Jordan Minor is the author of Video Game of the Year, the best video game history book, also featuring Dan Ryckert and many members of the Giant Bomb extended parasocial universe. He’s a Senior Writer on the Apps and Gaming team at PCMag. He beat Grubb and Minotti at Jeopardy, and one time, he told a pretty great lie about Street Sharks.
As honored as I was to get roped into the larger Giant Bomb orbit for game of the year last year, I had something like a retroactive panic attack when it looked like that may have been my last chance to contribute to this site that has meant so much to me for so long. But you can never blow up Giant Bomb, and thank god for that.
My 2025 gaming year was pretty much dominated by Nintendo (and not just because my next book, coming in 2026, is all about Super Mario Galaxy). With its genius hybrid form factor and unbelievably diverse game library, I genuinely believe the Nintendo Switch is in the running for best system ever. And the Nintendo Switch 2, carrying over all those strengths while boosting the power for both old and new games, took its predecessor’s place as my primary gaming machine pretty seamlessly.
However, even if Nintendo was ultimately the star of the show, my favorite games of 2025 span all styles and systems. You know it’s a good year when you actually have to struggle to cut a list down to just ten games. For more, you can read my full reviews for these games (along with all sorts of other gaming takes) by following me over at PCMag.
10. TRON: Catalyst
True Tron likers know that the eternal struggle with this franchise is knowing it has never been, and probably never will be, fully “good.” Tron: Legacy’s visuals and soundtrack are essential parts of my personality, but the film is a bore. And no number of Nine Inch Nails songs will remove Jared Leto from Tron: Ares. So does Tron: Catalyst fulfill its potential as the "Cyberpunk meets Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars” it looked like it could’ve been? Not really. Still, it was exciting to see Mike Bithell follow up his Tron visual novel with an ambitious top-down adventure filled with moody atmosphere and digital city exploration, elegant cycle racing and disc battles, and a fantastically realized and written set of simulated characters.
9. Pokémon Legends: Z-A
I’m still waiting for my perfect dream Pokémon game, but Pokémon Legends: Z-A, even with some frustrating setbacks, made huge strides toward making that dream a reality. Combining the active catching mechanics of Legends: Arceus with a fully real-time battle system makes Z-A the best feeling Pokeémon game by far, the most satisfying Pokémon games to press buttons in. Pokémon relies on selling you a fantasy, not just making you think about cold stats, and nothing felt more real than commanding my living trash bag to nimbly evade attacks before striking back. The city needs variety, and the visuals should be better, even if they aren’t a technical disaster anymore. But if Z-A’s innovations aren’t incorporated into future games, it will be a huge missed opportunity for evolution.
8. Despelote
I’ve never been to Ecuador, and I don’t particularly care about soccer, but Despelote is a moving, interactive testament to how our passions and our communities are intertwined, how they shape us into who we are as we grow up. Plus, even in a narrative-driven game, it’s just fun to aimlessly kick a soccer ball around. Take that, Rematch!
7. Baby Steps
Baby Steps is like watching an embryonic art form fully be born. Bennett Foddy has toyed around with uniquely frustrating movement mechanics since the QWOP days. Getting Over It elevated the punishment with philosophical musings on punishment itself. But it all evolves into a new beast with Baby Steps, from Foddy and collaborators Gabe Cuzzillo and Maxi Boch, a literal walking simulator about male failure that’s Octodad meets Death Stranding. Crucial to the experience, though, is that between all the slipping and falling, Baby Steps’ hostile world is a strangely enjoyable one to trudge through one step at a time, even without purpose.
6. Doom: The Dark Ages
The 2016 Doom reboot was a miracle of a shooter full of unbridled carnage and sly comedy. Unfortunately, none of the sequels have recaptured that exact energy. Doom: Eternal overcomplicated a perfect combat loop and got too serious with its story. Doom: The Dark Ages also cares too much about its story; however, it thankfully managed to create an original form of demon slaying that satisfies in new ways. The medieval setting is about more than justifying flying dragons, guns that shoot skulls, and giant cosmic monsters. The more primitive armory makes the melee combat feel more personal. The shield alone, capable of so many offensive and defensive options, gives fights an improvisational feel that sucked me into such a groove. I also love that they gave Doom Guy a fur cape.
