The Free Cheese

This week on The Free Cheese, terrifying box art mascots. We add one of the essential Nintendo DS titles to The List as we work to better our minds in the process. We discuss our time spent with Brain Age this year and whether or not we believe it's made us any more intelligent or sharp.

This week on The Free Cheese, rip and tear. We revisit our 2016 Game of the Year to see how it fares against the rankings of The List. Just ahead of Doom: The Dark Ages, we see how Doom started a new trajectory for the franchise and captured our attention in the process.

This week on The Free Cheese, meeting the meat man. We wake up in Harvest and have no clue what to do next. In this episode, we discuss our journey through the experience of Harvester and the nature of using guides when playing adventure games.

This week on The Free Cheese, text message job interviews. We find a phone and try to locate its owner, discovering more about those close and not so close to her along the way. Where will Simulacra land on The List? Tune in to find out!

This week on The Free Cheese, the dungeon rises. We return to the dungeon with a new format, combining some influences together for 100 rounds of thrilling video game trivia.

This week on The Free Cheese, you are the wind. Journey with us back to 2009 to the heyday of PlayStation Network and the burgeoning world of indie video games. We discuss the significance of thatgamecompany's Flower and how it led to the creation of this podcast.

This week on The Free Cheese, that's David's mark. We travel through time and fight dinosaurs as we add another Capcom survival horror game to the list. This time, we look at the more action-oriented sequel to Dino Crisis and reflect on the strength of its upgrade system.

This week on The Free Cheese, you search and you action. Sega may be working toward its goal of transmedia takeover today, but the roots of the efforts follow back to 1987 on the Master System. In this episode, we look at Zillion and how Sega tried something different with a new property. It's also an opportunity for us to celebrate the unannounced Year of Metroid, so let's do that too.

This week on The Free Cheese, a good first-person shooter. We Return to Castle Wolfenstein, seeing what id's legacy becomes in another developer's hands while still using idtech to bring the game to life. We compare it a bit with its contemporaries and some other games on The List, and then we rank it.

This week on The Free Cheese, Halo ...killer? We turn the clocks back to 2004, as the video game world looked toward sequels to Grand Theft Auto and Halo, and PlayStation introduced its new first-person shooter, Killzone. We explore as much of the campaign as we can and spend some time this episode wondering what went wrong for us.

This week on The Free Cheese, mullets live on. We finally add a Mario Kart game to The List. Wait, right—We add our third Mario Kart game to The List this week, bringing the best-selling Nintendo Switch game into discussion. We talk about the changes made for the Switch release, how it became so dominant, and what we like about it so much.

This week on The Free Cheese, boulderrrrr PUNCH! It wouldn't be a season of The Free Cheese Podcast without a new Resident Evil game to add to The List. This time, we make it a cooperative experience and see how the fifth numbered game stays true to and defers from the Resident Evil formula.

This week on The Free Cheese, hello neighbor! We've just moved to town in time for the winter holidays and the total absence of bugs. We gather to recant our time spent in the first quarter of our year with Animal Crossing, sharing stories of villagers and tyrants.

This week on The Free Cheese, throw all your hands up. Six years after its initial release, we finally play through the Anthem campaign. We share our thoughts on our time with the game, what we think went wrong with Anthem, and what could have saved it. We also look back on our time with other live service games, pitch the ultimate Green Lantern live service game, and wonder what's next for BioWare.

This week on The Free Cheese, hear that? We discuss soundtracks that made an impact on us and on other video games. Rather than focus on the "best" soundtracks (although we save some time for that as well), we look at soundtracks that feel important.

This week on The Free Cheese, metroiDOOMvania? We look at how video games post-Doom tried to find their own niche and why expanding on item collection works well in a first person shooter. It's back to Egypt to investigate the alien invasion for us, all before another ranking on The List.

This week on The Free Cheese, we are not ninjas. What happens when a franchise reaches incredible heights and has nowhere to go but outward? A grand adventure to collect the icons of the elements, if you can survive controlling it. We take a look at one of Mortal Kombat's first experiments and see how it holds up.

This week on The Free Cheese, prepare for Titanfall. We return to Titanfall 2 this episode to check in on the multiplayer community and see the campaign through. We discuss how it holds up after eight years, and how much first-person shooters have changed since its release, then rank it on The List.

