Starting on the simple side with microphones, You may use any standard USB microphone you have at your disposal, but if you want clearer quality, I would suggest dipping further into your pocket. Commonly used microphones for Let's Players are the Blue Snowball, the Blue Yeti or the AT2020. All of these microphones range from $100-$150, so they're pretty cheap for good quality. All of these microphones are suitable for your needs so it just comes down to what you want in terms of sound. I personally use the AT2020 on my own project (which is coming soon!) and it works great both up close and from a distance. I chose it over other mics because I preferred its type of sound as it was built for voice actors.
I also recommend buying a standard pop filter as well in order to get rid of that hissing "dead air" sound.
Capture cards unfortunately are a bit more complicated and technical. Essentially what they are is a pass through that captures the video of your console and streams it to your computer for you to save and edit. They tend to often cause confusion amongst new Let's Players and since Let's Playing is such a new art, nobody outside the hardcore community completely understands how they work. It basically requires some trial and error but to save you money, I recommend you either go with the Elgato capture card or the Hauppauge HD PVR 2. These are the two most commonly used capture cards to record consoles and are generally cheap, running from $150-$200 on Amazon. Both work very well but I however, sided with the Hauppauge PVR 2 since it has the ability to capture both high definition and standard definition game consoles and comes with the necessary cables to do so. I will warn you however that when recording standard definition consoles, the Hauppauge can become glitchy so it's best to keep an eye on the capture as you record. Here's my Hauppauge in action:
Some people like to cut corners and save money by simply using a camera to record right off the TV, but your video quality will be mediocre at best and it will likely turn a lot of viewers off from watching your content.
The final and often most overlooked piece of equipment you'll need is a laptop. Both the microphone and capture card will be running while you record so you're going to need a laptop with a high grade processor. Do not use a laptop with anything less than an Intel Core i5. If you do, you're footage will be very prone freezing and having a lot of visual glitches in the final product. I unfortunately had to learn this the hard way as my friend and I recorded an entire play through of a game, only to have half our footage become corrupted because my laptops processor was severely under powered. I cannot stress this enough, it is crucial that your laptop specs meet the requirements for the capture card.
In order to work with your hardware though, you're going to need software to put everything together. This is the easiest, as well as the cheapest aspect for your equipment needs since a lot of it is practically free! To record audio, I strongly advise using Audacity. Audacity is completely free and has a lot of options for sound editing. It does have limits and compared to expensive programs such as Adobe Audition, it practically has nothing but for simple commentary, it works perfectly and you'll never need to use anything else. The capture software for your capture card will be bundled with it so there's no money spent there either. The potentially most expensive thing is editing software to put your videos together with. I recommend Sony Vegas Movie Studio. It'll cost about $50 but it has everything essential you need to make your videos look professional. If you want to save as much money as possible, you can use Windows Movie Maker which is free, but it's unfortunately very limited and frustrating to work with. I only recommend it if you can't afford editing software whatsoever.
Whew! And that about covers it! These are all the essentials you need to start a Let's Play channel! Admittingly. it can be costly, so I would only recommend trying this if you are absolutely passionate about making Let's Plays. Otherwise, I would suggest to just sticking to watching them. I hope this guide helped a few aspiring Let's Players out there or at the very least, gave viewers a new appreciation of the dedication it requires to do! If anybody has any questions or comments, I implore you to share them!
Links to Equipment listed:
http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-AT2020USB-Cardioid-Condenser-Microphone/dp/B001AS6OYC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410567941&sr=8-1&keywords=AT2020
http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-Gaming-Edition-Definition-Capture/dp/B008ZT8QKO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410567916&sr=8-1&keywords=hauppauge+hd+pvr2
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudio
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