Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 60: The best game with a reptile. With Gex making his grand return, now seems like the perfect opportunity to take a look at video game reptiles. There are loads, obviously, of various levels of importance. So this episode is a real toss up! Who will win... who knows! You'll have to give it a watch or listen in order to determine how things will turn out. Reptiles can be snakes, turtles, dragons, dinosaurs... but not frogs! If you were thinking of your...
Jul 14, 2023•39 min
Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 59: The best game with the worst gimmick. There are plenty of crap games with bad gimmicks. Tony Hawk: RIDE, for example, which was built around a terrible skateboard-shaped controller peripheral and was basically a terrible game as a result. Or Crime Boss: Rockay City, which is a painfully bottom tier heist game which boasts “Vanilla Ice is in this” as its entire USP. Then, of course, there’s the Kinect library. The entire Kinect library. But still, l...
Jul 07, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 59
Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 58: The best use of a mega popular license. Licensed games are big business. The richest studios and publishers in the galaxy all have a foothold in the gaming space because, as countless CEOs and market analysts tell us every year, video games make more money than Hollywood, musical theatre, gardening programmes, the broadcasting rights for Shinty, and the GDP of Wales combined. It is for this reason that everyone working in video games lives in a cas...
Jun 30, 2023•34 min
Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 57: The best game where you play a dead guy. Gaming is stuffed to the coffin lid with undead protagonists. Vampires. Poltergeists. Murdered detectives with unfinished business. Starship captains resurrected from death by a rogue human supremacist terrorist organisation with a trillionaire CEO. The list goes on. And indeed, on. But what’s the best game with an undead protagonist? And why on earth did nobody pick Grim Fandango? Only one of these question...
Jun 23, 2023•24 min
Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 56: the best globetrotting travel game. This week we welcome our first guest panellist, the ever endearing Bertie Purchese from Eurogamer! If you've ever gone to EGX you may know Bertie as the eccentric host of the Eurogamer Pub Quiz, and if you're generally interested in games writing you'll have come across his tireless work as an Associate Editor of Eurogamer, where he covers news, conjures up features, records podcasts, and looks after their Suppor...
Jun 16, 2023•37 min
Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 55: The best game with horse armour (but you can't have Oblivion) 2006 feels like a lifetime ago. I’m sure for at least some of you reading, it literally was. In which case you won’t remember the utter stink that was kicked up over the concept of – get this – paying actual real money for in-game cosmetic items, on top of the money you’d already forked out for the game itself. It seemed unthinkable, until Bethesda went and did it, releasing the infamous...
Jun 09, 2023•35 min
Because we live in a meritocracy, rubbish things never get sequels. Except we don't live in a meritocracy, we live in hell, and therefore rubbish things often get nine sequels and a spin-off TV show while good things are busy getting rejected in board rooms. Such is life. But it's not necessarily a bad thing, because every now and then, sequels far outstrip their progenitors. It's a phenomenon that occurs most often in the world of video games, where sequels will often build on the bare bones of...
Jun 02, 2023•35 min
The video game industry has a long and legendary history of awful names. Several developers have spent literally millions of dollars on otherwise excellent games just to slap the most staggeringly awful title on the final product. Boring names are common enough, with tepid words like War, Quest or Royale thrown in there more as a tone setter than anything remotely interesting. Then there's the wild stuff! Metal Gear Rising: Revengence is a truly mythical example, and the recently announced Metal...
May 26, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Welcome to the Best Games Ever show Episode 52: the best game with a ginger protagonist. Cal Kestis of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is just the latest in a long line of Gaming Redheads, an esteemed group that includes such celebrated characters as Official Femshep, Joanna Dark, and what's-her-face out of Heavenly Sword. And it makes me swell with pride to see this proud tradition continuing. Listen. I'm not even a proper ginger, but my beard has the reddish hue of muddled European stock, and I look ...
May 19, 2023•27 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Almost every action adventure game with RPG elements and dungeons, that's set in an open or semi-open world, can trace its roots – a link to the past, if you will – back to the original Legend of Zelda game on the NES. And this is surprising, because that game is 37 years old. That’s roughly as old as I am, which in human terms is “should probably start thinking about life insurance” levels of decrepit. In the context of a medium driven by technological advancement, it might as well be an eterni...
