The Best Games Ever Podcast

Interactivity is this medium's entire thing. It's a composite of many other art forms: everything from prose, to sculpture, to television. What it cribs from those things is often its weakest work, but what it does brilliantly and almost singularly is give the audience some control within the experience. All art is interactive on some level, in that the relationship between a creative work, its author, and its enjoyer is always a conversation of sorts. We project our own world view onto motionless hunks of marble. Our own life experiences onto flat planes of pigmented acrylics. Our own cultural conditioning onto Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. And there's those Choose Your Own Adventure books that give you some sense of a branching narrative and are also rubbish. But games? You may inhabit entire worlds beyond the screen via a proxy. An avatar quite often of our own design. An effective physical presence. Games don't just tell us what Narnia is like: they let us stick a steel toe-capped size twelve through the fucking wardrobe, mate. We all get to be Dorothy, except instead of a nippy wee dug we've got an AK-47 and a bandolier of frag grenades. This medium doesn't need to be better at imparting meaning through narrative than all the places it steals from, because it does something that none of those other things can: freedom to change the script. Whether it's through small, inconsequential choices like whether to shoot a guy in the bonce or the willy, or full-on branching narratives with multiple possible origin stories, middles, and endings, games are more or less what you put into them. Namely, you. But what is the best game that lets you control the narrative? Let's ask our esteemed panel of professional Game Likers from VG247, which is sort of like Eurogamer but communist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes a game comes along that is, for reasons, a bit a of a black sheep as far as its parent company is concerned. It could be a passion project that doesn't tick any zeigeisty boxes, a legacy IP that the current owners have no clue what to do with, sometimes even a perfectly decent game that the court of public opinion has turned sour on and therefore must be canned. Video games are big, unwieldy projects that only ever release in a working state through a combination of talent, grit, and extraordinary good luck, and it's the latter that often pushes one into precarious waters. And yet, there are a number of examples of games that are brilliant, beloved, fine ambassadors of their genre despite being a full-on headache for anyone involved in having to sell them. Which of these, according to our esteemed panel of Alex Donaldson and Tom Orry, is the best ever? Host Jim Trinca will decide in this edition of The Best Games Ever Podcast, a show that is loved by all including its parent company and associated stakeholders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Add-on content for video games is often worthless, but it can sometimes go very, very right: just look at the DLC catalogue for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It infamously introduced the gaming landscape to the concept of horse armour, or paid cosmetic items in single player titles, which was widely condemned as a cynical cash-grab (even so, the concept ended up being so lucrative that it survives to this day). But it also gave us Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles, establishing a familiar pattern of big games having a medium sized expansion set within the existing map, and a larger, quasi-sequel sized one set in its own brand new area. Starfield's recent DLC, Shattered Space, hasn't gone down as a vast improvement on the base game, but it may well be the vanguard of a much bigger (and potentially better) expansion coming down the road. Lord knows the potential is there. But that's by the by. The question I'm asking our esteemed podcast panel today is: which DLC expansions have been better than the base game? To find out what they picked, and who I chose as the winner, check out this podcast here what we recorded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gaming is full of rings of power: from RPG trinkets that give your character a small but pivotal buff to a critical stat, warp rings that provide instantaneous transport for Sonic the Hedgehog, and beastly racing circuits. Not to mention, er, the actual rings of power from Lord of the Rings. Season 2 of Amazon Prime's Rings of Power inspired this topic, obviously. Well I like it anyway. That makes one of us. So, which is the best game that features a ring of power, or Powerful Ring? To find out, we assembled this panel of VG247's finest talking heads in order to record this, the latest episode of our pokey little panel game. Featuring Jim Trinca, Tom Orry, Connor Makar, and Alex Donaldson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who won out of Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous, the crowdfunded space sim sensations pitched to us a decade ago by two of the genre's most celebrated game directors? Star Citizen being a spiritual follow up to Wing Commander and Privateer, and Elite Dangerous being a direct sequel to Elite, Frontier: Elite 2 and Frontier: First Encounters. Well, it depends how you define "win". Or, indeed, "exists". This is just one of the Enthusiastic Disagreements we have in this week's Best Games Ever Podcast, along with GTA vs Saints Row, Call of Duty vs Medal of Honor, and another one that we can't remember. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you were lucky enough to have lived through the 7th console generation as a young adult with enough disposable income to buy a couple of games per month, you ate damn well. You probably have countless fond memories of each big new watercooler game that the studios of the day were firing out with alarming regularity, and you had no idea what the hell "games as a service" meant. Bliss. What wasn't blissful, though, was how unreliable the machines were. The Xbox 360 of course was blighted by the Red Ring of Death scandal, a vast and expensive tech design and consumer rights blunder that cost Microsoft billions to put right. The PS3 similarly had the Yellow Light of Death, which wasn't as bad or as widespread as Microsoft's issue, but still affected a lot of people and is pretty much a guaranteed certainty if you're still lucky enough to have a working PS3 Fat: clean that thing religiously and change the thermal paste. Honestly. Do it. It will die eventually whatever you do, but don't tempt fate. Not that the 7th gen was the only era with widespread tech issues. Every generation of games machine has had some kind of common problem, usually caused or exacerbated by excessive heat, and therefore often associated with games that drive the hardware particularly hard. So which of these system-busting games is the best one? Well, that's what we're here to get to the bottom of in this panel show, featuring Jim Trinca as your host, Tom Orry and Sherif Saed as your regular panellists, and Ian Higton from Eurogamer as a Special Guest (he's my favourite, very handsome, doesn't smell usually). