The last few years the video game industry has been in somewhat of a crisis – mass layoffs, studio closures, cancelled games – and that continued this past year with yet more layoffs, union busting, and generative AI in game development. If that wasn’t enough then one of the biggest publishers in the industry is being acquired by a shady consortium including Trump’s son-in-law and the sovereign wealth fund of a royal family that commits war crimes, pacifies its population with mass executions, and murders journalists. It’s enough to make anyone lose faith in the entire industry.
But despite this great games are still being made, and in 2025 we got a metric buttload of them. Far too many for us regular mortals with jobs and responsibilities to be able to play. Despite my list this year only including one game that didn’t come out this year (and that one came out late 2024), there are so many titles from 2025 that I want to play – Absolum, Sektori, Despelote, Peak, Citizen Sleeper 2, The Séance of Blake Manor, Death Stranding 2, Dispatch. For the sake of my backlog 2026 better be a disappointment.
Anyway, enough rambling, here are the 10 best games I played in 2025.
10 – Ball x Pit
We live in a post Vampire Survivors world, and like all the Dark Souls inspired games before it we’re getting some really interesting spins on the formula. Just this year we had Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor (Vampire Survivors but with mining and defined levels), Megabonk (Vampire Survivors but 3rd person over-the-shoulder), and there’s the upcoming Warhammer Survivors (Vampire Survivors but grimdark).
In that vein, Ball x Pit is Vampire Survivors but Arkanoid. Rows of enemies slowly (or not so slowly) descent towards your chosen hero – each with their own differing stats and style of play – and you spew out balls to destroy them. Unlike other games in the genre you can directly aim, and directing a volley of balls to enter an opening you have created and bounce around doing huge amounts of damage is the key to clearing enemies faster. Added to this is the different types of ball – some that set fire to enemies, some that freeze them, some that steal life, some that emit a beam the cross the screen doing damage to any enemy it hits – and that these balls can be combined through fusion to create new hybrids, and even evolved to create incredibly powerful balls.
Each level comprises waves upon waves of enemies broken up by sub-bosses before ending with a mechanically complex main boss fight. Win or lose you’ll end up at home base after each run where resources you have gathered on your runs can be used to build out your base, and doing so bestows perks that improve your chances on future runs. One of the better “one more run” games I have played in recent years, it is only at the tail end of my list because I didn’t get to play enough of it to see the later levels. Absolutely cracking soundtrack too.
9 – Mario Kart World
We finally got a new Switch in 2025, and it’s a wonderful piece of hardware that finally has the oomph to make some of my favourite Switch games run well. At launch though we only got 1 game – Mario Kart World – and the general consensus from the gaming press was it was a disappointment. I do not agree. Sure, any Mario Kart that has to follow 8 Deluxe and the years of DLC updates that game has received is going to considered thin in comparison, and on paper the number of tracks offered in World is less that 8 Deluxe. I would also agree that the open world is mostly empty and devoid of things to do outside a number of challenges that could have easily been presented via a menu list rather than dotted around the map.
But it’s what World adds that makes it a standout title in my opinion. Firstly the increase from 12 racers to 24 creates a level of chaos in races that is unmatched by any other karting games, especially online where the caliber of opposition is better and more unpredictable than the ai. Secondly the addition of wall-riding, grinding, and a host of new power ups has created some incredible new tactics and metas to get ahead in online play, which is where the game really excels. But the best addition is a result of the open-world structure of the game: Knockout Tour.
In Knockout Tour 24 racers proceed through a seamless string of races where the finish line of one is that start line of the next, and each finish line that helpless few racers at the back are eliminated until only 4 remain for a final showdown to the final finish. It is essentially a battle royale mode incorporated into Mario Kart’s tight and addictive gameplay, and one that is chaotic, hilarious, and – more importantly – easy to get into and not a large time investment. Regular race and battle modes are available and they are great fun too, but it is Knockout Tour that is the killer mode.
One final note, because circuits are present in the open world and connected by point-to-point stages, one of the routes ends with Rainbow Road, and racing up to it rather than just loading in is one of the coolest moments I experienced in gaming in 2025.
8 – Monster Hunter Wilds
I never thought at the beginning of 2025 that a new Monster Hunter game wouldn’t be vying for a spot at the top of my list, but it’s a testament to how good the competition was in 2025, and how Wilds failed to live up to the standard set by Monster Hunter Worlds. That title was a behemoth, the first Monster Hunter game to break out of its niche, clutch fanbase in the west and become a genuine commercial and critical success, it quickly became Capcom’s biggest selling title ever. And World had legs, a steady drip feed of new monsters and limited time special events featuring crossover with other Capcom titles as well as games from other developers (Horizon: Zero Dawn and Final Fantasy XIV for example), leading into a huge expansion that added dozens of hours of content led to a large and happy playerbase for years.
