My game awards for 2025

I'm almost never able to play the hottest games in the year they're released. I've never had a gaming PC and I've mostly kept to Nintendo consoles. I play what I can when I can and try to avoid most of the discourse. It's a peaceful life.

2025 was no different. I didn't play nearly as many games because I chose two that took massive chunks of my time and another that promises to. What follows are my awards for the best ones I did play.

I only bought three games released in 2025 but they were all-stars. Here are the awards for those three:

Game with the best, and highest density of, "What the fuck did I just read/see/do?!?!" moments:

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy

My experience with visual novels is very limited. Hotel Dusk was my first foray into the genre on the DS, along with a couple more that I can't remember because it's been over 20 years and just typing that sentence makes me want to lie down but then I'll probably pull a back muscle getting and why does my knee hurt? Anyway, They were interesting, with good to great writing, but they weren't exactly what I came to games for. I know now that the genre and its sub-genres have much more to offer than I knew and I regret closing them off for so long.

Enter The Hundred Line. I saw some coverage of it early in the year, mostly focusing on how it brought two of the greats of the form together for what seemed like the creation of a magnum opus. I think I first heard Dominic Tarason talk about it on Bluesky, but I can't be sure. I put it on my wish list and kept an eye out for any news. The more I learned the more intrigued I became. I bought it the first week it came out and dove in.

I haven't had such a steady stream of WTF moments in any game since Deadly Premonition. The characters were all genuinely disturbed and disturbing in a shockingly wide variety of ways. I had no idea what to expect or where the story was headed.

I was hooked. I was going to see this through no matter what.

Twenty hours later I finished the prologue with the same feelings I had at the beginning of the story. I jumped immediately into the new game+. It took me another 20 or 30 hours to find the "canon" ending, 001. Along the way I saw another 30 endings along several of the branching routes the story could take. The stream of WTF slowed down but never stopped. There's a shocking reveal at the end of the ending 001 that I had mostly pieced together from completing two other routes but it still packed an emotional punch to actually see it.

And still it kept going. By the time I put it down and started something else, I had seen 89 endings over the course of nearly 100 hours. I still think about it weekly and I know I'll eventually go back and wrap up the remaining stories.

The strategy elements are excellent. The battles are maybe 20% of the overall game but the same care and thought was put into them that was put into every other aspect of the game.

The presentation is phenomenal. The voice acting includes some of the greatest line reads in any media and it's ridiculous that none of them were nominated for best performance at the game awards. Yes, I know that awards shows mean nothing but it's a symptom of the myopia of games media's focus on production values over all else. If I'm more charitable, I'd call it a problem with the sheer number of games released every year and the impossibility of keeping up with everything. Whatever the case, the voice actors here deserve all the praise in the world.

Go into it as unspoiled as you can and give it time to do its work. There is quite literally nothing else like it. I don't do ranked lists but if I did I would put it at the top of 2025 without any hesitation.

Best game that also made me realize I'm just too old for some things:

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Hollow Knight is revered for good reason. I bought it on a whim back in 2018 and played it nonstop for a couple of months. I was entranced by the atmosphere and enthralled with the world. A few months later I walked away after seeing three endings and exploring every nook and cranny I could find in the map.

Silksong was something I wasn't planning on picking up this year but it came at the right time and the right price. I have to give Team Cherry credit for their mastery of vibes, man. The melancholy mixed with hope and humor in the Hollow Knight series is executed so well. The world is unique and feels old.

I didn't find it too difficult until the end of act 2, when one of the combat gauntlets stopped me cold. I tried for I don't know how long to finish it and no matter what I tried I couldn't. I gave up and haven't come back to it. I may never finish it.

And that's fine. I had a great time exploring the world, meeting its delightful inhabitants, and succeeding so many times against implacable foes. It's worth every moment I spent with it and I don't regret buying it at launch at full price. I love it, I'm never going to be good enough to finish it, and that's fine.

Game that the internet is most wrong about:

Mario Kart World

When talking about works in any media, it's important to take it for what it is, not what you expected it or wanted it to be. I think that's the basis for so much of the online hate against World. It's not Mario Kart 8 and it's not trying to be. It's something new, both iteration and evolution. The trick system, with its rail slides and wall riding makes each track a playground. Using it to find and exploit the alternate routes through each race is a joy. It's pure, undistilled fun and results in some of my favorite moments in the whole series.

Free roam is something special. It's the perfect complement to the races. It gives you time to explore the world and see the way each track is put together. It lets you practice the tricks and shortcuts without any pressure. It makes you slow down and appreciate the artistry in the track and world design. It also has a surprising number of secrets and easter eggs hidden throughout the gigantic world. There's a complete remake of Super Mario Kart's ghost house hidden away in it! I loved every moment I spent driving through and seeing what was around every corner.

It's a great launch title that showcases all of the things the Switch 2 has to offer. I just wish I had more people to play local multiplayer with.

