The Huh, Riiiiight, That Came Out In 2025 Award: Doom: The Dark Ages

To clarify, this award isn't a scathing rebuke of Doom: The Dark Ages or the hard work the fine people at id Software put into the game. The core gameplay of Dark Ages is good to excellent, with id correctly adjusting the game's pacing and combat momentum to swing more towards 2016's side of the pendulum rather than Eternals'. Likewise, compared to the previous games, I found the logic and expressed strategies of Doom: The Dark Ages' many combat arenas far easier to parse out and lock into. I wasn't initially sold on the game's cyber-Viking fantasy theme, and I have never been too invested in the reboot Doom game's lore, but I came around this time as the game became more generous with its pomp and circumstance. The journey you have in Doom: The Dark Ages is gloriously stupid, and it knows it. Ultimately, id successfully threaded a needle between restraint and indulgence with Dark Ages, and the game itself is good; in fact, I'd go so far as to call it is "very good."

But, MAN, was this a one-and-done game for me, and that's a first from the reboot trilogy. And judging by how quickly this game fell out of gaming conversations after its release, I'm not alone in saying that. Fundamentally, I don't know how much more blood they can get out of this stone, even if I like this particular stone. Dark Ages feels like an evolutionary dead end because I don't know how much more you can refine this formula without having to throw it out and start from scratch. And that's probably why I wasn't compelled to give the game a second or third go when I rolled credits, at least, not initially. This game feels tired; I'm tired; we're all tired; 2016 was ten years ago, my duders! It's nice to hear MachineGames working on a new Wolfenstein title around the time I published this article, but I don't know, I might be done with the reboot id games? Like this game is good, but the mystique with the modern id reboot games is waning for me, and with this, and to an extent Eternal, I feel safe saying I don't especially like id's writing department.

Runner-up: Elio

Blink, and you might have missed it, but Pixar did indeed release an original, non-sequel, feature-length animated movie in 2025! What once felt like a heralded occasion has now been driven into nowheresville. While you can blame simultaneous streaming releases all you want, just like Dark Ages, it feels like we have witnessed the shine of an institution wear away right in front of our eyes. And again, Elio isn't "bad." In fact, Elio's adventure has its moments of earned sentimentality; a Pixar fixture, to say the least. Still, there's no doubting in my mind it feels "safe" and narratively comes across as Pixar going through the motions to put something out to meet their "one film per year" quota, even if its release has been long delayed thanks to the 2023 writer's strike. It's no Good Dinosaur, as it avoids being a complete disaster, but something about it feels oddly out of date.

2025's Biggest Example Of 'Your Fave Is Problematic' - Ruri Rocks

Despite the contrivance I am about to discuss with this award, Ruri Rocks ended up being my 2025 anime comfort food. As someone who collected gemstones and fossils as a child, the show's narrative, centering on a girl desperately trying to find someone who understands her passion for mineralogy and latching onto the one person she finds who shares it, resonated with me. Yes, the adventures of protagonist Ruri Tanigawa and Nagi Agot were incredibly low stakes, but most hobbies are like that. On top of that, the show really nails the fundamentals on how much work you need to put into some hobbies to get even minor or minuscule gains, and in this case, even if your hard work only amounts to a speck of gold, it means a lot to you regardless. The chemistry with the cast was unmatched by most 2025 anime, with everyone relaying concerns and solutions to problems or roadblocks without an ounce of malice. It felt good to watch Ruri Rocks progress and give its motley crew its just rewards after hours of toil. Likewise, with 2025 also being a year where it felt like we were inundated with high-quality shonen action anime, there was something immediately comforting about watching two friends pick away at quartz or pan for gold.

However, Ruri Rocks has an Achilles' heel that makes recommending it to anyone other than yourself a dicey proposition. And this "problem" is something even the show's most ardent defenders can't deny. While the heart of Ruri Rocks is in the right place, the show and its direction think with its dick, and all of the female characters have their bodies framed in shots and establishing scenes in ways that feel lecherous. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a straight cisgendered white male, but in some episodes, Ruri Rocks goes one or two steps further than it feels like it should. And in general it's damn near every scene-setting shot wherein one of the older female characters has their ass, thighs, or chest in the center of the screen, and the shot lingers on that for what feels like an eternity. To add to my discomfort, while much of this fanservice takes place, one of the characters, Ruri, who is a minor, is often in the same scene. The show never becomes pornographic, let alone ecchi. Regardless, there's something about those unrelenting fanservice shots that really takes away from the slice-of-life elements and genuine interpersonal relationships, which are the show's best assets. But, alas! As a wise man once said, anime gotta anime!

