Happy Fool's Day
The first person to pull an April Fool's joke gets stabbed.
I'm really in love with Let's Play posts. If you're not familiar, Let's Plays are basically self-made documentaries or mock-umentaries of gamers playing video games, typically recorded in video format, but sometimes also in screenshot play-by-plays. There are lots of decent ones spread out on the web, with one of the largest repositories being the SomethingAwful forums and the Let's Play Archive. Some may argue that the number of incredibly shitty Let's Plays rivals the number of decent ones, so, I tend to pick and choose. My first Let's Play was actually watching a youtube user by the name of ProtonJonSA, a well-known Mario ROMhack LPer. These custom Mario games are usually ridiculously hard, such as the infamous Kaizo Mario World hack, and he plays them blind - to absolutely classic results.
A really unexpected source of Let's Play humor, though, was stumbled across when I was visiting That Guy With the Glasses. While checking out some of the partners after my daily dose of the Nostalgia Critic, I found a link to the Spoony Experiment, home of the Spoony One. It's...apparently a joke from Final Fantasy/D&D about bards. Yeah. Don't let the name fool you, Spoony (Noah Antwiler) is a very professional writer and critic and has a lot to offer the online video blogging and review community.
He also has a series of Let's Plays and game reviews, one of my favorites being Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of the Flesh. This game was released back when the industry thought full-motion video point-and-click games were still a good idea, and in my opinion, this game is the single reason why you don't see too many of those anymore. Spoony's Mystery Science Theater style of mocking the game is riotous (at times), although the individual segments are hours long - I find myself putting it on in the background of browsing or playing World of WarCraft and cracking up even if I don't pay attention to every minute of the "thrilling" in-game action scenes (which, as Spoony will point out, is pretty slim pickings in this particular roller coaster of suspense).
Another favorite series of mine is the Resident Evil series as LP'd by TheDarkId. Located on the Let's Play archive, linked above, this particular thread of the Resident Evil games brings new levels of hilarity to the already-campy and somewhat tired titles. I was a huge fan of Resident Evil on the original Playstation, and remained an avid player until Capcom started releasing rail shooters on the Wii. TheDarkId basically sums up everything about the titles that could be hilariously misinterpreted (or just hilariously interpreted, because the series has some abysmal writing) and presents it with punchy commentary and slick photoshops. He also has a Let's Play for Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, a really, really bad sequel game to the popular RPG. All of these games come in screenshot-only format, so you can't simply put it on and have entertaining dialogue working for you in the background, but if you find yourself with time to read and need some good laughs, it's well worth it.
I'm really in love with Let's Play posts. If you're not familiar, Let's Plays are basically self-made documentaries or mock-umentaries of gamers playing video games, typically recorded in video format, but sometimes also in screenshot play-by-plays. There are lots of decent ones spread out on the web, with one of the largest repositories being the SomethingAwful forums and the Let's Play Archive. Some may argue that the number of incredibly shitty Let's Plays rivals the number of decent ones, so, I tend to pick and choose. My first Let's Play was actually watching a youtube user by the name of ProtonJonSA, a well-known Mario ROMhack LPer. These custom Mario games are usually ridiculously hard, such as the infamous Kaizo Mario World hack, and he plays them blind - to absolutely classic results.
A really unexpected source of Let's Play humor, though, was stumbled across when I was visiting That Guy With the Glasses. While checking out some of the partners after my daily dose of the Nostalgia Critic, I found a link to the Spoony Experiment, home of the Spoony One. It's...apparently a joke from Final Fantasy/D&D about bards. Yeah. Don't let the name fool you, Spoony (Noah Antwiler) is a very professional writer and critic and has a lot to offer the online video blogging and review community.
He also has a series of Let's Plays and game reviews, one of my favorites being Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of the Flesh. This game was released back when the industry thought full-motion video point-and-click games were still a good idea, and in my opinion, this game is the single reason why you don't see too many of those anymore. Spoony's Mystery Science Theater style of mocking the game is riotous (at times), although the individual segments are hours long - I find myself putting it on in the background of browsing or playing World of WarCraft and cracking up even if I don't pay attention to every minute of the "thrilling" in-game action scenes (which, as Spoony will point out, is pretty slim pickings in this particular roller coaster of suspense).
Another favorite series of mine is the Resident Evil series as LP'd by TheDarkId. Located on the Let's Play archive, linked above, this particular thread of the Resident Evil games brings new levels of hilarity to the already-campy and somewhat tired titles. I was a huge fan of Resident Evil on the original Playstation, and remained an avid player until Capcom started releasing rail shooters on the Wii. TheDarkId basically sums up everything about the titles that could be hilariously misinterpreted (or just hilariously interpreted, because the series has some abysmal writing) and presents it with punchy commentary and slick photoshops. He also has a Let's Play for Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, a really, really bad sequel game to the popular RPG. All of these games come in screenshot-only format, so you can't simply put it on and have entertaining dialogue working for you in the background, but if you find yourself with time to read and need some good laughs, it's well worth it.