What’s up, Duders? It’s your resident guy-who-contributed-a-power-rangers-podcast-to-the-site-years-ago, Matt Shipman! This is my first time writing one of these lists properly, since last time I hadn’t played enough games to make a top 10 out of, so I opted for top 10 stuff I acted in that year. I’m a voice actor, btw. This year I played more games than I have in a LONG time, so I’ve got more than enough to fill a top... seven list... So here’s my top seven games of 2025 in no particular order!
Umamusume: Pretty Derby
I knew this shit would win best mobile game. You can’t beat horse girls. I have to admit, I do genuinely like this game, but I’m a bigger fan of the franchise as a whole. Gacha games are a major turn-off for me. However, the characters and stories in Umamusume are so fantastic that I want to spend as much time as I can with these actual-horses turned anime girls. That’s why I forced the crew to let me attend the Jantucky Derby here on the site!
For years I’d heard that the animation in Umamusume’s several anime seasons and movie were amazing, and had a minor interest in checking it out. But I’m a huge fan of the Shonen Jump action manga Kagurabachi, and when a rumor started going around that the same studio that animated most of the Umamusume anime would be animating Kagurabachi’s eventual anime, and a friend recommended the at-the-time airing Umamusume: Cinderella Grey spin-off show, I gave it a shot. I fell in love with it fast. Especially season 2, which is one of, if not the best sports story I’ve ever seen. I can put on like any episode of season 2 and cry.
Anyway, this is about the game, and at the core, it’s a rogue-like training sim. You pick your horse girl, you pick six support cards (represented by other horse girl characters), and run a three-year “career” where you train your horse girl and compete in races. The races are completely automated, and you can only cheer on your trainee and hope you trained them properly. Luck plays a big factor, as each of those support cards come equipped with several little cutscenes that can randomly trigger after any training, and depending on your input during said cutscenes, you’ll get various stat boosts. Once you complete the three-year journey or fail trying, that final version of your trainee gets added to a separate pool of trainees, and you can use those post-career horse girls to compete in other events the game has. It’s a fun little loop, but it’s also a gacha, so you need to roll and pray you get the horse girls you want to see the story of, and more importantly, pray you get the support cards that will carry you through. Harikitte Ikou indeed, Kitasan Black.
Did I mention almost all of these horse girls are named after and lovingly based off of real life Japanese race horses? The anime takes the route of crafting a story around the real-life outcome of these real races (and it’s wonderful), while the game allows you to make any of these horses a winner, and the story changes depending on how they place. The stories can be heart-wrenching, and that’s what I love the most about them. These characters were clearly made with such love for these real horses, and god what happened to me? I didn’t care about horses at all, like eight months ago! Wild. Anyway, good game, better anime. Start with Cinderella Grey if you wanna watch the anime. I love Tokai Teio and Tamamo Cross. And Super Creek and Kitasan Black and Twin Turbo and—
Okay, that was too long, but I won’t have to explain so much about the other games, so it should get shorter from here. Next up!
Elden Ring Nightreign
Hop on Nightreign! I only got to play this for like two weeks before I had a bunch of back-to-back obligations and wasn’t able to sync up with my buddies’ schedules anymore, but we’re all pumped about this DLC, and if that means another two weeks of fuckin’ around with friends with Elden Ring mechanics, it’ll be well worth the money. What’s that? It was released on 12/4?... Okay, well... it’s hard to schedule game time with your friends as adults, okay?! I’m still excited to get around to it whenever we can.
I loved Elden Ring for the slow pace I could take it at. I loved exploring the world on my own as I pleased, and having that tension of never knowing what was around the next corner. And I love Nightreign for basically the opposite reason. Many of my close friends are also voice actors, and that means if we get an email at 11 pm asking if we can record at 10 am the next morning, we say yes. It also means that on any given weekend, at least one of us are going to be at a convention somewhere in the continental US. But this game brought us together for a stupid, high-speed, team experience, very much contrary to base Elden Ring. And since we all played Elden Ring, there wasn’t nearly as much to learn. Very pick-up-and-play, as long as you listened to your friends Bryson and Yung-I, who knew everything about the new mechanics like I always did.
More games that are weird, experimental, and built on existing frameworks, please! I don’t need devs to remodel Sonic the Hedgehog’s fur every single game, just make something FUN, like this!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection
I just wanted to play Dungeon Dice Monsters, dude. I’ve always just wanted to play Dungeon Dice Monsters. I never had the board game version, and I never had any of the games on this collection, so I bought the Early Days Collection and have only opened Dungeon Dice Monsters. It’s fun! Turns out all you have to do is make your own path around the CPU’s path and never connect the two until you reach their little clown-man, then attack it three times, and you win! It got a little repetitive. I would have loved a way to play it online against other players... Uhh okay, once again, I’m learning something while writing this. They apparently patched that in! I gotta fire this back up... Anyway, it was exactly what I wanted, which was... Dungeon Dice Monsters. 10/10.