5. South of Midnight
As a nerdy progressive Black man in America, I have a pretty complicated relationship with anger. So imagine my surprise to hear South of Midnight reflect those feelings back at me just about perfectly through a heart-wrenching musical sequence (I break my bones, I rend my skin...). Any complaints I may have had about the serviceable if not spectacular PS2 action-adventure throwback gameplay melted away at how well the game captured such a culturally specific truth. The entire experience is full of beauty like this, drawn from the mystic folklore of the American Deep South. Nothing else affected me like this all year.
4. Mario Kart World
An open world is such a perfect setting for a racing game that it’s a shame it’s been held hostage by overly realistic examples of the genre. We didn’t know how good we had it with Burnout Paradise. I want the freedom to go wherever I want and also not care about my tire pressure or whatever. Mario Kart World’s wondrous theme park of an open world was a space I wanted to vibe in basically nonstop this year. I wanted to explore every track at my leisure, tackle bite-sized missions that came my way, cruise by and watch as dream logic stitched wacky Mario locales into a cohesive continent. The tweaked racing mechanics are also superb, and Knockout Tour is an incredible use of the whole map, but simply existing in Mario Kart World was what kept drawing me back in.
3. Hades II
Hades got me to enjoy roguelike, a genre I dislike so much it triggered one of my earliest brushes with internet outrage. Hades II unsurprisingly used its Early Access period to build on what we loved in the first game, from its looping story structure to its immaculate and ever-changing combat. But what sets Hades 2 apart for me isn’t just its differences but how those differences all stem from one core, very cool character conceit: Melinoë is a witch. Her fighting is infused with magick. She farms forbidden flora to brew potions. She reads Tarot cards and summons animal familiars into battles. She embodies a different umbral aesthetic alongside the familiar ancient Greek mythology. She stands at the crossroads, not just to descend into the underworld but rise to the surface, to take on this huge world in both its light and its darkness.
2. Donkey Kong Bananza
I’m an absolute Donkey Kong sicko, from Donkey Kong Country to Diddy Kong Racing. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is one of my top ten games of all time, and I’ve played it within the last year. So seeing DK get a starring role in a blockbuster Nintendo 3D platformer, from the finest Mario developers at that, feels validating. But swapping out the hero allows Donkey Kong Bananza to explore totally new kinds of platforming, to emerge from the mess bold and brilliant. DK’s raw moveset is so expressive, full of weighty aggression but also nimble grace as you navigate dense sandboxes. And because you can fully break these levels apart, they exhibit an even greater level of craft and thoughtfulness to keep that destruction feeling unique. They encourage increasingly creative ways to gleefully deploy your freedom as you experiment with new tools in new scenarios. Donkey Kong Bananza turns something as seemingly dumb as digging through rocks into Nintendo’s best pseudo-immersive sim since Breath of the Wild. Oh, banana!
1. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
When I saw Dan Ryckert also give Metroid Prime 4: Beyond a perfect score, I messaged him to thank him for letting me know we aren’t crazy. And we’re right! Get it out of your head whatever you think this game was supposed to be, whether because of the extended dev cycle or weirdly rigid Metroid orthodoxy. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, the game in front of us now, is simply spectacular. It’s a beautiful alien world and interlocking adventure, a nonstop series of inventive puzzles and abilities, a deceptively tactical first-person shooter. As I said in my review, Prime 4 has the “confident, bespoke variety of excellent scripted campaigns in classics like Half-Life 2, Resident Evil 4, and Titanfall 2. It also has the empowering self-motivation that comes from nonlinear, criss-crossing treks between biomes in search of the path forward.” Just getting the motorcycle, solving the riddle of this ingeniously designed alien factory in the middle of a lightning storm, was better than everything I played this year, and that was only the first act. I flowed through this game like a cosmic dream, a gift psychically implanted into my mind, and I can’t imagine a better way to end my 2025.