as hell, and it's only three parts long: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
  • Chip Cheezum and General Ironicus' LP of No More Heroes provides hilarious jokes, Ear Worm catchphrases ("PIPES!"), a mock "ranked assassin" complete with fake introduction (actually just Chip's dad wandering in and rambling about Star Trek), and of course, plenty of commentary on the age old question of whether flaws on Suda51 games are actual flaws or post modern Mind Screws.
    • The same authors have recently completed an LP of the even crazier Killer7. Highlights include futile attempts to make sense of it all, Chip's burning hatred of Iwazaru, Ironicus' impressions of "Ghost Kid"/Kess Bloody Sunday's voice and finally the final revelation that the entire LP may or may not have been a hallucination by Chip, completely in line with the game's Mind Screw nature.
      • They've moved on to Metal Gear Solid 3 now, featuring Chip Cheezum on a mission to "place every animal (found in the game) in his mouth", thus completing the spiral of life◊. The thread title, originally a quote from MGS2, sums it up best: "Cruelty to animals is a sign of serious behavioral problems◊".
      • *sniff* Mission J. Frog :(
      • Let's not forget Chip Cheezum's insistence on replaying maps several times with different play styles, an epic wrestling match between Ocelot and a king cobra, Snake attempting to teabag a helicopter, Cheezum's Flanderization of Big Boss as a wild jungle man with poor social skills (complete with Hulk Speak), Major Zero trying to convince Snake to shoot a porn movie with EVA, and General Ironicus' tendency to burst into punch-drunk laughter whenever a new gameplay mechanic is introduced. And that's just a fraction of the awesomeness that is this LP.
      • And this LP is no longer accessible without a Something Awful account.
  • Rooreelooo's LPs of Banjo Kazooie and Tooie, both subtitle LPs that go through every nook and cranny of the games. Of course, it isn't without the obligatory mishaps with Mr. Vile and Canary Mary...
    • And now Rooreelooo is doing an LP on BanjoKazooie: Nuts And Bolts, with an intention to show off what Stop N' Swap finally does and use Goon-submitted vehicles for certain parts.
      • Including a ski-jump challenge which is attempted with nearly every Goon-created vehicle, and some of the jumps really must be seen to be believed. (One in particular racks up 5000 yards. In perspective, you only need 500 to get the best prize in-game.)
  • Tasian's LPs of both Osu Tatakae Ouendan games are pretty enjoyable. They're more or less Gag Subs giving the names of goons to various characters, though during the tapping sections Tasian will explain bits of culture or stuff about the band which made the song.
    • They might have gotten This Troper to download songs that her family calls "psychopathic" (she is convinced that this is simply because none of us understand Japanese), but it was worth it for moments like Tasian throwing his stylus at the screen, the things the Ouendan shout after each success ("Monster! Relationship! Stable!"), and that time he was so inspired that he used two styluses. Love and Government!
    • This Troper considers it a must watch if only for the insane amount of skill Tasian has. Anyone who has played EBA or Ouendan has not lived until they've watch the finale of the second game. Phenomenal.
  • Egomaniac's video LPs of ''Siren'' and ''Siren 2'' are subtitled and extremely detailed, organized into both chronological and play order, and provide details and translations of the Archives and speech in Siren 2.
    • Just want to emphasize that Egomaniac went above-and-beyond the normal call of duty here. Not only did he collect every Archive item and solve the puzzles, you can tell from the commentary that not only does he know the winning moves, but can anticipate the viewer's questions and ideas and explain why they would or wouldn't work.
    • Not to mention that Siren 2 isn't even in English, meaning he translated nearly every line of text and dialogue his own damn self.
  • Sethur's LP of Psychonauts is well worth a look. It was very considerate of This Troper's typical videogame desire, which is to hear every line and read every description. Extremely considerate; there probably wasn't a single opportunity to see someone's reaction to a button or being caught on fire that was missed. Sethur knows when to stop talking and doesn't make a lot of bitter sarcastic comments, and he goes through and collects every single figment, no matter how painfully placed, to earn the bonus video. He also has a pleasant voice and doesn't swear much - and when he does swear, it's actually deserved. This Troper had been curious about the game, and appreciates this.
  • UltraJMan, his entire collection, though his run of IWBTG is a must-see.
  • The Let's Play of Uplink turns an unconventional strategy game about Hollywood Hacking into asklh%$#h; endl; {{strings.txt}} ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERR
  • Slowbeef and Diabetus Lets Play of Dead to Rights. Lets put it this way: If you are not laughing by the time they start doing their Jack Slate impressions, you have no soul.
