Invis's Favorite Games of 2025 [PART 1]

Yo, what's good? I played a lot of games this year. A lot. This year was the roughest I've ever had, as it left me more free time than I wanted. It's going to take a while for me to get into the games portion of this list, but just bear with me as I want to get some things off my chest.

After suffering a sudden loss in the family, I found myself searching for a job again. Time went by with many job interviews that I left feeling as confident as ever, only to be told on more than one occasion that I was the next best candidate. As more and more time passed without an offer, I sank lower and lower into my own negative thoughts. Please someone, just give me a chance.

So I did what anyone else would do in a situation like this; spend a few weeks creating Giant Bomb Forever (live now at twitch.tv/giantbombforever, I have no shame). I went back and forth on whether or not to include discussion about GBF in here. My argument against it was I wanted to avoid sounding as if I wanted to bring attention to myself. It's more than that though. This means something to me, man. In my previous and particularly stressful job I would have Infinite up the entire work day on another screen from the moment I arrived to the moment I left, and it was that way for six years.

It's not like someone else wouldn't have done this, but I knew I was in a position to step up and bring back Infinite. When it looked dire for Giant Bomb a few years ago, a bunch of internet strangers got together and archived in its entirety the website we all care so much for. With all the videos and knowledge of the site we gained during that, I took the free time I had and re-created Infinite with a new name; Forever. When there were days I didn't want to get up because I felt as if I was doing nothing in life but spinning my wheels, working on GBF gave me a purpose again. I'm not going to forget the first time the CD-I stream played on GBF, and the chat spammed an emote I added of Jeff doing his "Inca" dance at the moment it started in the VOD. I was having a particular rough day, and that helped me smile.

Fast forward to October 14th. I suffered a trimalleolar fracture and dislocation in my right ankle after a skateboarding bail, alongside a sprained left ankle. The left ankle was fine, however I was told the right required surgery to fix (ORIF in particular), and I would need to wait a couple days before the operation could commence due to an abundance of swelling. After two days in the hospital constantly having to power through the worst pain I've ever felt, the surgery went through without an issue that left me with metal plates and screws in my leg.

The following seven weeks were a time that I can only describe as depressing. For that time I was told to put no weight on my bad leg. I didn't leave the house except for twice, both were for follow-up appointments with my surgeon. I began needing to depend on others for the most minute of tasks that left me feeling hopeless. I'm grateful to have a support system around me that was more than accommodating and loving, though I could not help myself from feeling as if I was preventing others from going on about their lives due to having to watch over me. A day could not go by where I felt that getting back to a normal life was possible. Crying became the norm as I couldn't stop myself from doubting that I'm ever going to get back to the things I love. Am I going to regain the full range of motion in my foot to play drums like I used to? Am I going to be able to stand up straight without losing balance to ride my skateboard again?

After those aforementioned seven weeks, I was told the news that I longed for. Over the next two weeks I can begin to slowly put weight on my right ankle until I can walk normally with my air cast. I will also begin physical therapy (which I'm still going through three times a week, and will be for a while) to begin recovering my range of motion, strength, and balance. As of right now, I'm in the early stages of walking in regular shoes. For every day that I walk it seems I need to rest that same amount of time right after, if not more. Right as I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I find myself at times taking two steps backwards both mentally and physically. Even with that, I do see progress.

I'm eternally thankful that I discovered Giant Bomb. Giant Bomb has got me through so many of life's rough patches, and continues to do so every day. The community around this site not only cares for each other, but loves each other. I've come to experience that more than I ever have in 2025, at a time where I needed it most. Every day is a challenge. Some days I can see the checkered flag, but I've got no gas left. I've already fought through so much to get to the end of the year, and who knew this tiny vessel could ever endure such violent weather?

