Game of the Year 2025
It almost feels like a cliche to say but 2025 was a weird year for gaming for me, what even is a “normal” year at this point anyway? At the end of 2024 I lost my job, got evicted from my home and thankfully my very kind in-laws allowed my partner and I to live with them for a few months while found somewhere new to stay. I whole goddamn year later and we are finally in our home, somewhere we hopefully be for a long time to come.
This of course coloured my whole year and sharing a space with family again limited some things for me. We were sharing a Living Room space, so sitting on party chats or Discord with friends while I played games wasn’t really doable anymore. My in-laws were again kind enough to offer me a space to work from home from, but gaming in there for prolonged periods of time was uncomfortable both physically (the chair wasn’t very good and I didn’t want to impose too much and replace it.) On top of all this, I was now living quite a lot further from some of my friends who I hung about with in person the most than I had in the past and uhhh that might have coloured a few of my choices in this list.
Anyway, that’s enough preamble and ranting about personal stuff, here’s video games
5: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
I’m not a big RPG guy. Like, I used to be. I grew up sinking tons of hours into Pokémon and Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger and so on but over the years I’ve kinda found that I fall off those kind of games after a while even if I enjoy them. So, I was expecting the same thing with Expedition 33. Instead, I was engrossed in its world. Pulled into caring about the characters, their struggle to survive and the incredibly fun battle system. I always appreciate a game that intentionally allows you to just absolute break its systems and the battle system in Expedition 33 is very much that. By the end of Act 2 I had turned Maelle and Sciel into glass cannons that could eradicate bosses in single hits who started every fight by intentionally dying in order to apply new buffs. It’s so fun, although admittedly it does mean I potentially missed out on some of the fun dodge/parry patterns in the battles with those bosses but I’ll live. I will say though, almost every time I’ve revised this list this game has fallen a spot (it was briefly in number 1) and that’s largely due to some issues I have with the final Act of the game. Without going into too many spoilers, Act 3 feels like it was made for the sickos in some ways. It’s largely focussed around side content and optional boss fights that while fun, are brutally difficult and doing them will easily make you overpowered for the last actual story boss even if you weren’t intentionally trying to turn your characters into atom bombs like I was. The story also just completely falls apart in this act for me, undercutting its own ending in ways that I was not fond of. A great, but flawed game. But one that stuck with me enough to deserve to be on this list.
4: UNBEATABLE
God, UNBEATABLE is just fucking fantastic.
3: Okay no wait I should write more about Unbeatable than that
4: UNBEATABLE (for real this time)
The inverse of the last game on this list, UNBEATABLE actually started relatively low on my GOTY rankings (but high enough to be ranked) because quite frankly it didn’t work. When UNBEATABLE launched on PS5, the Arcade mode (where you play most of the rhythm game part of the experience) was completely broken. Unlocks didn’t work, it didn’t retain your high scores, it was just a bad time all around. The story however, did work (for the most part) and the more I played through that the higher the game rose in this list, despite the technical issues. In part that’s because UNBEATABLE’s story is just fantastic. Set in a world where music is illegal and you do crimes, I wasn’t really too sure what to expect from the story mode. It ended up being mostly a visual novel/adventure game-y thing with the already fantastic rhythm game section mixed in, alongside a couple of really fun minigames (and one really bad one, I’m sorry Prisonball but I don’t think you care) and it’s all glued together with some of the most stylish action sequences around.
The story it tells is of course just as important as how it is told and UNBEATABLE’s story is not one I’m going to forget any time soon. I dunno, I just wasn’t expecting the silly rhythm game about music being illegal to make me tear up, to make me want to actually pick up a guitar again, to make me want to put the effort in to do any of the many hobbies I love but do not dedicate enough time to due to life, lack of focus and lets be honest if you know me, probably a bit of undiagnosed ADD in there.
Also they did actually fix the Arcade mode so like, that’s why it climbed the list. It’s still buggy, you can feel the story mode barely holding itself together. It’s an overused metaphor but it’s like a cartoon car that has been pushed beyond its limits and part of it are just flying off as it goes. But that shouldn’t stop you playing it. There’s nothing quite like it.
