“What is VG247’s Best Games Ever Podcast?” you ask, with the child-like glee usually reserved for when you see a new limited edition flavour Coke or a Transformer cameo in a new Chip ‘n Dale film. Here’s the format: Each week three of us must present our choice for the best game ever that meets certain criteria (this week it must be a game that we believe is great but nobody cares about). Then our host/judge, Jim Trinca, will decide who has made the best case and declare a winner, most likely annoying two of us in the process. We’re aiming to make each episode about 30 minutes long. Enough to feel like you’ve invested some time into something more than an audio sneeze, but not so long that you need a whole box of Kleenex to make it through. Hopefully that means you can squeeze the show into whatever busy podcast schedule you already have going on in your life. If not, just cut Eurogamer’s - we won’t tell them. That is it. Check out VG247’s The Best Games Ever Podcast on Apple Podcasts and subscribe. Or listen on Spotify. It’s even on YouTube if that’s your thing. 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 Episode 1. We’ve got some details on the show’s content below (mostly for SEO if I’m being honest, but you might want a bit of info on the games we picked), so if you want to avoid spoilers, don’t scroll past this posing man (Support friends of VG247, People Make Games, on Patreon).
Best game nobody cares about
This is the topic of Episode two of VG247’s Best Games Ever Podcast. Here’s a rundown of who picked what.
Tom – Quantum Break
The Xbox was in a pretty bad way back in 2016. The console was clearly underpowered compared to the PS4, the system had put a focus on Kinect and TV (?!), and Sony had a better line-up of exclusives. So It’s no surprise that people generally didn’t care about part video game part TV show Quantum Break. Which is a shame, as Tom reckons you should have. It’s from Remedy (Max Payne, Control, Alan Wake) and is awesome, both in terms of visual splendor and action-oriented gameplay. The TV stuff, wasn’t even that bad – it has Lance Reddick in it, so it must be good when he’s on the screen.
Dom – Pokemon Conquest
Have you ever heard of Pokemon Conquest? Nah, we didn’t think so. And fair enough, really; it was a spinoff crossover game with the Nobunaga’s Ambition tactical-RPG series. Obviously a great fit for Pokemon, right? You play as a warlord in Feudal Japan, and using Pokemon in grid-based strategy battles, you slowly take over the empire. Not only do you have moves as well as your Pokemon, you can also evolve, too, for some reason. Dom reckons that despite barely anyone playing it (it was a DS game that launched after the 3DS, in the same year as Black 2/White 2, d’oh), it’s the best Pokemon game out there. And it’s particularly relevant now, with Arceus being out in the wild.
Alex – Disaster: Day of Crisis
A weird and wonderful mix of Metal Gear, Time Crisis, disaster movies, and post-9/11 rah-rah chest-thumping action, Disaster: Day of Crisis is a bit of a mess. But it’s also a modern masterpiece. Developed by Xenoblade studio Monolith Soft, Disaster is emblematic of a golden age of the Wii - warts and all - of a period before Nintendo saw the sheer amount of dosh to be made from casual ‘waggle’ games, when it was still green-lighting more traditional games and asking developers to find a way to work motion controls in. Thus enters Day of Crisis, a game with light gun shooting, driving segments where you turn the controller on its side, tense bomb defusal mini-games, and motion-controlled CPR on endangered victims. It’s by no means polished perfection, but it’s the B-movie video game at its best - and somehow, one of Alex’s favourite games of its generation. Let us know what game you’d pick and which of the three you think should win in the comments below (It’s Quantum Break, right?). If you like the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review saying how wonderful it is, and tell all your friends, who can then tell all their friends who are hopefully big players on social media.
Come back in a week for another Best Game Ever. If you want more podcasts, you could do worse than checking out our friends at Rock Paper Shotgun who have the Electronic Wireless Show. Eurogamer has two shows (greedy!), Digital Foundry has DF Direct, Dicebreaker covers the world of tabletop gaming, and the Outside Xbox lot has Oxventure - A Dungeons & Dragons Podcast.
