Hello.
Here is my Game Of The Year List of Games that did not come out in 2025.
I’m doing this so that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won’t be my number one, because I am shallow and want to seem interesting.
5. Fear and Hunger Termina
Imagine a keyboard where a single random key is linked to several sticks of dynamite, those sticks of dynamite strapped to your feet. You’re typing away, hit the rigged key, and BOOM, your legs are gone, and you’ll probably die now.
That sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon, right? No? Really? Wow, you would not like Fear and Hunger 2.
4. XCOM 2
Imagine a keyboard where a single random key- wait no, i already used that analogy, and we can all agree it was incredible.
3. Resident Evil Code Veronica
Resident Evil Code Veronica is a deeply tragic game.
Released at the first gasp of the new millennium, this was, for a VERY brief time, one of the most technologically impressive games ever, a Resident Evil game with 3D environments??? THE FUTURE IS HERE.
That lasted about a year until the humble Dreamcast was eclipsed by the bleeding-edge PlayStation 2, making Code Veronica feel a decade old in mere months.
But faith would have worse in store for Code Veronica- Code Veronica is an evolutionary dead end for the original style of Resident Evil. Whatever evolutionary path RE 1 began, it ended here, in a game that is weird, obtuse, and shockingly difficult by todays standards, (well, at least it is until you realize that the hit box on the knife is fucked up and you may as well be swinging a light saber), eclipsed entirely by the louder sexier and more… Leon-y Resident Evil 4.
I can't argue that that was the right call by Capcom. Code Veronica is cumbersome, goofy, and dated, but that’s exactly what makes it such a joy to return to in 2025. This game reminded me why I love classic era survival horror, it’s awkward movement, and abundance of enemies making every ammo drop and health pick-up feel like a patch of light shining in the dark, in some genuinely tight game design that constantly forces you into making difficult decisions. Are your last five bullets REALLY worth spending on that single zombie that plagues the corridor just outside your current save room?
The cutscenes clunk along with all the ineptness and charm of a dog playing piano badly, but it makes the game impossible not to love, and particularly for fans of horror movie jank.
2. Baldur's Gate 3 - DARK URGE RUN
Sometimes, when traveling alone by air, I will ask the flight attendant to wish my friend “John” a happy birthday over the intercom. Most of the time, they will not, citing that there are rules in place for what they can and cannot use the intercom for. But very occasionally, one will comply. When they do, I will then turn to the person next to me, gesture upwards, and say something to the effect of “Oh, come on… who requests a happy birthday during a flight?” The person I'm sitting next to with a confused blankness in their eyes, will usually respond with a “Yeah…” and not knowing what else to say, return to what ever they were doing before I interrupted them, oblivious to the knowledge that the person who requested the happy birthday… IS SITTING RIGHT BESIDE THEM.
My meaningless deception instills in me, a mild euphoria.
It has never once been my birthday.
Baldur's Gate 3 is the only game that has allowed me to emulate that thrill.
Baldur's Gate 3 allows you to play as a serial killer. What is otherwise a fantastic classic fantasy RPG, allows you to select the “Dark Urge” option, in which you will need to juggle your homicidal urges, while keeping your teammates oblivious to your murderous deeds. I like to play the most heroic hero possible, while slaying innocents in the shadows, rolling for if I can bury the bodies in time, and when I fail, shrugging and saying “Oh jee wilickers, not again, why do people keep dying around us?”
If the thought of withholding a dark secret from the people around you intrigues you even slightly, 1) perform my happy birthday trick, and 2) play a Baldur's Gate 3 Dark Urge run.
1. Void Stranger
Void Stranger is a game about swapping tiles.
Imagine looking at cells through a microscope, and then slowly pulling your gaze back, until you are now looking down at said microscope, now imagine floating up into the sky, your field of view encompassing the room with the microscope, then the building containing that room, then the street the building was on, then the city containing that street, and then on, and on, and on, until its you floating in the cosmos, planet Earth now a speck of dust at the very edge of your ability to perceive it.
That’s what it's like to play Void Stranger.