At least I got to experience all these great games that 2025 had to offer. Let's get into it. The only games that I didn't get around to playing which I believe I may have enjoyed was Silent Hilf and Metroid Prime 4. I've only beat the first Metroid Prime and I wasn't huge on it to begin with, which left me not clamoring for the fourth entry too much. I'll probably like it, but meh. As for Silent Hilf, I was playing it (and thoroughly enjoying it) leading up to me breaking my ankle, and it's hard for me to go back to it due to negative associations. Here's some games that I want to talk about first but I did not enjoy enough to make the list. I try not to talk about games that I have zero positive things to say about as this entire list is not every game I played this year, but these following games were ones that I felt so let down by just due to how much I was anticipating them (except this first one). So let me get this off my chest:

- MindsEye : I beat MindsEye. I do not recommend MindsEye. I'm someone that will fall off ANY game once I stop having fun, no matter how much history I have with the series or how long I've put into it. Which has to mean that I enjoyed MindsEye, right? I'm not going to say I hated it, but it was something I was able to finish due to a combination of streaming the entire playthrough to some friends alongside it being funny countless times when it shouldn't have been due to either bugs or constant story nonsense. I wouldn't ever recommend someone to hate-play or hate-watch something, but MindsEye might be the exception. If you can get a group of friends to suffer together, I believe you'll have a good enough time just poking fun at this disaster.

- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 : Make this a sequel to "Vampyr" instead of Bloodlines and I can see it having better reviews than the Mixed that Bloodlines 2 is at right now on Steam. By sharing the same name of its beloved predecessor, Bloodlines 2 has to live up a near impossible task, and one that it does not succeed at. There's some truth to it that the original Bloodlines is viewed through rose tinted glasses simply due to the fact that it was one of the first games to tackle vampires in the standard open world RPG setting that we know of today. It's an unfinished buggy mess of a game (the community's unofficial patch solves most the issues but my point still stands) yet it kills where it matters those most. All of what I love about the original Bloodlines isn't present in its sequel; well written clan members, a foreboding ambient soundtrack, a vast map hand crafted to fit each clan's unique lifestyle. The entirety of Bloodlines 2 takes place in a 10 or so block radius of Seattle that has less interactable buildings than just one of Bloodlines 1's locales. Quality always over quantity, except when it's neither like here. Bloodlines 2 is a walking simulator with flashy combat sprinkled in throughout, and while the combat in this sequel allows for more creativity with its varying telekinesis and mind control powers, that's the only thing it does better than the original.

- DOOM: The Dark Ages : To better understand my opinion on Dark Ages, I'll first tell you that I believe Doom Eternal is better than Doom (2016). I began to go against my rule of bailing on a game the second I stopped having fun, because I just knew that The Dark Ages was going to click for me eventually. After about 75% through the campaign, I realized this wasn't going to be the case and dropped it. Rarely does the soundtrack of a game get in the way of gameplay for me, but it did here. So many of the songs are a low tempo industrial sound, and I want back those Bonham triplets ontop of a djenty tone. I couldn't ever get that adrenaline rush from the music like I felt from 2016 and Eternal when playing The Dark Ages. Take that and combine it with a slower movement which I wasn't fond of, and I could not enjoy The Dark Ages like I wanted to.

- Hades 2 : It physically hurts me to put Hades 2 here after all the hours I spent in the first Hades with hundreds of cleared runs. There's two main things that prevented me from getting into Hades 2 the way that I expected; one is I did not enjoy any of the weapons. Not a single one. The starting staff thing was the only one I didn't strongly dislike. The other was the Cast mechanic. I have never been someone who likes lingering attack effects in any game, and the Cast being one of the core mechanics felt like it forced me into a playstyle that I do not enjoy.

- Lost Soul Aside : Cut the length of Lost Soul Aside down to 10 hours as well as cycle in a new voice cast and you've got yourself a solid character action game. I was enjoying most of my time up until I realized that I had experienced everything it was going to throw at me come the 5th hour, and I wasn't even close to being done. The combat is not varying enough to warrant me continuing on that long so I had to bail once I got what it was putting down. It looks cool though.

