Man there’s no other way to put it: 2025 was an absolute cracker of a year for gaming.

I really have no idea why there seems to be this ebb and flow of good and bad/mediocre years for releases but going back through my numerous years of GOTY posts the pattern is there, at least for the last 6 years or so. There’s honestly probably nothing there and indeed much of it can be put down to the filter that I apply to the gaming world at large. I’ve got my own tastes, preferences and ways of engaging with the medium that isn’t the same as…well anyone else and that plays a major part in how the various years will play out. All that being said though I don’t think you’ll find much argument for the fact that, no matter your particular circumstances, 2025 delivered in absolute spades when it came to gaming.

That’s also reflected in 47 games total, a number that I’ve not gotten near in over 5 years. The reason for this is simple: casting off yet another self imposed rule and instead focusing more on a general direction than an absolute. So now, instead of feverishly scrolling through the Popular New Releases section on Steam or the newly added on Xbox Gamepass I just try to find around 4ish games to play a month. Couple that with a semi-regular crew who get together every so often to play one of the many friendslop games and it’s a number that’s been easier to hit than ever. Whilst 52 in a year is always a goal I have burning in the back of my head, one that will get ticked off at some point in my life, it’s no longer the constraint that it once was.

In the spirit of tradition I give you the below list of every game I played last year in chronological order along with the scores at time of review:

Today brings me a special kind of joy in awarding the joint wooden spoon award. There’s been many years where I’ve felt somewhat bad for doing so, often punching down on an indie developer who was probably trying their best. Indeed when I was putting together this list I was afraid I was going to be doing so again that was until I stumbled back across 2 fantastic examples of what has gone horribly wrong with the AAA games industry. They are Borderlands 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. With so many other developers demonstrating impressive results on relatively small budgets, these titles truly exemplify everything that’s gone wrong with large-scale game development in this day and age. Strangely though I hope they continue down this path, burning out in a flurry of investor cash whilst the world turns its eyes to greener pastures.

This year’s honorable mentions list has swollen to what I believe is record-setting levels, 8 in total. They are in no particular order:

  • Dragon Age: The Veilguard: A controversial choice to put up on any pedestal given nearly every aspect of it has been met with some kind of trouble but for me, in all honesty, it was one of those games that gave me what I’ve been wanting from titles like that for so long. Was that their intended way of engaging with the game? Probably not, given that it could very well of have been a result of its troubled development that led to that particular kind of experience being possible, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that I enjoyed it for what it was.
  • Slay the Princess: A game I can’t believe I slept on for so long. It’s depth of core and meta narrative is honestly unrivalled in any game I’ve played to date; one that shows just how deep you can make an experience should you invest the time and resources to build out a branching narrative that truly reflects the player’s choices, motivations and intentions. It’s a surreal, mind twisting affair that earns of all it’s emotional payoffs.
  • Wanderstop: Ah yes, a game that reflects my general mood with my professional career as it stands today. At first it irritated me, what with its lack of direct objectives or means with which to mindlessly engage with it. That was until I realised that was the whole fucking point and that irritation I felt was stemming from the exact thing it was trying to alleviate me from. Nothing quite like getting an unexpected therapy session is there.
  • Abiotic Factor: Whilst I engaged with this game initially as part of my routine friendslop engagement it quickly shifted to something more. My crew and I would spend hours on numerous nights during the week exploring, building and generally just hanging out with each other. It harkened back to the initial days of World of Warcraft for me as it wasn’t so much the game that kept me coming back, it was the people. We capped off that game late last year and the hole that’s been left has been felt by us all. We’re trying to rekindle the flame somehow but there’s always going to be that hole, that place which we once had filled by Abiotic Factor that’s no longer whole.
  • Desktop Survivors 98: The aesthetic, the unhinged gameplay, the nostalgia. This game just seemingly has everything it needs to tickle the dopamine cells of this elder millennial in spades. There are precious few games where I look at the achievement list and go, yep, I want all of that for no other reason but it’d be fun to do so. Ever since then I’ve been on a quest to find yet another vampire survivors clone to fill the void and unfortunately none of them have. I do have hope for Saros this year, though.
  • Dispatch: Boy oh boy, we finally found the good timeline where Telltale Games didn’t up and eat its own ass so badly that it destroyed the genre it created. Dispatch is everything these games can be and more, yet again showing us what a talented indie dev studio can put out. To be sure these aren’t novice devs, they have many big titles under their belt, but their debut release as a cohort shows just how well they can work together.

I have only one thing to say before I name this year’s GOTY winner: this game is tight!

For once the mainstream and I agree on who should be crowned the winner of 2025’s banger year of gaming titles. There are many reasons that it’s up there: making me love a genre I’ve hated, the great writing that pulls you in and keeps you guessing, the absolutely out-of-pocket soundtrack, but in the end it’s how all those disparate elements come together that really make it something worthy of the title. We, as the consumers, need to be careful about how hard we hype things like this up though as whilst emulation is the sincerest form of flattery I’m not exactly looking forward to dozens of Clair Obscur clones coming out in 2 years. There’s a magic to what this team put together and simply copying its core parts will not produce the same experiences.

Clair Obscur really only gets GOTY though because the other 2 games, which I rated just as highly, had the unfortunate problem of being sequels. That’s not to denigrate sequels in general, far from it, but there’s something special about a game that can reach such heights right out of the gate vs one that has history, legacy and nostalgia driving it forward.

Death Stranding 2, in any other year, would’ve taken my top spot by a large margin. It was everything that the first game was and more. I spent so, so much time in that game just making it a better place for others and it felt good. I’d eagerly hop on, thinking I’d push the story forward, only to spend 2 hours being a virtual trucker. When I did get out of that loop though I was hit right in the gut by the story, the same themes of loss, parenthood and chosen family resonating with me so hard as to bring me to tears multiple times. I love everything about this game and, whilst a Death Stranding 3 isn’t exactly a guaranteed thing at this point, my heart aches at the possibility.

Finally Hades II and, oh man, Supergiant just keeps doing their thing. Whilst this isn’t as out of left field as their previous titles have been it is their first ever sequel and they brought that same sense of innovation to it in droves. That next level of mechanical depth, which is at first rather daunting, rapidly becomes an intriguing set of min/max levers that you can keep tweaking for hundreds of hours if you so wish. It also serves as the fun touchstone where I ping my mate about how many runs it took him to beat the final boss and, upon comparing them, getting called a cheater. You couldn’t ask for a better follow up to the original.

If you’ve made it this far through my GOTY post, thankyou, I appreciate you. As I lumber into 2026 I’ll admit I don’t exactly have the same sense of renewed zeal that I usually do but at least the drive is still there to continue doing this. 2026 looks like an interesting one, although I’ve still yet to do my yearly cleanup of my Review Queue to see what’s slipped in/out of the year which could change my view dramatically. Whatever may come though I shall be here, plodding away, giving you my thoughts and generally just keeping on. That might not be the inspirational tagline you’re needing to kick this year off but hey, this is a game review blog now, go on /r/linkedinlunatics if you’re needing that kind of thing.

Games, Review

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About the Author

David Klemke

David is an avid gamer and technology enthusiast in Australia. He got his first taste for both of those passions when his father, a radio engineer from the University of Melbourne, gave him an old DOS box to play games on.

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