So what went wrong with Wilds? Well, mostly nothing, hence why it’s on my top 10 list. Wilds introduces new monsters, new mechanics, new environments and new environmental changes – each biome undergoes distinct periods of plenty, fallow, and inclemency that transform how the regions look, what monsters will appear, and what resources can be gathered. More quality of life changes make getting into the game and doing what is most fun even faster than before, the addition of the Seikret mount makes getting around the expansive maps faster, as well as providing a way to quickly dip out of a fight and chug a health potion or sharpen your weapon. A new monster type that we hadn’t seen before in the series – cephalopods – introduced a new challenge, and the rest of the roster of new monsters and returning favourites left a list of monsters at launch only a couple shy of Worlds at launch.
However not all is great. At launch the game was horrendously poorly optimised on consoles and especially on PC, to the point I had to buy a new GPU just to get the game running at a presentable frame rate, and even then it was only possible with frame generation technology. In the months since updates have failed to make much of a dent in the performance issues, and the same problem we saw in 2024’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 is apparent – the RE Engine cannot do open world games and Capcom should stop forcing its devs to use it outside of the Resident Evil team. Additionally in an effort, I presume, to get as many players into the end game as smoothly as possible, the campaign was rendered laughably easy. Whereas in World and Rise I frequently hit roadblocks that forced me to improve my equipment and git gud to progress, I sailed from opening cutscene to end credits in Wilds without getting knocked out by a monster a single time.
This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the end game was more extensive than it was, or if there was really any reason to fight some of the earlier monsters again once you hit the end game, which there really isn’t. Not only does this make the end game monster roster seem very small, some of the earlier monsters are really interesting and have some great designs. However, despite these shortcomings I still pumped a lot of time into Wilds and had a lot of fun doing so, and I pop in from time to time to see what is new and smack some monsters about. Hopefully an expansion will revitalise the game but even if it doesn’t it remains a really solid entry in the series.
7 – Metal Gear Δ: Snake Eater
Metal Gear Solid 3 is the greatest entry in one of the greatest franchises in video game history, and Delta is a faithful, loving, ground-up remake of the PS2 classic with beautiful modern graphics, updated controls, and quality of life changes, but keeps everything about the original that made it so good. The bonkers cutscenes, the ridiculous characters, the best stealth gameplay in the series, the incredible boss fights. As far as remakes go it’s almost flawless, and a must play for any fan of the series.
6 – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
MachineGames’ took a break from making batshit over the top shooters like Wolfenstein to make a faithful new entry in the Indiana Jones canon that doesn’t really feature much shooting. Instead what we got is more like a first person immersive sim in the vein of Dishonored or Deus Ex, with an emphasis on exploration, puzzle solving, and punching lots of Nazis. Troy Baker’s impression of a younger Harrison Ford’s voice is genuinely uncanny, as is David Shaughnessy’s impression of Denholm Elliott’s Brody, and the are backed by a cracking supporting cast, most notably Gina Lombardi (Alessandra Mastronardi) who is strong, capable sidekick in the vein of Marion Ravenwood, who supports Indy while being more than a match for him. A great performance by the sadly departed Tony Todd as the mysterious giant Locus, and a cartoonishly villainous Nazi antagonist round out a cast of classic Indiana Jones characters that fit a mould without feeling rote.
Raiding tombs, investigating a mysterious religious conspiracy, using disguises to get into places you should be, working with local collaborators, and punching Nazis across a glob-trotting campaign that doesn’t outstay its welcome, while offering plenty of secrets for those who wished to go looking. The only knock I have against this game is some of the fisticuffs boss fights just ever so slightly stepped over the line from challenging to frustrating for me. Apart from that I absolutely loved it and am looking forward to what MachineGames do with the franchise next.
5 – Donkey Kong Bananaza
“OOH BANANA!”
You hear that line a lot during the 20 hours or so it takes to beat Donkey Kong Bananza, and it never gets old because each collected banana unlocks new abilities to smash and crash your way through each level. And therein lies the joy of this game, careening through each new levels, destroying the scenery and sending enemies flying while you hunt for bananas and pursue the evil Void Company by digging further and further into planet towards the core.
In that classic Nintendo way mechanics are introduced, perfected, and then used to defeat a boss before being discarded before they can become stale and a new mechanic is introduced. Each new world is a distinct biome with new enemies and new hazards, and each new boss poses a completely different challenge to the last one. This game deserves to stand alongside Mario Galaxy and Mario Odyssey, while not quite reaching the same pinnacle those games did, but this is the best 3D Donkey Kong game yet (a low bar I know) and the best game on the Switch 2 right now.
