Episode 56: The best globetrotting travel game

The Best Games Ever Podcast

Welcome to The Best Games Ever Show episode 56: the best globetrotting travel game.

This week we welcome our first guest panellist, the ever endearing Bertie Purchese from Eurogamer! If you've ever gone to EGX you may know Bertie as the eccentric host of the Eurogamer Pub Quiz, and if you're generally interested in games writing you'll have come across his tireless work as an Associate Editor of Eurogamer, where he covers news, conjures up features, records podcasts, and looks after their Supporter Programme. He loves RPGs, which often have a fabulous globe-trotting aspect to them (though not necessarily of our globe), so we asked him to bring that expertise to today's topic. And he actually turned up!

Video games are a wonderful medium for virtual travel. They don't just show you new places, they let you interact with them. Live in them. Breathe their air. Talk to the people who live there. I mean, sure, usually your chief form of interaction with a game world is violence, but that's not always the case. And, as well as inviting us to adventure in realms of fantasy, video games have gotten extraordinarily good at depicting real life places too. Contemporary locations like modern day New York, Tokyo, and London are extremely well represented as video game locations. Untethered from linear time, historical action adventure games like the Assassin's Creed series and Ghost of Tsushima allow us a glimpse into the world as it was, not just as it is now, which is a thrilling aspect of the medium for anyone with an interest in the past.

But what is the best game for digital tourism? Which game truly makes you feel like a globetrotting citizen of the world, according to our esteemed panellists? Well, to find out, you’ll have to listen to this here podcast. Which you're presumably doing already otherwise you won't have seen this.

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