3. Red Dead Redemption 2
Our discussions about Red Dead Redemption 2 centered around the idea of fun. There’s no question that this game is technically one of, if not THE best game ever made. A towering achievement that’ll be the benchmark for many, many years.
It has a stirring and powerful narrative, gorgeous design and attention to detail, and a damn masterpiece of a soundtrack. It has incredible and emergent open world moments too, with great hunting and the 2nd best fishing of 2018, but ultimately repetitive mission design and difficulty respecting the player’s time pulled RDR2 back into position number 3.
Make no mistake about it, every aspect of this experience is worth the time investment, but there were 2 titles we had more fun playing in 2018, and that won the day as the gunsmoke cleared.
2. God of War
BOYYYY! The tale of Kratos and Atreus is truly something to behold. The storytelling is gripping in a way old Kratos would surely mock, and Cory Barlog’s team did an incredible job overhauling every aspect of this franchise. I mean, as an industry we’ve discussed what other franchises could use a God of War style freshening ad nauseum.
The possibly gimmicky feeling ‘one continuous shot’ design really shines, making Kratos’ journey feel like your journey by extension. It’s painful that we had to nitpick to choose a winner, but the only small dents we could put into God of War again revolved around having slightly less fun actually playing the game. In most other years Kratos would’ve been a shoe-in, but in 2018 he’ll have to settle for second best game of 2018.
1. Spider-Man
This was a really, really tough decision. For a good long while, Spidey and Kratos were tied at #1 until an epiphany broke the stalemate: “Spider-Man was really a dream come true for me. To have that total package with not only the web swinging, but the combat, the story, the animation, the visuals, the music. It is everything I could’ve ever dreamt a Spider-Man game to be, and I’ll never forget how it made me felt.”
That really sums up how Spider-Man made us feel. Moment to moment, it was the most fun we had all year, and some of the most fun we’ve ever had holding controllers in our hands. We could go over each individual piece of the puzzle and find places to mark it down, but at the end of the day, Spider-Man was too grin-inducing to pass up. To Insomniac: you did Stan Lee proud with your vision for Spider-Man, and we’re very pleased to say that Spider-Man is COGconnected’s Game of the Year for 2018.