Hey, 2025 fucking sucked, huh?
I know that, you know that, we all know that, so I’ll save y’all the spiel this year. The short version: The current political and social climates are nightmares, hoes depressed, but we can’t stop fighting, or they’ll take everything from us piece by piece.
Thankfully, escapism has never been more accessible. Anytime I needed comfort food at the end of a long day/week/several months this year, video game developers have had my back from the AAA space down through indies and one-person ROM hackers. Since I was busy helping a group of internet doofuses piece their gaming lives back together for most of 2025, I didn’t have a chance to even look at most of the projects I wanted to. Still, as is tradition around here, I’ve come up with a list of my ten favorite releases this year, preceded by a few oddball honorable mentions cordoned off from the rest so I mess with Marino’s stats as little as possible.
Honorable Mentions (AKA The Retro Corner this year, apparently):
Retroid Pocket Classic
This is it. This is the one. Finally, the retro gaming handheld I’ve always wanted. It’s powerful enough to play everything up through PS2 games. It has a 1080p OLED screen that’s huge for the form factor, perfect for nighttime play and using LCD/CRT shaders. It’s small enough to actually be carried in your shorts/jeans/coat pocket. The one I bought is a dead ringer for the kiwi Game Boy Color I had as a kid.
Don’t let my coworkers’ obsession with dual-screen memes sway you; you can’t do better for ~$130. Any time I wasn’t playing a new release on my PC or Switch 2 this year, I was sitting down with Mario’s Picross and Pokémon TCG on this lil’ guy, and I absolutely adore it. The thing that really solidified it as my secondary place to go for gaming this year was the ability to earn RetroAchievements. Speaking of...
RetroAchievements
If you haven’t heard of RetroAchievements, it’s exactly what it sounds like. While playing games in an emulator/frontend that supports the service (such as RetroArch or Dolphin), you can earn achievements and compete in online leaderboards for games that never had them. It’s that extra cherry on top for playing old favorites or checking out classics for the first time.
Because the entire service is run by the most hardcore fans of any given game, it feels like achievement sets serve their original purpose for the first time in quite a while. Being able to go to the RA website and see proof on your profile that you did, in fact, do that insanely obscure thing in a 1994 video game is ridiculously cool. Huge shoutouts to anyone who has worked on RetroAchievements sets over the years. I spent a lot of 2025 watching authorblues’s streams of both earning and programming them, so I know how much hard work goes into every one. Y’all have done wonders in further reigniting my love of retro gaming. ❤️
Sakura Wars 2
I’ve become a pretty big fan of the Sakura Wars series in the past few years (and you should too, if you like Fire Emblem and/or 90s anime), so I was thrilled that the long-awaited fan translation of the second game was released in April. As mentioned above, I’ve barely had the time to really sit down with anything other than new releases this year, so sadly, I haven’t had a chance to get very far in it yet. You better believe it’s the first thing I’m doing when I’m done editing all these GOTY podcasts heading into our winter break. Thanks again to Lexi for picking up a physical copy for me over in Japan!
BAZR
One of the biggest surprises for me this year was BAZR, a Super Mario 64 ROM hack put together by anonymous_moose, furyiousfight, and spk for SimpleFlips' Chaos Mario Team Competition (shoutouts to SimpleFlips). It’s one of the most creative hacks/fan games I’ve seen in a long time, turning Mario 64 into a randomized Balatro-style roguelike with elements of Neon White. Each of Mario’s abilities is stripped away, and you can only perform moves that are dealt out from a deck of cards and assigned to each of the main controller buttons (B, A, Z, and R, hence the name). Some moves are normal, like the long jump; some are wild new abominations like totsugeki-ing Mario across the level like May from Guilty Gear. Run out of cards before you can reach a star, and you lose a life. Lose all your lives, and the run is over.
It really struck a chord with the Mario 64 speedrunner in me, especially as I, like a fair number of speedrunners, have come to find more fun in challenge runs than the speedy variety. I wish I had more time to spend with this one earlier in the year, but hey, now I can go back and earn the RetroAchievements set for it, aaaaand we’ve come full-ish circle. Fun! Now, for the main event.
10. Hades II
It’s impressive that Hades II made my list at all, considering how I usually don’t like roguelikes or lites. But as I mentioned in my honorable mentions, sometimes one comes along that really appeals to my sensibilities otherwise and gets me absolutely hooked. People always told me that “Hades is the roguelite for people who don’t like roguelites,” but I never felt that was true. It’s been a while, so I can’t point to exactly what pushed me away, but it was something related to the repetitive nature of the traditional Rogue-style cycle.
