Let's talk Let's Play (and its derivatives)

[Decay]

For a good eight or more years now I've been following Let's Plays in various forms. What is a Let's Play you ask? Is this your first day on the internet, I ask? Let's Play was originally a way to play through a game with input from a community, done in the form of screenshots with text commentary posted to message boards, and was popularized on the Something Awful forums in 2006. They would play through a whole game from start to finish in that manner. In 2007, it evolved to video form there, and once Youtube stopped being terrible in its early days, it exploded in popularity across the whole internet.

 

Nowadays, Let's Play and Let's Play derivatives are incredibly diverse in content, style, and format. For the purposes of this thread, let's just say any kind of regular gaming video content counts. I will now go over some of my favorite youtube and twitch channels.

 

Men Drinkin' Coffee: An absolutely hilarious, often satirical (see: name) group of hobbyist LPers originating from the Something Awful forums but also doing some content purely on their youtube channel. In my opinion, they may be the single funniest group out there doing this thing, but are still small-time enough that they only do a new series every now and again, with an irregular schedule. One of their hallmarks is how they always seem to be having a good time, even when playing the worst games. Their enjoyment is contagious. Their funniest and most popular series is for the amazingly bad Ride to Hell: Retribution. Their latest series has them judging various Kickstarter projects and the first one they do is highly pertinent to Fuwanovel's interests and contains a healthy dose of culture shock. Everyone here should at least watch the second linked video just for that bit of amusement alone: 

 

Dslyecxi: I love this guy. A former marine (albeit a trainer, never seeing front-line duty), he currently runs the Shacktac group of gamers. Shacktack's main purpose is to gather people for highly organized, complex Arma missions. Expect plenty of milsim spergery. But also expect plenty of highly intense videos that are fascinating to watch. These guys take the game mega seriously with huge player counts, fully simulated command structures, radio systems, etc, but they have a great time doing it, and Dslyecxi is a great player and team leader, making him really fun to watch. His videos can sometimes be a bit slow, this is definitely an acquired taste, but when they get going they really go, and they showcase a style of gaming almost none of us will ever experience first-hand.

 

Beaglerush: A former Shacktac member, he now does something completely different. XCOM videos. Yes, the slow, boring-to-watch strategy game XCOM. Except they're great, and the game is way better to watch than you might expect. Beagle is a great sense of humor and his XCOM series always tell a great story that's fun to follow along with. Also, he happens to be incredibly good at the game, able to go toe-to-toe with it on the hardest difficulty, playing with a mod that enhances the difficulty even further. I'm a bit of a tactics and strategy nut, and could honestly watch videos of good strategy gamers all day, but I don't even think you have to be that to appreciate Beagle. He's a funny guy and he manages to make XCOM an entertaining game to watch. He's active on both Youtube and Twitch, providing a ton of content if you watch at both places. Also, his old Shacktac stuff when he was active there is good, too, but I already talked enough about that.

 

Yogscast: Oh boy, how freaking mainstream of me . What am I, a 12 year old Minecraft-obsessed brat? Everyone knows these guys, they make mad bank crapping out a 15 minute minecraft video a day. I actually wouldn't mind if I never saw another Minecraft series again, and I kind of hate Simon. But, that said, I still genuinely enjoy the dynamic between Lewis, Duncan, and Sjin in their modded series, previously Skyblock and now Blast Off. Their banter together is actually really funny, and their videos are the kind that I can put in the background and enjoy while doing other things, occasionally checking in.

 

Giant Bomb: Huh? Does this count, can I do this?? It's my thread I do what I want. These guys are great, and easily my favorite people in all of the gaming press. They've helped pioneer a new kind of gaming press and their main focus is on regular video content. They do some complete game playthroughs, but they also do a lot of one-off "Quick Looks". Their Persona 4 Endurance Run back from 2009 where they played through the entirety of Persona 4 in over 150 episodes is a classic series that I still go back to watch through from time to time. They're hilarious people, my favorites being Jeff and Vinny. Almost all of the most entertaining gaming videos I have ever seen have come from these guys. They also run a great weekly audio podcast.

 

I don't expect some of this stuff to be to everyone's taste, but I wanted to give a window to what I've been watching with my free time when not starting yet another Hearthstone arena run or trying to finish up Majikoi. What about you guys? Please share with us what kind of Let's Play or general youtube gaming videos you've been watching lately. Or just chat about them, what you like and don't like in an LP. i'm pretty interested to see where the tastes of the Fuwanovel community lies.

 

edit: Dang, broke the youtube embed limit, we're off to a great start!

[Eclipsed]

I like to tune in on Markiplier every now and then. Since I'm too lazy to write up something I'll copy pasta his Youtube About Me >.>

 

Welcome to Markiplier! Here you'll find some hilarious gaming videos, original comedy sketches, animated parodies, and other various bits of entertainment!"

