The Free Cheese

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!

This week on The Free Cheese, there's auto-swim if you're lazy. What happens when the hardcore Tetris developers take on Nintendo's blue ocean strategy in the literal sense? Endless Ocean is a fascinating release for the Nintendo Wii and one that still feels unique today. We discuss our time with the game, the weirdest things we found below the sea, and rank it on The List. Come hang out with us a...

This week on The Free Cheese, ohhhh la la. Let's save the galaxy one dance move at a time, checking out Space Channel 5 on the Dreamcast. As a counter to UGA's Rez, we revel in the bright colors and tones of Space Channel 5, exploring another approach to rhythm video games.

This week on The Free Cheese, no really, the rings are the good part. We make some Spider-Man comics to start the show before diving into one of video gaming's most notorious releases. In time for the new DC Studios release of Superman , we play one of the Man of Steel's key video games to see how bad it really is.

This week on The Free Cheese, it's basically July. With six months on the books for the year and this season of the podcast, we break from The List and reflect. First, we talk about the hits and misses from this season so far. Then, we talk about the games we've been playing outside of the podcast. We look at some news stories and trends from 2025 in video games. Finally, we share our most anticip...

This week on The Free Cheese, how did you do it? We begin our adventure with Deus Ex and quickly realize how much this game has awaiting for us. We also learn how varied and nuanced our individual campaigns are going to shake out. We discuss the opening areas of the game and the interactions with the world that we've had so far, like triggering opponents mistakenly with a flashlight and preemptive...

This week on The Free Cheese, it should have been called Wii U 3. We look back at eight years of Nintendo Switch, starting with its rumors through its reveal and launch. We share our launch story, then discuss the highs and lows of the console. To close out a console generation, we share our Top 8 Nintendo Switch games. Next, we look toward the future of Nintendo Switch 2, discuss what launch has...

This week on The Free Cheese, we're chasing high scores again. We add Bizarre Creations' Geometry Wars series to The List, discussing the impact it had on Xbox Live Arcade and the nature of the platform. We go through each of its modes, share stories of high scores, and finally complete what our former selves couldn't achieve.

This week on The Free Cheese, feelings never die, probably. We revisit the history of E3, looking at its different eras as we experienced them. In our journey through time, we uncover some artifacts from The Free Cheese hosting E3 2014 and reflect on the highlights of the show through the years. In its death, we discuss the road the led it there and what we think of Summer Game Fest taking its pla...

This week on The Free Cheese, do you have the bug? Our adventures in Animal Crossing continue into Spring, bringing a change of atmosphere to our towns and new activities we can miss out on. We discuss how we've spent time this season in the game, the changes we're slowly making to our towns, and which villagers we've grown attached to. We also talk a bit about how this has bled into the real worl...

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.