Do longplays illustrate adequately the strong & weak points of a given game

[NewDeli]

Hi,


As you may know I am investigating the possibility to make a series of game captures via WinUAE. There are various reasons which cause me to hesitate to produce longplays. Some "good", some due to laziness or lack of practice.

Among the "good" reasons :
Most of the time, I can't sit and watch a longplay for 2+ hours as if it was a movie.
I may have a specific reason to fast forward to certain moments, e.g. if I am stuck, but usually the walkthrough + hints do the trick.

I think longplays lack illustrations : Oral comments, captions.
Of course, longplays are part of our assets as Amiga gamers and the people who make them might have their reason not to clutter them with such things.

Last : For some games (shooters), gameplay repeats itself over and over without any sense of novelty except the increased difficulty level.

So I am curious, would that make a reason NOT to watch such captures if one illustrated only the first two or three levels ?

To create this thread, I had a retro-gaming related French TV show in mind (now a YouTube channel), and that's Retro Game One.
Even if you don't speak French, you could watch [ Show youtube player ] episode or [ Show youtube player ] to get the idea. Of course, i am much less talkative than this guy,
and I don't have the same professional outfit. What I'd like to keep in terms of "fun factor" is the areas of interest.
One "show" for shooters, the other for fast-paced platformers and so on.

[Dan Locke]

I'm not sure what the point of this poll was. I wouldn't say that longplays are "mandatory" for making an educated choice about playing a game, and I didn't see any connection to the thread title.

Anyway...

I find longplays to be extremely helpful when I want to get a general idea of a game without taking the time to download and run it in an emulator, and they help me understand how to get past areas in shoot-em-ups and platformers that have me stumped. In the case of games like Shadow of the Beast II and Brian the Lion, where the game looks and sounds great but isn't fun at all, I just watch the longplay and enjoy the pretty graphics and music. Sometimes, when I'm on a computer that doesn't have an Amiga emulator (any computer that isn't mine), I'll go on YouTube and watch a section or two from a game that I like (this also applies to my non-Amiga games). Finally, they're immeasurably useful when making a tribute video, although my worthless "high speed" Internet connection (76k, courtesy of CenturyTel) has made the extensive downloading required unfeasable for the time being.

In short, I can't see anything bad about longplays at all, or even simple gameplay clips, as long as the quality (both in the video itself and in the player's ability) is good.

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

To create this thread, I had a retro-gaming related French TV show in mind (now a YouTube channel), and that's Retro Game One.
Even if you don't speak French, you could watch [ Show youtube player ] episode or [ Show youtube player ] to get the idea. Of course, i am much less talkative than this guy,
and I don't have the same professional outfit. What I'd like to keep in terms of "fun factor" is the areas of interest.

Whatever you do, please be more accurate than this:
[ Show youtube player ]

8:53 : "En fait, Gryzor c'est l'ancêtre de Contra..." -> "Actually, Gryzor is the ancestor of Contra..."

[Maren]

Longplays spoil the fun so in my opinion they're best avoided altogether, but having a horrible, unskilled and bitchy player review them makes them worthless even for cheaters looking forward to beating the games without lifting a finger.

All of the few longplays I watched covered video games I had already played through completion, because comparing different points of views can be entertaining. In the best case scenario, they would reveal a trick or two I never heard about.

If you're an exceptionally good player and recording longplays would make you happy, go for it, but personally I don't see much of a point, in fact, if I could have my way, I'd focus on comparisons between different versions, now that would be useful

[Jonathan Drain]

Longplays for me are a way to see a game that I never finished, without having to play it through. Some games are very difficult or rubbish, or sometimes I'm just lazy.

[gimbal]

love longplays, like you I see them like movies. Its not true that they lack narrative, some people actually take the extra step to provide comments while they play. For example the "lets play..." line of movies on Youtube tend to have them. Some (or should I say, most...) of them suck, some of them are pretty good at it

If you ever do a longplay, you'd be best to have a lure. For example a longplay that shows secrets in stead of just running through the game is worth watching. Let it contain something that gives people a reason to watch it in stead of playing through the game themselves again.

I'd focus on comparisons between different versions, now that would be useful

Nah, then Laffer wouldn't have anything to do anymore