  • The fun isn't just limited to video games though, the ongoing Let's Play of board game Risk! pits various goons against each other in an epic struggle for world domination. It's currently in the middle of the Game 2, and the actual rounds are fleshed out with hysterical interactions between the leaders of the specific factions, and even an "official" historian's remarks on military strategy. Highly recommended.

Some recommendations from the non SA-affiliated Let's Play Forum:
  • Same goes with Rainiac666, though without IWBTG.
  • L0rdVega, who colloquially addresses his fanbase as "viewer!" and has gained fame for Let's Playing Silent Hill games completely blind.
  • OmegaZultan is a humorous Let's Player; in particular, Felix The Cat and Power Rangers are worth watching.
  • ThePokemon Mystery Dungeon LP, by Not Pigeon, is an excellent read, and well worth looking at... despite suffering from horrendous scheduleslip
  • In the same vein, the somewhat recent LP of Myst II, by FluffyTheHamster, is also an excellent read and is still currently on going.

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.
    • This Troper sincerely recommends you look into the vacuum cleaner and what can be done with it in "Things Never Seen" section for Deus Ex. Reading about it made him laugh uncontrollably, actually duplicating it made him laugh so hard he cried.
  • 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 "Super Star" 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 You Tube is located here.
    • In particular, his IWBTG walkthrough is highly reccomended.
    • Due to some...issues...Cloud8745 has permanently left Youtube and has moved onto Viddler. You can still find most of his videos reuploaded on Youtube though. Most importantly his IWBTG walkthrough.
    • Although not related to Let's Plays, Cloud also did a dramatic reading of the infamous fanfic My Immortal along with DarkxideX, which was the best one this troper had seen. Link.
    • He's back on Youtube as xCloud8745x. Wow, he jumps around a lot.
  • Psychedelic Snake is another Youtuber this Troper recommends for his adorable British accent and hilarious screams in playing all three available Fatal Frame games (that are definitely the best of his stuff, especially the second game), Resident Evil and Silent Hill 2. He is currently taking on IWBTG, with little success in the form of pure fury.
  • The ClubFloyd archive is a collection of blind LPs of various Interactive Fiction.
  • Gavaroc is an Australian youtuber who succeeds at Let's Playing RP Gs and fails at roughly everything else. Regardless of progress made, the audience is kept entertained with a constant supply of hilarious sarcasm and occasional singing along to the game's music, often with improvised lyrics. He is currently playing Golden Sun 2: The Lost Age & Kingdom Hearts.
  • 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 HCBailly. Just a guy who really loves Final Fantasy and other RPGs, 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.
    • This Troper is particularly fond of his Chrono Trigger LP. Because feeding your cats is the most important part of the game obviously.
    • Illusion of Gaia is also a highlight, with the game's utterly insane plot leading to a record use of his catchphrase "Of course, why not?". "This is your brain on Illusion of Gaia. It's kind of like your brain on drugs except...well, I guess there's really no difference."
  • Phantasmagoria 2 by Noah Antwiler of The Spoony Experiment. His first attempt at a full LP after several hilarious video game reviews, and he gets lots of great material from the game's lame acting, incredibly non-intuitive puzzles, impenetrable story, and the myriad psychological issues and inexplicable omnisexual charms of the main character. Plus, the absolute greatest ending to a Let's Play ever.
    • And now there's SWAT 4, whose highlights include an insane grandma who gets maced repeatedly, and flash bang grenades thrown by his teammates blowing up in his face (among other terrible decisions by the AI - "You're in my way, sir.", getting stuck on a door, and so forth).
  • ProtonJon reviews a number of Super Mario World ROM Hacks (some of them sadistically hard) while offering constructive criticism. He also has LPs of the original Ninja Gaiden and a few other games.
  • Though many Let's Plays exist in the Giant in the Playground Boards, a particularly notable example would be Let's Play with Hotblooded Anime! (Super Robot Wars J) (the title being a reference to Martian Successor Nadesico) with board member and troper Nerd-o-Rama playing through a game of Super Robot Wars J, making his own interpretations of the story. Notable among which being the adamant replacement of all Gundam SEED names and terms with their nearest Universal Century equivalents.
    • Ramba Ral Yogurt Sauce Man is amused by the most recent turn of events, and hopes Nerd-o-Rama follows through with his "move the LP to LiveJournal to avoid problems with GitP's overstressed forum servers" plan.
      • Has this LP been abandoned or moved or something? Because the last post was 4 months ago, and there's no mention of an actual move to livejournal or someplace.
