What sorts of games do you think would best work for someone who wanted to start doing LPs? Or any other kind of general advice for selecting a first game?
Something simple, but not directly personal to you. You want to save something like that for when youâre better at it.
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Maybe something you know well. Also you may want to choose what game based on if you are going to do a video lp or a screenshot lp. I think video lps take more setup but once youâve got it all ready, you can do other lps later on with less work.
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I think, especially for your first LP, you should try to do something that you know fairly well. Secondly, try to pick something that isnât a 50 hour epic, like a JRPG or open world game. LPing a short game lets you learn the ropes without getting bogged down with something huge if you end up realizing you donât want to do it halfway through.
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I think a shorter game that you really love would be best.
A short game would be better for a first project to make it easier to complete and LPs of games that you feel strongly about tend to be better as a result. Itâs all a learning experience from there. You should also know what type of LP you wanna make as some games lend themselves better to VLPs, others to SSLPs.
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Something you can play on the PC. Donât sink a ton of money into a capture card off the bat. OBS is free and can record damn fine for a first LP job
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Something you know well, but isnât your âfavoriteâ game. No matter how good you are, your first LP will have errors and growing pains in finding an audience
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Something fairly linear, in the ~3-5 hour range. RPGâs are huge edit jobs when you cut out grinding, you donât wanna make episodes longer than 20-30 minutes, and you donât wanna start out with a 30-40 episode LP. Keep it 10-15 episodes, something people can catch up with in a day
(For the record, I started with Rocket Knight Adventures and Illusions of Gaia)
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Short linear games are great for when youâre just trying LP out.
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A Souls game.
Go with something that is 3 hours max, that you can record without technical issues (massive framerate drops for example) and that you are familiar with. If you are recording with a co-commentator, make sure itâs someone you know and already mesh well with. Also avoid things with several endings or various other collectible/completion bonus content if you can.
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A good test would be something like Portal, as itâs quick and you could learn the ropes on recording and voice. (But just upload it as a test, keep it private, and send to trusted friends for review)
A good multi part series would have to be something you have played previously, that wonât bog you down with hours to replay. This could be a classic NES game to a Playstation Adventure that could take up to 8 hours to complete. I think Mario 64 is a bit overdone, but itâs a great example of an easy format (one level per episode, all stars). Trying something level-based is a great safe option.
Good Ideas for First Runs : Crash Bandicoot, Army Men Games, Little Big Planet
Once you tried that, go for something near your area of expertise - A horror game, an FPS, Something from your childhood that you want to share and work from thereâŚ
Donât pick a game that will frustrate you to the point of quitting. It should be an enjoyable and fun experience for both you and the audience. You could do this!
Iâd say do what you want to do. Worst thing thatâll happen is youâll get sick of it and abandon it. My first LP was a long RPG and I finished it with only a light hit to my sanity.
Itâs easier to do an LP of a game youâre passionate about, whether in a positive or negative light. That drive will help focus your effort into making a better product compared to some random game you donât really care as much about.
Biggest thing is nail down your workflow before you post your first update. Once you get it to the point where your work process is automatic, making an LP is significantly easier and less stressful.
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Funny you should say, my first proper LP was Dark Souls. I did some really bad smaller stuff beforehand, but I donât like to count that because itâs really bad.
My first LP was Dark Souls 1 blind, but I never made a thread for it. Still the most fun I ever had with an LP.
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My Dark Souls LP was the second one I had ever done and the first to teach me how to deal with somehow losing my backup saves and having to restart the game and catch back up. (And it hasnât been the last, either.)
Well, guess what, I didnât have any backups from begin with.
Seriously, though, Souls games are some of the harder ones to LP. Not because the games themselves are more challenging than your average game, but the way the save system works you donât get any redos. Unless make backups of your saves on PC. But even if I had done any of my Souls LPs on PC I wouldnât have bothered to do that because I like to live dangerously.
Something that you know well.
Something that has a definite end and wonât last too long.
Something that you have something to say about.
Something that isnât too terribly hard and is easy to get footage of.
Iâve knocked around the idea of doing a letâs play for a few years, and to follow up on the initial thread question, is it better to approach your first LP from a more humorous angle or something a tad more serious?
I ask because one game Iâd want to LP is an edugame from the early 2000s, which isnât long or hard, but would be tongue-in-cheek at the very least.
You do You, Shmoo. The more natural you are, the better. If youâre doing edu-tainment, feel free to take that in however direction you want â your history with the game? what do you know about the characters? what sort of problems do we see? do you think the developers knew what the target age for this game was?
Unless you plan on being âin characterâ as a Kids Presenter for the duration of your LP, it will be a bit difficult. If you want to tell jokes, fine. If you want to be serious, thatâs fine as well.
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Definitely donât force humor. Itâs usually better to try to be informative first and then let your natural humor seep in as you get more comfortable.
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I definitely agree with everyone here saying pick something you like that is fairly short.
My first LP was a game that I wasnât particularly fond of (Vampire Rain) but wanted to show off anyway because
- itâs bad and I enjoy showing off bad games
- wasnât done that often
It also wasnât a game I was super familiar with so I ended up doing a lot of practice runs of missions before attempting to record anything. While we did finish the game and Iâm pretty satisfied with the LP, it took much longer than it should have because it wasnât a very enjoyable game to play and sometimes I just couldnât convince myself to sit down and practice/record.
The game Iâm preparing to do now is one that I really like a whole lot, so getting all the gameplay recorded for it has been much easier.
Iâm glad people mentioned not to do a) something too long, or b) something you care about a whole lot as your first LP, because Iâve been really tempted to LP Bloodborne, but, well, that kind of fails both tests. Bloodborneâs a game I know a lot about and really, really love, but if Iâm going to LP it, I do want to do it right, so itâs probably not a good idea to do it as a first LP.