Overall, a fantastic top 10 list and easily my favourite in years (maybe ever?). There are 9 games on the list that I have either played/am going to play/want to play because of these discussions, and I could see my own list being very similar in terms of the games on it.
Heading in, I knew that Red Dead had no chance of winning, but would have called top 3 a win, so I'm a little disappointed it fell just short.
I actually agree with a lot of the criticism that was presented about Red Dead despite it being my GOTY. I played it more as a "game" and less in the way that Alex/Vinny/Brad described, and also got annoyed with how literally slow it was in places, but I don't think those "faults" were enough of an annoyance to have it effect how powerful the rest of it was for me.
The only two points I took issue with in the entire Best Game deliberations were:
1. Ben's idea that the game was worse off because he didn't play it the way it asked. "The game is giving me instructions and I'm choosing to ignore them, I can't believe I am failing because of it, this is terrible design" What? Doesn't nearly every game ever present you with instructions that must be followed? Yes, obviously in a lot of cases a game will present you with an objective and give you the freedom to approach it how you see fit, but there are multiple times that happens in Red Dead when you can choose how to approach a firefight, for example. When the game is saying, "hey, push this cart and protect your friends", I don't think it's unreasonable that you need to push the cart to protect your friends in order to succeed. There's a time for "go crazy and find a way to beat this guys", and a time for "follow our instructions in order to succeed because they are important to the narrative".
2. Vinny's "I tried to play the game but then it forced me to play the story and that is not what you described", when Brad literally talked about how his own "separate" game of exploring with Arthur connected with the "game" presented through the mission structure. He did add in an "I'm not an idiot, I know you need to play the game", but it seemed like a really weird, unnecessary point to make to undermine the approach of Alex/Brad.
RDR2 got way too much coverage compared to other games. Yes it was divisive but I think they went on about it way too much. god of war and dead cells was above it and they barely spoke about it. Dead cells barely got any mentions in that list. Yet it finished 2nd. ---