Runner-up: Beyond Citadel

Beyond Citadel is a sequel to The Citadel by indie developer, or one-person-show, doekuramori. As my friend ArbitraryWater best put it, both games bleed the old 90s-era doujin game spirit. While it operates at a level of fidelity that can only run on modern systems, the game evokes the vibes of something for the PC-98. The almost neurotic way you need to reload weapons, which errs on the side of ultra-realistic gun mods in ArmA, makes the game's combat deliberate and almost like a puzzle. However, the game is basically guro body porn where every enemy bursts into highly realistic gore and viscera, and every character is a scantily clad anime girl with some of the most unrealistic proportions you'll see in any video game. And yet, it's the gunplay that I think about the most, considering how unique and oddly addictive it ends up being.

So Bad It's Good Award: Ancient Roman: Power of Dark Side

I need to get an article on the site about Ancient Roman and its INCREDIBLE fan translation. Ancient Roman is a rarity for kusoge enthusiasts like myself. The game is, from top to bottom, one of the most incompetently made video games ever. The graphics look like something that would have launched on the Sega Saturn or Nintendo 64, but it was instead released a whole year after Final Fantasy VII. The music is immediately recognizable as being busted at a fundamental level, and if I were to tell you that the game doesn't know that exploring towns and the overworld shouldn't use the same zoomed-out screen or camera angle, would you be shocked? The game is, at times, utterly bizarre in its creative flourishes. The enemies fold or phase into the battle screen as if they are origami, and when you have beaten any enemy, you watch them fly into the sky after a final blow or hit. But the absolute cherry on top is the fact that the game's difficulty drops like a rock when you get access to a weapon that casts the standard "Sleep" status effect. That's a problem for the game because the programmers forgot to make all of the enemies immune to irregular status effects, so even on bosses, you can stun-lock them into oblivion. It's incredible stuff.

If you're unconvinced this game can provide some of the best laughs you'll ever get, do yourself a favor and watch the game's opening. Marvel at a company being forced to publish a game with only partially rendered 3D art assets as it attempts to depict two completely disconnected apocalyptic events! And unlike most kusoge, Ancient Roman is shockingly playable, and thanks to the major shortcoming with status effects I mentioned earlier, it's far more beatable than most kusoge affairs you can have. You can see everything in the game, and there is a lot to see. There are character story arcs that are entirely missable that convey significant parts of the game's worldbuilding. The reason why the main antagonist is the colossal asshole they are? Yeah, you need to fuck around and find some ruins during a non-communicated window of about fifteen minutes during a single act in the story to know that! Those last few points lead me to believe that someone involved with making Ancient Roman might have played Final Fantasy VII and had some ideas about what PS1-era JRPGs were expected to do, and they tried to include all of those things, but with one-sixteenth the budget. Honestly, I need more of you to see this thing for yourselves, but be warned, this new fan translation I praisedmakes some creative choices that might rub you the wrong way.

Runner-up: Momentary Lily

GoHand's is back, baby! After showing distressing signs that they might be lurching towards mediocrity or anime acceptability with the likes of The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today and The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses, GoHands has returned to making visual "masterpieces" that cause your eyes to defocus and bleed as you stare directly at them. Momentary Lily is an artistic abomination with the old mix of 2D characters in 3D backgrounds, warts and all, that many of us are all too familiar with from GoHands. And honestly, I couldn't be happier! For as visually repulsive as their creations might be, there's no denying that someone or something at GoHands has artistic ambition and ideas. The problem is that every time they try to put those ideas into motion, the results leave you with the worst throbbing headache imaginable. But hey, at least they're memorable rather than the lion's share of anime we get from the Light Novel or isekai strip mines!