Hades II, on the other hand, is an incredibly friendly game to all players. The constant progression after every run got its claws in me, and I felt the urge to keep doing “one more run” for almost ten hours during my first session. Even if I was seeing the same areas over and over, the drip feed of excellent new dungeon crawling and action game mechanics was perfectly paced to encourage experimentation as I sought to hear every new bit of dialogue from the colorful cast. The only thing really holding Hades II back for me is, ironically, the fact that it does still have those irritating roguelite trappings in places. Perhaps it had something to do with my pace of play, but the middle of the game became a fairly mindless loop of doing runs to gather materials for progression. I didn’t even roll credits on the game since you need to arbitrarily do a minimum of, by my math, five additional runs to gather enough MacGuffins in order to see the ending.
I find that... Boring.
Regardless, Hades II provided a very fun action game for me to dive into, and serves as the introduction to a running theme in my list this year.
9. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
While I’m generally warmer on Musou/Warriors games than dungeon crawler roguelikes, it’s still one of those action-adjacent genres in gaming that I’ve dabbled in but never really stuck with. Like Hades II, I’m surprised this one hit so hard with me. It’s a testament to how much Koei Tecmo’s studios have refined their ability to do licensed Warriors games that feel like the source material. More so than the previous Hyrule Warriors entries or even the great Persona 5 Strikers, Age of Imprisonment feels like a game where their usual over-the-top formula has been reined in just the right amount.
The game has been cleverly designed to slot seamlessly into the Tears of the Kingdom story, and provides nerds like me the lore and backstory that a Breath of the Wild-style Zelda game maybe never will. This swinging back and forth between emotional cinematic moments featuring Tears’s lovable cast and crazy-yet-deliberate hack-and-slash gameplay akin to Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition’s Legendary Dark Knight mode make for a thrilling experience.
Similar to Hades II, the only thing keeping Age of Imprisonment lower on my list is the fact that it also plays into its genre trappings just a little too much. As fun as performing all the different combos, supers, and team supers available to various characters can be, eventually it all becomes a touch repetitive, like the mainline Warriors games. I’m maybe halfway through, and I’ve found I enjoy it more as a game where I complete a couple story missions and some side content before putting it down for the day and coming back when the itch strikes.
But damn... When that itch gets scratched, it feels good.
8. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
At the beginning of this year, Jeff Grubb asked me to predict my Game of the Year. I told him, “Something would have to go horribly wrong for it to not be Metroid Prime 4.”
Well... It didn’t go horribly wrong.
Making a Metroid Prime 4 that lived up to everyone’s expectations was always going to be an impossible task. The first Prime is one of those games so beloved that people have massively inflated its quality in their minds, reaching “unobtainable” status for any follow-up. Nevertheless, Prime 4 could and should have been better. A solid two-thirds of this game is fantastic, a mix of wonder, excitement, dread, and plenty of badassery. That last third, though... There’s a story to be told here. I imagine it’s some combination of the usual development hell woes mixed with the eternal urge to have Metroid appeal to more people and subsequently sell enough copies to justify another entry.
A lot of the problems people have with the game are things I don’t see as problems at all. Often, they’re positives! I’ve harped about this enough in various places online, so I’ll keep it at this: Metroid is one big ripoff of the Alien franchise. It’s okay for it to branch out like Alien to Aliens, as long as it doesn’t fall too much into Alien 3 territory. I feel that things like the Troopers are great ways to make Metroid more talkative and accessible to a general audience while still keeping things faithful to the lore and mechanics of Metroid, especially if that remains within the Prime subseries. It’s okay for Metroid to be different, like any other gaming franchise... They just have to stick the landing. Metroid Prime 4, unfortunately, did not stick that landing.
The things that “don’t feel very Metroid” in Prime 4 aren’t talkative NPCs, cutscenes, or linearity. Both mainline and Prime games have had all of those things. The thing that feels like a mismatch is anytime something becomes arbitrary for padding out playtime or wrapping up a loose thread. Driving around a desert on a motorcycle for a minute or two as a calm reprieve from the action and suspense? Cool! Being forced to drive around and gather X amount of currency in order to progress? Bitch, this ain’t Mario. And that terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad ending? If you think Samus will spare the baby Metroid she was contracted to murder, but not do everything in her power to turn that situation around, you are approaching Other M levels of not understanding the character.
