Eat Lead: My experience in making a playthrough video.

Video game playthroughs are a dime a dozen. You can find them anywhere in many, many forms. For some reason though, I thought "Hell yeah, that's something I could get into." So I set off on this grand journey to start recording gameplay, and god forbid put my voice onto it. 

"You have a good voice, you should be in radio or something." I hear stuff like that from customers at work once in awhile, and I always shrug it off. It's nothing special, I just think it's because I live in Kentucky and don't have a country twang to it.  I mean, a voice is a trademark, you recognize folks by their voices, think of the Giant Bomb crew for instance. There is a huge divide between silent playthroughs and playthroughs with someone actually talking over it. After getting a few normal videos up with just gameplay, I looked at these as boring and bland, which is strange. Back when I used to look for gameplay videos, I would cringe at the fact that some annoying guy would have his voice on it.

So, I had a plan. I went out and got Fraps to put my plan in motion. Now what was next is deciding a game to use to test this out. I originally planned to do Tails Adventures as my first game. But because of the reverence I have for that game, I backed out. If this first one fails miserably, I don't want it to take Tails Adventure down with it. I asked my sister which game I should "defile." And of course she picked Altered Beast. Turning that down, she recommended Lethal Enforcers 2: Gun Fighters. 

THAT game is a perfect nostalgia game. A game I kind of remember as being fun, yet hard. Lethal Enforcers 2 is a light gun game that takes place in the wild west.   I thought it would work well for this. I could not be more wrong...

So, I had a game, was ready to record, and was getting a bit nervous. I recorded a quick promo to just throw out there. But from there,  I had no idea how to proceed. Do I just go in and play? Try to give a bit of info? Talk about how this game impacted me? Fuck all that, I decided to read the cheesy introduction from the manual to the intro music. As was my right. 

Intro aside, I decided to jump right in and play. Yeah, talking and playing is a pain if you are not used to it. I botched the first run so bad I scrapped it (yet saved it, maybe for a rainy day, or a reminder of why life isn't worth living anymore. I forget). I considered using a Game Genie code to help me out, but decided against it. The destination isn't important, it is the journey! And if I happen to fail to reach the ending of the game, so be it! Here is the video of my Lethal Enforcers 2 playthrough.

After doing this, I've learned quite a bit.

1. I think it would be better to break videos up, three 9-minute videos instead of one 27 minute video.

2. Be consistent with your tone, set it early, and stick with it. 

3. Be yourself, sounds simple enough, but it's easy to stray and try to sell things too much

4.  Don't get discouraged. Just compare some of Ryan and Jeff's old videos to the current ones.   

4b. That being said, reading a description of a game is a lot harder than it looks 

6. Fuck Lethal Enforcers 2, seriously.

Video game playthroughs are a dime a dozen. You can find them anywhere in many, many forms. For some reason though, I thought "Hell yeah, that's something I could get into." So I set off on this grand journey to start recording gameplay, and god forbid put my voice onto it. 

"You have a good voice, you should be in radio or something." I hear stuff like that from customers at work once in awhile, and I always shrug it off. It's nothing special, I just think it's because I live in Kentucky and don't have a country twang to it.  I mean, a voice is a trademark, you recognize folks by their voices, think of the Giant Bomb crew for instance. There is a huge divide between silent playthroughs and playthroughs with someone actually talking over it. After getting a few normal videos up with just gameplay, I looked at these as boring and bland, which is strange. Back when I used to look for gameplay videos, I would cringe at the fact that some annoying guy would have his voice on it.

So, I had a plan. I went out and got Fraps to put my plan in motion. Now what was next is deciding a game to use to test this out. I originally planned to do Tails Adventures as my first game. But because of the reverence I have for that game, I backed out. If this first one fails miserably, I don't want it to take Tails Adventure down with it. I asked my sister which game I should "defile." And of course she picked Altered Beast. Turning that down, she recommended Lethal Enforcers 2: Gun Fighters. 

THAT game is a perfect nostalgia game. A game I kind of remember as being fun, yet hard. Lethal Enforcers 2 is a light gun game that takes place in the wild west.   I thought it would work well for this. I could not be more wrong...

So, I had a game, was ready to record, and was getting a bit nervous. I recorded a quick promo to just throw out there. But from there,  I had no idea how to proceed. Do I just go in and play? Try to give a bit of info? Talk about how this game impacted me? Fuck all that, I decided to read the cheesy introduction from the manual to the intro music. As was my right. 

Intro aside, I decided to jump right in and play. Yeah, talking and playing is a pain if you are not used to it. I botched the first run so bad I scrapped it (yet saved it, maybe for a rainy day, or a reminder of why life isn't worth living anymore. I forget). I considered using a Game Genie code to help me out, but decided against it. The destination isn't important, it is the journey! And if I happen to fail to reach the ending of the game, so be it! Here is the video of my Lethal Enforcers 2 playthrough.

After doing this, I've learned quite a bit.

1. I think it would be better to break videos up, three 9-minute videos instead of one 27 minute video.

2. Be consistent with your tone, set it early, and stick with it. 

3. Be yourself, sounds simple enough, but it's easy to stray and try to sell things too much

4.  Don't get discouraged. Just compare some of Ryan and Jeff's old videos to the current ones.   

4b. That being said, reading a description of a game is a lot harder than it looks 

6. Fuck Lethal Enforcers 2, seriously.

People tell you that your voice is suitable for radio? Really? Anyway, I'd like to do the same, and I even know what game I'd do, but I'm nowhere near equipped to do it.

Enunciate.

It needs to be broken down into smaller chunks so it can be Retspuraed.
 I am kidding but here are some tips. 
1. If your going to Let's Play a rail gun shooter always have a partner.  Humor comes more naturally when you have someone to play off of.
2.  It isn't cheating to record the game first and then do commentary.  Trying to give commentary while playing a game will only cause both to suffer.
3.  Pick games that are interesting to watch even without commentary.  No offense but Lethal Enforcer 2 is worse to watch then it is to play it. 
4.  You should break your videos up into smaller chunks so as not to burnout the audience.  Especially for repetitive early generation games.  You can get away with 20 plus minute videos for longer games or when you develop a bigger following. 
5. Just so these aren't all negative I will say your video capturing and audio were very well done.

Indian Chief Necromancer! oh boy! ;) Good luck on future playthrough endeavors!

Sorry, wish I knew more about the subject, but the only research I had was a buddy of mine recommending Fraps to me. 
This was shortly after I got my tax return back, so $37 was a drop in the bucket.