Most Confusingly Bad Thing: Captain America: Brave New World

I ended up being in the minority in calling Captain America: Brave New World "not great," but still not the worst Marvel movie I've ever seen. I wouldn't recommend anyone take the precious time out of their day to see it, but I don't think even its worst moments justify the near-universal revulsion it faced. What I saw too often in the criticism of Brave New World was that it didn't live up to the "standard" people felt it needed to meet after The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier. It's a criticism I'm not going to say is invalid, but I also don't think it's a mystery why the film didn't live up to those expectations. The film can't make up its mind about what it wants to be because it pulls the rug out from under itself by not fully and wholly centering on Sam Wilson. Admittedly, that might be because Sam Wilson in the MCU hasn't been a consistent or fleshed-out character beyond the few times he sneaks in memorable quips, so maybe someone halfway into making the screenplay realized they were trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. It tries to say something, but it never devotes itself to any single idea or point and that's odd to see in a movie like this.

And yet, some Marvel movie fundamentals remain. There's a decent enough Hulk fight that I won't spoil at the end of the movie, and the fight choreography eventually gets there. However, notice how what I think is the highlight of the film isn't a tussle where Sam Wilson is front and center; it's one where Harrison Ford's character, as the Red Hulk, gets most of the screen time. Sure, Sam Wilson is there, and it ends satisfyingly, but even the climax is just "eh, fine." It's downright weird to see a big-budget action Marvel movie heavily advertise itself as the introduction of a new Captain America, only to pull back on the very premise it initially banked itself on mid-film. But even that aside, Marvel Studios has seemingly forgotten how to make Marvel action slop, because the actual fighting and big epic rescue scenes aren't entertaining anymore. It's not just hero movie fatigue; the scenes aren't that good. Christopher Nolan never lost his formula, nor did Tarantino, nor did the Fast and Furious franchises, but seemingly, Marvel Studios sure did lose its mojo.

Runner-up: Black Ops 7's Campaign

As Polygon's review begins, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 might stand as one of the most significant steps backward we have seen in Call of Duty's history from a single-player perspective. 2023's Modern Warfare III was no walk in the park, what with its dull open world combat missions and empty campaign maps, but Black Ops 7's campaign is on a whole different level. Not only can it NOT be paused by solo players, but it also lacks checkpoints and requires an online connection at all times. It is important to note, as the game inched closer to its full release, Treyarch emphasized it was less a single player campaign and more a "cooperative" one. That would have been fine and dandy if it weren't for the fact that there's no cohesion with the story and your characters, and every mission is structured like a wave-based horde mode. Worse, the big set pieces are over-the-top arena battles that feel entirely out of place. If you haven't seen the game's Doom Eternal-like boss battle, give it a watch, because it's the corniest and most brain-dead sequence from a major 2025 AAA game.

Best Comfort Food: PowerWash Simulator 2

PowerWash Simulator 2 made my GOTY 2025 list, and I don't have a single regret about it. Every 7.5 or 8.0 out of 10 review I read made entirely valid points about how the controls and missions can be unintentionally frustrating and how the room-building stuff between missions is a net negative. All of those criticisms are fair and on point, but for me, they're ancillary to a game that feels good to play, and when you get into a groove while washing or cleaning a surface or object, all of your neural synapses are on fire. This game has the "juice." Some of the trickier surfaces and crevices are ingeniously designed and placed so that you can't help but imagine they're purposeful. The designers know how to make their fans moan in disgust or how to make their skin crawl, and that's genuinely remarkable. But what's more is how satisfying it is to complete even the most minor tasks in this game. The cash jingle that plays when even a small part of a vehicle or building has been cleaned always puts a smile on my face, and reaching the end of the more extended missions provided some of the most exhilarating feelings of accomplishment I had all year. Obviously, it's not for everyone, and this entry has not done anything to silence its previous critics, but for people like me, it was a much-needed gaming safe place.