Uhh what to choose, what to choose...

[Getsuya]

http://lparchive.org/

 

I get all my LP needs from Something Awful. The above is an archive of most of their completed LP threads, current ones require a membership at the Something Awful forums to read (and subsequently to watch since most of their Youtube stuff is hard to find unless you've got links right to it, all of which are in the threads).

 

There's kind of a weird disconnect between Something Awful and the mainstream/popular LPers on Youtube. SA will basically drum you out of town if you try to put a facecam in anything, and they tend to hate on reactionary 'watch me play this freaky game blind!' stuff, preferring instead well thought-out LPs that focus on highlighting the game as opposed to making a career for a Youtube superstar. Though on the outside it seems elitist and sometimes they can be a little mean about things, the truth in the end is that they make REALLY good LPs and their efforts have brought a lot of big games to light (Dangan Ronpa anyone?). I mean, Yahtzee (the guy who does Zero Punctuation) himself made an LP on Something Awful (more than one, I think). And often producers of games will drop in to comment on the LPs (Something Awful has an absolutely insane range of subscribers from idiot trolls to big names in a lot of industries... it's bizarre). ANYway I heartily recommend at least checking out the Archive if you want some real high quality LPs in either Screenshot or Video format.

 

If folks want more specific recommendations I can give you a few of the more notable ones from SA history.

 

Edit: Incidentally the LP Archive currently houses 1560 completed LPs.

[Abyssal Monkey]

Yogscast: Oh boy, how freaking mainstream of me . What am I, a 12 year old Minecraft-obsessed brat? Everyone knows these guys, they make mad bank crapping out a 15 minute minecraft video a day. I actually wouldn't mind if I never saw another Minecraft series again, and I kind of hate Simon. But, that said, I still genuinely enjoy the dynamic between Lewis, Duncan, and Sjin in their modded series, previously Skyblock and now Blast Off. Their banter together is actually really funny, and their videos are the kind that I can put in the background and enjoy while doing other things, occasionally checking in.

I actually enjoy the yogscast for more than just the rinse and repeat adventure maps they do.  With the VoxelBox basically employed by them (I don't know how the relationship actually works, I just know they have a tight connection), they can create their own adventure maps and stories.  The current lucky block challenge is a good example.  They're dicking around with a mod, and turned it into a story with its own lore.  The yoglabs is another great example of them creating their own story.  

 

I guess I enjoy them more because they are actually creative quite literally, than just aping other's works like other channels do,

[Nimbus]

I always tune into Gabe and Yahtzee's "Let's Drown Out" Series.

They Originally gave their opinion on the weeks gaming news but since the return of the show (discontinued December 2014, resumed March 2015) they seem to be taking a less structured approach. Still fun to listen to them argue with each other though.

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkkiai4nXBVJcYW06qF5LkXk-eGeFEr9I

[TheFantasm]

I'm a pretty big fan of RoosterTeeth's Achievement Hunters LPs. Great variety of games as well.

 

https://youtu.be/94SMof1ENNs

[mbl]

Yogscast: Oh boy, how freaking mainstream of me . What am I, a 12 year old Minecraft-obsessed brat? Everyone knows these guys, they make mad bank crapping out a 15 minute minecraft video a day. I actually wouldn't mind if I never saw another Minecraft series again, and I kind of hate Simon. But, that said, I still genuinely enjoy the dynamic between Lewis, Duncan, and Sjin in their modded series, previously Skyblock and now Blast Off. Their banter together is actually really funny, and their videos are the kind that I can put in the background and enjoy while doing other things, occasionally checking in.

 

 

It's sad because back in the days before they decided to to take the no-effort route of pandering to kids and selling out wherever they could, they actually were funny. Simon used to be hilarious, he was the reason for much of their initial rise to popularity and invented many of the popular minecraft memes. Their original minecraft LP, where they RP'd and had other yogscast members (Before the others were even LPing) playing NPCs in their world, was epic... until they killed it. Their podcast remains to be one of the funniest ones in my memory; it was hilarious every episode... until they killed it. Unsubbed shortly after they started following the dirty path. Followed Hat Films and Sips for a while,  because I liked to mindlessly watch Gmod games sometimes, but unsubbed to them a few months back as I wanted to stop wasting so much of my time watching such things.

 

I don't have any real LP suggestions as I unsubbed from most everything (apart for a few who I don't watch but remain subbed to for honor's sake) to get out of that scene.

 

For twitch theres MANvsGame and Ezekiel_III. If you like speedrunning then there's Elajjaz and firedragon764. I mainly just watch them and whoever they host.

[Fiddle]

I like Cr1tik4l because he deliberately plays terrible games, which correlates to a greater focus on the commentary. Here's a relatable example video:

[SilverLi]

I am only following shenryr, Arumba and DDRJake playing Europa Universalis 4. Because I enjoy watching someone rant and curse the game I love.