We’re already 2/3rds of the way through January, but I had such a great time gaming this year that I wanted to post a belated retrospective for the year. 2025 was a complicated and mixed year for gaming as a whole and a pretty batshit mess for the world at large. It was a year with some really excellent games, the launch of a new generation of Nintendo hardware, supply shortages, price hikes, mass layoffs, tariff malarkey, ongoing geopolitical injustices, a mess of A.I.-related concerns and debates, and a bunch of headlines that you would swear (and wish) were stories from The Onion rather than actual news. While many of these problems are absolutely going to continue to be problems in the new year, let’s keep things relatively light and talk about some gaming-related things that brought some glimmers of joy to my 2025.
I personally did a lot of gaming in 2025, but most of that time was spent cleaning up my backlog and playing older games that I wasn’t allowed to play when I was in a cult. A lot of the critical darlings this year just didn’t really appeal to me. I’m not an RPG guy, so Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II weren’t really doing much for me. And rather shamefully, I still haven’t gotten around to playing the first Hollow Knight, so Silksong will remain on the back burner until I finally play the original.
Biohazards
This was the year of Resident Evil for me. I blame Crow Country for igniting my fascination with Resident Evil’s particular brand of survival horror early in the year. I played a little bit of Resident Evil Revelations in 2024, but I didn’t finish it. But I enjoyed Crow Country immensely and found the puzzle and world design incredibly fascinating. I knew it was heavily inspired by the classic RE games, so that prompted me to take the plunge and properly try out the official series. I started with the remake of Resident Evil 2, which I enjoyed it quite a bit, but fucked myself over and depleted too many resources about 2/3rds through the game, which basically soft-locked my playthrough behind an impenetrable wall of Lickers and zombies. I’ll definitely go back and try again after some time and be more careful with my resource management and save slots. From there, I jumped right into Resident Evil Village, which was also a fantastic time. After finishing the game and its DLC, I returned to finish My Friendly Neighborhood, which had been in my library for some time after I had initially bounced off of it. While jankier than proper RE games, it was a great little “horror” experience starring a menagerie of Sesame Street-coded muppet characters. I’m going to count Alan Wake II amongst this category, since the sequel borrows so much mechanically from Capcom’s flagship Survival Horror series. It was a mind-bending and surreal piece of meta fiction that I personally enjoyed quite a bit, especially as a fan of the previous Alan Wake games and Control. This sequel really felt like it took proper advantage of the reality-rewriting premise of the series. It was constantly surprising, unapologetically weird, and consistently delightful. Later in the year, I finished the remakes of both Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4. 3 was a bit too short and scripted for my tastes, but was still a fun time. But 4 was absolutely fantastic. I plowed through the main game and the DLC. After putting it off because I wasn’t all that intrigued with the setting, I finally started Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in November. I was glad that my fears of disinterest were proven wrong, as the mucky bayou and dilapidated houses might actually be one of my favorite environments in the series so far. The DLC was fittingly ridiculous, with one of the packs starring a redneck who punches monsters to death with his bare hands, but a good time all around. I’m looking forward to Resident Evil Requiem next year and will probably go back and finish the Revelations games in the meantime. Also, I watched all of the awful Resident Evil movies in the original series. How the fuck did so many sequels get made? Who are these for? And why did I watch them all?
Gods and Monsters
Early in the year, I played through the 2017 remake of MediEvil. Under my fundamentalist Christian parents’ noses, I had tried the original PS1 game on demo discs and kiosks whenever the opportunity had arisen, and I had always remained intrigued by the Tim Burton-esque, Halloween-core world of the game. While I still really enjoyed the world itself and the characters in the remake, I can’t say it was exactly fun to play. I really feel that if a game is going to get a remake, it needs a lot more than just a visual upgrade. This was one that needed some mechanical TLC from top to bottom, in my opinion.
God of War and God of War Ragnarök truly lived up to the hype. I played them both back to back, and each one was an incredibly fun, polished, and emotional experience. Excellent writing, performances, and production made this cast of gods feel grounded and fleshed out as people. Of all the games to make me shed a tear, I didn’t expect these to be among them. And that's along with the fact that they're just extremely fun to play. The Valhalla DLC was a fantastic epilogue to Kratos’ journey and great re-playable arcade mode at the same time, and I sometimes boot it up just to do a run or two now and then.
I was late to the party, but I dropped into Helldivers 2 and it really grabbed me. Even as a solo player, I drank up a lot of that delicious liber-tea. But now that I have friends who play, it’s increased the fun tenfold. I will be returning to this regularly in the future, especially now that the file size on PC is no longer a big, monstrous fatty that gobbles up my SSD space.