3: Peak
Remember I did that whole preamble at the start that you probably skipped over? Where I talked about like, my living situation this last year? Well YOU BETTER. IT WAS RELEVANT. I usually play a lot of co-op games with my friends, or when I’m not playing co-op games I jump into PSN party chats with some friends and just hang out when playing separate game OR I stream games. A bunch of us in one of my friend groups do this last one and it’s fun to just sit and chat with people while you’re playing a game and to share in whatever comedic moments arise.
Peak is a game that feels designed around creating those comedic moments. I didn’t stream much this year but playing Peak with friends and us all sharing in the silliness that that game created was the online social crutch I needed this year. It also helped that a few of us got really into recording our gameplay sessions and cutting them up into little funny clip videos, something that let us continue to laugh at the experiences we had playing it long after the fact and also just get some practice in video editing (at least, that was part of my reason for it.)
None of this would have worked for us if the core gameplay of Peak wasn’t so damn fun. There’s no shortage of co-op games out there that are designed primarily to generate streamer clip content but I don’t find a lot of them actually enjoyable to play outside of that framing? The term “Friendslop” has gained a foothold this year and I kinda hate it but I’d also definitely argue that Peak does not belong in the category anyway. There’s a lot of depth to its climbing mechanics, a lot of strategy in how and when to use the items you find or even just in planning which route you want to take up the mountain, hell a lot of the time it’s important to even know when you’ve taken a bad route and need to turn back before it’s too late.
I cannot recommend something more than getting a few friends together, hopping on Peak and just going for a climb. Maybe install the “Unlimited Players” mod, because the chaos of having like 8-10 people all trying to climb a mountain designed for 4 player co-op really is Peak.
2: Hollow Knight: Silksong
It’s goddamn Silksong, what do I even need to write here? As with a lot of people I wasn’t sure if Silksong could live up to the absurdly high expectations that Hollow Knight and the years of development time had set for it but what do you know, they did it. They made another outstanding Metroidvania.
I find it hard to actually write about Silksong in a format like this without just slipping into a review because weirdly there’s not a lot I feel passionate about saying about Silksong. It’s just really fucking good. I love this style of game and they made one of the best ones there has been.
Is it as good as Nine Sols? Is that a question anyone except me would even ask? Who knows.
1: Blue Prince
I will not be explaining this screenshot at this time
There’s something about a puzzle game that basically requires note-taking to complete. Last year had my beloved Lorelei and the Laser eyes and this year Blue Prince took a stab at it and created one of the most sensational puzzle games I’ve ever played.
Blue Prince would almost definitely have made it to near the top of my GOTY list entirely on its own merits, but it admittedly has made to it to the coveted number one spot in part because of things outwith the game itself. Again, online community has been a big thing for me this year and Blue Prince has been a perfect game for that kind of experience despite being a solo game. I spent a lot of time in multiple discords discussing puzzles, meta-puzzle theories, giving hints to people I was ahead of and receiving them from those I was behind. Most of the few times I streamed this year were Blue Prince, going live to test out theories and ideas we’d crafted on those discords or just to poke around for new puzzle leads. For weeks it absolutely consumed friend groups and discord servers I was in, it was the only game I could think about and it of course filled many pages in my notebooks while I played. Years after I’m gone some descendant of mine is going to find the absolute nonsense I wrote trying to solve the puzzles in this game and be very confused.
Honourable Mentions
Donkey Kong: Bananza
Nintendo made a great 3D platformer with some really fun and unique mechanics and absolutely oozing with charm. Who could have predicted such a thing?
Sektori
If I had been able to play more of this it’d have almost definitely jumped two spots up and kicked E33 out of my top 5. An ex-Housemarque dev made a loveletter to arcadey twinstick shooters, and specifically to Geometry Wars, and it is absolutely fucking stunning.
Kirby Air Riders
I didn’t own a GameCube and Kirby’s Air Ride is weirdly expensive so I actually have barely played the first of these games. But I love Kirby and I love racing games and this one scratched an itch I didn’t know I had.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
I haven’t finished this one yet but man I love delivering packages to weirdos across Australia.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
I haven’t finished this either and it is maybe the most likely to have fallen off this list if I’d played more of the games beneath it in my list. But they made a new Metroid Prime! It has capital I ISSUES but also it’s largely pretty great?