Best "Lets Play" Series

Etho plays Minecraft - season 2. 11 years and counting of wholesome fun.

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I like Game Grumps. I don't even watch them for the games they play; Dan and Arin are just funny as hell. It's like watching RiffTrax/MST3K but for video games. Literally watching their Space Quest V play through right now.

9

Minecraft SMP/Survival Island/Shadow of Israphel - Yogscast

Additionally, their Tekkit series.

Actually all of their old Minecraft stuff is amazing. I loved their playthroughs of various adventure maps as well. There's a playlist full of those somewhere.

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Oh man, that's a name I haven't heard in a bit. The Tekkit series was so funny

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Was checking if anyone had mentioned this. You gotta pay respect to the classics. The whole moon series was great.

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Side question: what are your favorite "non-obnoxious" ones?
No youtube-edits, no memes, no forced jokes, just good gameplay and game discussion.

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If I might be so bold as to self promote my solo VR-only let's play channel has long form gameplay with (almost) no edits or cuts and I discuss in depth the mechanics and art of the games I play. So far I've covered The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Half Life: Alyx, Hello Puppets, Cosmodread, After the Fall, Into the Radius, Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted, Wanderer, and most recently Half Life 2 VR.

I haven't uploaded anything recently as my partner and I just got married but there's a decent backlog of games and I plan on continuing my run of Half Life 2 once it gets back up and running.

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- Thanks, yeah that's the sort of thing I had in mind. To clarify sensible edits that improve the flow are totally fine as long as they are not the popular-youtuber types with flashy transitions, cutting to memes, screaming or making a face etc.
  
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Not really a Let’s Play, but more of an “I’m Playing“, but I recently discovered SourSweet’s DayZ series. He only edits for time and to add film score type music to heighten the drama, as well as narration. He’s calm and collected, very skilled at the game, and there are no memes.

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Permanently Deleted

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Let's Game It Out is a gem to watch whenever he uploads.

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His early ones with Anthony are definitely my favorite. The Messenger series is amazing, and I can't see the game without hearing "I'm Ninja Bobbyyyy!"

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- Their horns of fear playthrough is hilarious: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1RPEtoJ9ZA8
  
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I do yearly rewatches of Until Dawn - Scary Game Squad. It's five slightly drunk guys keeping teenagers in a horror movie alive. They played this at release so all their guesses and theories during the game aren't influenced by what they saw on the internet.

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The Scary Game Squad is fantastic, and Until Dawn is their finest work. It's a perfect marriage of a group of guys who know all the horror story tropes and clichés and a game that is deliberately built around them.

2

Chip and Ironicus did a whole series on the metal gear series which is worth a watch. I'd also recommend watching Tietuesday dunk on that awful Wii U PacMan game

6

Chip and Ironicus in general are just fantastic, especially when it's a REALLY stupid game (in the good way!) like Wonderful 101. Ironicus just losing his shit at this next absurd thing never fails to make me laugh.

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I like Many a True Nerd’s Tale of Two Wastelands series. It’s a mod that merges both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but the host is a bit of a fallout super fan so he tours obscure areas of the map and explains a lot of weird little facts about the lore, easter eggs, and development of the games.

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He's got a lot of different series that are great watches. His CKII run with Perun is particularly good.

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If you mean of all time, then I'd say "How to survive the first night in Minecraft" by Lewis and Simon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UdEFmxRmNE

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I really like watching ChristopherOdd and Gab Smolders. Odd plays a lot of tactical games and popular titles. Gab tends to do more indie and horror but also does some popular games on occasion.

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Trespasser by Research Indicates is honestly so well written that it feels like director's commentary rather than a let's play.

Bobbin Threadbare's Deus Ex. It's half let's play, half a series of lectures on various topics relating to the game.

For me a good let's play is about the game and representing it, not about about the personality doing it.

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That Trespasser LP is what motivated me to play through the game myself, and I have no regrets. That game is insane. It's awful, don't get me wrong, but crazy ahead of its time. They basically tried to make a VR game two decades before VR gaming became a thing. Without Trespasser, we wouldn't have Half-Life: Alyx. Research Indicates' LP is a fantastic way to experience this obscure but fascinating title.

3

There's a couple that I really enjoyed. I haven't watched an LP in quite awhile.

(Mater)Welonz' "Judgment" LP is probably my favorite. She was thorough.

I also like Christopher Odd's (Mr. Odd) "Prey (2017)" LP.

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Welonz is fantastic in general. Always thoughtful and thorough and seems to approach whatever game she's playing with great respect. She even did a watchable LP of Return of the Obra Dinn, which is extremely rare.

I haven't checked her channel in a few months because for a while she was doing mono-Dragon Age, but at a cursory glance it looks like she has a moved to a more varied upload schedule these days, which is good.

3

I really enjoy the "Was it good?" series by Josh Strife! I guess technically they aren't long plays, he plays through older, fondly remembered games, trims the recordings, and adds great commentary. The videos are still quite long though. I especially enjoyed his commentary of Tomb Raider (the original).

https://m.youtube.com/@JoshStrifePlays

...I guess I'll also mention, I also do some let's plays with my friend 👀 but I don't think they're really anything special. We just enjoy retro video games and chatting!

