Let's Play vs Real Play; opinions wanted

I don't have enough time to play all the games I want to play.

This is always going to be the case for me, I believe. With mixed but gradual success, I'm trying to be a responsible adult, and to catch up on the very long list of excellent titles that I would like to play but have had to pass on for one reason or another, I'd have to spend several months not doing anything else. In addition, some of the games I do pick up tend to be the sort one develops a lifestyle around, such as Skyrim or Minecraft.

Of those unplayed games, there are a handful which, as a would-be game designer, I feel like I must have some knowledge of to be literate in the history of games or particular things they're well known for. And yet, they're hard for me to play for other reasons. For example, Maniac Mansion. First major Lucasarts adventure, forerunner to Tim Schafer's Day of the Tentacle. I got a copy and put it on my Android device in hope being able to play it on the bus would make it easier to find time for. Fact is though....it seriously shows the warts of being the first of its kind, and the first five or ten minutes are...extremely uninteresting. Or another example: Spec Ops: The Line. I know I'm supposed to be keeping an open mind and trying different things, but I can't get past the fact that it's a realistic military shooter, and I'm not very comfortable around realistic shooters that don't have at least a veneer of fantasy to distract me from the killing. Or the original Deus Ex which I bought on Steam and tried to play, but got frustrated by the old-style keyboard controlls.

So that brings me to the topic title: I could get a taste of some of these games (ok, probably not Deus Ex) by watching Let's Play videos of them on Youtube. The reason I haven't already started doing so is...well...it kinda seems like cheating. Can watching someone else play the game be "good enough" to get a sense of the experience? Anyone have an opinion informed by their own experience watching them? At the moment, most of the Let's Play videos I watch tend to be Minecraft related...which works because it's a sandbox game and every one is going to be different, so I'm not replacing actually playing the game, just supplementing it.

Go here. If the game isn't there, wait until it is. SA's L Ps are the most faithful to what you want, basically something that gets across the genuine experience, whatever that may be for that game. So uh, there you go.

You definitely have to rebind a fair bit for Deus Ex to click, but it's totally doable. Beyond right-click being use and the F# keys getting a lot of use, my setup is pretty standard FPS fare.

Under ordinary, consumer circumstances, I'd absolutely recommend watching Let's Plays. As their own experience, there are a lot of really good ones out there, that are a great way to spend a few hours. Plenty of them are good enough that playing the game yourself afterwards would feel redundant, and there's a select few that are significantly better than the game they're presenting.

But, since you bring up the idea of playing them for the game design, I'd have to recommend against it. An LP can convey a lot about a game, but it will never let you form your own valid opinions on how it plays, especially if the LPer knows what they are doing, and is giving their own opinions.

I mean, just from your post, you list off Deus Ex' awkward controls, and Maniac Mansion's slow opening. Do you think you would have picked up on those at all, had you been watching a video with good presentation? These are the very reasons you're supposed to be playing the games. Being able to give criticism like that, and developing your own ideas of what works and what doesn't is one of the most critical skills for any kind of creative endeavor; and if you only watch games, you'll only get an idea of how to make a game that just looks good. And, to be frank, we have enough of those already.