I've got to throw in a couple honorable mentions as well, which were games that I did enjoy but did not enjoy enough:

- skate. : I've put over 1000 hours into skate 1/2/3 so it was no surprise that gustDS and I were ecstatic whenever EA announced a new entry in 2020. Yet my world was torn asunder when they later told us it was going to be a free-to-play title. At that point I knew I had to temper my expectations on a couple features, particularly in its story mode and customization. At its core the skating itself has never been better. There isn't many mechanical changes here compared to skate 3 except the animations and their transitions to starting a trick and catching it are improved and they look fantastic. There's small things they added which I appreciate like hand drags and skating transition being slower. But besides that, there's no substance.

F2P caters to a certain type of player, and that player is not me. This new skate. was going to be a live service one centered around social aspects, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that; skating is at its most fun when doing it with friends and rooting for them to land that one trick they've been practicing for the last hour. It's neat to run into all these other skaters in the open world, but they are all running solo. I rarely, if ever, run into a group of players taking advantage of the one thing that makes skating what it is; the community. The map lacks any sort of flow, making lines from one spot to another become disjointed. Why would I want to join up with others to skate spots I'm not excited to skate? What's worse is a complete lack of PvP. Multiplayer games of S-K-A-T-E was the best game mode in prior games, alongside Deathraces, and both are missing.

Regarding the "story", it's nothing more than a long tutorial without cutscenes. Gone are the days of an opening cinematic with P-Rod recklessly driving an ambulance through the city while "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" plays. There are no pros or even amateurs in this new skate. All your missions are given to you from either a local skater calling you on a phone or a drone that follows you. I'm real bummed about the significant lack of brands™, genuinely. Odd to say I know, but in the first skate I recreated my board I was riding at the time in game and rode it around for my entire first playthrough (same exact deck, trucks, and wheels), and I just can't do that here. The original art EA has made for the boards isn't bad, but I would like to ride around on real hardware.

This sounds harsh, but this doesn't feel like an Early Access game; it feels like a vertical slice you would pitch to a publisher. I hate to use the term "no soul" because that downplays the hundreds of talented developers that worked on this game for thousands upon thousands of hours who were just following directions. But there is barely anything to do other than just ride around, and what's there to skate isn't intriguing. I had already been playing the Early Access version of skate. for a month by the time I broke my ankle. Many times would I finish up my skating for the day to only come back home and boot up skate. Then October 14th came and went. The board I was riding when I had the accident is leaning up against my wall, and I look at it every day. I want nothing more in life than to grab that board and go skating again. Since I can't do that, I needed this new skate. to land with me so I could live vicariously through my digital skater. I still find myself booting skate. up for an hour or so each week to chill while listening to music and hit some lines, but everything that brought me to love the previous three entries is absent here, and that sucks.

- Sonic Racing: Crossworlds : I'd rather just play Mario Kart World, and that's nothing against Sonic Racing. The level swap mechanic is a refreshing change of pace in a genre that needs it, but I have such a lower fondness for the characters of the Sonic universe than I do for Mario's.

- Wobbly Life : I'm not one for pure sandbox games like this, but me and two buddies stumbled upon this game while just hanging out at my house on a Friday, so we gave it a shot. We didn't play it past that one day, but the whole afternoon was a hilarious time of using trying to fit as many objects in the world as we could into the front door of our player homes.

- NASCAR 25 : I would compare iRacing Studio's first attempt at a consolized NASCAR game to EA's revival of the NCAA Football series. CFB 25 was barebones yet excels in its core minute to minute gameplay. NASCAR 25 is no different as the handling model feels just like you would want it to coming from the team behind iRacing, and there's not much more to say about it. NASCAR 25 is a solid foundation for future entries in the series and I'd like to see them expand upon the Career mode significantly, eg. NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona-esque.

