DarksydePhil/Analysis

There are many reasons why DarksydePhil is one of the most disliked Let's Players on the internet, but the main reason is because he breaks every unwritten rule in the LP play book. Whether it is his lack of gameplay skill, crass and tasteless humour that even Seth MacFarlane would cringe at, or dodging all fault every time he screws up, many people tend to look at Phil as a prime example of how not to make a good Let's Play.

Phil's history of bad LP's is so extensive that this playlist of 449 "This Is How You DON'T Play" videos has spawned from him.

Important Notes:
 * 1) Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not sufficient. Hard as it is to imagine at times, Phil does have a fanbase, no matter how small a niche it is. It has to fail to appeal even to that niche to qualify as this.
 * 2) Phil's Let's Plays aren't horrible just because someone riffed it in a TIHYDP video. There needs to be independent evidence to list it. (Though once it is listed, they can provide the detailed review(s) or, in special cases, the sole link.)
 * 3) Do not include any details of Phil's personal life; only keep the following entries confined to his Let's Plays since those are the main bulk of his content. You can briefly mention his personality, so long as it is an actual detriment to his content.
 * 4) If you come across a particularly bad LP of Phil's, explain why it is horrible in a civilised manner. This isn't Encyclopedia Dramatica, after all.
 * 5) If one of his LPs is good, say so. Don't pretend that it's horrible, or at the very least name some positive elements if you are able to.
 * 6) This page is about the LPs, not the player. Remember the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment.

Bad DSP Let's Plays

 * His Black Mesa playthrough, as seen here, has Phil at his worst in terms of gameplay. Not only does he ignore the tutorial, he also struggles to do a crouch jump for most of the playthrough. He asks what it is early on, and ends up fumbling on his attempts to perform the crouch jump due to his lack of knowledge on the game itself. Among his gameplay mistakes include his habit of rushing through enemy-filled areas that predictably go as well as you would imagine. Then he gets to a segment where he needs to crouch jump onto pipes, and he spends nearly twenty minutes trying in vain to jump onto the pipes. The cherry on top is when he eventually learned how to do the crouch jump; when someone on Twitter informed him of it, he assumed it was a glitch ("bugged jumping mechanic" as he puts it)! He throws the barrel needed to make the jump onto the ground below and repeatedly misses the jump he needs to make. He dies multiple times and blames the game and the creators of Black Mesa for his own mistakes.
 * His playthrough of Catherine is incredibly tedious to watch. Given the nature of the game itself, it comes as no surprise that Phil would spent the first few parts of the game making crude sex jokes every chance he got. As far as the gameplay goes, the fun begins as early as the first stage; he fumbles his way through each puzzle, needlessly over-complicates his situations by missing obvious solutions up the tower, spends so much time stuck on a single puzzle at various points, and doesn't bother talking to the sheep on the landings between each stage to learn any of the more advanced techniques. As expected, Phil blames the developers for every mistake he makes, and constantly bitches about the game's difficulty to the point where he eventually lowers the difficulty to Easy (something he rarely does, by the way). In the end, Phil only finishes a single playthrough of the game and gets the Full Chaos ending, and doesn't attempt any other endings. You can see the highlights for yourself here, and here.
 * In 2015, Phil played Crash Bandicoot for the first time, and oh boy was it a travesty! First, he dies to the very first enemy he's faced with. Second, most of his deaths are the result of poor timing on his part. His commentary here is particularly awful, constantly saying "OOGA-BOOGA" each time he picked up an Aku-Aku mask, and "bouncy bouncy" when jumping on a spring crate, in addition to just being completely obnoxious as he played (something that he had gotten on other people for doing). There are moments were he would trot out his usual "beginner's trap" excuse, which is often the result of a poorly timed jump, or just not paying attention to what's going on. It gets particularly bad towards the end of the game with "The Lab", where he spends ages trying to beat the level, and doing such a poor job of it, accumulating over 50 deaths and 5 Game Overs in this one level alone. Throughout the whole playthrough, Phil manages to only collect a single gem out of 26. The total death count is 325 deaths, and 16 Game Overs. Just to give you an idea of how bad this was, there are six TIHYDP compilation videos.
