by SmashPad StaffLast year, during an episode of Leveled Loot, a podcast project featuring Kurosh Jozavi, Myles Obenza, and Danreb Victorio, Kurosh proposed the idea of doing a Fantasy Critic Draft.
What Is Fantasy Critic?
Think of Fantasy Sports, but instead of drafting and maintaining a roster of players, you’re a video game studio signing and maintaining a portfolio of video games. Much like expecting the players to do well every time they play, in Fantasy Critic, studios are hoping the games score well critically.
To score points, games on a portfolio need an OpenCritic score of more than 70. So for example, Ninja Gaiden 4 had an OpenCritic score of 82, meaning it scored its owner (Myles) 12 points. If a game scored an OpenCritic average of 69, as nice as that number is, it would lose you a point. Thankfully, this trio of players were savvy enough to not have that happen.
But also throwing a wrench into things is the “counter pick.” After the draft, each team had to “counter pick” games from the other studios that they believed would either not score at least 70 (which, again, didn’t happen) or would not come out. In one of the more hilarious situations, Danreb picked Dispatch off of Kurosh’s list, a game that would end up ranking third in our Top 10 Games of 2025. That lost our Executive Editor 17 points.
Who Won Last Year?
In 2025, Kurosh absolutely demolished competition with critically acclaimed games Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Blue Prince, and Donkey Kong Bananza. These games alone scored him 109 of his 240 points. Danreb finished second with 164, while Myles only scored 84 because he stopped paying attention once the summer hit. You can see the full results from last year here.
2026 is going to be bigger and better.
This year, we ran it back and invited SmashPad newcomers Adriana Rodriguez and Michael Fertitta to the scene, and the draft was an absolute blast. Highlights include Adriana’s first pick being Grand Theft Auto VI (will it actually come out?), Danreb crashing out after not ending up with the “Capcom Three”, and Michael getting his list absolutely plastered by counter picks.
Check out the video above, and we hope you enjoy the content!