- Rematch : While it is good fun to stunt on them fools, Rematch the type of game to maximize its replay value and enjoyment with a group of friends, and all of our group who were playing just fell off of it after 15 hours.

- Mario Kart World : This a me problem, I know, but I take Mario Kart too seriously. I just can't get over the BS that is leading the entire race cause you are better than everyone else and then finishing in 9th come the last lap due to the game taking pity on those who suck by giving them the better power-ups. Okay, I'm done. I was able to enjoy myself quite a bit when doing closed friend lobbies cause we all know what we are getting into, but something about public lobbies just grinds my gears. Also not having any sort of map markers or a legend to track progress for the open world map is a choice.

- The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered : After roughly 20 hours of playing the Oblivion Remaster I couldn't shake the feeling that I would have more fun by just doing another playthrough of Skyrim. While there are a handful of significant questlines in Oblivion that are superior here than their Skyrim counterparts (Dark Brotherhood for instance), I believe Skryim sets itself apart in some key factors that mean more to me; dungeons and exploration.

- Tokyo Xtreme Racer : You're not going to find a more enjoyable recreation of the Wangan to cruise on than this revival of TXR. I just wish there was more car customization. Where are my wide body kits? How about an expanded wheel base?

- Once Upon A Katamari : I've skipped most Katamari games past the initial one, but picked this one up mainly as wanting an easy game to test game streaming on my Odin 2 Portal. The time traveling aspect was enough to keep me invested and did a well enough job of making the main levels not feel similar, which was my main problem with previous entries. Rolling around a ball is just fun dude, I don't know what else to say.

Okay look here, I'm going to use this space to just talk about things I enjoy at this point. My group of friends got into card games and tabletop games down bad this year (and spent way too much money on them), so here's the ones I enjoyed the most:

8. The Godfather: Corleone's Empire

7. Flamecraft

6. Flip 7

5. Re;MATCH (unreleased)

4. Resident Evil (2023)

3. Payback (2025)

2. Nemesis (2018)

1. Arkham Horror (3rd Edition)

Now with that out of the way, let's get into the meat and potatoes of why you're here. Here are the best games I played this year:

32. JDM: Japanese Drift Master :

A properly designed map and in depth car customization goes a really long way for me in racing games, as it did here for JDM. You've got a killer soundtrack to jam to while driving around, with nu-metal, drift phonk, and synthwave. A perfect soundtrack in my eyes. The physics are too heavy and the AI has a hard time staying on the track, but boy, doesn't this wide body look sick on this BRZ?

31. SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance :

This is the only Shinobi game I've played for any considerable amount of time (and beaten). I've played so many action platformers in the past that it takes a lot for me to be interested in one, but I'm glad I gave this one a chance. The brief pause that happens for sword hits to highlight all the visual effects and give everything more "oomph", the air juggles, its vibrant hand drawn environments. There's a lot to love here. The controls are severely lacking though. They aren't tight enough for the later platforming challenges that it wants you to do. They aren't unresponsive or delayed enough to be too difficult, but just enough to have frustrating deaths that feel out of your control.

30. Megabonk :

It's a silly 3D Vampire Survivors. And Vampire Survivors is dope. So are 3D games. Therefore Megabonk is dope.

29. Metal Eden :

Ruiner was a good time, and now you tell me Reikon Games's next game is a boomer shooter? Yo sign me up. Part Ghostrunner due to its fast pace and traversal, part DOOM for its weapon styles and soundtrack. Metal Eden is a short game with good enough weapon variety so there wasn't any feeling of similarity throughout my playthrough.