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by the recent release of Star Wars Outlaws, this week's podcast is all about what makes Star Wars, something we're exploring via the unorthodox path of picking a bunch of things that aren't Star Wars and pointing out the ways they are like Star Wars. Confused? Don't be, it's just an excuse to have arguments. Star Wars is a massive media franchise that's had so many ideas chucked into it by various writers, directors, showrunners, and every other type of creative over the years that it's hard to really pin down what its true essence is. Which is what makes the question "What's the best Star Wars game that isn't a Star Wars game?" such a fun topic: you can conceivably make an argument for anything. Yes, even Football Manager. So what does our panel most associate with Star Wars: is it laser swords and space wizards, or a beleaguered resistance movement against a tyrannical empire? Is it the things that famously influenced the young George Lucas, such as Flash Gordon adventure serials, the films of Akira Kurosawa, and living through the Vietnam war? Special guest Ian Dransfield from Games Media joins host Jim and regular panellists Connor and Mark. No Tom this week cos he was on holiday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes video games include the most random things, but who doesn't love that stuff? We all get excited when you can flush a toilet or turn on a tap, even though these are the most mundane actions possible in the 'real world'. Jim, in his wisdom(?), decided that these neat little features are pointless and made everyone pick the most useless of all found in the best video game. How did this go? Well, you'll find out when you listen to this week's episode of the Best Games Ever Podcast. To help make these 30 minutes or so more tolerable we are this week joined by everyone's favourite dated video game journo d-lister, Steve Burns. If you know who he is, brilliant, if you don't, he's hard to explain so we won't bother. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Video games are great, but sometimes you just have to admit that some of them are only available on consoles that, well, aren't great. Rubbish, even. You can guarantee an argument if you ask people to pick the worst games console, so that's what we did. But what is the best game on this worst console? Who showed their ineptitude and picked a game on a great console? Who picked something so perfect it could never be argued with? Did Jim say anything of interest or just stir things up? Truth is, depending on your exposure to certain consoles you're likely to have different views on this to everyone else, but we had to make a definitive choice over the best game on the worst console. It absolutely won't annoy anyone! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Video games are unparalleled in recreating real and fictional experiences. Only when both are channelled well, with love and passion, can a game transcend its place as merely a product and become art. For this reason being able to take a piss in-game is paramount to the merits of the medium. Where would we be without Norman Reedus widdling onto the grass in celebrated Art Game Death Stranding? Or that bit in Postal 2 where you can take a wizz on Gary Coleman, and he gets really cross with you? God rest him. Anyway. Fact is, there are loads of games which, for some reason, include the act of doing a Big Wee as part of their suite of player interactions. But which of these games is the best? To find the answer, listen to the latest episode of The Best Games Ever show: a podcasted parlour game about arguing over metacritic scores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for another episode of the Best Games Ever Podcast. This time we've got a great topic as Tom picked it. Join Jim, Tom, Connor, and Sherif as the gang ponders such a brilliant topic and attempts to come up with suitably amazing answers. Spoiler: Only Tom has a good answer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seems like nothing will convince Biden to step down and let someone else run against Trump., but we don't care about any of that because we're a video game quiz show. Unless... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You wait years and years for something to finally be over, and once that day comes, you're left not with a sense of joy, but with a deep-set anxiety about what comes after. Bereft. Unable to enjoy the simple joy of being free, because you've been around the block a bit, and you know how these things go. Sigh. But enough about finishing Morrowind. Recently the UK had an election and kicked out some of the worst people to ever be in charge of anything, replacing them with a default option that nobody actually likes that much. Which is rather like when you finish a video game. Except it isn't. It's nothing like that. It's not remotely like that at all. Forgive the rubbish conceit, and please enjoy The Best Game You Were Glad To See The Back Of, a podcast episode which you can watch or listen to on this very web page and/or app! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most games age like milk in the hot sun. But some are so bold, so brilliant, that they transcend their contemporary era, remaining relevant and highly playable for years or even decades following their release. But which of these has most aged like a fine bottle of fermented grapes, mashed between someone's manky toes? To find out you'll simply have to knock back a tall glass of The Best Games Ever podcast episode 104: The Best Game that has aged like a Fine Wine via the methods handily listed below. Or not, it's up to you, I'm not your mum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247.com paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free. Still inspired by last week's topic, we thought we'd flip it on its head an ask perhaps an even more pertinent question in an age of decade-long marketing campaigns: what's the best rubbish game that had a great reveal trailer? Baffled by the concept of how a rubbish game can be "best"? Listen, don't worry about it. Games media is full of this contradictory rubbish. We often say things like, for example, "a good 7/10 game is better than a bad 9/10 game". And it makes a perverse sort of sense. Except when it doesn't. Speaking of perverse, this week we're lucky enough to welcome Eurogamer's Ian Higton onto our humble little show. He's only the second person from Eurogamer we've managed to snag, because those guys are usually too busy coming up with cheap puns, but his showdown with Tom in his debut episode is one for the ages. We're also joined by Connor, who seemed determined to sabotage himself this week but blame it on Jim (me). Typical. To find out why Connor lost, and who won out of Tom Orry and Ian Higton, you'll just have to watch or listen to this week's excitig installment of The Best Games Ever podcast via one of the handy methods below. And no, we don't know why Jim is once again wearing sunglasses and a bandana. Apart from the fact that he's a riddy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many great games have suffered from poor marketing. Sometimes they're advertised to entirely the wrong demographic. Other times, they're partnered