Games that are worth watching a LP of, but not worth playing

One game, that I missed during its time, I've always wanted to sit down and play was Shenmue.

Until I sat down and played it.

This isn't to say I've lost respect for the game - it just hasn't aged well. So I decided to watch a "Super Replay" of it on Game Informer's YT channel and found it to be a much more enjoyable experience.

So Duders - what games are worth watching a "Let's Play" of that may not be worth the time sink otherwise?

Deadly Premonition, and there's a pretty good "Let's Play" on this site.

Honestly, I'm sort-of glad I didn't play through Persona 4 myself, just watched Vinny and Jeff do it. Doing all that fusion and dungeon crawling seems like no fun at all. And it's not like the story branches so wildly that you can't just sit down and enjoy it passively.

No More Heroes is up there for me. I love so much about that game, but playing is not part of that.

@gkhan: I hear you - I got PS4G on Vita back around its release and got stuck at a certain point. Over the years I've tried to come back to it, but I keep losing to a boss. So it seems my only options are start over or just never finish it.

I enjoyed my time with it, but I got things to do.

In fact, the same thing happened to me with FFXIII. I did eventually beat that about 4 years after its release.

Illbleed

Any Uncharted. They look cool, but are boring to play.

La Mulana. It's insanely obtuse. The puzzles are hard with a guide. I watched a play through. I still don't know how to beat the game. It looks pretty cool though. I might learn how to beat it some day.

For me it's Catherine. Was never any good at the block puzzles and just ended up frustrated that I was missing the story

Most games Game Informer has done Super Replays for, to be honest. As much as I love Blue Stinger and Overblood, I don't think people should actually play those games by themselves...

Not a big fighting game fan, but I liked watching Mortal Kombat's story unfold. Mortal Kombat X was pretty mediocre by comparison though.

Someone already mentioned Deadly Premonition, which was my pick for this.

You know what? I agree completely. I bought the uncharted collection in preparation to try out the 4th one, and I'm just kind of bored with it. I like the story, but the gameplay is so dull in comparison. I don't know what's wrong with me, since I enjoyed The Last of Us significantly more, but I'm just not feeling Uncharted at all, and I've beaten the first and second game now, and I'm working my way through the third.

Life is Strange, for sure.

@random45: The Last of Us has well designed combat that is interesting to play. Uncharted does not. It's a cover shooter, which is inherently boring to me, and nothing else.

The derpily-named "genocide playthrough" of Undertale. It's some interesting alternate content in the game, but you have to grind out dozens of random encounters, and supposedly the game is coded so that their frequency decreases as you do them, but you have to do them. Also that game is clever but doesn't really play great, and when the game actually gets hard, there is something sluggish and unsatisfying about the controls in combat compared to other shooter/bullet hell games. And your hitbox kinda feels like some bullshit.

@tobbrobb said:

Love that game, 100% agree. Ideally, find a LP where they just edit out most of the "overworld" stuff like grinding money doing side jobs, and also edit out killing random mooks on the way to the boss. A handful of the levels leading up to a boss have some clever element that's worth seeing, but for the most part, No More Heroes is like Deadly Premonition in that you want to see the crazy cutscenes and characters, but not deal with the tedious samey combat that goes on FOREVER.

Oof, I have to disagree. That game has a way of making you really feel connected to the choices you make. It definitely loses a lot of its impact by watching someone else play it, let alone a group of others play it together. Play Life is Strange ya'll!

Mine would be P4 because there is some funny stuff in there to make fun but wouldn't want to play it ever. Jeff and Vinny really brought out the best of that endurance run.

I'm with @kingbonesaw. No interest in playing the new Hitman, but really enjoying watching Brad / Dan fumble their way through it

Probably the last of us, combat was so frustrating and boring i never got through. I've been mulling watching a playthrough for years now but im kinda stubborn with wanting to beat games.

Even the lets play of deadly premonition was boring when game play was happening, i couldnt watch both endurance runs only saw jeffs.