  • Creepy's Let's Play of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night while doing the Naked Alucard challenge is the stuff of LEGEND on the Middle Ground forums, containing as it does one hundred thirty five utterances of the word 'naked' (by Creepy alone!) and an epic losing battle against a dart frog.
    • For that matter, the rest of the Middle Ground Forums has recently gotten into making a good amount of Let's Plays, supplied by many multiple members in the Gaming Section.
      • "Good amount" is underestimating it at the moment. At least half the topics of first page of the MG Games section is composed of these. We're going on an LP binge, and it's even been lampshaded in the Lounge on how many Pokemon Lets Plays there are at the moment. This troper is currently doing the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time one (heavilly inspired by Fred M Sloniker's example above), which features a genre-savvy Skitty who tries to follow in the footsteps of Kamina (complete with the shades!), and even notices parallels between his partner and Simon. I now suddenly realise the potential for others to advertise and apologize in advance before Hilarity Ensues.
  • Half deranged fanfic and half Let's Play, Radiation's "Let's Play Some Game No One Cares About" is nothing short of hilarious. Features Ness being renamed to "Toast," copious amounts of Character Development, and such immortal lines as "CATCH WITH YOUR HANDS, NOT WITH YOUR FACE!" When it gets serious, though, the results are breathtaking; in particular, the take on the final boss is spectacular.
    • He started on an LP of Mother 3 as well — Lucas and Claus became Guise and Estragon, they gave each other brofists, and Hinawa (err, Sarah) generated bread out of her... bread... hole. Unfortunately, it fell inactive and was locked.
  • RPGnet's Albert gives us Final Fantasy VIII: The Altimate Rewrite, a combination LP and Fix Fic for several common complaints about the game's plot and writing, such as more convincing explanations for SeeD's Mildly Military attitude and Squall's brick wall personality. It also changes Squalls' name to Thay. This has made some people come to like the game, others simply to like the re-write, leave still others wondering what sort of a name "Thay" is supposed to be, and make one guy crash the original revision by trying to drum up a They Changed It Now It Sucks shitstorm.
  • Back before Slowbeef did Snatcher, he did another game filled with unrivalled Hideo Kojima insanity - Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Since this was before he knew what a Let's Play was, he called it a "Metal Gear 2 Strategy Guide: The Game Solid Snake Never Intended For You To Play" and put it on his personal webspace instead of Something Awful.
  • Chuggaaconroy's LP of Mother 3. The effort put into this one needs to be seen to be believed, though it does have some hilarious commentary moments.
    • This Troper was about to add this LP to the list the second she got to the point where he got big name fans to voice acting for it.
  • Deceased Crab's playthrough of Eversion is the tale of one man starting a cute and innocent platformer only to find that it is pure Nightmare Fuel Unleaded beneath.
  • Boltage McGammar likes to remind the viewers that he fails horribly at the games he plays. Hooray!
    • And almost every time he says that, he immediately succeeds beautifully at whatever minigame/boss/puzzle he was tackling. He also does some creepily good voices for the characters; this troper cannot think of Veran as anything but a Southern Belle after his LP of The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle of Ages.
  • FPI, the same hacker behind The Second Reality Project Reloaded, did an LP of his own for Alfred Chicken for the Super Nintendo, with text added to enhance the story and the characters. You should definitely check out the videos, especially part 5...
  • The Persona 4 Endurance Run of Giant Bomb has Jeff Gerstmann and Vinny Caravella seeing how long they can last playing the game while making digs at the adventures of Charlie Tunoku in their quest to bang Chie save the town, often making jokes on characters (NPC "Funky Student", the Fox and Chie are particular Ensemble Darkhorses while Kanji becomes their Butt Monkey) and the dialog. Despite making a few botches through the game they do surprisingly well for playing the game blind, even managing to get the True Ending.
  • jasonsgroovemachine is a nice, thoughtful guy who did a great LP of Earthbound.
  • SirRonLionHeart is perhaps the ultimate Let's Player out there right now. He started out normally, but by the time he went 15 episodes into his Super Mario 64 LP he created a crazy accent and some cheesy but awesome catchphrases for himself and hasn't looked back since. He's only been around since February 2009 and has already gathered ridiculous love (and small but vocal hate) among the Something Awful community. Your Mileage May Vary, but either way this guy will leave an impression on you that you'll never forget.
