The Oscars are only six weeks away which means we’re finally, really ready to say goodbye to 2025… until somehow a bunch of last year’s albums get nominated for Grammys in like 2027. So, before we close the book on a year that was pretty hard to be enthusiastic about, one chapter I felt like I needed to write was about games. Because hot damn, there were a lot of great games released between last January and today. So many that there’s a bunch I still would really like to play that I’m either just getting started in or haven’t touched at all, like Metroid Prime 4 (sorry for the misleading featured image), Blue Prince, Rhythm Doctor, and Slots & Daggers. So if you’re curious what I’ve been up to, let me tell you about it.
Honorable Mentions
Borderlands 4
Kirby Air Riders
Mario Kart World
Monster Hunter Wilds
Whisker Squadron: Survivor
I played a bunch of retro arcade beat ’em up games in 2024 and 2025 thanks to getting into making emulation devices, but I don’t think I played anything as fun as MARVEL Cosmic Invasion. A spiritual successor to Tribute Games’ last release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, MARVEL Cosmic Invasion lets plays pick two characters from a colorful cast as interstellar comic book superheroes and try to save the universe from Annihilus, the ruler of the Negative Zone. There’s just enough depth here to keep the game consistently interesting, as every character has unique abilities and being able to tag between them means you can constantly change things up. But its the dressing that pushes this game over the top: I love this game’s dedication to making you feel like this really was your favorite arcade game in 1996.
Enhance Games already transformed Tetris into the coolest thing ever with Tetris Effect in 2018, now they’re back to revive the PSP’s inconic Lumines series. It’s a natural fit for this team, as Lumines games already combined falling block puzzles with music, but I’m not gonna complain that they chased the obvious good idea. Lumines Arise is less of a revolution and more of turning everything that made Lumines fun up to 11. I’ve enjoyed playing this in short bursts on my Steam Deck but I’m contemplating getting my ancient VR headset out of storage and really diving deep into this one.
OK, so one thing you gotta know about me is that Balatro really made roguelite games click in my head. Suddenly I’m into this sprawling genre after years of ignoring it. So I don’t know how revolutionary Absolum feels to longtime fans of games like this, but for me this absolutely kicked ass. It’s a beat ’em up (like I said, I’ve been playing a lot of those) but also it’s got a long-term grind and story to match. What’s not to like? Oh and you can play as a frog wizard. Hell yeah dude.
Another thing I got way into in 2025 was Pokémon. The Nintendo Switch 2’s release included a performance patch for Pokémon Violet, a game that was so technically disappointing at launch that it became the first mainline entry in the series that I didn’t beat. But with that patch, so many of the problems disappeared and I got way, way into playing through that game and its DLC. And I started dabbling in Pokémon Go again. And then finally an actually new game came out in October. I’m still not quite sold on Pokémon Legends: Z-A‘s setting being just one city, but otherwise there’s a lot of fun gameplay evolutions here. Who knew battling in real time could actually work? Also Mega Evolution is the best gimmick they ever introduced and everything that has followed pales in comparison… so that was a welcome return here, even if some of the new Mega Evolutions are fugly.
BALL x PIT was sold to me as 2025’s Balatro, which is a bit much. What it is is a fun roguelite take on Arkanoid, and that’s fine! It’s really fun to collect powerups and see how they combine and make clearing waves of monsters more exciting. It’s fun to go back to base and optimize tits layout so you can maximize resource harvesting. And that’s it! That’s the whole appeal of BALL x PIT. We don’t need to make a whole thing out of this. It’s just really good.
Ghost of Tsushima released just a few months before the PS5 in 2020, so I decided to skip it at launch and wait for the inevitable remaster. That took more than a year to come out, and so I just never got around to a game that I knew I would like. I decided not to let that happen with its successor, Ghost of Yōtei, so I picked that one up right at release and freakin’ marathoned it. When I wasn’t watching Mariners baseball, I was living in feudal Japan last October. Atsu’s quest for revenge is fine, but I did everything in my power to avoid main story missions and explore and see everything this game had to offer. And it offered a lot: mountains and hot springs and forests and some of the most beautiful meadows you’ll ever see.
Critical Role brought Telltale Games back! Dispatch is the first release from AdHoc Studio and a welcome modernization of this unique approach to adventure games. You play as Robert (Aaron Paul), a superhero whose mecha suit is destroyed, sidelining him from heroics until he gets an offer to work as a dispatcher for SDN, a company that provides superhero protection services. So the actual gameplay is you sitting at your desk, assigning missions to your team of colorful characters. But the real fun comes from watching this episodic story play out and change based on your decisions. I’m am 50% proud of the story I crafted in my playthrough and 50% tempted to play the whole game over to see how different I can make things. I hope there’s a sequel!
Sometimes you just wanna be a big ape and smash and smash and smash. Donkey Kong Bananza is not a particularly challenging game, but it makes up for it by encouraging you to play in the most creative, fun way possible. Which is mainly smashing everything. Also you get teamed up with teenage Pauline and help her discover her courage and it made me feel like such a proud papa.
Expedition 33 is the French JRPG we’ve all been waiting for. Wait, that sounds horrible? It’s really not! The little indie game that could, Expedition 33 tells the story of a terrifying, baroque, surrealist Paris where every year, a mysterious entity paints a number and all people that age and older disappear. You lead an expedition of 33 year olds who have one year left to live, unless you can find a way to stop the Paintress. Along the way, you’ll have to face all sorts of enemies and obstacles (including mimes!) to figure out what’s really going on. With a turn-based combat system that rewards real-time parrying, Expedition 33 was such a fun bright spot early on in 2025… and a sure lock for game of the year for most it. That was, until…
Hades II went out of beta and was actually released! It’s weird, I loved Supergiant Games’ first two games, Bastion and Transistor, but Pyre didn’t really click. I kickstarted Hades in like 2018 or something because they were doing a collab with Giant Bomb and I thought that was neat but kind of lost interest in that game too, even when it went on to be like everyone’s favorite game of 2020. Well, five years later, and thanks to Balatro, I get it. I played a shitload of Hades in the last few months and then picked up Hades II when it was lightly discounted for Black Friday. And then it was basically the only thing I played for all of December. And you know what, I liked the sequel even more than the original. It’s just more of everything that made the first game great: fun powerups, great weapon variety, and lots and lots of hilarious/horny interactions with the allstars of the Greek pantheon. I have very little left to do in Hades II but I feel like I’ll always be down for one more run, maybe forever.