Why do I watch playthroughs of videogames?

"Why do you watch a playthrough of a game? Just play the game!" I have heard that plenty of times, here are some of the reasons why I do not play the game that I am watching:

1) Lack of time: This is an oxymoron, I know, but the case here is that I work, do other stuff, I sometimes do not have the time to directly dedicate to a game as much as I would like, the whole nine yards, while it sounds stupid to say that I could have dedicated the 20+ hours watching the game to actually playing the game this takes me to the next point;

2) It's just background noise: Yes, sometimes I am not even watching the thing, I just have it as background noise and from time to time turn to it, while this sounds weird to some people I rather have this as background noise than music (yeah, sue me on that). I only alt-tab or turn to another monitor when I hear some commentary on something that could be potentially important (or stupid, maybe something cringe worthy).

3) Do not have the resources to play it: While I have several computers in the house none of them, well maybe one of them, are built on the last decade (2000-2009) which leaves me out of playing most of the games I could potentially be interested in, I could surely invest on a new machine but I also have to pay rent, utilities, a car, food, etc. So a new computer is at the moment out of the question until I can either find a good enough discount or manage to scrape enough money to build something out of parts I get from flea markets (of which I already have half to build a decent computer).

4) Do not want to mess with emulators or old hardware: Now looking at the other way, I have enough old hardware to mess with and play some really old games straight from the CD or Floppy, even from 5 1/4, but going full retrogaming means I need a CRT (which I actually have stashed and needs to be checked by someone who knows how to fix a CRT because it shorted out) and an old keyboard and trackball mouse (of which I have all), did I mention you need an old PC for the whole experience to be as close as possible to how it was back in the day? Most will not try to figure this out, no matter how cheap the parts could be, and sometimes figuring out an emulator can be a pain to some (and Linux doesn't make this any easier apparently).

5) No demo available for the game, not willing to spend money on something I can't try out: This is probably the main reason I watch most new games on YouTube first before buying them, while I could make a risky decision of paying 50+ dollars for the latest whatever game or 20/30+ for the latest indie game I do not feel this is not a sane choice, this hits harder in a time in which demos are no longer available, developers barely give a hint of the game through their available material, piracy becoming a more viable option before making the final choice, there are so many more reasons that require demos to be back on the table, urgently, so that we as players can either dismiss the game or build a more appropriate hype around the thing that we are looking forward for (perfect example, Alien: Colonial Marines was an obscene kick in the ass to everyone who was looking towards the full experience of reliving those very tense moments only to find this carcass of a game).

6) Kickstarter/Indiegogo campaigns banish into thin air: Not so much as a playthrough but I mostly end up finding out about games that become vaporware from YouTube, testers and the like, sometimes I wonder what could have been of a game had the developers not dropped the issue for whatever reason they decided to do so or not scammed players (remember that game in which you would become an Ant, another perfect example of what happens when you have the wrong people in your team and then get robbed of everything).

Why I decided to replay the old Fallout series and loved it

Recently Bethesda teased the gamer community with the possibility of a new Fallout game, they simply showed a "Please stand by" image and apparently left it there, still unsure if a confirmation was given or not about what was it but I dismissed the game, I simply don't like the new series and I tried all of the recent ones, it just isn't Fallout and even if heretical to some I think the last true game on the series was Fallout: Tactics.

So for the purpose of proving myself either right or wrong about how good was the series back in the day I took the task of installing the original Fallout and here I found myself in an ordeal I had not dealt with in many years. I spinned a virtual machine for Windows XP SP3 (I got legitimate licenses, leave me alone) and was successful on installing the game there, to my surprise the mouse was going all over the place with the slightest move so this was not the way to go, no matter how much I fixed and tweaked I could not get the thing to do what I wanted.

Next step was to use Wine and here is where I re-learned what a pain it was to setup, Wine is a Windows emulator for Linux, you can install programs and interact with them as you would in Windows, but you’re on Linux, and the thing does not get any less complicated from there. Turns out that every time I want to give Wine a chance it’s always a hassle to setup, installing is simple as the repositories for Debian contain the packages, but doing the whole thing, getting the setup right, making sure everything worked, it was trial and error until I managed to get the thing right and for this I took around some three hours to figure out what I was doing wrong. (Turns out I just had to leave the latest version of Wine as the default for the program to run, silly me eh?)

Once Fallout was installed I found another peculiar issue, I could run it windowed but I could not switch to other windows or things on my desktop while this window was running and I did not want to go through another hassle to figure out why this was the case, the whole reason behind this was that I wanted to record a play-through of the original game and eventually Fallout 2 and Tactics, but I could not even do something as simple as ALT+TAB to press record, eventually I figured that if I ran the thing full screen and setup the right coordinates on the recording program I would get the whole thing and this is how it will work from now on.

After this I finally met this jewel again and I have so many fond memories, everything came back to me (even things that I know I have missed so far), exiting Vault 13, finding Shady Sands, doing the radscorpion quest, figuring out that Vault 15 is a pile of rubble and your quest is going to take you a very long while to figure out and you got less than 140~ days to get to it before everyone dies on the vault, the first armor and new weapon you get (that Mad Max leather suit, because that’s not a jacket that’s the whole thing, and the SMG that has the lamest sound ever, the handgun sounds far more brutal than the poor thing and they do the same damage as far as I recall, unless of course you do burst).

Tweaking my character was also a personal no-brainer, I found that in the world of Fallout, a world that was blown to pieces by a nuclear war many years before you were even born (if memory does not fail me), you can find a ton of ammunition, way too much, so I never really bothered with melee as I could always find the ammo I needed for my weapon, I can’t wait to get the power armor and harden it, the .223 handgun (which is a nod to Blade Runner), fighting some of the weirdest and toughest bosses of the series, getting the random encounters that are very random indeed, finding meatdog (eventually, hope Ian doesn’t kill him as usual or me for that matter).

This is why I know this game is a jewel, it’s been more than fifteen years since I first found the dual-case that contained Fallout 1 and 2 for the bargain price of two dollars at a Wal-Mart, I remember installing them humongous version and my dad being furious at me for filling up the hard drive on the computer (we had a 3GB hard drive back then, imagine that!) but managing to run the game so smooth and fast it didn’t matter, so much I played both games that they skip from time to time and I think they are at the end of their life, so sad as it will be hard to find such a bargain again (unless GOG or Humble Bundle gives them away for super cheap again but I highly doubt it).

With all that being said, give it a try, enjoy it, take the time to learn probably one of the best and easiest systems for a role-playing game (because AD&D sucked in Baldurs Gate although it was an awesome game nevertheless).