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Most unique Let's Plays

L Thammy

Member
"Unique" is not synonymous with "good". For example, Pokecapn's Sonic 2006 LP is a classic, but funny videos about bad games aren't much of a novelty anymore, and the LP doesn't really do anything special beyond that and the usual humour.

This thread is for LPs that you believe do something different. Here are a whole bunch of examples.


RPG-X by the Freelance Astronauts

Three goofballs join a server for a Star Trek: Elite Force roleplaying mod. So a game that really has no gameplay. It's like a weird social experiment. The new players are trying to figure out how RPG-X works and have fun with it. The veterans are desperately trying to keep strict control and failing. Eventually the LPers' fans start pouring in and things just descend into chaos.


Animal Crossing: Wild World by Chewbot

A screenshot LP or Animal Crossing for the DS. Basically, Chewbot made a Let's Play and a creepypasta fanfiction at the same time. It reinterprets the events of the game as some kind of dystopian horror story. The ending is almost totally original, using its own art and Flash animation. There's also a shorter alternate ending.


Super Mario 64 by Vicas

This is more or less a typical Super Mario 64 Let's Play... except Vicas plays the game with his feet. Where other LPers have a camera pointed at their face to show off their reactions, Vicas has it pointed at his socks so you can see that he's really playing it. He only uses his hands to prop up the controller when he needs to use the Z button. The videos are naturally full of foot puns, and he gets different commentators for some videos.


Pokemon Blue by Metroixer

A hybrid screenshot/video Let's Play. Unfortunately, the videos were uploaded to Viddler, so they're gone. The focus of this LP isn't on playing through the game. It's on making use of the ridiculous amount of glitches in the first-generation of Pokemon games and trying to break things as much as possible. It also shows off a bunch of things you can do with Gameshark or messing with an emulator.


Ryuu ga Gotoku: Kenzan by Egomaniac

This is one of those extremely informative LPs. There's only one problem: the is for an English-speaking audience, and the game's a Japanese exclusive. So Egomaniac's also added his own subtitles. It's mostly a video LP, but the sidequests are left in screenshot form. He gives lots of details about the real-world tourist traps featured in the game. He even gives a lot of historical and pop culture context and compares the game to the novel that inspired it. I'm pretty sure that this is in the running for best LP ever made.


Half-Life 2 by Cybershell

Going by sort of his videos, Cybershell is perfectly capable of creating a serious, informative Let's Play. That's not what this is. In this screenshot LP he is playing a character. Imagine a cartoon version of the 12-year-old boy gamer. Constantly needs to shoot everything, cannot understand even the most basic of things, and completely oblivious to how terrible he is. The greatest thing is that he actually does play while taking photos of his monitor, resulting in these intense action shots.
 
Twitch Plays Pokemon
b1191b0a935ab0123cfa71959a2b0098-there-are-thousands-of-people-trying-to-play-the-same-game-of-pokemon.jpg
 
I believe Kay's channel deserves a mention. She's done Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Demon's Souls, Antichamber, NES Zelda and is in the process of playing SotC right now.

Rarely have I seen such a meticulous, observant and methodical blind Let's Player. Tbh, in a perfect world these wouldn't be super unique characteristics, but... well, here we are. She's great. :)
 
Anything by MegaTgarrett. He's blind and plays by surrounding himself with speakers and becoming Daredevil. His Ocarina of Time playthrough is amazing to watch. Not only because you're seeing someone blind play, but also because he explains how he's playing throughout it.
 
Fungo & Guy Cihi Play Silent Hill 2

Voice actor of James Sunderland, the main character of Silent Hill 2, see's Silent Hill 2 all the way through for the first time and gives a lot of interesting insight, opinion, and personality behind the game as Fungo plays it. Was an absolutely phenomenal stream, and worth watching for any SH fan.
 
I believe Kay's channel deserves a mention. She's done Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Demon's Souls, Antichamber, NES Zelda and is in the process of playing SotC right now.

Rarely have I seen such a meticulous, observant and methodical blind Let's Player. Tbh, in a perfect world these wouldn't be super unique characteristics, but... well, here we are. She's great. :)

You would be remiss not to in the same breath mention the man... The legend... Dark souls ultra speed runner and pro gamer Jeff "black dragon" green
 
Does the boatmurdered dwarf fortress LP count? It's unique in that it's a succession game where each player takes over the fortress every year. It's also insanely funny.
 
Fantastic idea for a thread, so one of the things I enjoy is ASMR videos (there's a thread about that in OT if you want to learn more) but I recently discovered some people do ASMR lets plays.

Ephemeral Rift is one of the biggest out there, I've really enjoyed his The Long Dark LP. There are other people out there doing stuff like Animal Crossing, Minecraft or even Dark Souls. Some games are obviously more conducive to it depending on the sound design.

I hope more people make them.
 
Does the boatmurdered dwarf fortress LP count? It's unique in that it's a succession game where each player takes over the fortress every year. It's also insanely funny.

I would think so, if just because succession games aren't that common.

I'm kind of surprised that so many people think that informative LPs are themselves unique. As far as I know, they're actually pretty common, especially coming out of Something Awful. But they're much less popular and thereby have less visibility.

