Lets Play / Kikoskia

"Welcome back, folks, one and all, to Let's Play [insert game title here]. When last we left off..."

— Kikoskia's introduction in his videos

Kikoskia (real name Damien Jennison) is a fairly noteworthy English creator of Let's Play videos on YouTube. Some of the strong points of his commentary are his generally amiable personality, whimsical yet snarky sense of humor, tendency to hang lampshades on common tropes and cliches, and almost total lack of the profanity or vulgarity that's all too common to the genre. Most of the games he plays tend to be RPGs or Adventure Games, and many of the first games he played were originally made for the Sega Megadrive^note played on emulation for ease of recording.

Kikoskia also briefly ran The Library Bizarre, a review site that focuses on lesser-known, often out-of-print fantasy and science fiction works. He also occasionally collaborates with other Let's Players such as Helloween 4545 and Necroscope 86, as well as tabletop RPGs that can also be viewed on his channel.

Not to be confused with Kickassia.

For those wanting a (mostly) up-to-date list of all the let's plays Kikoskia has done or is doing, you can check them out at this link.

He now has a Twitch channel and an official webpage.

Ongoing LP's are:

• Alternating on regular days: Betrayal at Krondor and Quest for Glory I
• Twitch Stream VODs (published two days after the streams except on Sundays): Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Wildermyth, Streets of Rogue and assorted Game Boy games
• Sunday "Let's Replay" slot (three episodes in a row plus any extras): Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition

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This Let's Player provides examples of:

• Aborted Let's Play: His Daikatana LP, due to a Game-Breaking Bug that crashed the game in a loading screen to the Ice Lab, corrupting his save file.
• Acting for Two: In-Universe as a Running Gag. If he's doing the voice of another, made-up character (Such as Rocket Jockey McGee from Action 52 or the Pirate during Guild of Dungeoneering), he will engage in conversation with that character. One of the more notable cases is his Legend of Grimrock LP, where he roleplays conversations between his four randomly-generated characters as he runs through the dungeon.
• Adaptational Villainy: When he roleplays Barbie in his Barbie games, he usually plays her as the most evil person in the game and only helps people for her own benefit and at their eventual expense.
• Anti-Climax: In his 13th episode of his livestreamed Let's Play of OpenXCom, his final mission was against a crashed Floater scout. He saw a floater right off the bat and mind-controlled it on his first attempt. It was the only surviving alien. His moment of Stunned Silence and subsequent Sarcastic Clapping took longer (13 seconds) than the mission itself (7 seconds)). Not one of his units even left the Skyranger.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: As part of the Self-Imposed Challenge in his Mount and Blade LP, Kiko restricts himself to recruiting only captured bandits and their own liberated former captives until he acquires holdings of his own to recruit from.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In his Let's Play of Daikatana
  "She's probably dead. Or worse, evil. Or worse, in this game."
• Ascended Extra: In the XCOM Enemy Within VODs, Fayola Mayunde was one of the generic XCOM security guards, but one of the viewer-generated recruits was named and modelled after her.
• Bears Are Bad News:
  • He gets antsy whenever he encounters a bear in his Baldur's Gate playthrough, because one bear is tough enough to wreck his party. When a group of druids summons bears (plural) in a fight, he absolutely loses it.
  • In his Neverwinter Nights OC game, he put his enemies on the receiving end of the trope, by playing a druid with a bear animal companion and using "bear" as his go-to wild shape choice.
  • This continues with the zombie bears in The Organ Trail.
  • NotABear from the Death Road to Canada VODs had the Angry-Strong, Sociopath, and Grating personality Combos, making him a terrifying and annoying individual. He also maxed+1 all of his combat skills, acquired a flaming greatsword, a chainsaw and a minigun, which allowed him to carve through enemies with ease. Fortunately, the majority of his victims were zombies and bandits, though he bullied and robbed the occasional vendor and was responsible for Billy's accidental death by immolation.
• Big "WHAT?!": In The Legend of Kyrandia 2: Hand of Fate, Kiko is sent on a fool's quest to pay various questionable people for a trip to the center of the earth. Then he discovers that he could simply have had Zanthia jump down an air vent. His reaction is this.
  • A notable one (two!) in his Final Doom: Evilution playthrough, after he spends a full 9-minute video (and some of the previous one) searching for a very cryptic switch to progress. Enjoy (28 seconds in).
  • In his Ultima VII: The Black Gate playthrough, he reacts to the questions of Batlin's weird personality quiz with increasing disbelief, leading up to an amusing example of this here in episode 44.
• Brief Accent Imitation: By the time he starts playing Rocket Jockey during his Action 52 Let's Play, poor Kiko is clearly beginning to crack. Hilarity Ensues as he comes up with the character Rocket Jockey McGee, using a completely silly voice, imitating an ridiculous western twang, and delivering commentary that's even more outrageous than the voice and accent put together. It's hardly brief, though.
  • Also whenever he's reading dialogue, he'll do some voice-acting.
• Brown Bag Mask: When replaying Action 52 for the Sega Genesis, he uses Sketch—a very crude drawing program—to draw a self-portrait. Instead of a face, he draws himself wearing this.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Keith in the UFO: Aftermath series, who both starts out as the slowest character on the team and has an accent that's as thick as molasses, making him an easy target for Kiko's wisecracks.
    • As the game progresses, he turns out as one of the most valuable members of the team though. His place as Butt-Monkey is subsequently taken by Gaston II.
  Kikoskia: Keith has managed to make something of himself! You, Gaston II, are a loadstone made of uranium!
  • In his original X-COM: UFO Defense playthrough, this role goes to Drake, who spends large amounts of any given mission either panicking, berserk, or under alien mind control.
• Captain Obvious: Although good-humored and with a talent for tongue-in-cheek humor, Kiko especially likes to comment on even the most obvious and self-evident things in games.
• Catchphrase: Several.
  • "Hey, buddy."
  • "You and me, [object/NPC], we're going on an adventure!"
  • "For no particular reason."
  • "Adventure!"
  • "And then die immediately because X."
  • "Batlin levels of evil."
  • "Do we have to X? I don't want to X."
  • “Have a grena-a-a-ade!”
  • “CHAAAAAAAAAINGUN, ha-ha!”
• Cherry Tapping: In his Command & Conquer LP, at the end of the last GDI mission, he destroys the Temple of NOD with an army of technicians^note The pistol-armed civilians who come out of buildings when you dismantle them.
  • This is immediately paired with There Is No Kill Like Overkill when he uses an airstrike to kill the last NOD trooper remaining on the map.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In one of the earlier episodes of the Hardcore Minecraft LP, you can see one of the Creepers that will ultimately kill him walking into the Nether Portal he's built.
• Comically Missing the Point: Kikoskia's reaction to Awesome Possum's exclamation "Stop polluting!" (in his playthrough of Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt):
  Kiko: He's not polluting! He's running around with a chainsaw!^note in the Rain Forest...