This week on The Free Cheese, welcome to the year of Metroid! We revisit the most divisive entry in the Metroid series ahead of the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond this year. We examine the unique controls, the emphasis on story, and action-oriented combat. Then, we rank it on The List as our first ranking in Season 13.

This week on The Free Cheese, let's predict 2025. For the debut of our thirteenth season, we look ahead at 2025. We see how we fared in predicting 2024 and then make our claims for the year ahead. We also give a taste of what to expect this season on the podcast and discuss some of the initial games we'll be playing.

This week on The Free Cheese, it's the end of Season 12 — Part Two. In our finale, we each share the games we played in 2024 that made an impression on us. We discuss some of the headlines from the year and bring things to a close with a peek ahead at Season 13.

This week on The Free Cheese, it's the end of Season 12 - Part One. As we bring Season 12 to a close in a two-part episode, we shake up The List with science and math. We also discuss the games we loved the most from this year's episodes and everything that surprised us along the way.

This week on The Free Cheese, making friends with old computers. In January, we each purchased a console we never owned before and have spent the year with it. Matt selected the PSP and Joe the Xbox. After twelve months with them, we reconvene to discuss the highs and lows of each. We discuss the games that we've played, what it's like to use the hardware today, and share the surprises that each one brought.

This week on The Free Cheese, live in your world, listen in ours. We celebrate the 30th anniversary of PlayStation one generation at a time. We discuss the launch of the brand, how it has evolved, and where we hope it goes. Through each generation, we look at the best selling games and key innovations introduced.

This week on The Free Cheese, it's been a while. We return to the adventure and see how the year turned out for our fitness journeys. We discuss how to maintain momentum with a routine and what we think Ring Fit Adventure does to encourage returning to it each day. Then, we rank it as our final ranking for Season 12.

This week on The Free Cheese, who's on top? After four different, multi-part episodes and two post-mortem episodes, it's time we rank our Wii Sports Killers. We give our final word on Wii Sports and discuss why it has remained at the top of our list for this long. Then, we rank the games that propped up this season.

This week on The Free Cheese, guns and monsters. We continue our Wii Sports Killers discussion with our remaining thoughts on Halo: Combat Evolved and Pokémon Gold and Silver. We look a bit at them individually and what they represent historically, then compare them against one another.

This week on The Free Cheese, blocks and mushrooms. As we approach the end of the season, we look back on Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Tetris Effect: Connected. We have a final discussion on our time with each game, then compare them ahead of our pending ranking against Wii Sports.

This week on The Free Cheese, we close the gap. Throughout 2024, we hosted monthly streams where we checked in with some of our childhood favorites from the 16-bit era. Now, we're reviewing and ranking Super Strike Eagle, Krusty's Super Fun House, Scooby-Doo Mystery, and Sonic Spinball on The List.

This week on The Free Cheese, point and click. The car has crashed and we're at a haunted house. Everything is black and white and—oh, that's the nature of the Macintosh. In Uninvited, we're finding the secrets in every corner of every room and learning the truth of sorcery trapped in the walls of this house. Will we find our brother and escape alive? Maybe. Eventually...

This week on The Free Cheese, I don't wanna talk about it! We add the last in line of classic Resident Evil games to The List. We share our strategies for combatting some of the troubles we encountered, revel in the absurdity of the story, and highlight one of the best soundtracks in video games.

This week on The Free Cheese, BYORPG. We add perhaps the most indie game so far to The List with 2012's RPG Maker classic, Ib. We explore the art gallery and the horrors within, solving puzzles and trying to find our way back out with some friends.

This week on The Free Cheese, we get lost in the plot. We're rolling through FMV backgrounds one screen at a time as we discover the nuance of Fear Effect. We discuss its supernatural plot, its attempt at survival horror gameplay, and how well the game's art holds up today. Then, we rank it on The List.

This week on The Free Cheese, Spartans who play together... We play through the campaign together on the couch and come together for one final episode on Halo: Combat Evolved before we rank it later this year. We share the highs and lows of playing together and how successful our speedrun tactics were.

This week on The Free Cheese, we learned something today. We both collectively wonder why we ever fell off of this game at its release and add South Park: The Fractured But Whole to The List. We discuss our respective journeys through the story and struggle to find a bad thing to say throughout.

This week on The Free Cheese, we're all sackdudes, hey!   We revisit Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet and explore its single player campaign to see how it holds up. We also discuss the loss of the game's internet connectivity and the unfortunate absence of its greatest features. 