There’s a great game in here. The bones of a truly excellent one, even. At its core, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is very fun to play, as Prime always has been. Its biggest set pieces are among the best in the entire franchise. The soundtrack slaps, and the visuals are gorgeous. If it were a bit tighter of an experience, an eight-to-ten-hour game rather than a 12-15-ish one, it could have been the excellent action-oriented Metroid that Other M tried and failed to be. It’s far from a bad game, just an uneven one in the end, and because of the end. I’m definitely not mad. Just a little disappointed.
7. Pokémon Legends: Z-A
Hey, speaking of “Not mad, just disappointed”...
Pokémon Legends: Z-A was set up to be the Pokémon game I always wanted as a kid. In many ways, it is. A delightful cast of characters, a city that feels alive with humans and Pokémon working together, and of course, a real-time battle system that feels ripped straight from the TV show. It’s a blast to issue commands in battle just like Ash always did, down to basically being able to pull off “Pikachu, dodge!” for the first time. I truly feel that Z-A is the best overall Pokémon game in the Switch era.
Any issues I and others have with the game stem from the same place they have for years and years now: The Pokémon Company’s and/or Game Freak’s hubris. They’re intentionally making these games on shoestring budgets, and even if we didn’t have leaked info proving it, the resulting product shows it. The presentation continues to be embarrassingly lacking. From the subtle, like flat textures being used for interstitial buildings throughout Lumiose, to the glaringly obvious, like the lack of voice acting in cutscenes that are animated to have lip syncing.
Legends: Z-A is a smart project in the sense that Game Freak saw the resources they had to work with and made a constrained yet mostly-polished game rather than shooting for the stars with another open-world one. It just could’ve been even better with appropriate budgets of money and time. Completing the theme of pairs at the bottom of this list, I’m just a little disappointed with Legends: Z-A, even if I generally had a great time with it.
6. Peak
My enjoyment of multiplayer games nowadays mostly comes down to how hard it hits with my group of weekly game night friends.
Peak hit us like a freight train.
It’s not hard to see why. If you watch a streamer play it for five minutes, you’ll immediately understand the appeal. Working with your group in the confines of a Looney Tunes-style physics system to climb to the top of a mountain with the help of wacky items while yelling at each other through accurate proximity voice chat is a recipe for instant success. There’s not much more to Peak beyond that, and the reason I hold it in high regard is the moments I had this year because of that accessible gameplay loop. I can’t even count the number of times this year someone in my climbing trio said “No, no, this will work, watch,” only to comically fall to their death and be laughed at as their ghost circles the rest of the party, waiting for revival. It’s always hysterical to discover a new item or biome feature and have it be a 50/50 chance of the most game-breaking buff possible or an explosion that has you looking like Wile E. Coyote.
A lot of games on my list this year are powerful, moving, emotional pieces of art. But Peak shows that art takes many forms, and sometimes, the exact thing you need to get through the day isn’t thoughtful introspection or a good cry. Sometimes, you just need the guarantee of a good laugh with your friends.
5. The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-
Creating a proper follow-up to Danganronpa and the Zero Escape series was a tough task, but that’s exactly what Too Kyo Games set out to do, and they nailed it.
I was a bit skeptical going in, especially after playing the demo early this year that showed how extra (too extra) the characters and story could be. It felt like they were trying too hard to capture the twisted, “Hey, we know you still shop at Hot Topic” vibe of Danganronpa while also making every character unique from any they had created before. Frankly, the game often does try too hard in that regard. But just like Danganronpa, once you get settled in with the cast, learn everyone’s motives and explanations for their quirks, and eventually see loads of genuine character development, even the weirdest and scummiest members of the crew become likable in their own bizarre way.
What really hooked me on Hundred Line was the radical shift in gameplay for this studio, and the incredibly high quality they achieved. Adding a thrilling risk-reward aspect to a tile-based tactics game was just the refresher the genre needed for me. The gameplay is still very Fire Emblem overall, just amplified. Every unit has something specific they’re good at, and have moves that range from close-up attacks to wide, sweeping moves that leave them vulnerable. The fun comes from the death of a unit not being a punishment for failure, but rather a gameplay mechanic you can utilize for crazy combos. Take out one of your own in order to do a super move with no super meter, and you lose them for the rest of the round, but potentially swing the battle in your favor. Genius.
Hopefully, Last Defense Academy is just the first entry in a greater Hundred Line series, as Too Kyo and Media.Vision have a real winning formula on their hands. Just... Wait a bit to release the next game. I have to spend a lot more time with this one (if you know, you know).
4. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Here we have it, the “boring” entry on my list. Certainly not because of the game itself, just... What more can I even say about Expedition 33 that you haven’t already heard at this point?