 * He replayed the game 2 years later through the N.Sane Trilogy, and he somehow did even worse here; still having a poor grasp on how the game works, blaming the developers for every single error he makes, constant whining about "bullshit" level design, not bothering to learn the level layouts and platform timings, etc. The only positive that can be taken away from it is that he actually beat the previously cut level "Stormy Ascent", and got the 2 keys for the secret levels, which he also completed. Other than that though, he repeats the same mistakes he made the first time around, and racked up even more deaths, reaching as high as 427 deaths and 18 Game Overs.
 * His playthrough of the second game in the series, Crash Bandicoot 2, is not only just as bad as the first, but it also demonstrates Phil's inability to do anything for himself. A few deaths into the game, Phil out of nowhere decides to do a 100% run of the game, which would be fine if he didn't have the stream chat to tell him how to play the damn thing. Kid you not, his chat tells him everything he needs to know; how to get the gems, how to get the coloured gems, secret levels, and even the 10 extra life trick. He never tries anything for himself in this playthrough. He also blames his failures on lag, glitches, platform timings, and everything he can think of every single time. The real kick in the crotch though, was after he finished "Totally Bear", one of the secret levels, his cut the stream off and stated he would only continue if he got more money from his Patreon supporters. The second half wasn't any better, as he still ran into Nitro boxes, enemies, stage hazards, bottomless pits, all while still blaming the game for each cock-up. He manages to hit 508 deaths by the time he fully completes the game. You can check out Part 1 of the TIHYDP here, and Part 2 here, courtesy of Freddy Fazfuck.
 * Having already played the first two games in the series, and considering it is known for being easier than its predecessors, one would think Phil would do well with Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (again via the N.Sane Trilogy), right? Well...no. Once again, he relies on the stream chat to help him with almost every secret level, area, and hidden gem the game offers. Phil is so unobservant in fact, that the stream chat even had to tell him that he needed to break time crates open in the Time Trials! He once again fumbles over simple platform jumps, runs into enemies, holes, and hazards, and cursing out the developers for the mistake he was making. He even starts talking out of his ass about wireless controllers dropping inputs, when he just has really poor reflexes. Like the previous title, Phil does a 100% run of the game despite never playing the game before until now. His biggest struggles were with the Pura and Motorbike stages, the latter of which prompted many restarts (51 to be exact). While his death count "only" reaches 494 this time, add the restarts to it, and it rises to 545 screw-ups.
 * Watching him play Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled is nothing short of torture. It embodies some of his worst gameplay and commentary in a long time. For starters, he almost never makes proper use of the Boost mechanic, and complains about his opponents using weapons against him, when he can do the same to them. He spends most of his race time driving into walls, weapons placed by opponents, running off the track, into stage hazards, and getting demolished by the AI, all the while complaining about the difficulty and comparing the game to Mario Kart on the SNES. At no point does he really try to improve his driving skill, and even has the gall to insult the fans of the original title by assuming they're wearing nostalgia goggles. He even trots out his usual "beginner's trap" excuse on Dingo Canyon after falling off the track... by going behind the waterfall, despite common sense dictating that stuff like that in set dressing, and not part of the actual course. Check out the TIHYDP here if you think you stomach his barrage of Mario Kart comparisons and complaints about the difficulty; they  will  get on your nerves after a short while.
 * His Dark Souls and Demon's Souls playthroughs are essentially the same playthroughs: He has trouble adapting to the games due to his lack of patience. He tries rushing through the first game with predictable results. He then rage quit from the first game, in late 2011, and came back a couple years later, this time with his Twitch chat handholding him the whole way. He even played Dark Souls 2 and 3, and he didn't improve there either.