May 12, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Welcome to the Best Games Ever Show episode 50: The best game that is uncomfortably pro-monarchy. Video games are absurdly monarchist. Nintendo's biggest franchises both have you running around after a princess. Final Fantasy is littered with royals showing up as quest givers, party members, and protagonists. Fable III is entirely about seizing your divine right to rule, and leads to an infamous sequence where you are tasked with deciding the fate of the kingdom through a series of binary decisi...
May 05, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Welcome to the Best Games Ever Show episode 49: The Best Game with the Worst Difficulty Spike. High difficulty is one thing. As long as it's consistent, it can be an asset. Souls games are essentially all about providing a big mountain to climb. But sometimes games have difficulty spikes that, frankly, take the proverbial Michael. Games which aren't supposed to be mountains to climb, but gentle slopes to meander along. They lull you into a false sense of security, providing a moderate challenge ...
Apr 28, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 49
As most of us are residents of a horrible island, we at VG247 have raised a suspicious eyebrow at Dead Island 2 for being not set on an island or, frankly, horrible enough for our liking. Which has led us to ask the question: what is the best game set on a horrible island? There are so many to choose from, as islands are a popular setting in video games: their size is naturally limited, so it's much easier to proportion them realistically without surrounding the map with invisible walls. Everyth...
Apr 21, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Winning this podcast is easy: you just have to convince me, Jim Trinca, that your submission for the topic du jour is better than anyone else's. The tricky part is that I'm fickle and unknowable, and also, Donaldson knows everything, so he's usually uncovered an angle that you haven't thought of. The fact that it's almost always about 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is immaterial. In the cut and thrust of the Best Games Ever Podcast, finding the weirdest or daftest angle is where the game lies. That ...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 47
For all of its faults, the one thing you can say about Crime Boss: Rockay City is that Vanilla Ice is in it. Which reminded us of a thing that happened a while back: it was called "the nineties", and it had loads of good stuff, like the Amiga, Fido Dido, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But the nineties were a great time for personalities. Snoop Dogg. Pamela Anderson. Tony Blair. Loads of them. Chyna from the wrestling. The Churchill insurance dog. Bob Mortimer. I could go on. But it was a long d...
Apr 07, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Video games are very long-form pieces of entertainment, and as such, they have to work hard to hold our attention. Statistically, most single-player games are left unfinished by a staggering majority of the people who buy them, as much as 90% by some estimates. But is it any wonder, when a lot of games just get a bit naff after the first act? Once the New Game Novelty wears away, you'd better be introducing some huge plot twist, or engaging new mechanic, or something to switch things up and keep...
Mar 31, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 45
You’d think that swapping lives with any video game protagonist would be preferable to continuing as a regular ol’ human in the real world. After all, we don’t have magic, or spaceships, or unfettered access to military grade ordinance. But most video game protagonists have to live through things that the vast majority of us would need years of therapy to process. Monster attacks. Wars. Alien invasions. Having to go on dates. Still: plenty of game protagonists get to do nice things, like driving...
Mar 24, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 43 - The best game that takes ten or more hours to get good Let's face it: games are too long these days. I'm over 160 hours into Assassin's Creed Valhalla and I still haven't finished the bloody thing. But, perhaps worse than games that outstay their welcome are games that don't even get to the good part until you've put in a few shifts. The post child for this phenomenon is, of course, Final Fantasy XIII, a game which infamously funnels you d...
Mar 17, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 42 - The best game you could complete as your real self Video games allow us to live our wildest power fantasies, such as "plumber", or "murderer". But what if you had to endure a game world not as some souped-up avatar, but just as yourself? You? Little, pathetic ol' you, with your savings account, and your Nissan Qashqai? You wouldn't last two minutes in the mushroom kingdom, mate. But if our panellists had a choice, which game worlds would t...
Mar 10, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 41 - The best game that you can't forgive Sometimes even great video games are associated with bad memories. Maybe the last boss was just too annoying for you to finish. Maybe it was the game that made your 360 red ring. Maybe the day you got it was the day your dog died. Whatever it is, we all have that one game we can never go back to because it's just too traumatic. Or, you know, difficult. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...
