YouTube gameplay walkthroughs: love or loathe?
I used to feel strange about watching gameplay walkthroughs on YouTube. It felt like cheating, like I wasn’t putting in the time into to a game to really get the full experience of the title. Then I had a Kevin Hart moment when I took a look at my debit card balance (you see, the way my bank account is setup…) and quickly got over it.
I read reviews as much as the next gamer, but a negative rating won’t necessarily deter me from purchasing a title. Yes, there are usually gameplay demos available, but an hour’s worth of a random chunk in the title isn’t enough to capture my interest. There were too many perks attached to watching a few hours of gameplay and I couldn’t ignore them.
For example, Square Enix’s Thief recently caught my attention. Without giving away spoilers, it’s a title about a Master Thief who lurks in the shadows of the City, but gets caught up in the conflict within it. After looking through the PlayStation 3 titles I already had, I realized it was unlikely I’d get much credit on a trade-in at GameStop.
If Thief were a game I was going to purchase, I’d have to watch some gameplay action on YouTube before I made the commitment. I know, it sounds a little like I’m making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be, but let me put it this way: you wouldn’t purchase a car from the dealership without giving it a proper test drive, would you?
Anyway, what I do when I’m unsure about purchasing a title is I watch five hours worth of gameplay on YouTube. The reason why I do five-hour increments is I usually don’t have more than one hour to play videos games depending on my weekday schedule. So I watched this walkthrough for one hour a day and decided I didn’t want to pay full price for the title and would wait until it goes on sale.
No trip to the mall, $54.99 was still in my pocket and I didn’t feel cheated from putting in hours of my life with no real reward for my progress. It’s the equivalent to binge watching a show on Netflix: there’s always the next title.
On the other hand, if I had decided to purchase Thief, it wouldn’t have ruined the game for me. I hate the awkwardness that comes with from the first few hours of playing a new game. My first hour of playing usually consists of me adjusting the controls to my liking and finding out where I need to go. Gameplay time for titles usually average anywhere from 30 to 60 hours; it’s unlikely the game will be ruined for you in the first five hours.
Every gamer also has a different walkthrough experience. Some gamers strive for the “perfect” walkthroughs where they don’t miss any collectable or cut scene. Other players aren’t interested in the extras and just want to get to the end. I usually avoid “perfect” walkthroughs on YouTube, along with gamers who like to talk a lot during their tapings.
On rare occasions I’ve watched entire walkthroughs. In these cases, I knew I wasn’t going to purchase the title, but I was interested enough in the storyline that I kept watching. At the end of the day I’m interested most in the story; if I can’t get lost in a game developer’s world, the game wasn’t “good” to me.