 * In 2017, he did a "Redemption Run" of Dark Souls, and it's apparent that he did not improve at all. The "Redemption Run" rules were simple: No overpowered weapons, no help, no excuses. To nobody's surprise, he breaks all of these rules, blames FromSoftware and looks at the Stream Chat well over 1500 times! Overall, he somehow does worse overall in his Redemption Run! Originally, it was a poll that people could vote on what game they wanted to see Phil play: Scarface, Bloodborne: The Old Hunters, or Jak 3. The poll was meaningless, because Phil accused the trolls with tampering with the poll to make him play Scarface for reasons that only make sense to him. The poll is disregarded, and he chose to do Dark Souls Redemption Run. What doesn't help is that the Dark Souls series has become somewhat of a Creator's Pet to Phil.
 * Phil's playing of Dead Rising HD was excruciatingly painful. Not only because of his utter disdain of the first game, but particularly for those who are fans of the series. His inability to handle several boss fights, understanding how the game works, and dying repeatedly due to mistakes that he makes. Keep in mind he disliked the original Dead Rising and rage quit, and he bought the HD version a decade later, which begs the question on what an HD remaster would win him over. One particular boss fight he struggles on is the second fight against Carlito in the mall. Instead of fighting with a gun, he tries to take down Carlito, who's armed with a sniper rifle - with a wooden plank, mirroring the opposite from his Metal Gear Solid 3 fight with the End. When his stream chat was pointing out where to find a gun to help him, he shuns them, saying it's cheating. Keep in mind he had no problems cheating in the end of Grand Theft Auto games, and he does end up cheating several times in this very playthrough! He neglects to level up during the beginning, which results in a much difficult beginning. He incorrectly tries to compare this game to GTA and Dark Souls, which this game is far from. A TIHYDP of this game can be seen here.
 * His Devil May Cry 1 playthrough shows Phil's inability to understand, or adapt to game mechanics. He plays the game like a third-person shooter: instead of using melee weapons to deal more damage to his foes, he uses the shotgun instead. The player is supposed to use melee to start combos, and use guns as a filler to extend combos. When his stream chat told him about this, he listened and did it for about a minute before going back to the shotgun. He complains about the game's puzzles, particularly jumping puzzles. Phil complains about a gap that requires a floating ability and tries to make the jump in vain until he noticed he had that ability. Moreover, he played Devil May Cry 3 and 4 with no noticeable improvements between them. Watch the TIHYDP on 1
 * His Grand Theft Auto playthroughs are mostly this:
 * His Grand Theft Auto: Vice City playthrough starts off promising, then it quickly descends into being terrible. "Highlights" include starting missions unprepared, lacking ammo for most of the second main island missions, and lacking sufficient weaponry. He gets wasted nearly 100 times, most of which are due to his own unpreparedness. Of course, he blames the game for every mistake that he makes. A perfect example of him trying to rush through the game is the "Sir, Yes, Sir!" mission, where he has to steal a Rhino tank from heavily armed army members. Several of his attempts end poorly because he never realizes the convoy can be destroyed by a rocket launcher. He often tries to take the enemy out in the open instead of covering, leaving himself open to gunfire. During his attempts at the "G-spotlight" mission, he starts bashing the developers for inane reasons. You can watch the TIHYDP here.
 * Having come off from his playthrough of Vice City, he somehow does even worse in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It nicely demonstrates that Phil never learned anything from his Vice City playthrough! He misses important details, such as a baseball bat needed for a mission, setting an ally on fire with a flamethrower, and crashes his planes during a late game mission. He complains about driving in a game which was built for driving, going as far as saying "it's Grand Theft Auto, not Grand Drive Auto!". Instead of buying safe houses to lessen travel time between missions, he usually ignores them altogether. He even blames the traffic on some missions, even though he was driving on the wrong side of the road. One detail Phil misses is during the Outrider mission, where assumes Mike Toreno was driving a van, when he used a rocket launcher to destroy the van, killing Toreno in the process. He also complains about the game's radio stations, stating that people have bad taste in music if they like reggae music. With that all said, he did manage to clear the mission "Wrong Side of the Tracks" on his first try (it isn't difficult if you know what you're doing). Here is the TIHYDP, if you can survive it.
 * Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, which was his last original playthrough of the franchise, barring replays, still ends up being terrible. It shows his navigation skills are still not very good. He routinely gets stuck when driving on side roads, falls into the water, and manages to blow up his own cars. You would think by now, he has the basic mechanics of Grand Theft Auto remembered after a hiatus, but nope. This is best exemplified during the "Love on the Rocks" mission, where he has a sub-machine gun and not once does he use it. Another highlight is him mistaking a side job mission for an actual storyline for several minutes, until he realizes this mistake. He also complains about the game's radio stations and the game's frame rate. He rarely reloads his saves after getting busted or wasted, making his money issue later on worse. Watch here for the usual TIHYDP.
 * Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories shows that once again, his own inability to adapt to the game's mechanics gets the worst of him. He complains about tough missions, particularly "Tune in, Turn On, Bug Out," widely considered the hardest mission in the game. It takes him 50 minutes to finally complete that mission. He, much like the previous entries of GTA games, blames the game for mistakes that he makes. To complicate the playthrough, he never reloads his saves after getting wasted or busted, making these missions more problematic for him. You would think that he would know from being in business school that $8,000 revenue is better than $5,000 revenue, but in the game's Empire mode, he loses money because of his short-sighted moves that he makes. He even buys a minigun for a late-game mission in close combat with a car nearby him, which works as well as you would expect. Here is the TIHYDP of Vice City Stories.
 * Although he did quite bad in his playthrough of Grand Theft Auto V, his replay on the PlayStation 4, which was done in First Person Perspective, somehow ended up even worse. You already know it's off to a great start when he targets Michael de Santa and kills him instead of the security guard. He does even worse in most of his missions, and cannot handle driving missions. Once again, he doesn't pay attention to on-screen tutorials or during mission briefings, leading to some mission failures. As usual, he complains about how Grand Theft Auto V's "awful" soundtrack is and how the older games had better music, even though he disliked most of the games' radio stations. He never completes this playthrough due to the game locking up on the 51st part of the video series and the game cannot be played again. Once again, you can watch the usual TIHYDP here.
 * Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy shows Phil's inability to follow directions, complain about the lack of checkpoints and him not paying attention to the game. He starts off the playthrough on the wrong note with having trouble finding Scout Flies needed to progress in the first area of the game. He continuously collides into Dark Eco boxes, even after Daxter warned him about it. He struggles on the platforming segments because of poor timing with his jumps. One boss fight he has a lot of trouble on is Klaww, and that's because of his impatience. He tries rushing through his boss fight and falls into the lava several times. He even goes as far as complaining about lava being instant death, even though there have been a lot of platformers that he's played where it's an instant death hazard. His habit of talking over the NPCs costs him valuable information that is useful, such as special moves that are needed to beat the game. Had he utilized the spin kick more often, he wouldn't have had as bad of a time with platforming than he did. He bashes Naughty Dog throughout the second half of the playthrough and complains about their "shortcomings." The worst part was in the Spider Caves where he rants for minutes on end about the people who criticise him, calling them "elitist", and telling them they should "shut the fuck up!" Watch here for the usual TIHYDP.
 * If you thought Phil's Jak and Daxter playthrough was bad, he manages to do significantly worse in his Jak II playthrough. You could tell it was not going to go well when he manages to struggle doing the double jump mechanic in the introduction level. His complaints about the lack of checkpoints quickly get tiring, particularly he tries trading damage with the enemies, and often he ends up dying as a result. Each and every time he does die, he blames the game and Naughty Dog for his mistakes. He also uses inappropriate weapons for enemies and boss fights, rushes through hordes of enemies, and wonders why he dies at times. Him bashing the Jak II fans is eerily similar to how he treated the Spider-Man (2000) fans. He goes as far as blaming just about everything except himself when he dies due to him making mistakes. Special notice must be made during the Erol race, where he spends 38 minutes (!!) on one racing segment, restarting after even one mistake is made. During the time Phil races Erol, he trashes the fans of the game in a sophomoric and immature manner. Here's part 1 of the TIHYDP.