28. The Precinct :

An old-school GTA where you play on the right side of the law rather than not. This might be the only game I've played where you are a traditional cop other than L.A. Noire, so still a novel concept for me. Having to show restraint or forgive in situations that required it is a refreshing contrast to how you'll play these situations out in other games. You'll start out slow and gradually be given more dangerous jobs as you gain tenure, as you'll be driving around the map issuing parking tickets and stopping graffiti artists before moving onto homicide investigations and bank robberies. There's always an element of randomness to these jobs which was refreshing, as you don't know if the person you pulled over for speeding is going to try and make a run for it, or if the guy who just littered wants to turn this into a shootout. There's still a limited amount of objectives in all of these jobs that did get repetitive, but not enough to get in the way. There's enough variety and good cop/bad cop humor here for a good time.

27. Elden Ring: Nightreign :

I'll preface this by saying that all of my playtime in Nightreign was in the first two weeks, and I believe I would have had a much better time if I jumped in when The Forsaken Hollows to fix substantial issues me and buddy ran into. I'll take any excuse to play more Elden Ring, so I jumped into Nightreign right on release. It was the Elden Ring that I knew and loved. I usually have a short attention span when it comes to rogue-likes/lites, so the full co-op nature of it that was more inticing than anything else.

However me and my co-op partner realized early on that the design for the Remembrances quests was structured in a way that directly conflicts with anything other than playing solo. Only one player in the group can have a Remembrance quest active at a time, meaning if you queued with one active you were only going to be placed with others who did not have one active. And since the game was so new, everyone was wanting to complete these quests, resulting in days where we couldn't find a 3rd person to matchmake with us (since this was before Duos), which just meant we werent playing the game unless we wanted to do runs without progression. We did end eventually beating every boss multiple times, but was not able to finish all the quests we wanted to. The loop was good enough for us to just keep doing run after run, but before too long the lack of original content and impactful upgrades was enough for us to move on.

26. Ninja Gaiden 4 :

Button mash with confidence. The air combos, the hyperactive speed, the weapon switching to extend combos, it's all here to give you what you want in a game like this. The combos could have used more variance as all the weapon types more or less use the same combo pool, but just look different. Atleast it made it trivial to keep a combo going. The thing I want to talk about most though is the original soundtrack. It's the style of music I endear, a progressive metalcore/djent sound. Right when it hits hard at the start of a boss fight and that deep tone rumbles through my subs, I'm locked in more than I've ever been. Just listen to this riff at 42 seconds. Gives me goosebumps: https://youtu.be/pKAc4dn95wI

25. Atomfall :

Atomfall's storyline is entirely progressed through this Sherlock Holmes type of clue finding adventure where you've got to make your own decisions in what factions to team with based off the information you find. Making up your mind on who is "good" or "bad" relies entirely on what clues you've found, which creates a refreshing narrative by providing exploration more means than just looting. It also has one of the better bartering systems I've seen in games, in that goods are your currency. There is no money or gold or whatever to use in shops, but instead every weapon or consumable you pick up is used also for trading. In this war torn world, what is anyone gonna do with money? They need guns, ammo, and bandages. You're limited in inventory space which means you're also going to be limited in how much trading you can do. I'm generally not a fan of having to frequently go into my inventory screen to play Tetris, but it made enough sense here within the confines of the world that I came around on it. There's some good Eurojank when it comes to clunky melee combat and blind AI but at least it's funny at times.

24. Dying Light: The Beast :

This standalone expansion to Dying Light 2 plays it safe, but you shouldn't take that as a negative. I thoroughly enjoyed Dying Light 2 so I knew what to expect going in; a smaller in scope release that'll share a lot of similarities with what came before. Swinging your electric axe still feels incredible due to the weight and impact it conveys upon landing, barreling through a horde of zombies in a truck is still hilarious as they roll all over the hood, and dropkicking a zombie off a roof still puts a smile on my face.

23. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 :

The third game is another perfect remake, just how all of 1+2 was. The fourth game is a different story however. The career mode as it was in 4 originally has been stripped out and replaced with more or less the "Classic" game mode that was in later entries. THPS4 was the first game to ditch two minute levels and instead have an untimed run on more open levels. You would then skate around to NPCs and interact with them to start timed objectives. Underground 2 introduced the Classic mode where you would skate sections of the story mode levels with a timer and traditional THPS1/2/3 goals. The problem with this mode is that these levels weren't traditionally meant to be traversed with a short timer in mind due to their scale. This is compounded in the remake of 4 as those full levels were never meant to be played without a timer, as a Classic mode wasn't in consideration during level design.