@flashflood_29 said:

Yeah, I have to agree with FlashFlood. The game is an enjoyable Let's Play for sure, but there is stuff that most LPers/streamers might skip over for the sake of their audience. It's unlikely they're just going to sit there reading through Max's journal for like 10 minutes at a time, but between the goofy sketches and her thoughts on the events that unfold, it gives an extra dimension to who she is as a character. Also that game has a zillion NPC conversations and little objects to investigate that a stream/LP may not investigate to the same degree you would. Also the whole part where the game has various choices, which as expected don't wildly shift the direction of the plot but give you a sense of agency over what's happening and helps you feel connected to the characters, and that connection isn't quite the same when it's some other person on the internet committing to the decisions.

this but after you play it its fun to watch others play it i am looking forward to watching gbeast play it.

Well, I'd never want to play that Blair Witch game, but I definitely enjoyed the experience of watching Patrick Klepek play it.

@rkofan87: Definitey. It's a game that's fun to watch others play after you've played it yourself, to see how they went about things and their reasoning/commentary.

I played both games myself, but I'd totally understand someone wanting to just watch a playthrough of Persona 2. The combat has some interesting/sometimes fun quirks, but the random encounter rate is brutal, especially combined with the fact that both games feel like 80% dungeon crawling with somewhat small bits of story in between. The story of Persona 2 is super awesome and I love the characters, but the gameplay just doesn't sit too well after having played 3 and 4 and realizing how much those games streamlined the combat parts. That being said, I did have more fun playing Eternal Punishment because it had a more interesting difficulty curve. If someone was purely interested in the story and didn't have any sort of compulsion to play the game themselves though, I would probably just recommend finding a good video series.

I have tried to play some Uncharted, Assassins Creed and GTA games starting with III all the way to V, and I find all of them much more fun to watch for the story than to actually play. Luckily, my husband likes playing all of these games, so I get the story without having to try to get through the games.

GTA especially I usually just get to a point where I can't do something fiddly that it wants me to do, and I don't have the interest and patience to plow through it. Usually it involves some driving crap and the driving controls are horrible so I just stop playing. I wish I could put the driving from Saints Row 3 into GTA games, it would be so much better... :D

For me, I've enjoyed watching the LP of Lightning Returns and Dark Souls III recently. I know that I wouldn't enjoy playing the games, but watching them like it's a movie worked much better.

To respectfully disagree - I like a lot of the games on this list, which are heavily story based. I much prefer the let's play route for games that I know have a lot of mechanics-based gameplay that is either hard or obtuse. I may never play a Golgo 13 game, or Crusader Kings. I only developed the patience to really play Spelunky after watching it from multiple streamers. I bounce off every Souls game at least once, but watching others do it brings me back and eventually I complete them.

That said, I've also stopped playing every single Persona but Persona 4, despite really enjoying them. So often I get mired in completionism on the early games.

Playing games first, then watch others tackle and experience what I did in said games is a pretty cool way of approaching playthroughs, too, in my opinion.

I enjoyed watching a legendary difficulty XCOM2 playthrough recently. I'd never manage to complete one of those. Warhammer: Total War is okay as well.

Like others here, I often find myself skipping most of the gameplay of repetitive shooters where you have to kill 1000 generic guys, it might be fun to play but it sucks to watch that.

Every Telltale game.

You leave Sam and Max out of this!

For me it's any of the Dark Souls games. It's fun to watch people struggle through them but I absolutely hate playing them.

I'm not a fan of playing hard games myself.

Any RTS, especially Starcraft 2, unless, of course, you like RTSs. I fully understand why people like RTS games, but the act of actually playing them isn't enjoyable to me. I do, however, rather enjoy watching good players play them from time to time.

Story-driven stuff and hyper competitive games. The former loses it's luster quick and feels like a poor $60 investment, and the latter requires too much dedication and time on my part to become enjoyable.

Also, as much as it pains me to say, I greatly prefer watching LPs of horror games rather than playing them, just because I get to experience the atmosphere without fiddling with keys, puzzles, and annoying gameplay mechanics. It's not even because I don't like being scared (I do), it's just that the average horror game has become a chore to actually play.

