The Free Cheese

This week on The Free Cheese, the year of the vampire. For the first game in Season 14, we explore the early 2000s by way of its vampire assassin, female lead character action hack-and-slash genre. Or as you might call it, Bloodrayne. We take Rayne on a journey around the world, one button at a time.

This week on The Free Cheese, 2026 begins! It is time for our favorite episode of the year, a look ahead at the year to come. We reflect on predictions made one year ago, then set our sights on the months ahead as hope is not yet dead. 2026 invites us to celebrate a number of anniversaries in video games, but which ones will make our dreams come true?

This week on The Free Cheese, 2025 is over. We talk about everything we didn't talk about during the podcast this year. We each share the games we played that weren't covered on the show, the obsessions we found ourselves sliding into, and how certain themes layered our year. Then, we look at some of the news highlights from 2025 and check in with each of the platforms.

This week on The Free Cheese, this is the end of right now but there is more to come! In the first half of our two-part Season 13 finale, we're looking back at the episodes from this year and the games we played. We take a look at The List in different formats, ranking it individually and by review scores.

This week on The Free Cheese, can't someone else do it? We celebrate the end of the quarter century and the return of Game Informer by reading its 92nd issue from December 2000. We explore its cover story, read through its letters, previews, and reviews. Then, we have a scavenger hunt through the magazine to discover some of what has been lost to time.

This week on The Free Cheese, did you know that cars blow up after just six punches? When Eidos set out to create a new Streets of Rage, Sega passed and instead we got Fighting Force. We play through its campaign, discuss how cool it is to pick up anything in the environment, and see how well this brawler holds up almost three decades after its release.

This week on The Free Cheese, we're going to China. We join up and play through the campaign of Resident Evil 6 cooperatively to see why this entry was so divisive at the time of its release. We discuss each of the campaigns in the game, what Capcom got right, and where we think the series started to drift too far away from its origins.

This week on The Free Cheese, we escape the demands of a raccoon tyrant. As our year of Animal Crossing comes to a close, we start by looking back at the game's changes and updates for the fall season. We share thoughts around the staying power of a living game like this and reflect on a full year of playing. Finally, we close out by ranking Animal Crossing on The List.

This week on The Free Cheese, don't drink the tea on Mt. Tigerwolf. We wander the world of Suikoden to collect the 108 Stars of Destiny and save the world. After years of hearing the fan adoration of the series, we finally see what Konami's exploration into the role-playing game has to offer. We discuss the little things that make Suikoden great, like its snappy menus and combat, as well as how mu...

This week on The Free Cheese, there's always a... wait. We explore Citadel Station in Nightdive Studios' remake of the seminal System Shock. We discuss the game's presentation and its reliance on your active participation as a player, as well as what that means in the long run.

This week on The Free Cheese, the Guild authorizes you to engage with this podcast. Monster Hunter Wilds launched near the beginning of this year and we jumped in together right away. In this episode, we cover our time with the campaign, what it's like to finally have crossplay and an open world in Monster Hunter, and how Monster Hunter Wilds handles teaching the game to new players.

This week on The Free Cheese, what ever happened to Y2K? After ranking it our number one console a few years ago, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the PlayStation 2 by sharing our favorite games, the best features of the console, and what its legacy is today.

This week on The Free Cheese, there's a lot more than zombies to talk about. Who knew we would be tackling two difficult games back to back? Zombies Ate My Neighbors brings over forty levels of various challenges with themes that take us outside of the neighborhood against many different monster types from classic horror tropes. We discuss our time with the game and what surprised us about playing...

This week on The Free Cheese, how do you like your meat? We play Monolith Productions' debut title, exploring the world of Doom clones as they'd reached a peak. We discuss the unique setting of Blood, its campaign, and its difficulty.

This week on The Free Cheese, whipping up a frenzy. We are finally adding a Castlevania game to The List and we're doing it with the final entry in what we now consider the classic Castlevania experience. Castlevania: Rondo of Blood shows Konami at a high point and for the series, it presents a shift in design while honoring the games that preceded it. We'll look deep at its stages, characters, an...

This week on The Free Cheese, come, stay, and let me tell you about knife's prophecy! We're lost in the Canadian wilderness, wandering our way through the snow to figure out where monsters come from. Playing D2 for the Dreamcast, we control Laura after a plane crash leads the digital actress toward discovering her destiny.

This week on The Free Cheese, they made 25 years already? Reflecting on the two and a half decade of video games released since the year 2000, we share our top ten and why we picked them. We also discuss how games have and have not changed in that time and what we expect will be in our top ten in 2050.

This week on The Free Cheese, none shall pass! Let's check out the FromSoftware experience set in ancient Japan. No, the other one. We're playing Otogi: Myth of Demons to see how it holds up today and what DNA we recognize in the studio's games that followed.

This week on The Free Cheese, quick! Turn off your flashlight, she'll see us! We join up and play through the campaigns in Left 4 Dead, hoping our non-playable companions don't set off any car alarms. After surviving multiple runs and attempts on our survival, we make it out to bring Turtle Rock Studios' and Valve's first foray into co-op survival gameplay onto The List.

This week on The Free Cheese, we immerse ourselves in the simulation. After spending the summer in Deus Ex, we both finally get it when people are really into these games. After things have clicked into place, we share stories about how we each dealt with different areas in the game, how we built our characters, and some of the weird traps we were able to set. Then, we close out by ranking it on T...

This week on The Free Cheese, the raccoon days are never over. As we look forward to the fall season we must first look back at our time spent in Animal Crossing over the summer months. We share tales of bug catching, fishing, and all of the things we missed out on as well. We discover what happens when you have a birthday in the game and how tough it is to get that one last fossil.

This week on The Free Cheese, one square at a time. Travel with us to the countryside of Wales where everyone has an American accent and something haunts an old monastery. We explore the world of Koudelka and uncover the mystery of the monastery, combining survival horror gameplay with JRPG combat.

This week on The Free Cheese, flash your high beams. It's time to race around Tokyo and buy more cars so we can race around Tokyo. We're adding one of Genki's racing games to The List in this episode, discussing the structure of the campaign, how we each customized our cars, and the longevity of this entry in the series.

This week on The Free Cheese, dying to live. We're reincarnated more than once in Cosmology of Kyoto as we explore a bit of Japanese history in this obscure horror game.

This week on The Free Cheese, hey, I've become you . Quake 4 joins The List as we dive deep into Raven Software's entrance into the Quake franchise. We discuss the pacing of the game in the first few chapters and how a shocking transformation scene changes more than just the main character for the back half of the campaign. How does it stack up to the other Quake games on The List? Come find out!