Runner-up: Peak

Now, Peak is a game that can make you sweat bullets. Jumping across chasms or using items in a last-ditch effort to salvage a bad position can be harrowing, and they seem to be fixtures in every campaign. Nonetheless, among all the "friendslop" games released in 2025, Peak had a genuinely enjoyable single-player mode. Furthermore, when you bump the difficulty down to its lowest setting, which disables the fog mechanic, you can have an incredibly chill and goofy time with Peak. Similarly, the feel of climbing in Peak is immensely satisfying, with one of the most captivating "push your luck" elements of all the "friendslop" games released in 2025.

My Anime Of The Year: Dandadan Season 2

This might be a "vanilla" pick for this category, but I don't care. Also, count me as someone who supported the first season's cliffhanger ending. People getting upset about that weirded me out, considering it's an anime adaptation of a multi-volume manga; so, what did you expect? Personally, I want Science Saru to take their time, especially if each episode is going to be as good and tightly paced as they have been in the past two seasons. Anyhow, last year, Dandadan completely nailed its mix of stylish action scenes, earned moments of character drama, and genuinely heart-wrenching moments that put it in a league of its own. However, most of the first season featured the core cast, specifically Momo and Okarun, feeling out their abilities and adjusting to the complete reframing of their worldview. The second season was much more primed to be a playground for them to put their abilities to good use as paranormal investigators trying to get to the bottom of what is plaguing Byakuja Village.

And as expected, Science Saru masterfully walked a tightrope, balancing all of the previous elements of Dandadan while adding in more. With season two, the stakes have dramatically ratcheted up with new characters added to the mix, but not at the expense of any of the fan favorites. Momo's friend Jin adds a new dynamic without any of the character moments becoming muddled. With the story's chaos growing more sinister, everything about the second season felt like a recipe honed to perfection. Predictably, the action scenes are as tight and visually stunning as before; I can't think of an example of Science Saru ever missing a step in that regard, though. The show is as visually impressive as advertised and, in a few ways, feels like Science Saru pulling off a stunt to etch their names into the annals of anime history. Like most, I can't wait until we get to see more. Also, knowing what's ahead with the manga, at least the third season will assuredly not start with a female character in a state of undress and in a compromised position. I'm really looking forward to that not being an issue ever again.

Runner-up: City the Animation

It's safe to say Kyoto Animation has fully recovered from the arson attack that devastated them way back in 2019. While they did release a few shows and collaborations before City the Animation, the latter felt like an actual inauguration of their return, what with it being their first non-sequel production in about six years. And this being the studio that brought us the legendary Nichijou, you couldn't think of a better company to adapt City for television and streaming! It's one of the best gag anime made in the past ten years, and you can tell everyone involved with making the show had a blast. Every moment feels like it was painted with glee, and that unadulterated joy really comes through in the characters. Every person in the show is just having a great time doing what they do across its thirteen episodes. I might have enjoyed Dandadan more, but City the Animation made me happier. It felt like we all regained a friend we haven't seen in a long time.

Best Game Juice/Game Feel: Proximity Voice Chat In Friendslop

Yes, you can peg this particular mechanic to Roblox or Minecraft, or even EverQuest or Runescape years ago. Still, the way proximity voice chat works in Peak, R.E.P.O., Guilty as Sock, Mage Arena, or RV There Yet? feels fundamentally more unique than previous incarnations of this feature, and it keeps getting better. Whether it be communicating the appearance of an upcoming monster in R.E.P.O or shouting out your final moments before you fall to your death in Peak, nothing else provided me with more spooks and laughs than modern proximity voice chat. Furthermore, with the growing fidelity of players' spoken words synced to in-game lip movement, I'd argue these games aren't getting enough credit for fostering cooperative interactions between friends or even strangers, and that these games are becoming great role-playing and socialization tools. Again, that might not sound entirely unique, per say. I'm old enough to remember the days of wobbling back and forth in SOCOM or when you had to tolerate the default Xbox 360 headset for multiplayer. Nonetheless, the way proximity voice chat has been integrated into many modern online cooperative titles has helped build tension and allowed people to make their own fun within constrained toolsets, which results in authentic examples of player-based expression.