• Continuity Nod: Whenever he's playing a game where he can customize character names, he'll often pick names from previous games he's played.
  • For his replay of Video Game X-COM: UFO Defense, he's brought back the Guild Pirate from The Guild Of Dungeoneering.
• Deadpan Snarker: Very few plot holes, wonky mechanics, or unusual occurrences pass unremarked, especially if he thinks the game is rather subpar to begin with.
• Destructive Saviour: In his Mount and Blade playthrough, Kikoskia's character attempts to defend the village of Veidar from bandits in his first foray into the wider world. He wins by virtue of the fact that his character is literally the last man standing on the battlefield, all of the peasants having been killed or knocked out during the fight.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In Barbie Magic Genie Adventure, a unicorn makes Barbie do a fetch quest for him, then taunts her about it, reminding her that she's nothing more than a video game character and that even if she takes over the world, she'll still be trapped. When she declares she'll escape, he continues taunting her, pointing out she's not the first to have tried.
• Downer Ending:
  • Kiko plays challenge variations on the already Nintendo Hard X-COM games. It doesn't end well.
  • He gave Enemy Unknown another go, though, and other than the quick loss of Sub Zero, did MUCH better, actually winning the game. Granted, he didn't do a challenge that time around, but considering how unforgiving these games are, that's hardly something worthy of shame. If anything, it's proof he's still sane.
  • The ultimate fate of all three of his Minecraft Hardcore playthroughs. In Kiko's first attempt, due to leaving his Nether Portal unprotected, mobs walked into it throughout the game and killed him when he returned to the Nether to get more Soul Sand. On his second playthrough, he met his end with an ill-fated attempt to cure a baby zombie villager. His third attempt ended with him dying to a Creeper as he was rearranging his inventory following a mining trip.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Minecraft Hardcore ends with Kiko getting blown up by Creepers the second he enters the Nether. This is largely his own fault, since he left his Portal out in the open, allowing Overworld mobs to enter it. His second go at Minecraft Hardcore ended quite disastrously, being routed by a baby Zombie he attempted to cure. His third go ended with him being ambushed and killed by another Creeper as he was organizing his inventory.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: What is the reward his character Spunty McGoo receives for saving a village from bandit marauders (sort of)? A solitary cabbage.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: His earlier videos are generally more subdued and feature less of his typical whimsical humor.
  • His early Updated Re Release Let's Plays used the "Let's Play [game title] Again" name format. Only once it became a regular feature did he start using the "Let's Replay [game title]" format in naming such LPs.
  • An odd quirk of his early Let's Plays was him randomly going on a short (one word or sentence) tangent against Communism, such as randomly shouting out "Communist!" at game enemies. It's unknown why these tangents occurred, and have all but ceased in recent games.
• Epileptic Trees: He occasionally engages in idle (and silly) speculation as filler during slow moments in his videos. Here he speculates that human civilization in the UFO Afterblank series is being propped up by IKEA. [invoked]
• Everyone Laughs Ending: His first shot at playing Minecraft Hardcore had him laughing in disbelief after he spawned in solid stone and died in seconds.
• Eviler than Thou: Barbie will often dispatch the villain of the story because they are getting in the way of her own domination plots.
• Face Palm: In his Let's Play of Dungeon Quest, around the 6:15 mark of the seventh video, you can hear him whapping his forehead – and then explaining: "That's me facepalming."
  • Does this in King of Dragon Pass when men from his tribe got themselves cursed by sleeping with an elf in the woods...for the third time.
  • Does three facepalms in his LP Space Quest IV, twice of them in a row in the middle of eleventh video.
• "Far Side" Island: His second attempt at LP-ing Minecraft on Hardcore spawned him on what was basically one of these— a small island with a single oak tree and a few clumps of grass.
• Gatling Good: If his constant, enthusiastic cries of "CHAIIINGUN!" are anything to go by, this seems to be his favorite class of weapons in first-person shooters.

• Heroic Second Wind:
  • Kiko's battle with the Cyberdemon in Doom 3.
    Kikoskia: NO! – I REFUSE TO DIE LIKE THIS!!!
  • In a more meta example, his second XCOM playthrough was an effort to redeem his catastrophic defeat in its predecessor. He indeed wins this time around.
• Hollywood Tactics: In full force for his first playthroughs of UFO: Enemy Unknown and Terror from the Deep. He gets better in later playthroughs of X-COM and similar games, though, taking advantage of cover, tactics, teamwork, and combined arms.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: During his LP for Stonekeep:
  Kikoskia: This place is large, and it's called... the Feeding Grounds. The Feeding Grounds does not sound good... The only question I have to ask is, "Feeding grounds for what?"
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Lampshaded in this video, when Kikoskia discovers a fae rune. (Say it aloud.)
• Kleptomaniac Hero: His version of the Avatar from Ultima-This accusation is entirely baseless.
  • Iolo is actually the thief (not the Avatar) - This is because of a twist in the Ultima VII game engine which doesn't allow the Avatar to steal, but other members of the party can. This leads to a Running Gag.
  • Also from his Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition playthrough: "You'll notice that we're stealing blindly from everyone — 'cuz I'm a goit."