As a massive fan of Alien, I was excited for Alien: Rogue Incursion. But with my only VR-capable device being the Meta Quest 3 (complications with the GabeCube’s Bazzite OS makes it difficult to tether the Quest to), there wasn’t really an optimal way to enjoy it. The Quest port of the game plays in absolute potato mode, with muddy textures, bare bones lighting, and PS1-level draw distance. Ugliness aside, the novelty of VR play still made it an immersive and tense experience; having to manually reload weapons makes each combat encounter frantic, like you’re always on your back foot. And it does make you feel like a badass when you empty your rifle clip and then whip out the revolver to finish off a xeno. The flat screen-tailored Evolved Edition that ran on my Steam Deck and GabeCube was much easier on the eyes, but really exemplified just how basic the gameplay and structure of the game is when divorced from the tactile novelty of virtual reality. My assessment of either version never went above “just okay”, overall. I’ll probably try Part 2 when it releases, which hopefully is better optimized for Quest. But it’s nowhere near as great as Alien: Isolation and not as mindlessly fun as the 2010 Aliens vs. Predator.
I picked up the entire Dark Pictures Anthology on a deep discount despite their mixed reviews. The only one I actually played and finished was House of Ashes, because I found the alien vampire premise the most appealing out of all of them. While I had some fun, I just don’t think this type of game is for me. I appreciate the concept of interactive horror movies where you can change the course of the plot and fates of the characters, but a lot of it hinges on satisfying execution of the story, which I felt was lacking.
I enjoy me some Lovecraftian cosmic horror now and then, so I have some hope that The Sinking City Remastered will provide some good existential terror. A few hours in, it hasn’t quite clicked yet. But I’m pretty new to detective games in general, so maybe I just need more time to grasp how it all comes together. But dang, this game is a resource hog. Am I crazy, or is this a really poorly optimized game? I had to drop the settings way lower than one might expect to get acceptable framerates on my GabeCube.
I played High On Life early in the year, and largely enjoyed it. The humor is all over the place, but the foundational gameplay is surprisingly great. Little did I realize at the time, it was basically Doom Lite, and would be my first foray into this brand of high-mobility FPS gameplay. Most recently in December, I tackled the 2016 Doom and its sequel, Doom Eternal. Doom was a great time in its own right, successfully reviving a dormant franchise by embracing some of its inherent “video gamey-ness”. But compared to Doom Eternal, it felt like a proof of concept demo. Eternal feels like a fully modern take on a classic boomer shooter through and through. It feels both modern and retro in all of the right places. It composes a colorful, gory, heavy metal symphony of chaos with its various instruments of destruction. Each encounter is a frantic, violent dance where you are always on the razor’s edge between success and failure and a single decision can turn the tide of battle in either direction. It’s a game that’s both draining and empowering to play in near equal measure, which is poetic given that’s basically how the health and ammo economy functions on a mechanical level. I’m currently working my way though the two-part The Ancient Gods DLC.
Late in the year, I also started playing through Remnant II. While it would definitely be more fun with friends, I’m already enjoying it a lot more than I expected as a solo player. The mashup of shooting and Soulslike mechanics works surprisingly well and feels very satisfying. And I’ve had a looter-shaped hole in my library ever since I hopped off of the Destiny train. I’m excited to experience more of its weird dimensions in the coming weeks.
Color, Whimsy, and Im-Sims
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD was a mediocre remaster of a pretty great game. While I’m glad to have the entire DKC series playable on one console, the package is overpriced for what you get from this version. That being said, it was very enjoyable to play through the whole thing again after picking it up for about $15 off of the retail price, even with the devious bastards that are the final secret levels. Without a great new game drenched in that Country flavor since Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, I was hopeful that Nikoderiko: The Magical World could fill that spot. Unfortunately—while it has great visuals—it isn’t as polished, fun, or challenging as one might hope. That being said, I do like the idea of mixing in some Crash Bandicoot-style 3D segments with DKC-style platforming. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of that mix with this style of game in the future, but this was kind of a nothing burger for me, unfortunately.
As with a lot of other early adopters, Mario Kart World was my first game for Switch 2 because I picked up the bundle. I’m a little mixed on it overall, especially coming off of the final form that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe took after it finished its DLC run. In terms of pure racing mechanics, World is arguably the most refined and expressive that Mario Kart has ever been. But its open world can feel pretty bare bones at times, and I’m not sure its inclusion does enough to justify the corners that were cut elsewhere. For what it is, I’m still enjoying it and I hope it continues to receive updates that inch it closer to the top tiers of the franchise.