  • This LP of X-COM: UFO Defense, described by the author as "Defending Earth By Blowing The Shit Out Of It." X-COM itself is depicted as a psychopathic organization with a cadre of drunken, violent, mentally unstable agents, many of whom are sub-standard Replica clones and end up being recycled as cyborgs. Also, all construction is handled by a horde of drunken Russian engineers based in a facility known as "Vodkaville," alien interrogations are handled by a former KGB agent who uses methods even X-COM considers extreme, and the whole operation is commanded by Gendo Ikari. Explosives, fire, and more explosives are used liberally.
  • Another X-Com let's play, (recently completed) at the Giant in the Playground forums covers similar ground. Of course, psychopathy is the norm in X-Com. Private detectives, haunted medkits, and kidnappings of famous actors, a tad less so.
  • The trend of classic mid nineties Fi-Sci games continued with a LP of Bungie's classic Marathon. It starts with a scuffle in the docking bay. It ends in violent revolution. In the middle, one security officer learns to hate spaceship architects, AI programmers, and most of all, a nasty bunch of ones and zeros dubbed Durandal.
  • The Freelance Astronauts hail from Something Awful, but are branching out with their very own site. The Astronauts consist of four commentators by the names of Maxwell Adams, Ferr, Evek and Pipes! each with their own unique opinion and voice on the various games played. Each week, at the Maxwell residence, most or all of the guys get together in person or via voice chat to play games while streaming to the Internet as well. The games range from classics like Lemmings, to newer hits like Resident Evil 4, and even horrible homebrew games such as the infamous Ballion. With true wit, occasional guest commentary and Maxwell's strange encyclopedic knowledge of old game trivia, nearly every video has entertainment value, even if the game is poor.
    • Their currently ongoing LP of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a blast to watch. Instead of playing through it normally, they're cheating with the Homebrew Channel (with stuff like all items, unlimited health, changing Link's clothes color, and upping the speed and jump height of the Spinner) and seeing how badly they can break it.
  • Brian Sulpher's snarky commentary combined with his ready willingness to laugh at his own mistakes make his videos a must-see.
  • You want a LP for Audiosurf? The answer is simple: Search Youtube for "Audiosurf" (add more terms, like "SRW", to narrow the list down, if you want), and prepare to spend a weekend watching videos of people playing (note that most Audiosurf players take videos of their runs seriously). The only one this troper can't recommend, oddly enough, is the one named "Let's Play Audiosurf". Watch it, and you'll see why...
  • Moltov Mario World. It's pretty damn hilarious because whenever he sees a 3 up moon in Super Mario World he literally freaks out, to the point of falling out his chair and tries to get said moon by any means possible. Not to mention this is the person who made a good quarter of the extremely hard Mario hacks on the Platform Hell page (Pit of Despair and Pit of Death for example), and so it's kind of ironic when he does mess up in a Mario game.
  • Helloween4545 is an excellent L Per who specializes in horror-survival games which he often plays completely blind leading to hilarious moments of freaking out and when hes not freaking out making generally amusing remarks on the game world-when he isn't interacting with it in random ways (Ex. "May I have this dance Mr. Satan?")- he also has a tendency to name any enemy he comes across something random and fun to say
  • durden77 for his epic and hilarious struggle with Slowdown, the mooching loser who tried to ruin his LP's of Diddy Kong Racing and Rayman 2.
    • This troper had a hard time getting past his apparent unwillingness to raise his voice, instead doing a kind of fake yelling voice that gets very irritating after a while. Thankfully he's usually witty enough to make up for it.
  • Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force by Linkara of That Guy With The Glasses, featuring his thoughts on Voyager itself, brutal mocking of the game's puzzles, and the occasional Shout Out to frequent collaborator The Spoony One.
  • RoBurky plays The Sims 3 with a homeless, dysfunctional family.
  • Necroscope86 plays various Playstation-era games, ranging from Final Fantasy to Resident Evil, as well as PC adventure and RP Gs. His calming Yorkshire accent makes his videos incredibly relaxing. He's working on Fallout 3 at the time of this writing.
  • King's Quest V by Paw of That Guy with the Glasses. This early PC game features lots of fun fantasy cliches and horrific overuse of the developers' new toy of voice work, all of which he mocks with gusto (a particular subject of his ire is Cedric the Owl, who manages to remain utterly useless throughout the game). The ending is also something to behold.
  • Nobody doesn't love BillyMC. He tries so hard!
    • After Billy MC was restupuraed, Slowbeef later said that he likes Billy MC. This troper sees him as the mascot of the Let's Play world.