• Meaningful Background Event: If you pay close attention to the background of one of Kiko's Hardcore Minecraft videos, you'll see one of the Creepers that will ultimately kill him walking into his Nether Portal. It passes completely unremarked.

• Moral Event Horizon: Invoked in his Pikuniku playthrough. He treats Mr. Sunshine's admission that he doesn't pay one of his workers and instead tries to use "exposure" as a bargain chip to be the absolute proof that he's irredeemably evil.
• More Dakka: A most satisfying demonstration in his Ultimate Doom playthrough, where he mows down an entire room full of enemies with one long continuous blast from his chaingun.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: "Evi- I mean, Batlin."
• No Sense of Direction:
  • He's constantly getting lost in his Hardcore Minecraft series, much to the amusement of his viewers.
  • Exaggerated in his realMyst Let's Play: during an underground rail section in the Selenitic Age, he got lost after moving twice, then turning around 180° and going back, thinking he was going somewhere new.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Kiko characterizes Ymira in Mount & Blade as Spunty's straight man sidekick, being far saner, far more competent, and much less senile.
  • Repeated with Sharwyn alongside his druid in NWN.

• Ow, My Body Part!: A Running Gag in his Mount & Blade LP, typically along the lines of:
  "OH GOD MY FACE/SPLEEN"
• Precision F-Strike: Less than a dozen times, out of thousands of videos.
  • He says "Shit" a few times in his Lands of Lore playthrough, and promptly apologizes for his foul language
  • During his Silent Bomber playthrough:
    "'Do they have guns?' 'No, they all have bomb units, just like you, Jutah.' 'We're fucked.' ...That's exactly what they would say."
  • Near the end of Temple of Elemental Evil, Video 71:
    "Well, we're fucked. And I'm sorry I swore."
  • During his LP of Covert Action:
    "A large quantity of explosives has been purcha—Oh. Shit."
  • And lastly in his Final Doom: Evilution playthrough.
    "How about just running the fuck away?"
• Press Start to Game Over:
  • His Let's Play of Karateka is his shortest — 30 seconds from intro to farewell. He plays the actual game for all of 9 seconds, about half of which he stands still at the beginning. Then he gets into a fighting stance, gets out of the fighting stance, his character then takes a step back and falls off a cliff. Game over! No, seriously, that's exactly what happens.
  • His first stab at Hardcore Minecraft resulted in him spawning in solid rock, and thus dying in less than 20 seconds. He cracks up at this.
• Previously on…: Usually starts each video in an ongoing series (after the obligatory introduction) with a brief sentence or two recapping exactly what he's up to.
• Rage Quit: He's done this once, during his Let's Play of the notorious Nintendo version of Action 52, and it's hard to blame him. After spending half of video 13, all of Videos 14 and 15 and half of Video 16 playing Storm Over The Desert, which, like everything else on the cartridge, sucked, he had already decided that in the next video he would be not playing the next game regardless of whether or not he finished. Then he said, "In fact, I'm sick of Storm Over The Desert!" He then reset the game so he could go on to something else: the equally terrible Mash Man. And there was Evil Empire before that, which kept giving him lives to subject him to more suck. No wonder he felt so much fury when Storm Over The Desert came along and made things worse!
• Off the Rails: In his playthrough of The Stanley Parable, he does this as much as he possibly can. He only follows directions when there's nothing else he can do.
• Recurring Character: Bert the Zombie Pigman in his Minecraft LPs is a constant source of discussion.
• Red Shirt:
  • In his X-COM playthroughs, he always names one of his squad members Barry, whose sole duty is to run ahead of the squad and find aliens via getting shot at. After he inevitably dies, another trooper gets named Barry, and the process continues.
  • Subverted in his Let's Play X-Com UFO Defense Again playthrough, where his first Barry defies all logic by not only kicking total ass, but manages to live all the way to the very last mission of the game, where he finally dies not to aliens, but a panicked squad member.