Runner-up: Punching Shit In Donkey Kong Bananza

I again find myself praising a core mechanic in a video game as a highlight that very obviously wasn't the originator of that mechanic. Breaking things apart to make new toys that follow your personal in-game logic really is something Nintendo pioneered with Tears of the Kingdom. Nonetheless, punching through surfaces or burrowing through the ground to skip past barriers in Donkey Kong Bananza is that game's "juice," and I think I enjoy in Bananza than I did in Tears of the Kingdom. The toys and vehicles in Tears of the Kingdom were more fiddly and irksome at times. Whereas the ways you cut levels and missions in half in Bananza feel much more immediate and thus more gratifying. So much so that when I was playing Doom: The Dark Ages shortly after 100%-ing Bananza, I couldn't stop myself from thinking, "Man, I wish I could just punch this giant door into bits and not have to solve this lever puzzle." Obviously, there's some jank here and there, but whenever you can cut out whole sequences because you discovered a new and creative solution to an impediment and didn't have to play by the game's rules, that was magic to me.

Flat Out Worst Thing I Played Or Watched In 2025: Lunar Dragon Song

Ask the retro JRPG community to name what they think are the "worst" JRPGs ever made, and some frequent fliers will crop up. Sometimes, a Neptunia title will be thrown into the mix; other genre experts will name-drop the baffling Unlimited SaGa; Hoshi Wo Miru Hito is another classic, and there's a bunch of RPGMaker slop worthy of the title as well. However, another recurring figure in that debate is Lunar Dragon Song, a game many consider responsible for killing the Lunar franchise. Now, the last part of that statement is histrionics if you ask me, but what isn't is the fact that the game stands as the most insulting JRPG ever made. Now, to this game's defense, the Lunar "franchise" is barely a franchise, as it has only two prior games, and every re-release of those two games features an entirely different story and completely different gameplay. Therefore, making a third entry with the Lunar name was always going to be a nightmare, but this is more than a nightmare; this game is a tragedy. While playing Lunar Dragon Song, I had the pleasure of raiding Zophar of Zophar's Domain fame, and when they discovered I was playing Lunar Dragon Song, they lost their shit, and Zophar is a relatively calm and grounded person.

That said, I can confirm the game's most frequent criticisms. Yes, the game does whittle away your health whenever you attempt to run, and the default walking speed is painfully slow. Yes, the battles are mindless, and you have no direct control over your characters on what enemies they attack; you select what they will do from your typical JRPG battle menu and pray it will hit the most optimal target. Yes, whenever you enter a combat zone, you have to toggle if you want defeated enemies to drop items and resources OR EXP at the end of battle; you can't have both, like in any other JRPG. Yes, the combat has one of the most shoe-horned card-based collection mechanics to do summons, and all of your playable characters are fighters with next to no magical abilities. All of that sucks complete and total shit, but that's noise compared to the game's utter lack of a coherent story and zero effort put into creating a cast of characters you give a shit about. The game is about thirty hours long, and in that time, you're mostly doing fetch quests and dealing with minor contrivances before Lunar Dragon Song finally realizes it needs to have a story, but that happens in the game's final thirty minutes. The final boss battle, which I also need to discuss in some form on this site in greater detail, may be the biggest middle finger to a JRPG fanbase in genre history. It's awful, and then the game decides to try and tie everything back to the games people actually like in the series. It's "incredible" shit, I tell you!

Runner-up: Will Smith's Based on a True Story

So, Will Smith attempted a comeback with a full studio album titled "Based on a True Story," and in a year where Ye spewed antisemitic garbage in album form and Drake shamelessly used AI Tupac to defend himself against Kendrick, Smith's musical outing shockingly still stood as the year's worst. It's bonkers to think it, but Smith was at one point an award-winning singer and actor, and this album is a shameless attempt to revive both parts of his career. But, despite his acting chops and musical prowess, everything in this album is straight up TRASH! Will Smith has tracks in which he attempts to reassert his status as a sex symbol or source of attraction, and also juxtaposes between characters mid-stanza to convey skits, and they are corny as all fuck. The jokes are hokey, and the sound mixing is abominable. When the title track was released on streaming services, people were confident it was missing whole layers of production and compression; that's how bad it was.