The Awards for Old Games I played in 2025

Game that should be in the Smithsonian:

Hitman

When IO announced that this was going to be a launch title for Switch 2 it made my decision to buy one at launch easy. Hitman 2016 might be my favorite game of all time. It's the only game I ever got a platinum trophy for. I never got the chance to play 2 or 3 when they came out. I moved to China in 2018 and left my Playstation 4 Pro to my brother, a decision that I only mildly regret. The chance to play the whole trilogy on new hardware was a dream come true.

120 hours later and I think that IO are the best developers working today. The sheer amount of stuff to do in Hitman is mind-boggling. The mastery of craft on display is almost unbelievable and the fact that almost all of it was present in 2016 makes it all the more impressive. I love everything about it: the story is bonkers in the best way possible; the ambient dialogue is the best written for any game; the emergent chaos that can result from a strictly clockwork world is impressive; and the fact that ten years later they are still getting celebrities to be elusive targets is unbelievable.

Just yesterday I poisoned Slim Shady's spaghetti sandwich before escaping his nightmare world through a mirror in a bathroom.

Game of the year, every year.

Game that shows that turn-based gaming is alive and thriving:

Octopath Traveler 2

I know there's another big game this year that everyone's saying saved the turn-based genre, but this one shows you that it doesn't need and hasn't needed saving. I loved the original Octopath and just about 100%ed it the year it was released. It did something great with the traditional JRPG formula by marrying it to a Canterbury Tales kind of narrative. I thought it was brilliant.

The sequel does everything the first did but better. The incidental writing on every NPC rivals Hitman's in its brilliance. The moment to moment tactical decisions in combat are weighty and consequential. The world is beautifully rendered and lovingly built and alive. I love everything about it. I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through and it keeps giving me new things to marvel at. I've risked areas too dangerous for me too many times and survived by using every piece of knowledge, every item I had, and every dirty trick I could think of.

I haven't had to grind once.

It's one of the best games the year it was released and a strong contender for one of the best this decade.

Best game that weaponizes nostalgia:

Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line

A rhythm game using the entirety of Square-Enix's music catalog but also an RPG using characters from every Final Fantasy release is aimed directly at my pleasure centers. I spent countless hours as a child on Final Fantasy I, IV, VI, and VII and finished IX as an adult. The music from those games is seared into my brain and this game brings all those memories flooding back.

I played it seriously last year, finishing every one of the series quests and working on mastering the Expert levels on each track. I start it up every few days to do a run through its endless mode. I have the deluxe edition with soundtracks from Square-Enix's best games and I'm still discovering amazing tracks. Their composers have always been the best in the business.

On top of everything else, it's a very, very good rhythm game.

Game that shows that graphics peaked in the early 2000s:

Fire Emblem (GBA)

When I owned a GBA I was just out of University and working as a substitute teacher. I didn't make that much money so I subscribed to Gamefly and tried to get my money's worth out of it, trying and returning dozens of games every year. Fire Emblem was one of them. I never actually finished it but got very far into Eliwood's chapter before the battery gave out. I returned it and never got another copy. I didn't want to risk spending so many hours only for it to fail again.

This summer I was browsing through the NSO GBA catalog for something to cleanse my palate after Hundred Line. I half-remembered Fire Emblem from nearly two decades ago and decided to see if it held up. Nearly 20 hours later I had completed one game and started another. I had the wild idea to 100% the support conversations library like I'd done in so many other Fire Emblem games but after a second play through Hector's route I decided to make that a long-term goal.

It's a little rough around the edges and it's unbalanced in a way that makes mounted units superior to almost everything else, but it's a good Fire Emblem. The characters have surprising depth and the support conversations are some of the better ones in the series.

The pixel art on the characters and animations looks as good as anything has. The artist were at the peak of their skills on the GBA. They did so much with so little.

Best game with a talking ferret:

Shiren the Wanderer: Mystery of Serpentcoil Island

Shiren is a series that reinvents itself with every new entry while remaining faithful to its roots as a modern Rogue. It has always been a top-tier franchise, with nearly every game a certified classic. I bought Serpentcoil Island on day one. It was my game of the year in 2024 and I still do a few dungeon runs and Wanderer rescues every week.

It's the most beginner-friendly of the franchise by a long shot. They pared down the number of systems that you need to master, for one. They also created the best tutorial and in-game encyclopedia in the series to date. Not only does it help you master the basics, it gives you all the information you need to understand the more complex strategies of experts. The main story dungeon is challenging but not overwhelming. It slowly introduces new concepts through the different stories you encounter, and they make not only narrative but also mechanical sense to link them that way. The bonus dungeons after the main story continue to teach you, revealing the staggering complexity and flexibility of its seemingly simple systems.

It does everything right, from the smallest to the largest details. I have a much longer post about it in the works so I'll save most of my thoughts for that.

I would honestly recommend this to anyone. It's a master class in design and play.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Giant Bomb for keeping this place open. I hope 2026 brings you all everything you want, and nothing that you don't.