Mar 03, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 40 - The best game with the most juvenile feature. Look. Video games are often, y'know, full of stupid nonsense. Whether they're actually for kids or not, quite a lot of them have bum, willy, or fart jokes (which is actually good), but more sinister than that, a lot of them betray immature or undeveloped attitudes on the writer's part. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, this is a podcast in which a stirring defense of 50 Cent: Blo...
Feb 24, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 39 - The best game that was a huge flop. Sometimes, it doesn't matter how good something is, it just never gets the right break, or it arrives at entirely the wrong time. An artist may die a pauper, unappreciated in their time, but be considered among the greatest painters in history in the centuries following their demise. This is a form of cruelty we call "existing". Anyway, this is a podcast about Shenmue and things. It's good. “What is VG24...
Feb 17, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 38 - The best game you'd never believe was from that developer Hi-Fi Rush is a joyous cel-shaded rush of a rhythm combat game with a tone and art style not unlike Jet Set Radio, and it's surprising, because it comes from a studio most widely known for Evil Within, a spiritual follow-up to Resident Evil, and Ghostwire Tokyo, which is sort of like Far Cry: Shibuya via Siren Blood Curse. It's not the only example of a surprising or incongruous gam...
Feb 10, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 37 - The best game with followers you would never hang out with IRL Video Games often, through necessity, make us hang out with people we wouldn't necessarily want to in any other context.. Looking after rich idiots? Helping demon-possessed adventurers find peace in hell? Chatting with disembodied skulls who have terrible behavioural issues? (it's amazing how often that last one crops up). NPC followers or party members might be useful in a scr...
Feb 03, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 36 - The best game that really needs a remake. It's a simple fact that video games, unlike almost every other art form, just don't age very well. Some games desperately need a remake because they're so outdated that they're insurmountably ugly, impossible to find, difficult to get working, or challenging to operate. The original Dead Space, however, still holds up beautifully in the art department, is readily available on digital storefronts, i...
Jan 27, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 35 - The best game that shouldn't be made into a TV show The Last of Us has finally made it to television screens. Well, it was always on television screens. Um. Let me rephrase. Television finally has a prestige drama about zombies. What? Oh yeah. Fine. OK. Television addicts finally have a zombie show that's already been going for like ten years in another medium if they wanna skip ahead, Really? Hmm. Ah. Hmm. Well, fine, let's at least make ...
Jan 20, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 34 - the best game that suffers from bloating Bloat was clearly on all our minds in the afterglow of the christmas season, so we did an entire podcast about the concept. But we're not talking about being full of mince pies, here: we're on about video game bloat. The scourge of modern times, that has turned what used to be a fun escapist hobby into the full time job of icon janitoring. Games are so rammed with the dreaded "content" now that dev ...
Jan 13, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 33 - the best game that could have been made by an AI Join our panel of gaming experts as they discuss and debate the greatest video games of all time. Each week, we'll tackle a new theme and share our picks for the best games in that category. This week on VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast, we have a special treat for you! In the spirit of the holiday season, our host Jim decided to take it easy and let an AI do some of the work for him. That's ...
Jan 06, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 32 - the best game of 2023 The future is unknowable. As are the minds of our deranged panellists, who were asked to pick their nod for next year's GOTY based on the scraps of info we know about 2023's game releases and, somehow, none of them picked Starfield. It's obviously Starfield, you idiots. Cast: Tom Orry, Alex Donaldson, Connor Makar, and Jim Trinca. . . . . . . . . . . Our picks this week (SPOILERS AHEAD): Tom - Resident Evil 4 Remake T...
Dec 30, 2022•35 min•Ep. 32
Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 31 - the best game that reminds you of Christmas Christmas is a time of togetherness, of sharing your table with family, friends, and strangers. In that spirit, we invited a number of our friends and colleagues from across the games media to contribute to this, our first ever Christmas edition of the VG247 Best Games Ever podcast. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it, and wish you all a joyful holiday season. Cast: ...
Dec 23, 2022•41 min•Ep. 31