Best/Worst Use Of FMV: Quantum Gate

As many of you already know, I am a connoisseur of multimedia weirdness and edutainment garbage. As part of my quest to plumb the depths of both of those mines, I found Quantum Gate: No One Dreams. In fact, during 2025's Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run, I even managed to get resident TMNT expert ford_dent to watch this nightmare fuel with me. Now, to walk things back a bit, Quantum Gate has one of the most interesting backstories of any multimedia title to have graced the video game industry. In 1993, Media Vision Technology, best known for making sound cards (i.e., Pro AudioSpectrum), opened a game development and publishing division. However, despite sitting on a mountain of cash after undercutting Sound Blaster by selling a comparable alternative for a fraction of the price, they didn't get into publishing AAA PC titles or anything that was hip in the PC gaming sphere at the time. Instead, they exclusively funded arthouse games from college grads and edutainment because they felt those were better suited to the multimedia kits they were sending to the PC games and hardware press. One of those projects was Quantum Gate, and while it would get a full-fledged sequel shortly after it came out, Media Vision's house of cards came crumbling down to reveal that the only reason they were able to beat Sound Card was thanks to securities fraud! But hey, the engineering team in their HQ liked working together so much that they ended up creating 3dfx and went on to beat the ever-loving shit out of Nvidia in the GPU world for almost ten years.

To return to the game at hand for this award, Quantum Gate is less a video game and more an FMV slideshow. There are only two real "game" sequences in which you play a terrible permutation of Battlezone (1980). For the most part, you navigate pre-rendered environments while trying to interact with NPCs and pick dialogue options that you think won't piss them off. Quantum Gate is also only about two three hours, and despite it seeming like your choices matter, they don't, but with the game being about a government conspiracy to hide the death of Earth and what your actions on an alien planet genuinely involve, that's the point. So, you have art college grads shooting for the stars to make a game about how "the man" and megacorporations are bad, and said college grads are also spending dotcom bubble economy money; what else could possibly go wrong? Well, someone who had to render the backgrounds decided to make almost every cutscene and some in-game environments scanned images from a greenscreen, and it's PEAK 1990s multimedia Americana! I mean, look at the screenshot I shared! Now imagine that for two hours non-stop!

Runner-up: Crusader: Adventure Out of Time/Vikings (1998)

Crusader: Out of Time and Vikings (1998) are two works from the forgotten PC developer, Index+, which would later merge with the much better-known Microids. Both games secured EU funding for their edutainment efforts and made some bizarre creative choices. Vikings, at one point, features your protagonist getting their hand chopped off and replaced with a metal gauntlet that is clearly a spray-painted foam prop. Whereas Crusader has you talking to the prophet Abraham on how to use Hebrew symbols to summon a gollum to drag your dying body to a tomb. These games are bonkers and also have shockingly high production values for things that are essentially interactive encyclopedias. The gameplay amounts to you needing to drag historical images into slots to solve word puzzles or to trigger unique cutscenes, which usually feature FMV actors in the BEST cheaply-assembled costumes. I admit that I might be poisoned, but both of these games are at the top of my list of things I want the Giant Bomb staff to play on stream.

ZombiePie's Ostrich Moment: Death Howl

Every year, I award my "Ostrich Award," a unique commendation to any source of entertainment that evoked an unwarranted hostile response from me or had me on the opposite side of popular opinion. As I have said in the past, these works of art make me feel like a proverbial ostrich with its head stuck in the sand. And yes, I know that ostriches don't do that. With Death Howl, I have seen plenty of people in the review circuit say the game has a fantastic progression system, and that its blending of card-based combat with soulslike and run-based structures is a proverbial match made in heaven. And I want to clarify that those reviews are at least true if you enjoyed needing to grind in Dark Souls and Elden Ring for craftable resources and didn't mind banging your head on the same boss four to five times before you got unexpressed gimmicks about how to tackle them. However, if you're someone like me who likes their card games to be slickly structured and faster, those reviews turned out to be a red herring, leaving you completely frustrated and pissed off at Death Howl.

