PLAYING DEAD

What's the best game where you play dead guy? The Best Games Ever Show episode 57

From Manny in Grim Fandango to Reagan and Gorbachev in, uh, Reagan Gorbachev, dead guys have better video game representation than the Welsh

Article by Jim Trinca Former Video Producer

Published on June 23, 2023

Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 57: The best game where you play a dead guy.

Gaming is stuffed to the coffin lid with undead protagonists. Vampires. Poltergeists. Murdered detectives with unfinished business. Starship captains resurrected from death by a rogue human supremacist terrorist organisation with a trillionaire CEO. The list goes on. And indeed, on.

But what’s the best game with an undead protagonist? And why on earth did nobody pick Grim Fandango? Only one of these questions is answered in this week’s Best Games Ever Show, which is a bit short this week because the recording didn’t quite work and Jim’s on paternity leave so there isn’t any time to fix it. Still, at least the situation is framed by an ironic symmetry. Y’know, births, deaths, all that sort of thing.

To find out who won and what with, you’ll just have to watch or listen to the episode. Luckily for you, there are several ways of doing so listed below. You lucky people.

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You could also simply read the summary below, if you're the sort of person who skips to the last page of a book (a wrongun, a reprobate, a Bad Seed).

Tom

Tom picked Football Manager which seems like a reasonable choice given that you can take a football team to international leagues, and play matches against teams from all over the world. However, Tom didn't make that argument, he just pointed out that he once played it on his phone in an airport.

Bertie Purchese

Bertie went with Alpha Protocol, a classic Obsidian spy RPG which gave us a Mass Effect style twist of spy TV shows like ALIAS, and it was a corker too. Unfortunately it was massively overshadowed by Mass Effect itself, and never really found the big audience that it deserved. But those of us who played it at the time got to enjoy the thrills of being an international superspy in such exotic locations as Rome, Taipei, Saudi Arabia, and Moscow.

Donaldson

Microsoft Flight Simulator is the ultimate jetsetting game. Literally. With its astoundingly detailed world map (regularly updated with ever more high quality assets) and realistic flight mechanics that are as simple or as complex as you want them to be, 2020's revamp of the classic sim series came at a time when people were stuck in their houses and were crying out to travel again, so it perhaps isn't surprising that it became so popular with sim-heads and casual players alike. With a sequel on the way in 2024 that adds a much anticipated job system to proceedings, the future of this series looks very bright indeed.

“What is the Best Games Ever Show?” you ask? Well, it is essentially a 30-minute panel show where people (Jim Trinca and associates) decide on the best game in a specific category. That's it. It's good. Listen to it.

Come back in a week for another exciting instalment of the Best Games Ever Show.