Thankfully there is a toggle you can enable to get rid of the timer completely when playing 4, which is what I did. I had to go through some mental gymnastics to justify my decision, so anytime I was trying to complete an objective that would be tense with a timer (like collecting stuff or high scores), I would just restart the run once two minutes have elapsed if I didn't complete it in time. Outside of that I would just cruise around at my own pace as I would in the old THPS4. Even with all the NPCs and their voiced dialogue gone, it does play how I remember it, and I was enjoying myself more after changing the timer.

22. Gatekeeper :

I need to play more bullet hell games. Gatekeeper takes all I liked from Risk of Rain 2 (upgrading system and co-op) while leaving all which I didn't (the camera placement and art style).

21. South of Midnight :

An overhaul of the combat system would have elevated South of Midnight to something memorable. The combat is far from clunky or broken, but it just becomes monotonous early. There are a few accessibility options to skip combat entirely excluding boss fights, which I did enable due to how much the frequency of the encounters were getting in the way of me wanting to see the next story beat. It's an interesting option to put in your game to begin with; to skip significant portions. What I was left with was a touching story of a family reunion, a diverse well spoken cast of characters that are easy to care for, beautiful scenery, and one of the better original soundtracks of the year.

20. Wheel World :

There's a severe lacking of extreme sports games these days other than Riders Republic, so I'm always itching to play a new one. Wheel World's got a good look, good sense of speed, and handles well enough, and that's all I can ask to get something out of a game like this.

19. Ghost of Yotei :

[MAIN STORY AND ENDING SPOILERS]

What I'm about to write about Yotei may sound as if I hated my time with it, despite loving it whenever it avoids to get in its own way. I'm someone that heavily prefers less is more in character action games like this, and Yotei does not abide by that. I'm not talking about side content as the game isn't congested with endless amounts of mundane optional quests; the opposite even, where at times I felt the side missions were written better than the main questline. I'm talking about your combat arsenal. Come late game, during combat you've got equipped 5 main weapons with their own skill trees, combo lists, and weapon triangle (pentagon in this case). Alongside that is a total of 10 ranged weapons or throwables, where some of those have 2-3 different ammo types. It's too much to try and fit on a controller. By time I had them all they were used so little to where I ended up just doing nothing but parrying all the time as if I didn't have anything but my 5 main weapons, since I was fighting with the controls for switching between them all trying to remember the button combination to get what I wanted.

I'm in part coming to a game like this to crank up the difficulty and live or die by the parry, which is what I did here. I guess I wanted Ghost of Yotei's combat to play out at this slow methodical pace with bursts of action, akin to a Sekiro. The Takezo fight ontop of Mount Yotei was nothing short of perfection. I beat the Takezo fight maybe a quarter of the way through my playthrough and it set an unreachable high that I kept chasing for the duration of the game yet never found again. The blood that envelops the mountaintop as the battle rages on. The ensuing blizzard that blots out the sun whom will become the eventual victor if this goes on too long. This fight is one of those I'm going to remember for a long time, and it's entirely optional.

The late game upgrades you get, particularly Onyro's Howl and the Storm Blade, add a level of badass-ery to each fight that I wasn't able to really enjoy as I was mainlining the story at the point I got them as I had already done all the side content. Now I understand this is a situation unique to me and any others that play games where you do all the side content before the final mission, but in this case I wish I would have played differently. I can't recall many times where I regret doing this and has been how I play games for as long as I can remember. Once I see credits I'm done, so I try to get everything I want out of the way before that happens. In this case, it was the catalyst to my negative perceptions of Yotei.