On top of that, the game should be raked over the coals for inexcusable accessibility issues, which also plagued my runner-up for this award. Death Howl has a stunning monochromatic look, but if you're colorblind, the game's lack of options makes many of its environments impossible to process. Also, the text is way too small, and there aren't any optional fonts to pick from. But I diverged most from the critical norm with Death Howl's progression system. I found Death Howl way too cruel in forcing you to make entirely new decks each time you entered one of its sectioned environments. Also, grinding away on four distinct tech trees, rather than having one that you pick away at for the entire game, is ridiculous. And fundamentally, I did not enjoy mulling over cards, seeing one I wanted to craft, and being told I didn't have the resources to make it, and the game not telling me where those missing resources were. In the world of FromSoft, you have wikis and active fan communities to direct you to the right place to fill in those gaps, but with a smaller title like Death Howl, those gaps just stay there, and you end up falling into more frustrating and fruitless grind sessions. While I don't think Death Howl is outright bad, it has much less universal appeal than its glowing reviews suggest.

Runner-up: Little Nightmares III

2025 was a mixed year for accessibility in games. Silksong drew a lot of ire for its game design, which didn't allow players to adjust how they experienced the whole adventure, even as its difficulty shot through the roof. Lumines Alive was another game that I was shocked to see didn't have better options for people with colorblindness or vision issues, and it honestly feels like someone dropped the ball on that one. However, Little Nightmares III really took the cake in 2025 for being the most inaccessible new game I played all last year. To clarify, I only have myopia but even I struggled to see basic shit in this game. This game is so dark and blown out that it veers toward unintelligibility. Because things are so dark and washed out, you're constantly spamming the game's highlight tool to know where things you need to pick up are, because there are whole environments where you don't know what the fuck you're looking at or where the background and foreground meet. Those were issues with the first two games, but they feel much worse in Little Nightmares' third entry. It's a bummer, to say the least, but more importantly, it taints any praise directed at the game.

Game Of My Year 2025: Blue Prince

Yup, I'm a Blue Prince defender. The game is at the top of my 2025 GOTY list, and I stand by that entirely. I get part of the reasoning for the push against the game. It can be intimidating or even frustrating to be presented with a puzzle you don't fully "get" when you think you have all the right tools, and because you didn't piece things together in time, your progress has reverted to square one. Nonetheless, the game does solve something that has plagued puzzle and adventure games for decades: you can't just mindlessly follow a guide to solve it. Blue Prince also mechanically mocks modern 100%-ing gaming culture through its RNG, forcing players to settle for only a part of its picture with each playthrough. And all of that was accomplished by a single developer, which I find even more impressive. But a lot of these points are ones I conveyed in the Giant Bomb Site Moderators GOTY 2025 list, so I'll copy what I said there and also recommend you give that list a read if you haven't done so already:

Solo developer Tonda Ros has accomplished a monumental feat with Blue Prince. By combining environmental puzzle-solving with rogue-like drafting and randomization, they have made what is ostensibly a puzzle game that cannot be solved using a guide. Are there gimmicks and themes you can surmise by reading a blurb online to speed up the process of getting to the 46th room before the end of an in-game day? Sure, but most first attempts at any given room provide peak enjoyment when you roll with the punches, absorb the scenery, and check every possible nook and cranny. You discover strategies and techniques through experimentation and trial-and-error, but it's always in the name of taking one more "step" towards that constantly teased end-goal: the hidden 46th room. My favorite personal discovery came when I scattered dirt in the driveway as an experiment. When I did that while also sporting a mansion with a conference room, the result was finding dirt all over the conference table, and those piles of dirt are diggable. Much like the gameplay and level design, the story itself has more going for it than it initially seems like a simple mystery-adventure. Whether it's learning more about the context behind Simon's mother's disappearance or the chaos surrounding the manor, things certainly get interesting in Blue Prince. And for a game to keep its secrets so thoroughly hidden is nothing short of amazing.

Runner-up: Donkey Kong Bananza

I have said it before, and I'll say it again. Donkey Kong Bananza is far from being the most ambitious game of 2025, but it is, at least in my humble opinion, the best feeling and playing game of the year. The act of smashing away barriers and walls to make your own personal tools for enjoyment as you attempt to dash across its many finish lines is a complete delight. Yes, the game has bosses that are, more often than not, too easy because you can make powerful tools way too early, but the point still stands that the act of building those tools is a blast. There are plenty of gameplay surprises in the game to also bump it up high on my GOTY list as well.