I would like to second this, especially about the horror games. It's gotten to the point where I'm so selective about the horror games I play, out of fear of getting so far in and then hitting a wall where the gameplay mechanics start bugging me, that I end up not playing them at all. Also, aimless wandering because I don't know where to go or what to do isn't a gameplay mechanic, though this can be said for other genres than just horror.

I wish I had done this with Lightning Returns. There are some good story elements, and I like the character, but while the combat system is very good, it's underutilized and inconsequential with regards to the story and character advancement in all but a handful of fights in the whole game. All it's used for the vast majority of the time is getting energy to use the time stop ability.

Any story based game with mediocre or non existent gameplay.

Shenmue is 100% worth playing. That game aged like a fine cheese. Cause it fucking stinks! But seriously though I played it as recently as last year, such a good game. But that could also be because I played it back in the day too so maybe nostalgia can mask any kind of feet smell.

I would extend that to every adventure game.

Asura's Wrath

It's some anime ass anime.

Ride to Hell: Retribution.

Chasing Dead.

The American-made Silent Hill games.

Escape from Bug Island

anything made by David Cage

Any game that is hilariously bad is way better to watch someone else suffer through. I would also add games that are fine overall, but have really poor controls, like Eternal Darkness.

The Witcher 3, just can't stand the controls.

@beachthunder said:

Man, I have to disagree. That game was just bad. Patrick knew it was bad. We knew it was bad. Once or twice it glitched out enough that it was funny bad, but the other 95% of the time it was a tedious mess that was bad even by survival horror standards and had nothing even close to the tone of good survival horror games or the tone of The Blair Witch Project. I mean, it's funny that the devs just blatantly set it in the same "Nocturne" universe as their previous game, so you're playing whatsherface from "Spookhouse" (Ghostbusters FBI), but boy, was that a self indulgent low point for Spookin' With Scoops.

Two Best Friends Play Silent Hill: Homecoming, Deadly Premonition, and Heavy Rain.

Have fun.

I strongly disagree with this one. It's way more boring to watch someone climb walls and talking/reacting over cutscenes than to actually playing it, figure out the puzzles alone and make absurd jumps that make us feel good while doing it. Also, Naughty Dog's games have such good visuals that I want to explore them at my own pace.

And I strongly agree with this one. Listening to someone making commentaries while playing it is the only thing that is able to make that game somewhat interesting. Specially since none of the branching paths or player decisions matter for the story arc.

Even better, you can find compilations of each of those LPs on Youtube by Spookycookies, so you can get the best moments in about an hour..

As others have said Deadly Premonition is definitely one. I also think I like watching the first RE games, Dino Crisis, etc. more than I like playing them. Although I was okay with playing through Dino Crisis. Other older adventure style games as well. BioForge being one that I can think of, Blade Runner being another. Both of which are on the site as well (BR wasn't finished I don't think).

Until Dawn.

Ok I know this seems like it goes without saying, but for completeness sake. The Metal Gear Solid games. That has got to take the cake for "A story you just have to see, but a game you don't really want to play". Or, for many it can.

Personally though I put "Horror, any horror game' on the list. At least any with a half-decent story. I scare way way to easy, so can't enjoy anything with jump-scare potential if I am playing it myself. Watching someone else play it though? Somehow that's perfectly fine. Top of the list uh..the Five Nights series, if you were interested in the labyrinth of a plot, but couldn't be bothered to play the games. Also Amnesia (the first one), and Soma.

As far as general 'LPs worth watching" like I tend to find procedural generation games, when played by someone who is extremely skilled at them, to be really fun to watch. Like watching someone who has every last mechanic of something like Dwarf Fortress down is fun..but I'd never play it. The same to a lesser extend with the Paradox games. Like I -can- play them..but watching someone conquer the entire world while I struggle just to conquer and hold england together, it might as well be watching someone play a game that's not worth my bothering to try.

@bladededge: Yeah good call on the horror games. I just don't like that type of suspense and it just stresses me out too much. That was kinda why I enjoyed Spookin' with Scoops because I could still experience them but without stressing the fuck out.