The story's pacing is consistently one that pulls the rug out from underneath you anytime you feel that you're right there at the finish line, and it gets old fast. You finally found out where one of the dudes that killed your parents is hiding out? Well too bad, cause he barely gets away for the third time right when you get to him. I understand the concept of a slow burn, however all the tension of it is removed when I do not believe it's ever going to get resolved. And then once it finally does it's not this grand comeuppance that it should be, but one of disbelief where I'm waiting for the "gotcha". While I thoroughly enjoyed the side stuff, me playing like this caused there to be stretch of where half of my 70 hours in a 100% playthrough had only two of the Yotei Six killed and that ruined the flow tremendously. I was on board for the most part up until the forgiveness of Oyuki. I did come around on her towards the end of the game, but I spent most time with her in the firm belief that she was going to eventually betray Atsu. You're telling me that Atsu spent 16 years of her life seething in hatred to not only immediately forgive her, but want to work alongside her? You're telling me she abandoned Jubei and Kiku in a life/death situation to focus on another member of the Yotei Six, but forgave Oyuki? I just didn't buy it.

Towards the beginning of the game Atsu alluded to desiring death after she killed the Yotei Six, and there's certainly a story to tell if you go that route. Death follows Atsu wherever she goes and it never lets up. Once Jubei came back to assist Atsu in her fight with Saito you knew he wasn't going to come out of it alive, and he didn't. Jubei was willing to sacrifice everything to help his sister when she had nothing left herself. Ghost of Yotei is where it's at on this list purely due to how strong the story finishes coupled with how the combat manages to stay satisfying throughout the entire journey. Regardless of the pacing and character issues I had an issue with leading up the finale, it speaks wonder to how well it lands when the best story to write is the easiest one.

I wish my time with Yotei didn't pan out like it did. If I could go back in time to convince my prior self to mainline the Yotei story while completing only a few of the side stories (in particular Storm Blade, Undying Samurai, Takezo) and don't force myself to at times use weapons I don't want to use, then I believe this game is easily a top 10 for me. Whether it was due to playing Assassin's Creed: Shadows earlier in the year for the same length of time or all the aforementioned, Yotei was an overall step down from Tsushima for me. However we only have a first impression once, and my impression of Yotei was doomed from early on at no fault of the game itself.

18. Assassin's Creed: Shadows :

In a parallel universe, I don't believe Shadows is a better game than Ghost of Yotei. Like I mentioned at the end of my Yotei section sometimes you play games at the wrong time or the wrong way and end up ruining it for yourself. Shadows does have a stronger cast of characters in my mind as well as a much better paced story, but a less fluid combat system. Both are well made in their own right and it just depends what you want from them. It's a shame Shadows and Yotei came out the same year as one was always going to overshadow the other. I'll say that I do love what Ubisoft began doing with Assassin's Creed: Origins, which was putting in historical accounts of the game's setting into its codex, and it's present here in Shadows as well. I do not enjoying lengthy reading but I make an exception for these. I was not aware of Yasuke prior to playing Shadows nor know much about Feudal Japan despite taking an interest in it, so I ended up enjoying reading up on all that in game.

17. Donkey Kong: Bananza :

Finally, the Red Faction sequel we all wanted. I knew going in that I was wanting to collect every Banandium Gem similar to how I did in Odyssey with Moons, and I wanted to do it without any guides. With the combined efforts of the incredibly intuitive 3D map (looking at you Mario Kart World) and the ability to buy hints from each layer's shops, I was satisfied with how close I got to 100% on my own. Bananza takes an old school concept of just collecting stuff and expands upon it in the simplest of ways; what if you could just beeline a path straight to your objective by breaking stuff instead of finding the normal path? It's simple and fun. It's just unfortunate the best song on the soundtrack is tied to the least useful transformation. ZEBRA ZEBRA ZEBRA ZEBRA ZEB-

GO TO PART 2 FOR THE REST