 * While it wasn't as bad as Jak II, Phil has a lot of problems with Jak 3. The first part of the playthrough has him fumbling and messing around with the game's audio options, not realizing the game doesn't have any surround sound. He also hasn't learned from his mistakes in the first two Jak games. He repeatedly fails minigames and puzzles due to his own carelessness and trying to rush through the puzzles (and for that matter, the game itself). This is even taking in consideration that Jak 3 is the easiest game in the trilogy due to its Sequel Difficulty Drop, Phil somehow ends up making a lot of mistakes on his part and not learning from his previous mistakes. You can watch here for a synopsis of his playthrough.
 * His playthrough of the first Ratchet & Clank demonstrates how Phil can't be bothered to play the game as the developers intended. An inversion of his Devil May Cry LP, he spends most of the playthrough trying to smack his foes with the wrench instead of using the game's arsenal of weapons. Even when he does use the guns, he uses unsuitable weapons on certain enemies (like using the Walloper on mutant puffa-fish, or the Glove of Doom against tanks), and wastes his ammo frequently resulting in him constantly spending his bolts needlessly. In a moment of pure idiocy, he spends 30,000 bolts on a Health upgrade instead of waiting to hit 40,000 for the Tesla Claw, one of the better weapons in the game (he didn't have the Persuader, so he wouldn't have that discount). Not to mention he bitches constantly about enemies being "cheap", not having any ammo, and redoing long stretches of gameplay, all due to his own incompetence. In another moment of complete idiocy, he restocks ammo from the Gadgetron PDA despite only standing a few feet away from a vendor, causing him to go into the final boss woefully unequipped! If you can bare his ineptitude and constant checkpoint complaints, here's the TIHYDP for it.
 * Phil then played Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando in 2014 and he fares even worse. He neglects to upgrade his weapons, and he's surprised that they didn't work, he never purchases the Minirocket Tube (a rocket launcher), which is surprisingly effective against enemies, and his weapon choice is often baffling, such as using the Heavy Lancer on an enemy in the latter portion of the game. He fails challenges and the Electrolizer/Infiltrator minigames because of his impatience and not bothering to understand how they work, and once again, he rushes through packs of enemies with predictable results. Phil often uses the wrench instead of his weapons, which prevents them from gaining experience and leaving them weak later on. He sings when trying to find Raritanium, which easily gets grating after a while (he literally sings "Raritanium" over and over). There is one part of the LP that becomes desynched, which he leaves in until the end of the video. He also claims certain items are useless when they're not, such as the Box Breaker. You know the strafing mechanic that was introduced in this game? Besides the introduction stage, he never uses it again. Watch here for the TIHYDP.
 * We all know how Phil is when it comes to good games, but when it comes to bad games, he is no better. Like his brief playthrough of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, for example: the game itself is already notorious for its poor graphics, outdated design, empty levels, and shallow gameplay loop, but Phil still finds a way to screw it up. While the playthrough is more amusing than horrible, there are still things to comment on. For starters, he does a poor job of linking his tricks together, leaving his scores very low, and he was struggling to get the bare minimum for the few stages he did, meaning he had a difficult time progressing through the game comfortably. His usual DSP complaints are on display here, as to be expected at this point. That said, some of his bails were due to shoddy programming on the developer's part, including one funny glitch that sent him flying.
 * Worth noting is that Phil only did the first two stages, and a bit of the third before he quit playing. This was when he realised the game had recycled missions, sloppy controls, and limited appeal. Probably a blessing in disguise for him considering the later stages are even worse than what he already played. You can see for yourself right here.
 * Phil has been known to ignore guides and on-screen instructions before when playing games. This is very noticeable in his The Witcher 2 playthrough, where he ignores the entire tutorial and wonders why he dies a lot. He slams the keyboard, ignores NPCs' advice, and even runs headfirst into fire from a breathing dragon. He calls it bullshit, when in fact, he was at fault for ignoring the game in the first place. He also dies during boss fights and blames the game, CD Projekt and others for his own mistakes. During one of the boss fights, he slams his keyboard when it's "broken" in an attempt to get it to working again. His understanding of the game's combat system is suspect at best when he gets jumped on multiple enemies and wonders why he died. He ended up disabling comments on the playthrough due to the backlash he received. Watch here for the usual TIHYDP.


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