Blue Prince
DUUUUDE. Everyone singing this game’s praises was right. It’s so hard to talk about without spoiling things, but trust me, it’s worth playing. My wife (my wife~) and I sunk dozens of hours into this. The overall puzzle gameplay is fun in and of itself, but the world-building that was happening underneath it all is really what kept us coming back for more. It’s so interesting and fun. There was one puzzle that made me feel like a GENIUS for figuring it out, but I won’t spoil anything here. Do yourself a favor and pick this game up; it’s so unique, you just gotta experience it.
Sonic X Shadow Generations
Uh, uh, the Switch 2 version came out this year!! It counts! Even though I played it on PS5 last year... I’m cheating a little here, but I’ve always loved me some Sonic, and this game blew my expectations out of the water. The Sonic Gens side is still an old game that people praised endlessly when it came out, which of course means I thought it was fiiiine when I played it for the first time in this collection. But Shadow Gens is the best Sonic game I’ve played since like, SA2. Well, I liked Frontiers too, but that was a very different thing. I’ve never been a huge fan of the boost mechanics in modern Sonic games, but Shadow Gens made it work for me somehow. The levels are actually longer than two minutes, and they’re actually... fun? The whole time??? The long levels are never good! It’s the first Sonic game in forever that I enjoy turning on and replaying levels for the hell of it. And that’s really what I want out of a Sonic game at the end of the day.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger
My wife (my wife~) plays Venusmon, I won. I’m not sorry.
Digimon is another franchise I’ve loved since I was a kid, and I’ve never gotten around to playing the Cyber Sleuth-style games until now. Probably helps that there’s English voice-over this time!! I love the story, the battle mechanics are actually really fun and interesting (having elemental weaknesses plus attribute weaknesses is very cool), and the game just kept surprising me. I swear I thought it was over at the halfway point, but then the game said, “Sike! The actual story is just starting!” Also, the fact that Aegiomon never got on my nerves is a testament to the writing. One look at him, and I was worried, but they proved me wrong. And I have to mention just how play-tested this game feels. There were so many moments where like, I was on a side quest and a character said we had to go back to the place we just came from, I sighed, and then the game faded to black and teleported us there. Like the devs knew I didn’t want to do that and said, “We got you.” And like, when you switch out party members in battle, they don’t lock you into your choice right away. So many games do that, but this game was like “nah dude, you made a mistake, it’s fine, switch Dorumon back out.” Loved it. Digimon is back, baby.
Kirby Air Riders
CITY TRIAL BABYYYY!!! If you watched the Kirby Air Riders UPF recently, you know I love this shit. Me and (say it with me) my wife~ played the original Air Ride for the Gamecube as recently as this year, before the sequel was announced. It’s a game we didn’t play all the time, but when the itch returned, and we fired that baby up, it was like we never left. And this new game is just a better version of the old one. City Trial is all that matters; this isn’t a racing game. It’s basically a rogue-like! Kinda! Just like Umamusume and Nightreign... I guess I like “kinda rogue-likes.” You spend five minutes exploring a wild map (that changes round to round now!), searching for a new vehicle to ride, and collecting power-ups that affect your vehicle’s handling in real time. A bunch of wacky stuff happens in the city to keep it fresh, and at the end of the round, you go into a mini-game that uses your souped-up vehicle, and you try to win it! And if you didn’t, whatever, it was only like 5 minutes, just play again! It’s an addictive cycle, and for all the PNGs of food in your face, giant tires rolling down the road, and meteors falling from the sky, you can always just choose to cruise around and take City Trial as it comes. It’s the kind of game you can talk over and have fun playing at the same time. It’s fun, I love it.
And uhh, if this has to be ten games, then... I didn’t play any of these, but I acted in them so... Seven Knights Re:Birth, where I’m the protagonist, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap! And Gundam Breakers 4. Those are 8, 9, and 10.
This year had some ups and some DOWNS for me. I’m so grateful to the GB crew for always putting out videos and podcasts that make me smile. I really needed that this year, and they provided, as always. I also got to meet the crew in person for like five seconds this year at the Warframe Villa! I work in a really volatile industry, and I’m an actor, so I have lots of emotions about... everything. But anytime I get to come to this site and hang out with these guys for an hour or two, it makes my week. I’m forever grateful to have contributed a tiny little thing to this site in Armed & Rangerous, and I’m grateful I’ve gotten to keep dropping in to yell at the guys about anime horse girls and City Trial. Thank god they bought the site lol. Love you all!