  • There's also Let's Sorta Play: I Wanna Be The Guy, played by none other by Kayin Nasaki, the creator of the game itself. It's quite satisfying to see him get a taste of his own medicine.
    • Malus Calibur also has a damned good IWBTG run (the third video is especially fabulous). Further, he was masochistic/insane enough to attempt Bubsy, and he actually managed to complete the damned thing.
    • Speaking of Bubsy, ssskinner is a notable Let's Player who did the game as her very first Let's Play.. without the use of savestates, I might add.
  • 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."
  • The Chzo Mythos by rmlohner, featuring tons of movie and TV Shout Outs, gratuitous leering at the female characters, occasional sidetracking into his thoughts on various movies, TV shows, and books, and best of all an ever-increasing tendency to sink into an emotional breakdown as frustration over the puzzles builds up. The first few videos have some technical issues as he struggles to balance video quality with audio sync, but from then on it's fine.
  • Serious Sam - The First Encounter by Overthegun played half-blind. Apparently, normal difficulty isn't challenging enough. But hard is...well...hard.
    • Hell most of Overthegun's stuff is pretty awesome. His sweet british accent makes it all the better. He calls them "How To Successfully Fail" of HTSF and that pretty much speaks for itself (amusing blind-runs). For example, his Let's Play of Mega Man 4 pretty much defines why the classic Mega Man games are considered Nintendo Hard.
  • While not using the "Let's Play" term officially, Youtube user Omegaevolution has video playthroughs of several popular games from a wide variety of genres; his preferred genre appears to be Eastern RPGs, but he also does fighting games and action-adventures such as Resident Evil and Mad World. He has recently begun using audio commentary with certain games as well, starting with Punch Out and God Hand.
  • Vash12349 has earned quite a following in the Youtube LP scene for his distinctive voice and attitude towards the games he plays, earning at least one Crowning Moment Of Funny with each playthrough he does.
    • This troper highly reccomends his ongoing LP of In Famous, where he kicks the Karma Meter all the way over to "Evil As Sin" by microwaving everyone that pisses Cole off. Which is everybody.
  • The Great Clement has taken up the task to play through all MegaMan games, with great humor, with a voice over for the cut scenes and apparently he hates X6. He's currently putting the X series on hiatus due to lack of proper recording hardware, and has moved on to the Zero series.
  • There's the Galactic Civilizations II War Report and Diary, both by Tom Francis of PC Gamer UK; they're both pretty funny, and include some impressive CMOAs. Every side manages to be a Magnificent Bastard at some point, which considering the other sides are non-cheating A Is (and the player is... well, you should probably see for yourself) is pretty of impressive.
  • Nakateleeli Has taken it upon himself to play the entire .hack sereis of games, both the original four and G.U.. He also has done LP's of BunnyMustDie and other obscure, Widjet Series games. He also has a fairly good sense of humor. Currently, he's playing The Legendary Starfy and has just finished .hack//Outbreak.
  • The Daily POS features "Imagefests" and "Videofests", which are essentially lawyer-friendly Let's Plays (although occasionally they'll Imagefest things other than videogames, such as packages of random shit they've sent one another).
  • The ironically-named cheetamen92 goes through all of both versions of Action 52 just so you can witness for yourself why it's so hated.
  • Hellfire Commentaries on Youtube, founded by N Tom 64 and The Helldragon, while not using the term 'Let's Play' officially, has quite a number of playthroughs under their belts, such as various Sonic-related titles (usually co-starring Fastest Thing Alive from Find The Computer Room), puzzle games like Portal (usually featuring Greatzombieron), just to name a few.
    • Unforutnately, they do have a severe case of ScheduleSlip, as evidenced by the massive time gap in between a few parts of their Kingdom Hearts II playthrough.
  • The Civilization Fanatic forum has made a couple of interesting contributions, one by Kan' Sharuminar is a playthrough of Hearts of Iron II as the British and now for something completely different, Captain2 has recently started a fallout 3 game Anything goes
  • The German Let's Player Klyka mentions in his Velvet Assassin Let's Play that by purely through the amount of WWII games he has played, he has depopulated his home country twice. All of his other LP's are very much worth checking out and he has also made a few guest appearances on Helloween4545's LP's, and visa versa.
  • Coming in mean from the eastern european LP scene, give it up for lithuanian dad. Just... lithuanian dad. Check out that wild style! Keep an eye on this crazy guy *points with thumbs* and ladies, hold on to your mams. (Warning: Some rude'n'crude language).
  • This troper highly recommends watching 666theheartless666's LP's if you like survival horror games. But beware! You may die of laughter.
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