with uncool or problematic brands. A lot of the time they're just hard to explain, and need to be experienced to properly understand, so unless you can get a significant number of people to try a demo you're going to struggle. This, incidentally, is why our much maligned profession still has value for consumers in the age of YouTube. At least that's what I tell myself at night when the existential dread kicks in. But sometimes there are good games that are just hobbled by a botched first impression. A pre-rendered reveal trailer, perhaps, that contains no actual scenes or assets from the game in question and doesn't even work as a tone piece. The recent reveal trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which inspired the theme of this episode, seemed like one of these. Indeed, some people initially wondered if it was some kind of Fortnite tie-in, given how removed it felt from the Dragon Age they knew. However, a proper twenty minute gameplay reveal the following day has, thankfully, eased a lot of people's concerns. Phew. So, what have our esteemed panel come up with for good games that had crap reveal trailers? Find out in the latest edition of The Best Games Ever Podcast, handily presented to you right here on this web page or app that you're reading this on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It won't have escaped your notice, dear viewer or listener, that the last episode - our incredible two-part 100th episode special quickfire edition - featured six contestants instead of the usual three. It may have escaped your notice, however, that 50% of them were not actually VG247 staff. This has caused certain ripples at VG247 Towers. Realising I may have triggered a full-on staff revolt, with its ire pointed squarely in my direction, I felt it wise last week to pretend to be ill and get Tom to host the podcast instead. Tom, being the great mediator that he is, not only stepped seamlessly into the host role but also managed to get everyone to calm down and thwarted a live mutiny attempt during the recording. With everyone suitably placated, we'll back to normal next week. But what's the best game where everyone's mad at you even though you've done nothing wrong? To find out, you'll have to listen to this.... unorthodox edition of The Best Games Ever Podcast. The extended bit for subs only is *very* special this week, so if you want in on that, become a Bestie for just £2.99 a month! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To recap: for the 100th episode we decided to come up with 100 episode topics and blow them all on one huge quiz round, with individual buzzers and everything. Inviting some favourite guests to return (Owen, Richie, and Burns) with the promise that, yes, however many points you score in this mammoth episode will be added to your overall total for the series. This has caused some friction at VG247 Towers, which you'll get to enjoy the fallout from in Episode 101: The best game for losers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One-hundred episodes. 100 weeks of The Best Games Ever podcast. I can scarcely believe it. On a personal note, it's been wonderful to host this stupid, daft, funny, sometimes even informative show about games past and present, with its mad politics and meta-games, running gags, plot twists, special guests, and so on. Tom asked me to host it on a freelance basis at first, and it was working with the brilliant VG247 team on this ad-hoc basis that convinced me to snap up the opportunity when he later invited me to put throw my hat in to replace the brilliant Dorrani Williams as VG247's Video Person. We're definitely not the biggest gaming podcast in the world, or England, or Basingstoke, but we are as far as I'm concerned one of the best. Onto business, then. For the 100th episode we decided to come up with 100 episode topics and blow them all on one huge quiz round, with individual buzzers and everything. Inviting some favourite guests to return (Owen, Richie, and Burns) with the promise that, yes, however many points you score in this mammoth episode they will be added to your overall total for the series. If you want to know who came out on top, you'll have to wait for part two next week. But this here part one that you can watch or listen to below is, in and of itself, an extremely fun time that we hope you enjoy listening to as much as we enjoyed recording it. Prepare for bickering. Prepare for petty arguments and appeals to a non-existent rulebook. Prepare for Connor managing to score some points despite technically not even competing. Here's to another 100! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ahead of our big 100th Episode Quickfire Special Featuring Steve Burns, which is going to irrevocably change the scoreboard forever, Tom and I decided to do another one of our Best Games Ever Podcast audits, where we review everyone's picks in the last few months, reveal who ranks best in overall wins and win percentages, and maybe... just maybe... Tom will successfully lobby to get the scores changed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Realistic water and wetness were seen for years as a litmus test for photorealistic graphics, but by the PS3 generation, developers had it nailed: water shaders had become so sophisticated that Nathan Drake would emerge from a full dousing of seawater and slowly dry off, with his clothes soaked, and skin glistening. It was a mesmerising effect: it's difficult to describe to younger people how incredible it was to see this mundane environmental phenomenon happening, in real time, to a video game character. Of course, now these graphical effects are so commonplace that they scarcely raise an eyebrow. Aloy's clothing dries off at varying rates, does it? Who cares. Seen it, mate. But given that, I thought it would be a challenge for our regular panel to come up with the best game ever where your character gets wet and stays wet for a bit. To find out how they got on, you'll simply have to watch or listen to this week's Best Games Ever podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whatever your attitude to guns in real life (for the record, they're awful and civilians shouldn't have them), it's hard not to become a sort of virtual gun nut when you're a gaming enthusiast because, inevitably, our primary interaction with game worlds is shooting bullets into them. Even games which emphatically are not shooters often feature guns as a tool or special attack. And sometimes – not hugely often, but more regularly than you might think – we get games which have fully developed shooting mechanics and a range of guns that you don't even get to use until many hours in. Perhaps making you wait until the final act before it grants you the right to bear arms (note: nothing to do with bears, see previous episode). There's always a very good narratively justified reason for this. Perhaps the game is set somewhere where firearms are naturally scarce, like The Past, or Shropshire. Perhaps the developers are making a clever point about the instant, maximum violence that automatic weapons afford vs the nuanced, patient art of having to stab or punch people instead. Whatever the reason, this week our esteemed panel of professional game enjoyers are tasked with deciding which is the best of these rare treats. If you want to know what they came up with, there are handy ways to watch or listen to the show below. What a coincidence! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to episode 97 of the Best Games Ever Podcast. As is traditional, let us give you some information about the show. This week we are looking for our contestants to think of the best game in which you fight a bear. Let's see if anyone decides to subvert the topic in ways that cause mutiny within the ranks. As ever, host Jim Trinca must decide who has picked the best game by judging on an unknown list of criteria he most likely makes up as he sees fit on the day. A true professional. If you want more of the Best Games Ever Podcast, we have an extended edition in which Jim picks a game and the rest of the team tells him how much of a terrible choice he's made. You can get this by becoming a paid member. Head to VG247.com and click on the "support us" section in the top right (in the menu on mobile) for all the details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can't say anything these days! Is what silly people say, a lot. You can actually say whatever you like. You can say, for example, and with confidence, that there are certain things you could get away with in gaming thirty years ago that simply wouldn't fly now. Like… racing games with only one track. Platformers with a length of 20mins if you're good at them. Games with terrible representation of anyone who isn't a straight white male. Attitudes and expectations change with time – sometimes it's progress, sometimes it's regression. But whatever the reason, it does lead to a lot of otherwise good games being cast into the shame cupboard of history. Games which would be a tough sell or borderline offensive now, but play great. So what's the best one of those, according to our esteemed panel? This week Tom and I are joined once again by Richie Morgan from I Hate Doctor Who and Owen O'Donnell from The Infinite Review, two people who also remember the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by the (frankly excellent) Fallout TV show, this week on VG247's Best Games Ever podcast I've tasked my colleagues with finding the best game where a family member ditches you. With the prerequisite understanding that none of them are allowed to pick Fallout 3, the quintessential "dad's buggered off" simulator. As it turns out, being forsaken by a family member is a fairly common scenario in video games, especially if you widen the concept of family out to any sort of fraternity or gang. Which didn't stop racer-obsessed Mark trying to crowbar in a racing game, of all things. Or Tom from bringing up the usual guff. To find out which specific guff, you'll have to listen to this, which is presumably what you're doing here in the first place, which means I've essentially wasted the last five minutes of my life typing this out. Thanks for that. Thanks. I could have spent that doing something nice, like cradling my laughing child, or eating crisps, or any number of things that we do while the reaper waits. Anyway, watch Fallout, it's good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by the recent free drop of current viral sensation Content Warning – a co-op survival “shooter” about making spooky FauxTube videos with three of your mates – this week's Best Games Ever podcast is all about freebies that we'd happily pay for. It's a happy coincidence that this topic coincides with the launch of our extended podcast: a paid version of the show which includes an extra segment where you get to heart the host's pick, and its subsequent demolishing by the rest of the panel. To paraphrase one recent YouTube commenter, “so this is the idiot whose opinions you plan to monetise?”. Well, yes, but the point is that they get kicked around like a sheep's bladder, so I'm actually nobly offering myself up as the waste organ in question. For more information on how to become a paid VG247 subscriber, which comes with other benefits such as silky-smooth ad-free browsing, check out our Support Us page: https://www.vg247.com/subscribe/standard Anyway, some rules for this episode are: we're talking about actual free games. Not free-to-play games that aren't actually free once you factor in the entire economic model. So free as in beer, not free as in The NHS. Also, stealing doesn't count, Connor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Best Games Ever podcast is a game show where three totally normal and socially acceptable panellists have to find the best game in a peculiar category such as "Best game with a breakfast buffet", or "Best game with loads of vandalism". They have to pitch their pick to our host, Jim, who uses his power to decide the winner. But there's a lot of office politics, backstabbing, and meta-gaming going on which makes this mild-mannered panel game fraught with real danger. These days the overwhelming consensus about a game can act as this great opinion hammer, used by the masses to beat down the oddballs, wildcards, and those with loud voices and poor taste. With review scores aggregated together into one gleaming numerical figure, games can be effectively ranked with a superscore that'll be chiselled into its tombstone forever. A positive score may be a gleaming eulogy, whereas a negative one traps a game in an eternal cycle of being bashed on. But there are misses! Games that weren't loved, or perhaps still aren't loved, but are really good! You probably have one or two personal faves that fall into this category. A lot of this stuff is personal taste after all, what may work for you may not work for thousands of other perfectly sane gamers out there. The result, a pantheon of underdogs. Games that may not have the gleam of all-time classics in the eyes of the many, but are gems in the hands of the few. What, then, is the best game that is actually good despite loads of people hating on it? Does it sounds a little bit like Garfield? To find out, watch or listen to our esteemed panel argue about it for like an hour - we're still giving away our extended section, although be warned that this is going behind the paywall soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big Western style open-world RPGs from beloved Japanese studios who tend to be known for other things (inhale) are like buses: there's none for ages, and then two come along at once! See also: Clinton-era disaster movies about Earth getting clobbered by an asteroid. See also: Clinton-era disaster movies about America getting clobbered by volcanoes. See also: those ones about the White House (former home of Bill Clinton) getting clobbered by some guys with guns. I dunno. You don't read this anyway. The gist is this: there are two games with superficial similarities that have come out at the same time, and so I'm asking our regular panel to come up with previous games that have followed this pattern, and to add a further layer of meta grief, asking them to specifically pitch me on the Deep Impact equivalent of the pair. As in, the less good one. The less well known one. The one that didn't have an associated Aerosmith song, if you will. Listen. It's just an excuse for