  • In his playthrough of Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, the caption for his video of his first away mission reads "Who wants to take bets as to how many times I can get the redshirt killed on this mission alone?".
• Running Gag:
  • CHAAAAINGUN!!
  • On Ultima VII, his constant reinterpretations of "Rule Britannia".
  • IOLO, YOU THIEF!!
  • *whistling*
  • During the second Action 52 playthrough, whenever an enemy got stuck in a glitch (which was quite often) "Hello sir, you appear to be stuck in a glitch. Let me help you." -Shoots the enemy-
  • "Dance, [character], dance! Dance for my amusement!"
  • "Bzzzt!"
  • Whenever he describes a game as "manly"... it won't be.
  • "Craaaaazy bus!"
  • "No one takes a bullet to the face/bear attack to the neck/giant boulder to the head/[insert other bizarre and/or gruesome manner of death here] like Gaston!"
  • "I'm the hero of Veidar!" "What, that place where they all got massacred?"
  • "And now, we'll be doing X. And by X, I mean Y." (Often Y is nothing like X at all) ^note Usually whenever he misspeaks and then corrects himself on the spur of the moment, or when he wants to emphasize something odd, ridiculous, or just plain painful.
  • Zombie Crumpet - usually in The Organ Trail but once in NWN due to a graphics glitch making Crumpet glow green.
  • "Precious, precious rocks" in Anvil of Dawn.
  • In Crusader Kings II: "WHAT HAPPENED TO FRANCE?!"
  • "'By the way, ask me how humble I am.' 'How humble are you, [character]?' 'Exceptionally humble!'"
  • "Have at thee!" -Kills an enemy- "And thee was had at."
  • From Eye of the Beholder III, upside down egg stew.
  • "Zom-beh?!" (in regards to any instance where the game has zombies as an enemy Mook.)
• Self-Imposed Challenge: With some games, he enjoys giving himself certain handicaps to keep the game more challenging for himself and entertaining for his viewers. So far, these include:
  • The Antarctic Challenges (only one base in the middle of Antarctica) for X-COM: UFO Defense
  • The Pacific Challenge (one base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean) for X-COM: Terror from the Deep
  • A Mount and Blade: Warband playthrough where he restricts himself to recruiting only from captured bandits and freed prisoners (and his own villages, once he sets himself up as a ruler).
  • A Crusader Kings II playthrough where he customizes his starting character as a product of inbreeding to see how far he can get on a bad character.
  • Three playthroughs of Minecraft on Hardcore Mode (game locked on Hard difficulty, death is permanent).
    • Doubly so with his first (well, second) where he spawned on an island several dozens of chunks away from any land, with only a few patches of grass and a single tree. He accepts the challenge. The first fifty or so minutes consists of him waiting around stationary for a sapling to grow, since he had nothing more productive to do and moving depletes your hunger faster.
• Sequence Breaking: A very major case in his Ultima VII playthrough. Lampshaded:
  Kiko: "But Avatar, why are we breaking plot consistency?" Iolo, you don't know that I've been breaking the plot since video 1?
• Shouting Shooter: When any kind of Gatling Good is involved, you can bet your behind that Kiko will yell out a long "CHAAAINGUN!" as he delivers a barrage of dakka.
  • Seems to have variations in non-gun shooter entertainment.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: The setup for his playthrough of The Sims, contrasting serious, studious Samuel with the party animal slacker Dave.
• Special Edition Title: While Kiko tends to stick to a consistent (if steadily-evolving) theme for video openings and closings, he does occasionally tweak the format a little:
  • Anything involving the Ultima games (and his Minecraft playthroughs, in which he uses a custom "Avatar" player skin) almost invariably feature some variation on "When we last left the Avatar..." Ultima I further tweaks this to "When we last left the Stranger..." as the character in question has not yet become the Avatar in franchise canon, technically.
  • His Dungeon Hack videos have both a Cold Open and a Stinger narrated by his Player Character.