I don't have much to add that hasn't been mentioned, but I am so happy to see the freelance astronauts mentioned in the OP of an LP thread (even if it is a series that has irregular hunter instead of ferr/pipes)

Fun fact! You can find cans of Freelance Astro-nuts in Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Probably Young Horses' way of thanking them for their Octodad LP.
 
The OP kinda suggests that you're looking for gimmicks, but I think these guys still deserve a mention for standing out from the LP crowd:

Super Best Friends Play (aka TheSw1tcher on YouTube).

They're unique because they're actually competent at video games and fun to watch/listen to. It's not that the videos are just "good", but these guys actually seem to care about producing quality content, which is something I think a lot of let's players actually lack. They also typically only pick video games that they're passionate about, and have a fairly decent understanding of the video game world/industry. Worth a try if you're genuinely looking for something fun and video game related to get into.

Since the OP was looking for something a little more out there, their recent one man let's play of No More Heroes was pretty interesting, since Matt was one of the QA testers for the game. He has a lot of fun insight and stories from his time working on it, and it's pretty different from most of their other videos.
 
Super Best Friends Play (aka TheSw1tcher on YouTube).

They're unique because they're actually competent at video games and fun to watch/listen to. It's not that the videos are just "good", but these guys actually seem to care about producing quality content, which is something I think a lot of let's players actually lack. They also typically only pick video games that they're passionate about, and have a fairly decent understanding of the video game world/industry. Worth a try if you're genuinely looking for something fun and video game related to get into.

And somehow NeoGAF has become the home of their official forum, judging by the size and speed of the community thread about it.
 
Tendale's LP of the SF version of Dragon Quest V is some pretty great stuff. It starts off relatively standard, but then the LP'er really gets into writing extra dialogue for the characters (since the DQV is kinda threadbare with the dialogue, at least in the SF version), and it turns into a neat story, that obviously still sticks to the plot of the game. Still has some silly one-liners that are eye-roll worthy, but it's worth a read.

Here's a good update to look at, it's the one (in spoilers just in case, but it's typically known)
where you have to choose who to marry
.
 
There was an old screenshot LP of Harvest Moon that was comparable to Chewbot's Animal Crossing LP in many ways.

Not sure if it's still in the SA archives or whatever, last time I looked it wasn't publicly available.
 
Everything by The Dark Id. A classic by now, but haven't seen him mentioned in the thread yet.

You get everything the games have to offer and more with this author, great writing included. Be it the hilarious Drakengard, the depressing Drakengard 2 or the hugely informative NieR, there truly is a load of additional value in these LPs that really makes the games shine. And the Xenogears LP is probably the best way to enjoy that particular title nowadays.

Still hoping for Drakengard 3 some day.
 
TheAuZZieGamer's let's play on Hitman: Blood Money is one of the best on Youtube. His humour and editting makes these short, super compact videos for each level in the game. Unfortunatly, this is really all he managed to do and he's been M.I.A. for well over two years now. But I have always stayed subscribed on the off chance he returns.

http://youtu.be/B6Bzg99DE1w
 
Oh yeah, I remember that Animal Crossing one that was pretty good. I think I'll check out the Half-Life 2 one too because I've heard of it before.
 
Dead Space Weaponless is amazing. It inspired me to try my own weaponless run
but I didn't finish it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg8DRXWuhHE

In a similar vein System Shock 2 Pacifists Run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTfVlcCWw5Q

Both are amazing and both took years to complete.

If anyone else knows LP's like this (specifically for horror/survival horror games) I'd love to know about them.

Edit: Pacifists Run never finished, but the interesting part did. It's been years since I've seen it so I thought wrongly. My bad.
 
Boatmurdered is probably responsible for more people trying Dwarf Fortress then anything else, and with good reason. Note that the games many, many versions beyond the one shown.
 
NakaTeleeli's Minecraft Let's Play is both an actual Let's Play of Minecraft (Not only going through all the achivements and beating the game's boss in a coherent manner, but also being in a proper manner in terms of commentary as aside from the usual kind you see), and actually comes with a storyline that directly involves you, as a second entity accompanying him. Really gets into it's stride after the main game is complete and he starts showing off many of the game's mods, where the story starts to take centre stage. This probably isn't for everyone, but it's an interesting experience and a refreshing change of pace from your typical Minecraft fodder.
 
supergreatfriend plays [MODE]

[MODE] is a weird '90s FMV game that nobody's ever heard of. The basic premise is you attend a party and talk to people. You don't have normal dialogue options, though. You can only respond with colors: red (negative, or "no"), blue (neutral), or green (positive, or "yes").

What makes this LP unique is how he did it. He didn't just run through the game himself. He played it on a stream and let the stream decide how they were going to reply in conversations by voting. You might say it's similar to Twitch Plays Pokemon in a way.

After a few runs like that, he then does a few more runs on his own where he shows off the game in a much more thorough manner. And it's very thorough. I don't think there's anything in the game that he left out.

It's all very well-edited and genuinely makes this weird FMV game enjoyable to watch.
 
And somehow NeoGAF has become the home of their official forum, judging by the size and speed of the community thread about it.

I'm a fan of them but that thread scares me. It moves at an insane pace that makes it almost impossible to follow any of the conversations.
 
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