As I expected, Split Fiction was a massive hit for my wife and I. We both thoroughly enjoyed It Takes Two and were looking forward to this followup. Hazelight continues to teach their masterclass on endlessly creative co-op design and mediocre storytelling. The gameplay is so incredibly varied and fun, constantly throwing new ideas and challenges to test you and your partner’s coordination and synchronicity. But I’m still not fully recovered from the Cutie the Elephant incident in It Takes Two, and the quick reference in Split Fiction was like a jab at a still-too-fresh wound. But anyway, incredible game overall. We are definitely looking forward to whatever the studio’s next title is. I hope that the recently-announced Orbitals for Switch 2 can fill that niche for us in the meantime.
Donkey Kong Bananza was just pure, destructive bliss from beginning to end. Like Super Mario Odyssey before it, the completion process was lengthy, but very fun. I welcomed any excuse to return for some smashing, and I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth out of the Emerald Rush DLC. I’ve probably put nearly as much time into that one mode as I have the rest of the experience. If I had to pick a single Game of Year that actually released this year, this was it.
UFO 50 is a joy that keeps on giving. This collection of “retro” games from a fictional console features a full 50 games that evokes the early work of a company like Rareware, telling something of a meta story of their evolving design ambitions and franchises that spin off from each other. Not every game is a hit, but pretty much everyone is bound to find at least a few games in the package that they enjoy, given the diversity included.
I was hit with a superhero hankering in 2025, which prompted me to finally pick up Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. I played a little bit of the inaugural title on the PS2, and this iteration—for better and for worse—picks up right where those games left off, mechanically speaking. Grinding to keep all of the heroes at acceptable levels is still a pain in the ass, and the game is generally just bloated and repetitive. I had some fun, but none of my friends were really impressed enough with it to warrant coming back for co-op sessions. I'll keep chipping away at it whenever I feel the urge, but I'm in no rush to finish it. Marvel Cosmic Invasion was a much more accessible source of mindless fun. While short and a bit lacking in content, it's a great multiplayer game that's easy to jump into for some quick co-op beat-downs.
Another sleeper hit I think fits in this category is Skin Deep, a bite-sized Immersive Sim with a colorful, lo-fi, retro sci-fi aesthetic that condenses many of the emergent, highly interactive aspects of the genre into shorter, sillier, contained experiences that tasks you with rescuing the feline crews of spaceships. It’s quite an elegant game that rewards creative thinking and balances out the genre’s usual complexity with smart streamlining and non-serious goofiness. On the same front, I also played a few hours of the fantastic Dishonored. While it slotted back into the backlog in favor of other games, I fully intend to go back and finish it in 2026 and play its sequel. But Deathloop is another story. I think I gave it more than a fair shake, and it just feels like a much worse version of Prey: Mooncrash in pretty much every way. I don’t really see myself going back to finish it anytime soon.
I picked up Kirby Air Riders during the last weeks of December. It’s a weird game that takes some time to get into and appreciate, but I think I like it, I guess? I keep finding myself coming back to it, but despite its simple controls and adorable presentation, it’s actually not as beginner-friendly of a game as you might think. It seems to be set to “overstimulating” by default, and it’s hard to tell if you’re actually playing it correctly or not. Convincing my friends to play it again might be a challenge.
Nostalgic Replays
Having Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Switch and Switch 2 fulfilled the collecting drive I have, despite the egregious pricing for the two Galaxy games. 100% completing the game once again in crisp 4K was a tiring but satisfying endeavor. This game still holds up incredibly well. Having already completed the Super Mario 3D All Stars version of the first Galaxy, I’m not in a rush to play through that one again. But when I inevitably do get the hankering once more, the newer version will obviously be the preferred choice, with its Switch 2 enhancements and the fact that you can use the gyroscope to control the cursor in handheld mode. Once again, though, I must put it out into the world that I still want Super Mario 3D Land ported to Switch at some point, please and thank you. There are too many great games still trapped on the dead 3DS.
I was taken off guard by how much I enjoyed Yooka-Replaylee. My full review outlines my detailed thoughts, but suffice to say that they pretty much fixed it. Yooka-Laylee is finally fun.
I never played any of the original Pac-Man World releases, so the Re-Pac versions of the first two games are basically entirely new games to me… and I have yet to actually finish either of them. They’re simple fun, but nothing about them really sticks out. Maybe it’s the way the collectables trigger my OCD that turns me off? I’ve been steadily and slowly chipping away at them a level at a time, but I never really feel motivated to stay for longer play sessions. I mostly have my fill for a while after finishing a level or two.
