The Best Games Ever Podcast

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 segm...

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 goi...

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 (forme...

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 who...

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 clas...

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...

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...

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-manne...

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 D...

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 c...

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, bu...

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 s...

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...

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 t...

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 judg...

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...

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 a...

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 lon...

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...

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 T...

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...

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 butt...

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 w...

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...

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...