I echo all the statements up until now. It’s absolutely masterful. It’s a love letter to the PS1 and PS2 eras of JRPGs in all the right ways while adding its own smart flourishes on top. It has a fantastic cast of characters brought to life by incredible performances, a story that’s deep without being needlessly convoluted, a godlike soundtrack with banger after banger, and active, engaging gameplay that may be the best turn-based combat ever in an RPG. I also appreciated how much Sandfall respected my time with this one. I’m not much for sidequesting in games, so I was in and out of the main story in (too obscenely appropriate to have been planned) only 33 hours. With praise like that, you may wonder why it ranks at only number four on my list this year, especially as a person who loves its obvious inspirations in Persona and Final Fantasy X.
It’s all about tone.
Expedition 33 is a depressing game. While there are glimpses of hope splashed throughout, the primary goal of the game’s themes seems to be emotional devastation of the player. That’s usually not my thing, and it brought down my love of this game. I’m certainly not saying there’s no place for that in storytelling or games as a whole; it’s just not for me. Take Persona 3 Reload from last year, for example. Perhaps it’s too cliché for people at this point, but if a game is going to have depressing themes, I want it to at least culminate in a message of hope, a sign that things will get better and heal even if you’re in the deepest of depths right now and may be for quite a while. Since I haven’t had a chance to talk about it yet, I’ll say that the ending of Expedition 33 really drove home this game being too bleak for my personal tastes. Without giving away too much and spoiling anyone who might not have finished it yet: The only ending options in the game are “bad” and “sad”, with “sad” very obviously being the canon choice. Again, not the tone I typically enjoy in a story, but especially not in 2025, where everything has gone to shit. I often found myself playing the game in shorter bursts than I usually would with an RPG, just because I needed to step away after some of the heavier moments.
As I said, I found everything else about the game absolutely fantastic, and Expedition 33 is still one of my favorite RPG experiences in a while. I just hope that in the future, any further Clair Obscur games lean into the name and let the light that highlights darkness shine just a bit brighter.
3. Donkey Kong Bananza
My top five this year is a Who's Who of everything I love about video games. From visual novel/strategy game hybrids to expansive RPGs to now, the pure sugar rush of a fantastic 3D platformer.
Donkey Kong Bananza is just a playable Pixar movie in the best way possible. It’s delightfully energetic, beautiful to look at, and even tugs at the heartstrings a couple of times. It’s an incredible platformer, even when you don’t account for the stunning presentation. One of my favorite games growing up was The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. That game’s unique feel and set of moves is shockingly rare in video games since, and have only been featured in quite the same way in Rumbleverse (my beloved, RIP) and now Bananza. Climbing straight up nearly any surface, tearing off part of the environment to swing as a weapon, dive bombing fist-first from the top of the tallest structure you can see? It’s all here. And it’s all just as magnificent as the first time I experienced them.
Music in video games is hugely important to me (hence why I run our Best Video Game Music of the Year show, coming soon to a Giant Bomb near you), and the running musical themes of Bananza always brought a smile to my face. The soundtrack is a bit uneven, but while the background music is a bit muted, it just causes Pauline’s big moments singing the Bananza themes to perfectly punctuate the proceedings even more.
The only real gripe I had with the game is its fairly clean separation between the core “overworld” progression and actual platforming challenges. I suppose it could be seen as a fair compromise for a younger audience, making the main progression popcorn while the tricky parts are set aside as a meaty steak for experienced fans to sink their teeth into. I think Super Mario Odyssey blended them elegantly though, and Bananza could’ve as well. Then again, if you’re being compared to Super Mario Odyssey not for pedigree but for quality, that’s a strong sign that you’ve done a lot right.
2. Dispatch
I’ve always hated the Telltale style of games. Tales From the Borderlands was the only exception, and who knows at this point how much that’s tied to my sense of humor in 2014. I never liked that style of retro adventure “walking around until I do the arbitrary trigger for progression” gameplay mixed with a whole bunch of cutscenes and the occasional choice to be made. Dispatch overhauls and refines that style in the smartest way possible.
The actual gameplay of Dispatch is a blast. I love the real-time strategy of it all, managing who on the Z-Team is sent on a given assignment, distributing their stats appropriately, knowing when to trigger items and abilities... It’s engaging in a way that the Telltale style never was. AdHoc was smart to combine a gameplay style that you expect to be more cerebral than active with the multitude of cutscenes that play out. By the final chapter, I was obsessed with min-maxing every aspect of my team to achieve as many successful missions as possible.
