Let's Plays under attack!

[KrayZekrow]

Section 107 of the US Copyright Act allows "Fair Use" of copyrighted material, which includes commentary.

I have a vid on my LP channel stating that, hopefully that will protect me ^^;

 

[OrenjiJusu]

I have never understood why anyone would watch them. Either you are interested in the game so why would you watch someone else play it. Or you aren't interested and then why would you watch it in the first place. Although I am a spoilerphobe.

Well, lots of reasons.

1) Getting some older games to run on Vista and Windows 7 can drive a grown man to tears, whereas with an LP, someone's already gone through that hassle for you.

2) A lot of older games are just bad by today's standards. Look at Ultima 6 and its utterly impenetrable UI, or the blatantly cheating AI from strategy games like Fantasy Empires.

3) Some of the people who do Let's Plays are genuinely hilarious. I refer you to TheSpoonyOne's SWAT4 LP [http://spoonyexperiment.com/category/lets-play/swat-4/page/2/].

4) And sometimes they take a game with a really dense plot and make sense of it. See Scorchy's (written) Let's Play of Knights of the Old Republic 2 [http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/KOTOR%202/].

5) And sometimes they just take a really overrated game with an absolutely terrible story and rip it to shreds. Like Shamus Young's Spoiler Warning series on Fallout 3 [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7926].

Also with a few people, watching an LP of a game can motivate them into actually playing it or pursuing its purchase, as it had with me and Neverwinter Nights 2, X-COM and KOTOR. They can also end up explaining how to play the game better than in-game tutorials do.

 

[ServebotFrank]

Why in the name of god would you two revive a dead thread for no reason?

 

[FalloutJack]

Fallout 3 is NOT over-rated.

Actually, it kind of is. It's drastically inferior to Fallout 1 & 2, has arguably the WORST moral choice system in gaming, and a completely pointless VATS system.

Check the gauge again, sonny. Your mileage is ENTIRELY varied. The Fallout fans are across the board on what Fallout is good, what's not, and whatever. As an advocate for ALL the major Fallout games, I'll have to disagree with your statement, and the other guy who didn't like Fallout 3.

Now then... The removal of Let's Plays is not freaking lawful. A Let's Play is the same as a walkthrough that you have on like Gamefaqs. I don't see THEM losing the brunt of their information, so this is entirely bogus. There is no legitimate reason to halt a player, an owner of said game, from showing people WHAT HE DID IN SAID GAME. People do this all the time and Let's Play is just more official than others. It is not wrong, ergo STOP REMOVING IT.

 

[KrayZekrow]

Why in the name of god would you two revive a dead thread for no reason?

I has reason, I love LPs! =D

 

[Farther than stars]

Fallout 3 is NOT over-rated.

Really. Man, could've fooled me, what with all the Game of the Year awards and legions of loyal fanboys.

Ah well. I'll just go explore some mostly-intact buildings that survived a nuclear war and the intervening 200 years. Maybe I'll fight some supermutants that were created by the Enclave for the Evulz long before the Master ever crawled out of an FEV tank, and when I get hit, I'll stop and eat a few dozen boxes of instant rice that had been sitting in a locker for two centuries. Later, I'll need to find a magical suitcase that could be used to found a utopian paradise and instead use it to power a machine designed to clean radiation from water, because, you know, filtering it through some mud or something just wouldn't cut it. And it's not like I have a robot butler than can create an infinite supply of clean water, albeit with a little recharge time, so examining his systems and copying that technology instead of wasting an entire GECK would be out of the question. And when I go to plug this magic suitcase in, I'll need to go myself, rather than send my highly intelligent super mutant buddy who's immune to radiation, at least until I pay $15.00 for a DLC add-on pack.

Hey, maybe I'll run into an old favorite character from Fallout 1 & 2, who, despite being nothing more than a minor and easily missed sidequest, was apparently important enough to Bethesda that they had to base the game's timeline entirely around making sure he could make an appearance.

These are the sorts of things that good Let's Plays pick up on, y'see.

I wouldn't say that Fallout 3 is overrated. It is a good game, clear and simple. Not only is it one of the more extensive RPGs out there, with something in it for everyone, but it actually has some pretty shrewd level design for an open world game.
Sure, it has a few kinks here and there, but it's a fantasy game; what did you expect?
Go and play COD BlOps and Battlefield for your reality nearing singularity.
If you only want adventures nearing linearity, with samey enemies that all match in similarity and where there's no single mutant to be a fatality, then there are Bad Company and Flashpoint to suit that banality.
But some don't look with eyes of regularity and we like to experience a different kind of actuality, where instead the lockers don't hold rice that time forgot, but they were left there yesterday by the raiders you just shot. As you see each place tells you a lot, and that's whether you see it or not, but sure go ahead, leave it unread. Take your stable DNA (which no ghoul or mutant can sway) and just go away, because I just can't convey how petty those complaints are anyway. But you seem dead set on what Shamus said, so who's supporting the legions of loyal fanboys now, eh?

P.S. If you hated the story so much, why would you even be bothered with the DLC? And if it's too pricey, you can always wait for the GOTY edition. But in all honesty, I've never believed a game should be judged by its price anyway.

 

[Aidinthel]

Guys, if I might make a suggestion: Please don't resume a year-old flamewar. I doubt Kavonde even remembers typing that post.

 

[Farther than stars]

Fallout 3 is NOT over-rated.

Actually, it kind of is. It's drastically inferior to Fallout 1 & 2, has arguably the WORST moral choice system in gaming, and a completely pointless VATS system.

Drastically inferior seems a bit of a drastic term, so I think you may be speaking with nostalgia.
Speaking as a newcomer to the series myself, I actually think it's pretty immersive and doesn't saddle you up with the back-story strait away. Sure, the moral choice system is bad, but I think about every moral choice system which is defined on principles rather than consequences (maybe a little more Utilitarianist than Deontological, but at least its closer to our individual perception of ethics). And as far as it goes, it does leave some choices open for internal debates by sometimes not even assigning karma to which side you choose.
And personally I think that VATS (that's VATS: Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, not Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System System) is a good way to transit the turn-based combat of the previous games to a 3D enviroment. Plus it actually makes experimenting with all the different types of weapons fun, because it gives some really cool shots of the gameplay.

 

[Farther than stars]

Guys, if I might make a suggestion: Please don't resume a year-old flamewar. I doubt Kavonde even remembers typing that post.

Yeah, you're right of course, since this isn't the place to discuss it anyway. We seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent by accident.