everyone to shout at me. Listen at your own inconvenience here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's clear from Helldivers 2's marketing that the game is directly inspired by Blair-era Dutch arthouse anti-war movie Starship Troopers. It's also clear from playing it that Warhammer 40,000 and the future war bits of Terminator have made their mark on the project, and with its sprawling, player led, strictly PVE campaign engendering a keen sense of community among players, it's rather like a wholesome war-themed social club for 90s teenagers. As a Nearly 40 it feels laser-targeted at my exact levels of pop culture cutoff, shooting skill, and associated decrepitness. It takes a lot of willpower after a play session to not immediately open Netscape Navigator and e-commerce that poster of the grey alien that says “take me to your dealer” and also one of Gillian Anderson doing a pout. But my wife wouldn't let me put them up anywhere, so it would be a waste of £18.98 plus shipping. I would advise current teenagers to never grow up and move out: that freedom is an illusion. Stay at home where it's cheaper and nobody bats an eyelid if you cover your bedroom walls with folk off the telly in sultry poses. What the actual fuck was I talking about. Oh, yeah, podcast. So which other games are Secret and/or Unofficial Adaptations of films or TV shows? And of them, which are the best? In order to find out what our expert panel thinks, you should watch or listen to this week's Best Games Ever podcast. Methods for doing so are handily listed below, so you don't have any excuses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's been long and arduous road to something resembling a worthy adaptation of Frank "dirty" Herbert's sand-based epic Dune, but with the recent release of Denis Villeneuve's Dune 2, we can safely call that one done. I just hope we get enough sequels for the films to start covering such nonsense as half-worm emperors and chair dogs. Aside from the various video game adaptations of Dune - from classic RTS games to modern upcoming survival games - there have been plenty of games that effectively use the desolation and devastation of desert sand. Who can forget the arresting third act of Uncharted 3, or the Tatooine section of KOTOR, or the grand majesty of Assassin's Creed Origins, with its ambitious recreation of sun-drenched North Africa? But which sandy game is the best one, according to our lovely panel? If Alex Donaldson was in this episode, he'd have picked Fifty Cent: Blood on the Sand, but he isn't. To find out what was actually pitched, listen to The Best Games Ever Podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're anything like me, nothing makes you lose interest in a game quicker than the words "always online". Or "free-to-play". Or "connected experience", or whatever other marketing terms they've come up with for "live service grindfest that sucks". Sometimes they don't even tell you upfront that it's a GAAS title, leaving it up to the prospective audience to divine this information from visual cues in gameplay trailers like... three distinct types of in-game currency, numbers popping out of enemies heads, and the whole thing having that unmistakable whiff of a project that no involved creative could ever muster real enthusiasm for. The core of a good idea spoiled by shareholder demands. Etc. It wouldn't be so bad if every single effing game didn't seem to ship with live service elements nowadays. But still, sometimes a s**t sandwich comes with sprinkles, and people can enjoy any old muck if they have to. Which brings us to the topic of today's Best Games Ever Podcast: what's the best live service game you begrudgingly like? Could it be Destiny 2, the series that many hold responsible for this genre? Could it be Genshin Impact, the poster-child for F2P games that are Good Actually? Or could it be Diablo 4, which leverages a beloved ARPG brand to lure people into its miasma of micro (and macro) transactions? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Physical game releases have been in danger of disappearing for a long time, what with Steam all but killing the PC optical drive, a cheaper discless PS5, and the rumoured incoming Xbox Series refresh which will do away with bluray even on the premium model. They're not likely to die off entirely: there will always be holdouts in the die-hard enthusiast sector, there are still people releasing Mega Drive carts now in 2024. But there will come a time when, for all intents and purposes, the era of major game releases on disc will come to an end. It makes sense for publishers. It makes sense for the environment. It makes sense for people trying to live in a small flat (hello). But it will be a shame when it finally succumbs to the inevitable, because there's nothing quite like the tactile appeal of holding a new game box. Reading the manual on the bus home. Slipping it in amongst its new shelf siblings in the correct alphabetical order, its colourful spine adding to the cacophony of Cool Logos that adorn your living space. Digital libraries try to simulate this, but they just don't scratch that particular itch. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the physical game that will be lost is the thrill of a multi-disc release. The promise of a grand old time, an endless adventure too big to be contained on but one measly piece of landfill fodder. Two discs? Cor, what a treat. THREE discs? Man, this has gotta be good! EIGHT DISCS? What could POSSIBLY... oh, about an hour of crappy FMV. Still, you can't put a price on that initial excitement. What, then, is the best multi-disc game of all time? And does it have Final Fantasy in the title? To find out, listen to our esteemed panel argue about it for approximately forty of your earth minutes in this here program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Best Games Ever podcast is a game show where three regular panellists have to find the best game in a weirdly specific category such as "Best game with a named horse", or "Best game with a terrible British accent". They have to pitch their pick to our host, Jim, who then decides the winner. But there's a lot of office politics, backstabbing, and meta-gaming going on which makes this mild-mannered panel game fraught with real danger. This week, inspired by the recent release (finally) of Skull & Bones, we're asking: what's the best Pirate Game that isn't Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag? We're asking like that because of two things: 1) Black Flag is arguably the best pirate game of all time. Well, it's either Black Flag or Sid Meier's Pirates!, and the latter isn't connected to a recent game launch, so. 2) It definitely isn't Skull & Bones, because that game frankly deserves to walk the plank. And how do you define a pirate game? Does it have to involve flintlock pistols, cutlasses, and sailing the actual caribbean? Or can it be something that features acts of piracy in an entirely different setting? Well, figuring that out is part of the game, so watch this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes it's just really baffling why certain games are popular. And you wonder to yourself if it's just because you're broken in some way. What malfunction or defect from birth would lead someone to, say, think Horizon Zero Dawn is a load of cobblers? We're here to reassure you that it's fine, actually, to just not get Mass Effect. To look on in bewilderment as your colleagues all obsess over Death Stranding or Mass Effect. To be left cold by everyone's incessant overtures about Breath of the Wild. Some things just aren't for you! And that's ok! The healthy way to deal with it is to accept that you're just, in some small way, better or smarter or more discerning than everyone else. But which of our distinguished panel has picked the best game that everyone except them loves? To find out, watch this. Watch this! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the best game that has no business being brought up on a podcast that's all about the Best Games Ever? If you can get your head around that, you're already way ahead of our regular panel. Some of the worst games ever made are also the most interesting. Take Night Trap, for example: it's arguably one of the most important games in the history of the medium. Questions were asked about it in congressional hearings: it was, despite narrative overtures to the contrary, a peeping-tom simulator where you, the player, spied on a house full of teenage girls having a sleepover via a bank of (extremely rubbish quality) video feeds. Your objective was ostensibly to save the girls from vampires, or something, but it doesn't matter, because few people actually played Night Trap and even fewer would admit it. What's interesting about it is that it caused such a moral panic in the US that it led directly to video games having their own age ratings systems, which is an important thing in the evolution of the medium, because now it's an accepted fact that the video game audience isn't solely comprised of impressionable children. Which means we get mature, grown-up games like The Last of Us, which is about headshotting zombies and chucking bricks. The point is that a game doesn't have to be good to be interesting. So what heaps of absolute rubbish have our regular panellists Tom, Alex, and Billcliffe brought to the table today? Find out by watching or listening to The Best Games Ever podcast via these handy methods, and enjoy our extended SUBSCRIBERS ONLY podcast for FREE until February: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Honestly, we've got no idea what episode this is. Jim thinks this is Season 2, which is news to everyone else, but it's also sort of episode 84. This week we pick the games that we just can't stop going back to. The games that, despite knowing we have newer titles to work through, we play at every opportunity. Do you have one? Oh, and we introduce a new segment: Jim's Pick. Get it free for now, but in the near future we're going to be launching a subscriber's edition of the show that features this extra content. It won't cost much. On the show you can hear the choices of Tom Orry, Rebecca Jones, and Mark Warren. And, as it turns out, Jim Trinca. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So much STUFF game out in 2023 - we had Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a new Baldur's Gate, a Skyrim sequel which introduced such innovations to the series as: Guns and Boring. Starfield, I'm talking about. And you knew that, but I have to spell it out in the body text because a certain tech giant has taken wordplay, nuance, and creativity out onto the back porch and shot them all in the head as a sacrifice to the god of Endless Growth. Which doesn't exist. The god, or the concept. Heh! We even got a sequel to Dead Island (it was called Dead Island 2). Some of the very best games frankly of all time came out last year. Outrageously, though, many of them came and went with minimal fanfare, because within DAYS of their release, the news and hype cycle was onto the next thing. Whether that was yet another huge, record-breaking franchise entry or a team getting laid off after having made one. Yes, for the games industry, last year ruled and sucked in equal measure. It truly was the best of times and the worst of times. Anyway, the point is, there were so many amazing games coming out last year that you've forgotten most of them. And of those games you forgot, which is the best? Let's find out by asking our panel, Rebecca Jones, Connor Makar, and Alex Donaldson. They're experts, they like video games for a living. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, for the six of you who kept asking, Merry Christmas. For this festive episode on VG247's Best Games Ever Show, Tom and Jim are reunited with friends and former colleagues Simon Miller and Steve Burns. Since they all parted ways from their infamous stint at VideoGamer.com, Simon has gone on to become a professional wrestler, in-demand presenter, and all-round online personality with seemingly endless energy for building his brand. He recently made his IMPACT! Wrestling debut and we've got no doubt that he'll just keep getting bigger. Burns sits around in a big house eating pizza and playing PES. He also co-directs a production company and regularly kicks off on Twitter about the state of Man Utd. But listen. We're not here to reminisce. We're here to throw down in the toughest dojo in town: the Best Games Ever podcast. Who's pitch will convince Jim to grant them a coveted BGEP Win? Will Tom be robbed once again? And how will Miller crowbar Gears of War into this? Does Burns really keep a copy of Atlus Shrugged on his bedside table or is he just doing a bit? Find out the answers to most of these question by listening to this... exciting installment of The Best Games Ever show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have a lot of guests on the VG247 podcast because we know a lot of Games Media Personalities and most of them are too polite and/or socially inept to say "no" when we ask them to be on our podcast. In the last year we've had such Talented Greats as Mike Channel from Outside Xbox And Things and James Batchelor who has written some books. But which guest is Tom's favourite? And who can he stand the least? And is forty minutes of one-on-one with Tom Orry enough to shut up all the Tom Orry fans in the comments who keep moaning that he's never on? Find out in this week's inflammatory installment of VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast : the show that panders to its horrid audience. Or just that one guy in Wales who really likes Tom, for some reason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The VG247 crew is back to decide on yet another Best Game Ever. In this week's show we're looking at games that are spin-off from a game in a totally different genre. So, things like how Mario Kart is a 'Mario' game but not a 2D platformer that the series became famous for. You get the idea. As always, our host Jim Trinca makes a complete mess of picking the correct winner, but you can be the judge of that without me, a simple person writing these description, influencing you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tom's back by popular demand, but also to answer for his crimes against a previous guest: James Batchelor, author of The Best Non-Violent Video Games. For weeks following James' deserved win, Tom and Conner said some Very Mean things about him and his book, and even implied that virtuous host Jim Trinca (who is fair and kind) would let anyone win if they were on to plug some coffee table book that you can already read as tweets. Did Tom back down, or double down? And how did Connor manage to escape justice? Find out in this week's delectable installment of The Best Games Ever Podcast, the least embarassing podcast to blare out on the bus when your headphone jack gets ripped out. Of your "MP3 player". In 2006. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently, our friend and long time VG247 contributor Sherif Saed gave Pinnochio-themed soulslike Lies of P a bit of a pasting in his review. Our two star score prompted a lot of backlash from some quarters, and also a bit of internal discussion about the nature of opinion pieces. How reviews can sometimes be a flashpoint of controversy, and how scores don't reflect any of the nuance that led the author to their conclusion. Personally, I'm always a bit baffled by the phenomenon of people who haven't played a game kicking off online about the views of someone who has. As a wise man once said: “it's only game, why you have to be mad?” Anyway, I thought it would be funny to do an entire podcast episode on the question of other highly acclaimed games that Sherif would give two stars to. What sacred cow would he slayeth, given the task? To find out, you'll have to watch or listen to this podcast here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hours of gameplay is a deceptive stat. We're conditioned to think that a bigger number is better in all things when it comes to this hobby, and how long it takes to complete something is seen as part of its value proposition. If a full price game launches with a six hour campaign, for example, there's hell to pay. Doesn't matter how good those six hours are. But video games aren't inherently a long form medium. Some of the best games of all time are 25 minutes long (if you're good, or cheating). Many more can be completed in one sitting. Within reason. Technically you could play World of Warcraft for 600 hours straight in one “sitting”. Don't split hairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

London shows up in a lot of games. It's in a lot of Call of Dutys, which is the biggest shooter franchise in the world. It has the distinction of being the only non-US city ever depicted in GTA, which is the biggest crime franchise in the world after the royal family. Blimey, Ubisoft have done London four times, they can't get enough of it. It even pops up at the end of Mass Effect 3. But very few London-based video games are made by London-based teams, such is the nature of a global industry such as ours, and so many of London's virtual facsimiles often don't quite hit the mark. We're not talking about botched geography here: it's one of the biggest and densest cities in the world, so we can certainly forgive a bit of artistic license when it comes to shrinking it down to manageable proportions for a game map. No, we're talking about the cultural details and foibles that most of a global audience wouldn't notice. Watch Dogs Legion, for example, is an incredibly accurate recreation of Central London in terms of its geography, probably the best that's ever been conceived. But there are some story contrivances and missed memos that betray the game's Not London origins. The tuna puns that adorn every fish and chip shop. The fact that all the national railway terminals are closed off completely, virtually abandoned, accessible only in some story missions. When in reality, spaces like Waterloo and Liverpool Street are enormously important in London life. They are bustling hubs that serve as vital transport connections, but they're also grand cathedrals of the city's vast lunch n' breakfast based economy. Most of Britain's wealth is shuffled around by people in those big glass towers, you see, and they don't have time to make a packed lunch. London isn't really a Driving City, but Watch Dogs Legion is a Driving Game set in a location where traffic rarely gets above 20mph and the vast majority of UK drivers I know actively avoid going into it. It's a Train City, but in Legion, there are no trains. The tube is relegated to set dressing for the fast travel system. Essentially a set of loading screens. It's not London, it's a London-esque reskin of a North American city. I'm keen to see what the Fallout: London people come up with, because that project looks like it really understands how to leverage London as a location. And it has a lot of real-world history that could easily be folded into Fallout lore. Hey, you like underground bunkers? Mate, London's got loads of ‘em. There used to be one in the back of every garden. Anyway, to find out which London-based game is the best ever, you'll need to watch or listen to this here podcast here. Handily, we've provided several ways to do so. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Alan Wake (he's A. Wake, get it? Get it?) to Miles Prower, there are loads of video game protagonists whose names are rubbish puns. Well, actually there isn't, but it's happened just often enough that there's sufficient material for this edition of VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast. Halloween fell between the gaps of our posting schedule, so we couldn't really justify doing a Best Spooky Game That You Couldn't Finish episode, and Guy Fawkes night also doesn't occur for another couple of days, so we can't do a Best Game That Makes Light Of Religious Persecution either. But here's the next best thing – a topic that we can link to the year's best horror game, Alan Wake 2, on account of developer Remedy's penchant for giving their characters the most entertainingly daft names despite putting them in serious games with mature themes. Like “staying up past your bedtime”, or “doing that cool thing from The Matrix where you leap across a room firing guns”. But which game featuring a protagonist with a stupid punny name is the best one? And what exactly is a pun? Why is that if I say “talking skull”, you imagine something like Boney from Trap Door or Murray from Monkey Island, where it's the bleached skull of a dead person reanimated by supernatural means, rather than thinking of the talking skull that you yourself actually live in, or the dozens of talking skulls that you interact with on a daily basis? Not a single one of these questions is answered in this episode, but we do argue a lot, so you'll probably like it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gimme ham steak on rye with extra pickles and a dozen egg whites on the side. Hold the pickles. Who's uncle do I gotta bribe to get a parking space around here? Get outta here. And so on. Yes, this week we're asking our esteemed panel: what the best game set in New York (or a facsimile thereof)? There are an absurd number of games to choose from. The Big Apple is probably the most depicted city in the medium, and it's not hard to understand why: beyond the fact that it's an enormously influential media hub (the "capital of the world", or so the saying goes), where a disproportionate percentage of the world's most successful creatives hail