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Q1VsUyrfsnzhtRA3lUTmAlhbeVgsMUH

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NitaZera's Mass Effect playthrough: one, two, three. No commentary, just cutscenes and dialog, works out like a good action scifi series.

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Settled's Swampletics (OldSchool RuneScape) is wild, and popular among even people who have never played OSRS.

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Let's Game It Out always has good vids. Basically all of his videos are bangers, even if it's about a game I wouldn't otherwise enjoy/watch something about.

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I'm not really a fan of Let's Plays, so it makes sense my favourite is CowChop's Shadow of the Colossus Let's Play. After around five episodes they abruptly decide to rent an RV and road trip to the Grand Canyon, all while still "playing" the game.

It is surreal.

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Giant Bomb's Deadly Premonition Endurance Run series with Vinnie and Ryan. Also their Persona 4 Endurance Run.

https://youtu.be/W3197ohYfUI

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i like spooky games so every so often i'll rewatch supergreatfriend's ILLBLEED let's play. audio quality is dubious but the game itself is ridiculous and sgf plays it very well.

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I loved his dearly premonition lp, will have to check out illbleed :) Thanks for the tip.

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Been a while since I watched SGF. I really like the obscure games he brings to publicity, like MODE and the Philips CD-i interactive medias.

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- yeah i haven't watched his recent stuff but i've been a fan since the first demo friend episodes, it was the deadly premonition lp that really sold me though. i'll also sometimes rewatch the life and times of bully demise to appreciate the craft of the storytelling lol
  
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Giantbomb did a frankly incredible series around Kerbal Space Program a few years ago. It starts off incredibly goofy and by the end it's still incredibly goofy, but also deadly serious.

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https://invidious.io.lol/playlist?list=PL57hJfweW_2uqAdRACg-s5Siq_SBEwi2L

SBFP suffer through Omikron the nomad soul. This LP is definitively the best way to experience that game

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All the David Cage sbfp let's plays are fuckin gold. I don't watch playthroughs anymore but I will go back and watch those every now and then

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The editing of the LP also really helps the vibe of !Sanity at Risk!

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This is a great thread, thanks everyone!

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Personally, I really like watching Nilaus play factory games. I enjoy playing the games to a point but he puts forth an amount of effort that I can never bring myself to emulate and it's really satisfying even to just watch. Satisfactory, Tectonica, DSP, etc

2

Rycon's kenshi roleplay is by far one of the best, I watch a fair amount of these. It's not just a let's play, it's a full on roleplay with story

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxIQ9fpV90xOEkJrYv2RpsE95P_1-ZRNk

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I second rycon. His roleplay is top tier and he has a lot of dif games he does. Namely cataclysm dark days ahead, ark, kenshi, and rimworld. I'm working through his 100+ playthrough of innawood atm

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If you like old school shooter games (sometimes called "boomer shooters"), check out Civvie11.

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#freecivvie

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This one is great, and since it's a linear game with basically no actual gameplay in The Medium you get pretty much the whole experience.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_Goi54wf0dho7jqDQkwG2wJ-n3RLE5L

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"Pete Complete" is just amazing in everything he does. Very well planned and narrated let's plays with the goal of achieving 100% competition of a game in one playthrough.

I particularly enjoyed the Mass Effect series. Mass Effect 3 is almost complete now.

He also played Mutant Year Zero, XCOM, different RimWorld expansions and more.

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ProZD plays games is a standby for me. He's pretty funny and he's a real voice actor so he often narrates jokes in character voices.

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I profoundly enjoyed UberDanger's "Journey from 1-60" . An adventure though WoW Classic full of insanity, grinding and virtual gambling. Nothing like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dXLG-Wf93s

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TeamFourStar's Pokémon nuzlocke was pretty hilarious.

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If you like Rimworld the Pete Completes series is pretty good. He puts a narrative focus on his playthroughs which makes them super watchable!

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The Librarian's playthrough of Outer Wilds. The guy's super chill and makes good stuff, but that particular series is my absolute favorite.

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Call Me Kevin's videos are golden. I've rewatched his Comedy Night series so many times. Iconic. His Sims videos are always a riot.

One of my favorite videos of his is this video he made in "The Movies." The final result is at the end of the video and it is a glorious experience.

I've also been watching a lot of short horror game playthroughs from Markiplier and Kubz Scouts, like the ones where they play 3 random scary games. They both have an episode where they play Bad Ben and it's so good. It's the first game in both episodes. The game is fucking hilarious, has a specific feature that I think all horror games should have now, and actually has a really cool ending. Apparently it's based on a film by Nigel Bach.

Markiplier's video

Kubz Scouts' video

I also enjoyed watching them react to analog horror based games, especially ones inspired by The Mandela Catalogue. The aforementioned Kubz Scouts video includes Maple County. There's also The Fear Assessment and the video Markiplier did on it is...chaotic. I couldn't stop laughing.

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This will always be the best Let's Play series.

This isn't far behind, though.

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