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07/16/2024: What I Watched on YouTube in the Past 6 Months Instead of LPs and am I Ready to Come Back Yet?

(Warning: This blog mention some past YouTube drama, harassment, grooming, some swearing and spoilers to various PC games. Please take care before reading on.)

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Today it’s been 6 months since I found out a favorite Let’s Player (LPer) that I used to follow on YouTube, was accused of sexual harassment by a YouTuber and grooming a child on an old chat forum! It was the news that caused me to not only have my first meltdown in 8 months, but it was the first time in a while that I have more than one meltdown in a month! I wrote a blog here back in March about the scandal as it has the details of what happened, how it negatively affected me and how it caused me to gain trust issues because of the scandal.

A month after I posted that blog, the LPer came out and cleared up some of the things they were accused of (which I covered on another blog), which caused many to take back all the terrible things they said to them when the scandal first broke out in January. After I gather my thoughts over the event, I end up forgiving them as well since they admit their mistake and am willing to get help for their actions, which is a brave thing to do.

But even after the scandal ended on a somewhat, bittersweet note, I decided that I was going on a hiatus on watching Let’s Plays (LPs) from not just them, but from EVERYONE I followed on YouTube as not only I lost trust, but was also suffering from burnout from trying to catch up to their latest videos! This made me sad because I have been watching LPs since 2013 and became a video game lover because of LPs. Now I’m worried that I will no longer like the genre because of one scandal that (mostly) took place outside of LPs.

Of course this wasn’t the first time I took a break from watching them. I did back in 2021 when none of the videos that the LPers I followed posted looked interesting. Then I came back a year later with full the energy and ready to go! But now, I’m worried that my second and current break will be a permanent one. If that’s the case, then I’m thankful for the LPs for getting me through university when I needed a break from doing school work and life.

Even if I’m taking a break from watching LPs, I won’t be leaving YouTube just yet. Instead, I decided to watch Long Plays, which is a Let’s Plays but without the commentary from the player and you can just focus on the game instead. It’s like you’re actually playing the game yourself! That’s what I did for the first few months since the scandal broke out. Most of the Long Plays I watched were from PC games that I grew up playing, but probably never beat them for some reason. So, here are some of the Long Plays I watched this year.

The first Long Play I watched was the Nancy Drew CD-ROM game that HER studio made back in the 90s’. They were based off mystery novels that I read back in elementary school. There was a chance that some of you might have played their games growing up! When I was 9 years old, my parents gave me 5 Nancy Drew CD-ROM games for Christmas.

Despite enjoying the books, I could never beat the games for various reasons. Mainly due to the graphic looking creepy as the first two games, Secrets Can Kill and Stay Tuned for Danger were made in the late 90s’ and how you get a game over if you mess up. Like the ways you get a game over in the game, is terrifying! Because of that, the Nancy Drew CD-ROM games was one of the many games I could never beat growing.

Thankfully, there are Long Plays of the longtime series on YouTube. Out of the 34 games (!) in the Nancy Drew game, I only saw Stay Tuned for Danger, The Secret of Shadow Ranch & Curse of Blackmoor Manor. For Stay Tuned for Danger, the 2nd Nancy Drew game, I remember being creeped out by the character models because this game came out of in 1998. Like look at bottom picture.

Doesn’t that look horrifying!

Then there was the ending to Stay Tuned for Danger, which was one of the most infamous one where if you miss up, you get a game over by getting killed by the culprit! Maybe I did the right thing by watching a Long Play instead as if the graphics wasn’t going to scare me; it’s how the game ends!

Next was The Secret of Shadow Ranch. This was the 10th Nancy Drew game that came out in 2004. This was also the game where the character models have an upgrade to not make it look as creepy as the earlier games. It still looks eh thought. I remember getting stuck early in the game and never made it further to the 1st day! At least I knew how the game ends thanks to printed out walkthrough that I used to have. But the culprit for the game was both creepy and scary if you get caught at the end of the game!

The last game was Curse of Blackmoor Manor. It’s the 11th Nancy Drew game and I heard it was one of the best game that HER release! The setting of this game in an old mansion in the United Kingdom and I found the setting and the supernatural theme too creepy to play. Thank goodness for the Long Play so I can see how the story goes without risking my anxiety by playing it by myself. But too bad the culprit at the end was a letdown.

And that was it for the Long Plays of the game thought. I think I either got burnout or my mind went somewhere else and moved on to something else.

