Top 10 Video Games of 2025 - Late as Fuck and Short Edition
by unclejam23
It's my ten favorite games of 2025, but in August of '26. Because why not?
Despite writing a list every year on this here website, I straight up forgot to do it in 2025.
Oh well! Let's write a list anyway.
When the Giant Bomb crew put together their top 10 games of the 2020s so far lists, I decided to take a quick stab at making my own.
I didn’t think about it too hard. I just made a big list of games and picked the ones that felt right on a gut level. This list would probably change if I ruminated on it more, and I'll probably remember some obvious game I forgot at some inconvenient moment well after I write this. But, in alphabetical order, it looks something like this:
Astro Bot
Emily is Away 3
Kentucky Route Zero
The Last of Us Part II
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Mouthwashing
Neon White
Pentiment
Perfect Tides
Spiritfarer
There’s probably a lot you can tell about me from this list. I like narrative games/am pretentious. I’m not a particularly big fan of late capitalism. I need to work some shit out with my therapist about my adolescence in the 2000s. We could go on.
But what stands about this list to me is what's not on it.
There are no roguelikes/roguelites. There are no soulslikes. No metroidvanias. No auto-shooters. There are no games notorious for their difficulty, there’s minimal Nintendo representation (though if we were doing a century-so-far list, that would probably change rather drastically), and nothing in the way of multiplayer. I'm sure we can think of a few more.
All of this is a very long way of saying that I wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about the games of 2025 as a lot of people were.
I don’t think there’s a particularly engaging or deep reason why. It just comes down to a certain cyclical relationship I have with a lot of art mediums in general. A loud majority of you love Souls games, but my psychology stops me from valuing what those games want me to feel. A lot of you want the evocative arcade replayability of roguelikes/roguelites, but I think I've hit a point of diminishing returns. Consensus has been zigging, and I’ve been zagging.
But hey, I love that you love those games, and I want you to keep loving them! And I don't mean that passively aggressively either. Things work in cycles for me, and at some point, I'll meet up with you guys again. It just didn’t happen in 2025.
Still, there were plenty of games to love last year, so let’s get positive and list some shit!
Also, I'm only giving myself a maximum of five sentences per game. And I'm not proofreading.
Runner-Up: Powerwash Simulator 2
I love the first Powerwash Simulator, and its sequel improves everything about the original in every respect possible. They figured out how to make the larger levels less tedious, they've added a lot of quality-of-life equipment, the decision to give you soap for free is inspired, and I could go on. It's the game I logged the most hours for in 2025 (because I play it while listening to podcasts, shout out to podcast games), and the only reason it's not on the list proper is that I saw an opportunity to have one less game with a “2” at the end of it. Lists are dumb.
10. Dispatch
Early on in the game, you’re forced to fire an employee. The reasons your boss gives you for doing so are, at best, arbitrary and stupid. Dispatch is a satire of superheroes and corporate culture, and how the latter treats the former, but if you or anyone you know has ever worked in that kind of corpo environment, aspects of this game feel almost too real. But that's why it works. Also, it's nice to look into an alternative universe where old Telltale invested their time and capital into making their games look and feel good instead of chasing IP and grinding their employees to a pulp... oooooh, I see what you did there, Dispatch.
9. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4
Playing the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise as a kid made me aware of the concept that some games feel good to play and some don't. I played each one religiously until American Wasteland. I love those games dearly, and they play a fundamental role in how I perceive video games as a medium. I say all this so you know I'm not being flippant when I say that I think this game's version of THPS 4 is better than the original, that I like the new levels enough that I want Iron Galaxy to make THPS 5 (I don't acknowledge the existence of the THPS 5 we already have), and that I think this version has a better soundtrack. Also, American Wasteland's underrated.
8. Ghost of Yotai
It's an improved version of everything I liked about Tsushima, minus the mixed messaging the original game gave me about the morality of my own actions. Whereas the original game, intentionally or not, said, "You can use stealth if you want, but if you do, you're a dishonorable coward" (which was hilarious for the first few hours), Yotai says, "Nah, fuck all that hypocritical samurai code shit, go get bloody revenge." You gotta love it.
7. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Y'all heard of this one? Jokes aside, it's not higher on this list because I'm an act three hater.
6. Blue Prince
Every year or two, despite the previously mentioned attention issues, there's a puzzle game that completely consumes my brain. Here's a screenshot of the first page of my notes from Blue Prince:
5. Despelote
One day, when I was a little kid, I insisted on playing with my soccer team instead of going to an Orioles game (the Nationals hadn't moved to DC yet), then I changed my mind because I wanted to eat stadium junk food. But my brother's friend already claimed my seat, so I threw a massive crying fit. My soccer game got rained out, so my mom took me home, I got to play video games for several glorious brother-free hours, and I discovered I was an introvert. I hadn't thought about that, or any of my soccer memories, or really most of my childhood memories from those handful of years, until playing Despelote. The wave of nostalgic melancholy that hit when the credits rolled almost had me on my knees.
4. Hades II
I think I like the first Hades more. The Zagreaus/Hades relationship grounded everything in a certain kind of emotionality, and I think the sequel didn't really have that anchor. But that's splitting hairs because I also think Hades II's gameplay blows the first out of the water, and I have just as much enthusiasm for it as I did with the first. Plus, on a purely conceptual level, Scylla and the Sirens might be my favorite boss fight of all time? Maybe?
3. Peak
I am a weird person, and I played Peak primarily as a solo podcast game. True, that's not the "right" way to play it, but as a solo game, it's oddly ruminative when you look past the built-in comedy. Observe your surroundings, pick a route, figure out how you're going to climb it, and execute. Everything else kinda washes away, and Peak wound up being what I turned to if I needed to feel at ease. On a related note, suck it bitch:
2. The Séance of Blake Manor
If I had to invent award categories for my lists, there would have to be a Best Podcast Game award and one for Game That Made Me Feel the Most Like a Detective. Peak wins the former for 2025, and The Séance of Blake Manor wins the latter. It helps that it's basically 20 mysteries in one, and it helps even more that the mysteries weave in a rich tapestry of cultures and histories through characters that feel dimensional, all while evoking a spooky Sherlock Holmes-ian tone. You know how Widow's Bay balances every Stephen King style horror scenario? This is that, only instead of Stephen King, it's Victorian gothic horror, and you're the one who has to put it all together.
1. Consume Me
To be "good" at Consume Me is to help Jenny manage her eating disorder, and thus profoundly fail her as a human being. To reach deeper levels of empathy with her (as well as the developer for whom this is a semi-autobiographical story), you must continue the game, and that means you must (sighs) get good at it. It creates one of the most fascinating and emotionally impactful player/character relationships I've ever experienced, as you truly learn what it means to filter every decision you make around managing a self-destructive relationship with your body. I'm a rather vehemently anti-religious person (the game's not particularly religious either), but there's a period in the game where you can use the Bible to alleviate some of the stress, and it relieved my own sense of dread every time I got to click it. It can be a heavy experience, but it's also deeply funny, charming, and affectionate, and it was an easy choice for game of the year for me.
Honorable Mentions
And Roger
Arc Raiders
Bionic Bay
Donkey Kong Bananza
Is This Seat Taken?
It Takes a War
Lego Party
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders
Lumines Arise
Mario Kart World
Schedule I
Shinobi: Art of Vengeance
Spilled!
Sword of the Sea
Time Flies
Will Play Someday
Ambrosia Sky
Expelled!
Keeper
The Roottrees Are Dead (I know. I know!!!)
Silent Hill F
Probably a bunch of others I forgot.