• Tempting Fate:
  • Minecraft: "Let's see what the world throws at Kikoskia." *Spawns in solid stone and dies in opening 15 seconds*
  • UFO: Aftermath: He spends half the game dreading the moment one of his squad members opens a door to find a Balloon Fish staring them right in the face, since it could easily result in the destruction of half his squad. Guess what happens in video 60. Everyone lives, thankfully.
• Testosterone Poisoning: An inverted lampshading: whenever he describes a game as the "Manliest Game Ever", it will likely be one marketed to young girls, or at least be very cutesy.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • Kiko's reaction throughout most of Episode Four of Ultimate Doom (at least at the start).
  • Final Doom. Evilution. Last Call. Kiko ends up speechless after he screws up a whopping zero times trying to make it through the opening maze by brute-forcing it.
  • On his second attempt at Minecraft, Kikoskia finds himself stuck on a deserted island with only one tree. Despairing ensues (though he gets better).
  • A literal example occurs in the fifth video of his ''Crusader Kings II'' Let's Play when his infantile player character acquires a character trait ("proud") of which he doesn't approve and he also notices that there's a new claimant to the character's title.

• To Be Continued: He has a meltdown when presented with one of these at the end of Barbie Explorer.

• Too Awesome to Use: This is his opinion of pretty much any consumable it seems. He could be on a sliver of health and mana and still have the idea that his mountain of healing and mana items is more useful in his bag. He's gotten better at this as time went on – as of 2016, he'll hog all the items and get by with alternate means like spells, up until the last leg of the game, whereupon he'll start using hogged items judiciously.
• Took a Level in Badass: Keith, the UFO: Aftermath soldier who went from being The Load at the beginning of the game (to the point where Kikoskia refused to even give him one of his trademark nicknames) to becoming one of the most valuable members of the team. In the last episode of the series, Kiko even acknowledges his belated badassery by giving him the honor of delivering the final blow to the aliens' moonbase. He even goes so far as to call him one of the greatest heroes he's ever had in any of his Let's Plays, ever.
  • Kikoskia himself in a way. His first playthrough of Doom³, back in 2009, was marked by him being absolutely terrified. He also swore he would never touch Resurrection Of Evil. He replayed Doom 3 in 2021 and not only was he far more confident and had more fun with the game, he was keen to play the Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Mission expansion packs.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: He tries this as one of his first missions in his Mount and Blade playthrough. It goes less well than planned, leading to a running gag.
  Spunty: [charging into battle] I'm the hero of Veidar!
  Random Enemy: Isn't that the place where they all died—[gets run through by Spunty] OH GOD, MY SPLEEN.
• Unreliable Narrator: Sandstar regales people about his time in Hillsfar. During which he dies. Sandstar is confused at this turn of events. Amusingly, this is not completely unrealistic, since Resurrection Magic.
• Updated Re Release: His "Let's Replay" slot on Sundays covers new runs of games he's already LP'd.
• Useless Spleen: A sort of running gag throughout his LPs. Woe betide the spleens of Kikoskia's enemies.
• Verbal Tic: For your sake, don't even try and make a Drinking Game out of the times he uses "actually" and variations thereof, "pretty much", "absolutely" or "basically". You'll end up with a molten liver even if you're not drinking alcohol.
  • *sniff*
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Not snakes, but Kiko has this reaction to giant birds attacking him in Tiny Barbarian DX

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"When we come back, folks – more TV Tropes! Until then, folks, until then!"

— One of Kikoskia's typical closing messages

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