Why do I have nostalgic memories of Star Wars: Episode I - Jedi Power Battles? It’s really, really not a good game. There is arguably more jank than actual game here; it’s load-bearing jank. That being said, it was kind of fun to play some of Aspyr’s remaster with a friend. But yeah, it’s still a clunky, extremely frustrating game, especially in the later levels. I still have no idea how to safely dispatch those fucking droids with the green plasma beams. The novelty of revisiting an old haunt from my Dreamcast days was fun, but this is not exactly a classic.
Search Action (I refuse to call the genre “Metroidvania”)
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was an unexpected banger for me. Metroid Dread left me itching for another high-quality game in the genre since its release, and The Lost Crown checked pretty much every box. Crunchy, challenging combat, creative upgrades and puzzles, and actually innovative additions to the genre (like letting you mark the map with helpful screenshots to remind you of what’s in the room). It’s a fantastic game all around, but a massive pity that the team that made it has since disbanded to other areas of Ubisoft. I would have loved a sequel, but The Rogue Prince of Persia is a great roguelite that makes the lack of a Lost Crown followup sting a little bit less. This 2.5D roguelite has its own spin on parkour action, with a lot of DNA shared with Dead Cells, a game which developer Evil Empire had created DLC for. I’ll be back to finish the main quests now that it’s out of early access.
I’ve been half-gripped by Primal Planet, a Search Action game set in a fantasy paleolithic land featuring cavemen, dinosaurs, and aliens. There’s enough enjoyment to keep me coming back, but I’m still pining for a moment where it clicks and sucks me in completely like other games in the genre. That hasn’t quite happened yet, but I’ll give it some more chances because the premise is just so charming and underutilized in modern games; even as a paleohead, I still love an anachronistic mashup in the vein of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal (no relation other than a somewhat similar setting, despite the title). Parts of Primal Planet really evoke memories of playing Ecco the Dolphin and Jurassic Park on the Sega Genesis. I can feel the love that the developer poured into the game and I can’t help but feel that it deserves more of my time and effort to really understand it.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is the followup to the criminally underrated Journey to the Savage Planet. While it doesn’t quite embody the same Metroid Prime-inspired design sensibilities as its predecessor, it was still a fun time, especially when it takes the guard rails off and really lets you explore freely with a fully upgraded kit. It’s definitely a less focused and more sandbox-forward experience than Journey, but I found it largely successful in what it was attempting. The inclusion of competent split-screen co-op is icing on the cake. The humor isn’t going to be for everyone, but I saw most of it as charming, with a few gags that I found genuinely hilarious.
It was surreal to finally have Metroid Prime 4: Beyond in my hands. My detailed thoughts are in my full review, but suffice to say I was whelmed. Not over, not under; just whelmed.
Oh, and after years, I finally went back and finished the final stretch of Axiom Verge. I had gotten myself stuck way back in 2016 and wasn’t sure where to go to make more progress. I played and finished numerous other games in the meantime, including Axiom Verge 2. But finishing Metroid Prime 4 encouraged me to go back and see it through to the end, poking at the corners of the map until I found the path to the finale. It’s a great game overall, and extremely impressive as the product of a one-man operation. With my taste of retro-styled, heavily Metroid-inspired games reignited, Zexion is next on my list.
Light and Cozy
In between white knuckled combat games like Doom or Remnant II, I love a bit of lighter, low-stakes fare. Go-Go Town is an early access game with cozy vibes that tasks you with building a town from scratch and bringing in a population of residents. It’s got some fun management and automation mechanics that really lets you see how far your town has come; smart supply chain setups can make your town nearly completely autonomous. There are no real social mechanics with the townsfolk beyond simple quests, but the management stuff and exploration is pretty darn good. I’m looking forward to jumping back in as it continues to receive new updates.
Two Point Museum continues the Two Point series of quirky management sims with a theme that was really up my alley this time. I enjoyed Two Point Hospital, but the newest game scratches much of the same itch as the classic Zoo Tycoon game for me. I love real-life museums and aquariums, and the series’ satisfying progression and deadpan humor makes for a great interpretation. I’ll definitely be returning to this one periodically.
Looking Forward
There were numerous other games I tried out in 2025 that I just didn’t have time to fully delve into enough to warrant writing about just yet, but I hope to knock out more of my backlog in the coming year. I’ll probably post my wishlist/predictions for the rest of the year sometime soon, but it's not like I ever do anything in a timely manner. Happy New Year, and happy gaming.