A story-centric game like this is nothing without its characters, and that’s where Dispatch shines brighter than anything else this year. The whole cast is a bunch of lovable assholes. Every voice actor in the game absolutely killed it in bringing these goobers to life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the next convention I go to is lined with prints of every artist’s favorite for sale. I can’t say enough positive things about the story that’s told here and the progression of every person (and demon, and golem) in and around the Z-Team. I love superhero tales and have been reading comic books and watching the respective movies my whole life, but there’s something special about a story that lets the powers be a backdrop to well-done interpersonal drama. It’s what has turned a franchise like My Hero Academia into an international hit, and now caused Dispatch to be so beloved by a wide variety of players.
It’s so good that I insisted my friends join me for a second playthrough of the game, where they controlled everything. I got to see the other side of most decisions, fell in love with the game all over again, and saw my buddies get excited to play two more episodes the next week and find out where their choices would lead us. I can’t wait for the inevitable second season and to do it all again.
1. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance
Something that I haven’t had much of a chance to talk about online is that I’m a pretty big Sega fan. Growing up a generation or two behind meant that I spent a lot of time as a kid with my Genesis and eventually Dreamcast. I love the Sonic series (for better or worse), Crazy Taxi is one of my favorite games of all time, and I would pass the controller on Jet Set Radio and Super Monkey Ball for hours with friends. The company is definitely in my Holy Trinity of Gaming, alongside Nintendo and Capcom. Despite this, Shinobi isn’t a series I have great affinity for. My childhood dentist had a Shadow Dancer arcade cabinet that I would play on every visit, but that was the extent of my interest in the series.
I definitely didn’t expect Shinobi: Art of Vengeance to become my favorite action game from the past decade.
Character action games have been in a bit of a lull. A lot of the greats related to the genre in recent times fall more into the action RPG side of things, such as Nier: Automata or the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga. Dedicated action games have been weaker overall, from Bayonetta 3 flopping to the highly-anticipated Stellar Blade being a bit less than, well, y’know, to the long-awaited Lost Soul Aside being a general disappointment. The shining beacon for a while has been Devil May Cry 5, but hell, that was released six years ago. All of this is why I’m overjoyed to have an excellent new combo-heavy adventure, and from a most unexpected place.
The difference between this game and the ones mentioned above is obvious, and fairly large: 2D vs 3D. 2D action games have historically been more focused on platforming or the fighting game style brought to beat ‘em ups. I could be forgetting some examples, but I don’t think I’ve ever played a 2D game that perfectly translates everything I love about 3D character action games into the more limited play field the way Art of Vengeance does. Every move feels unique. Every string of attacks feels deliberate. You have to make a conscious effort to “button mash” your way through this one and not take advantage of all the mechanics. Fluid animations, long and expressive combos, and the empowering feeling of shredding through an enemy just to toss them over a ledge because they’re such a jobber that you don’t even care enough to see their fate is just the character action-flavored entrée for the incredible meal the game has to serve you.
Coming from Lizardcube and having names like Tee Lopes attached, I had no doubt that the presentation of Art of Vengeance would deliver, but they truly went above and beyond. The hand-drawn visuals are breathtaking at times, and combined with a pumping soundtrack that blends traditional Japanese vibes with rock and electronic beats, some of the set-piece moments kept a goofy smile plastered all over my face as I played.
This game is fun.
It feels good. It’s got the juice. That’s what I want most out of video games at the end of the day, especially during times where I desperately need escapism. I need to feel that I can go somewhere else, do something cool, feel empowered, and mutter “Hell yeah” under my breath to nobody in particular purely to express my enjoyment of the sick shit that just happened on screen. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is an incredible video game, one that I fear may have been widely slept on as we close out this year. Please don’t! If you even remotely enjoy action games, let this incredible experience bring you joy the way it has for me.
Let’s get out of here
If you read all of that, damn, thank you. Y’all know how verbose I can be, so it means a lot to me when people care enough to listen to what I have to say. Thankfully, this year’s list didn’t leave me an emotional wreck, so I can confidently end things on a high note.
This year was a tough one, as I’m sure they’ll continue to be for a while longer. But hey. We’ll get through this. Remember to look to art like video games, your friends, and any other sources of joy in your life when you’re struggling. Don’t be that weirdo who tears down the things you don’t like, lift up the things that you do! That’s why I ramble so much about these games that I love every year. I always hope that people can see it does so much more good to spread joy than negativity.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been busy, and I’m hella tired. I gotta go play some 90s video games and take a nap.