This week on The Free Cheese, you got green stars? We cover the second half of Super Mario Galaxy 2 and discuss our favorite moments from the final stages. We revisit some of our favorites from the campaign as a whole and look ahead at chasing 100% completion. We also look at the Wii Remote and its role in the gameplay overall.

This week on The Free Cheese, grab a Beam Cola and head to class. What happens when you repurpose a city sandbox engine for one of the world's most popular video games and use it to build a school campus? Rockstar sought to find out in 2006 with Bully and we spend this week adding it to The List. We go deep on its story, side missions, class structure, and everything in between as we lose five points in Greaser Respect but make everyone else like us.

This week on The Free Cheese, super brother. We add one of the Dreamcast's most interesting innovations to The List this week with Smilebit's Jet Grind Radio. We discuss how different the gameplay feels in comparison to games before and after and reflect on the iconic soundtrack and style introduced 24 years ago.

This week on The Free Cheese, it's all part of the journey. The second half of our Tetris Effect: Connected discussion picks up with a focus on the single player mode that made the game so special in 2018. We recant our memories of playing it for the first time and share what it feels like to revisit Journey Mode all these years after. We also explore our personal theming and word associations with each stage as we go through them.

This week on The Free Cheese, thank you Player570. You have earned 100 points. We revisit a game we both left unfinished and follow up last year's addition of Year Walk to The List. This time, we're spinning our mobile devices in circles and listening closely to the sounds between the lines in Device 6.

This week on The Free Cheese, bury me with my treasure. We spend some time with a puzzle game that never found much attention in North America, playing the re-release of its Sega Saturn port from the arcade. Join us as we work through the best strategies and tactics for clearing the game and setting new high scores in Cleopatra Fortune!

This week on The Free Cheese, give me your garbage and I'll send it right back! What do you do when your fighting game is the most popular game in the genre? You make a puzzle game spinoff. We play and rank Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, while providing some tips that helped us to become incredibly intermediate level players!

This week on The Free Cheese, we're sliding into P Tier.  In celebration of EVO 2024 and fighting games, we're spending an episode talking about Salty Bet. The online betting casino based on the MUGEN fighting game engine has been around for over a decade and still shines as an example of using a live streaming platform in a unique manner.  We discuss our best wins, greatest losses, and some of the wilder matchups we've witnessed through the years. 

This week on The Free Cheese, which weapon will you choose? SoulCalibur II joined the scene with some new friends when it hit consoles, bringing exclusive characters to each version of the game. We discuss the general gameplay and experience of its fighting system, then go deeper into Weapon Master and the secret characters you unlock.

This week on The Free Cheese, to the mountain top. Our evaluation of Pokémon's second generation continues in this episode as we return to Kanto and complete the second half of the games. We discuss the balance in difficulty across the next set of gyms and share our experience taking on the game's final boss. Then, we assess how it fares in comparison to itself, other games in the series, and its overall impact on the genre.

This week on The Free Cheese, they're probably dead by now. We bring Digimon expert Marc back to the podcast to discuss its history and future, share our collective histories with the franchise, and what makes it stand out against its contemporaries. We each acquired a Digivice ahead of recording and spent some time training our virtual pets. In the episode, we recant our experiences raising Digimon.

This week on The Free Cheese, you wanna get nuts? It's the 35th anniversary of Batman and we're celebrating by playing the Sunsoft video game adaptation. We discuss the impact of Tim Burton's 1989 film, our history with Batman, and of course we rank Batman: The Video Game on The List.

This week on The Free Cheese, we like our new, old consoles. As we reach the 50% mark of the year and this season, we reflect on the games we've played so far. We discuss our disappointments in some and surprises in others. We talk a bit about what 2024 has brought us, both in new titles as well as new experiences for us. Finally, we discuss the purchases of PSP and Xbox that we made this year and update on our time spent with each console.

This week on The Free Cheese, DualShock controller required. We play, review, and rank one of Sony's early first-party efforts to see how it stands against The List. We discuss the unique gameplay of Ape Escape and how the right stick combat works with each gadget you acquire.

This week on The Free Cheese, we try to set the high score for car flips. A Sega classic joins The List this week while we take an intense, leisurely drive across several countries. We dissect the gameplay of Out Run, how it has held up for almost forty years, and share our tips for success (or more realistically, how to avoid our mistakes).