from, it's also just has an intoxicating allure. Everyone wants to explore its streets, its hip neighbourhoods, its melting pot of cultures and cuisine. And what better way to explore it than from the comfort of your own home, in video game form, where you don't even have to go through security at Heathrow first. Anything is worth avoiding that, frankly. New York, or close approximations of it, serves as backdrop to a huge number of the greatest games of all time. Its stunning photorealistic recreation in Sony's Spider-Man games is one of the most intricate game locations ever constructed, as is the painting-like autumnal metropolis of GTA IV's Liberty City, a deft imitation that absolutely nails the vibe of the real world city and many of its signature landmarks, despite being completely unlike it in terms of its layout and geography. New York crops up in places you'd hardly expect, too. Mario Odyssey, anyone? Despite literally featuring a character who is canonically from Brooklyn, the last 3D Mario adventure has an entire sequence set in New Donk City, meaning that the Mario universe has at least two New Yorks. It's so good, they built it twice. But which New York-based game is the best of all? Well, to find out, you'll have to watch or listen to this podcast here. Handily, below are several methods for doing so. So keep your frickin' hair on, aight? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inspired by the recent-ish release of Detective Pikachu Returns, the topic of this week's Best Games Ever show is: what's the best Detective Game? And it's a doozy of a topic, because there's so many to choose from. Investigative gameplay crops up in so many things. Even the recent Assassin's Creed games could arguably qualify, if you're happy to define “detective work” as “pressing a special button to highlight environmental clues”. We'll just get it out of the way right now: nobody picked Disco Elysium, so that's the pseud's favourite out, and nobody picked the smart-arse Batman Arkham Asylum option either. I was as shocked as you are. It just goes to show, though, how broad and open a topic it is. It's unsurprising, really, given how solving mysteries is probably the most prevalent way of interacting with virtual worlds aside from doing violence. Hunting for clues and hidden objects, following threads until you reach a conclusion, making informed decisions based on a combination of hard evidence and your own gut instinct. There are lots of games out there that feature detective work, but no actual detectives. Likewise, there are plenty that star detectives, but contain no actual detective work. It's perhaps an historical oddity that, of all the Pokemon games to get a big Hollywood live-action adaptation, Detective Pikachu was the one that made it to the silver screen. Until the success of the movie, in the west at least, it was a relatively obscure spin-off for proper enthusiasts: an imported curio with a cult following, but nothing like the reach of a mainline Pokemon game. It's also an oddity in that it's Ryan Reynolds' only decent film in a career of absolute toilet, but it's also a role that everyone wanted Danny Devito to play, so Ryan Reynolds isn't even that much of an asset to the thing. Anyway. What on earth was I saying. Oh yeah, detective games. So, which of these bewildering number of games is the best one, according to our esteemed panel? Well, in order to fine out, you'll have to watch or listen to this here podcast, which you can do via several approved methods below. Cor, aren't we good to you. Special thanks to David Bulmer for performing "Jim's Theme". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Video games and excessive violence go together like cheese and crackers. Laurel and Hardy. Beer and nuts. Bacon and, er, rolls. Playstation exclusives and the concept of mediocrity. We love simulated violence here at VG247, but not the real stuff, so when it came to the task of deciding which notably ultraviolent game is the best one of all we decided to solve our differences via the medium of a weekly panel show format that goes out on all the major podcast platforms and YouTube. Conveniently, we already had one, which is this show: The Best Games Ever Podcast, which you're probably listening to now if you're reading this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I don't have a driving licence. I can't drive a car. People assume I can because I like games with cars in them. I don't bother to correct people anymore, as I'm almost 41 years old and I simply can't be bothered. If you've ever imagined me driving a car because you assumed I could drive a car and this revelation has shaken you to your core, changing your worldview and altering your very existence on this earth, I'm sorry. To be clear, I have been in cars, just not driven them. I mostly walk places. What a perfect intro to this week's Best Games Ever Podcast, in which we decide (or Jim picks based on no actual sense whatsoever) the best driving (not racing) game. I've also never raced in a car, unless you count go-karts, which I've done several times. To find out if Jim made the right choice, you'll have to listen to The Best Games Ever Podcast episode 72. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all love a bit of Cyberpunk don't we? And did you know that there are loads of games that use that setting and aesthetic that aren't Cyberpunk 2077? Sure, CD Projekt Red's game has just received a massive update, making it better than ever alongside a brilliant expansion, but if you had to pick a Cyberpunk game that isn't that, what would you choose? That's exactly what we're doing here in this week's Best Games Ever Podcast. As ever, Jim has to pick a winner, with Tom, Alex, and Connor doing their best to get his vote. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether it's Patrick Stewart in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Sean Bean in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or Terrence Stamp in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there are numerous examples of big name hollywood actors showing up in video games, and it's always an exciting little surprise to hear a familiar voice that isn't Troy Baker. But sometimes, there are cameos or guest starring roles that aren't even particularly well advertised. Did you know, for example, that Lynda Carter of Wonder Woman fame played every female Nord and Orc NPC in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? But what is the best game that features one of these surprise guest appearances, cameos, easter eggs, or whatevers? To find out, we consulted a top panel of non-experts in the form of podcast regular Tom Orry (my boss), Owen O'Donnell from The Infinite Review, and in his first ever appearance on our show, Richie Morgan: videographer, podcaster, twitch streamer, and Greggs Liker with a devoted cult following in the Scottish gaming podcast scene. Despite this impressive CV, Tom is furious with me for once again filling the podcast with my mates. To find out if he was wrong to doubt me, you'll have to watch or listen to The Best Games Ever Podcast episode 70, conveniently available on this very page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices