The Best Games Ever Podcast

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 i...

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 inv...

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 pos...

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...

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 i...

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 e...

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 crue...

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...

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'...

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, howev...

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 year...

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 int...

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 hol...

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...

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 enj...

Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 30 - the best game that made you uninstall Uninstalling crap games is one thing. But uninstalling a game that would qualify in some way as a "best ever"? That's a difficult thing to imagine, or determine. Unfortunately for our panellists, that's the game. Cast: Tom Orry, Alex Donaldson, Connor Makar, and Jim Trinca. . . . . . . . . . . Our picks...

Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 29 - the best game where you don't do much. This is a topic that's very close to my heart because I love sitting doing naff all. In that spirit, I haven't borthered writing an elaborate podcast description this week. This is yer lot. Bliss. I'm going to have a mince pie later after a long and productivity-free morning. You can't sack me Tom, I'm...

Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 28 - the best game to play while you wait for Starfield. This week's topic has come about because of two things: Firstly, we're desperate to do anything Starfield related because we are a games website and people click on articles about Starfield. But, rudely, it hasn't come out yet, so we have to get creative. I say creative. I mean, we have to...

The VG247 Best Games Ever Podcast has been going for six months! Can you believe it? The show that was spawned out of a random Slack message has gone from mild strength to ever-so-slightly-less-mild strength. To celebrate this milestone I sat down with host Jim Trinca to berate him about the choices he's made so far. Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: The 6-month Inquisition Special. Cast...

I've given up writing brilliant intros to these, now. If you want them to return, simply leave a bag containing £100k in unmarked bank notes on the hill at the top of the road near the church, behind the bin. Thanks. Alternatively, write a comment saying how much you miss the wonderful intros. Or leave a review for this podcast. You have exactly one week. Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast...

Michael Sheen is good, isn't he? Welcome to VG247's Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 25 - The best game with a welsh actor in it. Please do let us know what you think of the show – and if this is your first time listening, do go back to listen to the previous episodes. If you’ve got suggestions for topics, we’d love to hear them, because we're just picking countries now and running with it. “What...

I played the Discworld video game, remarkably, before I'd read a single Terry Pratchett book. I don't know if that speaks more to the cultural cache of video games, or to my own literary ignorance growing up, but getting to the age of 11 in the United Kingdom of the late twentieth century without having read a Terry Pratchett book is quite an astonishing un-achievement. One that I quickly remedied...

“Look, it’s very simple”, said Jim. “Review scores aren’t a flat scale, they’re all sort of, rubbery and compartmentalised.”“What on EARTH are you going on about now” replied Burns, already tired of this. Jim thought for a second, looking down at his floppy Meatball Marinara, freshly purchased from Croydon’s worst Subway (which takes some doing). “Well, consider food.”“The stuff you eat?” said Bur...

What is the best game where you get to eat pie? Because it's the opening line of our theme tune, it's the first question anyone ever heard asked on our acclaimed Best Games Ever podcast: a five star rated show which some critics have described as "safe as badgers" and "short running time". So we decided to ask it for our first ever live podcast, recorded at EGX London earlier this year, with an op...

I don't believe in any god. I don't think that's a particularly unusual point of view in 2022, at least in some parts of the world, but if I did there are certainly some moments that stick with me as things I'd have potentially given a deity credit for. I was once sat under a tree watching a game of amateur cricket. From the tree fell the largest pinecone I'd ever seen and to probably ever exist i...