The next Long Play that I watched was the SpongeBob SquarePants CD-ROM games that THQ release in the early 2000s. For anyone who played their games remember the “quality” cut scenes that is actually pretty funny because it kind of fit the theme of this silly show. I remember me and my oldest niece used to play the games a lot growing up. Three of the games that is: Operation Krabby Patty, Employee of the Month, Battle for Bikini Bottom. And we managed to beat all 3 of them, too bad it took forever to beat them since we were kids and that sometimes we don’t read the text carefully or have bad timing skills in some of the mini games.

The first SpongeBob Long Play I watched was Operation Krabby Patty. It was the first PC game that came out in 2002. It was a point-and-click game that has two different sub-plots about Plankton causing nothing but trouble for SpongeBob and friends. It has 5 mini games that are played in different order based which sub-plot you play on. The games were simple and bland. Well it’s the first SpongeBob PC game, so that what you expect. Despite that, it has a bunch of continuity porn from the first 2 seasons!

Then in one the famous “cut scenes” that I saw on the Long Play, Plankton made fucking Survivor reference that definitely flew over me and my niece’s head when we were kids! Made sense since the game came around the same time the reality show got big. At least the game was easy enough for me and niece to beat.

The second SpongeBob Long Play I watched was Employee of the Month, which came out a year later. Now this game was a true point-and-click where you have SpongeBob goes around Bikini Bottom doing errands for various characters in order to get him to King’s Neptune’s Paradise. The quality cut scenes carried on in this game but unlike Operation Krabby Patty, Employee of the Month was more liked due to adding ton of depth in the world of Bikini Bottom. Like, we saw more of Rock Bottom compared to its’ debut episode from season 1!

I remember liking Employee of the Month better than Operation Krabby Patty, but I remembered it took forever to beat the game because I was a dumb kid who never likes to read the text carefully. At least I get to see some of my childhood memory by watching the Long Play.

The last SpongeBob Long Play I watched was Battle for Bikini Bottom, which came out a year after Employee of the Month. No, no, not the famous console version. The PC version of Battle for Bikini Bottom! Yes, the PC version is way different compare to the console version that everyone grew up with. Basically, it’s a point-and-click mini game, just like Operation Krabby Patty, but better. There are 5 areas in the game that you go to and beat the robots the Plankton has release into Bikini Bottom (well sort of).

As I was watching the Long Play, I starting to get flashbacks on some of the mini games that took me and my niece forever to beat as kids due to us being bad at timing. I remember getting into fights on who should play the hard mini games as well…

But then there this mini game in the pirate bay area that we could never beat. It was a boxing mini game and the robot gets harder, the higher the ranks we go. I remember one day doing something wired in the game and then I get a pop up saying that, “Oh you got all the objects you needed to clear the mini game. So, you can move on”. I was surprised that the game gave me the green pass to move on to the next level! Of course, whenever I replayed the mini game in a different save file, I could never get to do that trick again and wondered why.

Then a decade later, it turns out what I did in that mini game is a save scumming trick by exit the level (where it auto saved the items you collected) and when you came back, the robots get reset back to easy rank, so this means you can avoid fighting the highest rank robot and can beat the level with no problem! When I saw that on the game’s TV Trope page, it blew my mind that I did a save scum move without even trying!

And then I got to the Chum Bucket area, where there was some inappropriate humor that defiantly flew by our heads growing up.

Such as…

…THIS SCENE!!!

Like 9 year old me know purple is the correct answer, so I didn’t even bother looking at the other choices.

But 28 year old me was HORRIFFED when I know what translucent is (go look up the definition on your own terms)! Like I know the show has some adult humor, but man I’m surprised that they got away with putting that in the game! Then I get to the later section of the game where Sandy Cheeks made two double entendre about SpongeBob’s “size”…

Despite that, I remember beating the game and getting to see the ending. But I prefer the console version of the game since I remember that better than the PC version.

And that’s it for me watching Long Plays as of this year. Now while there’s other video games that I’m interested in (but have no time or is too broke to get) in watching. But my executive dysfunction and my burnout won’t let me and it sucks! So one day when my mind would let me, I’ll keep on watching more Long Plays.

As for LPs, I’m not ready to come back yet. I think it’s still too soon to watch them again after all that happened back in January. Maybe another 6 more months then I’ll come back? If not, then oh well. At least I tried. Instead, I’ll be sticking to Long Plays, anime and crime documentaries instead as they are the 3 things that I’ll watch when my executive dysfunction allows me.

But now, I’m currently watching the new episodes of Total Drama instead as I mention in my last (and very long) blog as it not only brought back my special interest of the series from an 8 year hiatus, but is helping me keep me distracted from hearing all the terrible things that is going on in the world. And it’s helping me move on from the scandal, which made me happy as I was worried that the scandal be stuck with me for the rest of my life!

Hopefully, there will be no more bad news in the things I love that will cause to have another meltdown.