4 – Arc Raiders
I have no interest in extraction shooters normally, the idea of them does nothing for me, and every extraction shooter adjacent game I have tried has frustrated me as I, for example, watch a rival crew in Sea of Thieves sail off with the loot I spent hours collecting. My opinion wasn’t really changed by playing the server slam for Arc Raiders either, as me and my teammates narrowly extracted with our pockets full of scrap. Exhilarating, sure, but stressful and not something I was interested in playing solo.
But then the game came out and I started seeing impressions across social media and podcasts about how largely friendly and non-confrontational the community was, how people were helping each other to fight the machine enemies, share the loot and extract safely. So I took a punt and spent the next 40-odd hours venturing into the post-apocalyptic world of Arc Raiders, killing clankers, helping random strangers, collecting loot, hunting for blueprints, and generally having a whale of a time. I have been killed by strangers a few times, and on more than one occasion I have lost a lot of valuable loot which is frustrating, but the tension of each encounter, of each fragile alliance you form with strangers, with each “hey, don’t shoot” emote you hear, has created a perfect formula and one that has proven to be immensely popular.
Which makes it all the more depressing that the developers doubled down on their practice from The Finals of using AI text-to-speech dialogue for NPC’s. This game is printing money and they simply cannot plead poverty as the reason to not PAY YOUR FUCKING VOICE ACTORS. I don’t care that their voice cast signed off on this, it is a slippery slope to fully AI voice casts and a practice I find deeply distasteful.
3 – Battlefield 6
Battlefield is back baby! After stumbling with V, and falling flat on their face with 2042, Battlefield Studios and Dice brought the franchise back to the heyday of Battlefields 3 and 4. If you loved those games then almost everything about this is what you have been missing, with the only shortcoming being the lack of truly huge maps like Caspian Border, Bandar Desert, or Guilin Peaks from previous installments. I’m sure those maps and maps like them will be coming, but in the meantime the maps on offer can feel a little small for a game like Battlefield.
That hasn’t stopped me from having an incredible amount of fun in this game, both solo and with friends. That classic battlefield gameplay with all the unpredictability and tense fights, holding out against waves of enemy players to secure a capture point, getting frustrated by that tank that has killed you a dozen times and strapping some C4 to a quad bike to take it out once and for all, getting into intense sniper battles over hundreds of metres’ distance, everything that makes the series great is here. Unfortunately, because of the acquisition I mentioned earlier this will probably be the last EA game I buy. If I can turn my back on the football team I grew up supporting because of their ownership then I can stop buying EA games.
The campaign sucks too, don’t even bother playing it.
2 – Hades 2
How do you improve on perfection? Supergiant seem to know because they went and improved on 2020’s Hades in every single way, a feat I never would have dreamed possible. Melinoë is a more likeable character than Zagreus, she has more interesting combat mechanics, the cast of supporting characters are more interesting and better written, the weapon types available are more varied, the enemies are more varied, the bosses are more interesting and memorable, the different biomes offering new challenges. The new big bad is more interesting than grumpy dad, and the fact that there is a whole second game within Hades II – that I will not spoil here – means that, for me, there is not reason why I could ever see myself going back to the original. An absolute masterpiece that in any other year would have been my number 1, but this wasn’t any other year…
1 – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
This game came out of nowhere for me. I hadn’t paid any attention to the previews, I didn’t know what sort of game it was or the story behind its development and the studio who made it. But when it came out and I heard so many people whose opinions I hold in high regard saying this is a new high water mark for the JRPG genre I sat up and listened. And boy am I glad I did.
Expedition 33 is a stunning love letter to PS1 and PS2 era JRPG’s by a French studio of ragtag former Ubisoft devs, soundcloud musicians, and redditors, who came together to make something truly special. A turn-based JRPG with western sensibilities and storytelling conventions that still pays respect to genre classics like Persona and Final Fantasy, while drawing inspiration from Soulsborne games, Mario RPG, Remedy games (especially Control) and so many more.
The addictive battle gameplay loop of parrying, riposting and QTE attacks drew me in and developed in incredibly deep ways throughout my play, but it was the world and the story that really held me in this game. A powerful narrative of family, love, loss, and dealing with grief told by expertly written and performed characters in a genuinely unique world. The narrative, the characters, and the world Sandfall Interactive created, stuck with me long after I had rolled credits in a way no game has for a long time. Truly a masterpiece and a once in a generation game.
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