Some Honorable and Not-So-Honorable Mentions Leading into My Top 10 Games of the 2025
For the first half of 2025 I wasn’t sure I’d even have 10 games to construct a top 10 list with. Outside of some high-profile games like Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2—big games that I backlogged early on—I felt like I was keeping up on the games I cared about pretty well. Despite feeling like I was being pretty thorough, the list of games that really impressed me was looking dire.
Fast forward to the end of the year (or the start of 2026 now) and the story is very different. I ended up with far more than 10 games I wanted to talk about. In prior years that meant writing a longer list or simply talking about a lot less games. This year, I’ll honor the sanctity of the top 10 list with another article soon, but I also want to discuss a few of the games that didn’t make the cut. These “awards” will serve as a way to celebrate games that just missed my list, but also to talk about some things I really didn’t like in 2025.
Best game compromised by AI garbage – Arc Raiders
Arc Raiders is the most thrilling multiplayer game of the year. It is filled with suspenseful, terrifying, movie-climax moments all generated through a combination of game design, enemy AI (the cool kind), and player interaction. It is the game to make the extraction shooter genre feel real for a lot of the mainstream game audience (so much so that Bungie’s Marathon likely owes it some favors).
It’s clear to me that the best and brightest behind the Battlefield games left to work at Embark, because so much of what used to make Battlefield games feel electric is baked into the bones of Arc Raiders. The environments are detailed and evocative, the controls and guns feel incredible, the audio cracks and roars, and the game isn’t brought to its knees by the same microtransaction desperation that plagues every inch of Battlefield 6. The “Battlefield moment” is now the “Arc Raiders moment” as unpredictable enemies, unpredictable players, and lavishly designed environments all combine to create unforgettable stories.
Arc Raiders is one of my favorite games of 2025. I had so many memorable encounters and thrilling experiences I’m unlikely to forget. That said, I couldn’t in good conscience include it in my proper top 10 list because of Embark’s decision to double down on AI usage for character voices. They seemingly have no interest in addressing the issue, instead allowing dry, soulless voice delivery to suck every ounce of intrigue out of the dialogue and worldbuilding.
It’s a depressing, cynical, anti-art blemish on an otherwise fantastic game. Something Embark is in a safe position to address now that the game is a runaway success. One of the arguments in favor of the approach was that they could update the names of items and have the dialogue immediately ready to go without the need for a new voice recording session. They even allegedly got contractual buy-in from voice actors to use their voices for this work. But whatever excuses they’ve made, the results speak for themselves, as a game full of life and excitement in every other way is deadpan slop in this one regard.
Best DLC expansion – Lies of P: Overture
I’m not quite as high as others on the original Lies of P. I enjoyed it for sure, but I found that it so slavishly tried to ape the design ethos of From Software that it came off as a little bit cynical at times. Even worse than that, the final level was a giant, bloated, tedious slog that felt like a desperate attempt to pad out a game that was already long enough.
By comparison, Lies of P: Overture is an all-killer, no-filler DLC expansion that addresses all of my issues with the main game through pure execution. The boss design is fantastic, with some truly thrilling battles that put your parry skills to the test without ever feeling impenetrable. The levels are full of danger, depth, and beauty, without ever retreating to the lazy padding of the core game. Despite a more elegantly edited world, Lies of P: Overture is the perfect length too. At around 15-20 hours I found it to be pretty substantial for an expansion—almost a new game in and of itself.
It’s a shame this can only be played by progressing pretty deep into the main game. As a standalone it would be a near perfect experience. The jump in quality left me really excited for what this developer does next.
Best horror game(s) of the year – Silent Hill f and Cronos: The New Dawn
Consider this the perfect horror pairing from 2025. Neither Silent Hill f nor Cronos: The New Dawn are perfect horror games, yet their strengths and failings complement each other very well.
On the one hand you have Silent Hill f, a game that fails to find a good balance in its combat. On the “Hard” difficulty I found the game to be a miserable slog. On the lower difficulty level I found it to be too easy. Either way, there is far too much combat for how little depth it has. That said, the frustrating gameplay is worth the trouble. Silent Hill f’s story reveals itself in layers and deals with some heavy subject matter in thoughtful ways without pulling any punches. It features the best Silent Hill story since Silent Hill 2.
Then you have Cronos: The New Dawn, a game that burns an intriguing narrative on some really weak late-game twists. Developer Bloober Team really knocked it out of the park with the Silent Hill 2 remake last year, but that was a shock considering their prior output. Cronos’s story is a bit of an unfortunate return-to-form for the studio. On the other hand, the gameplay is peak survival horror. While it owes a ton to Dead Space, Cronos has some pretty sharp combat design that made every fight thrilling and tense. If running out of bullets and barely scraping by in one fight after another is your idea of a good time, Cronos is still absolutely worth playing.
Biggest disappointment of the year – The Switch 2’s terrible screen
The story all the way up until launch day was that the Switch 2’s new LCD screen was such a big step up from prior screens that it would even compete with the original Switch OLED. In some respects that is true, but if, like me, you are sensitive to blurriness or ghosting, none of the improvements will matter. The Switch 2’s screen truly sucks, and I find using it so unpleasant at times that I’ve avoided it in lieu of other handhelds, keeping most of my Switch 2 time to a docked, TV experience.
I feel a real need to talk about this because it is such a subjective issue. For most people the screen is fine, so much so that complaining about it attracts a bunch of Nintendo apologists who will insult you and dismiss the issues. It’s so bad to my eyes, and so totally fine for most people, that I have to imagine some screens are worse than others. While everything else about the Switch 2 is a clear upgrade, it almost doesn’t matter when the screen is a smeared mess in most games.
Outside of the occasional Reddit thread, Youtuber breakdown, or podcast shoutout, it feels like people have largely moved on from this issue. Tech experts Digital Foundry suggested that Nintendo could probably fix the issue through overdrive, which would clean up the blur at the cost of some battery life. I’d lose as much as 50% of the battery life if it meant I’d actually want to use this thing in handheld mode, and I think it would be a perfectly fine thing to offer as a toggle. But with rumors swirling that newer Switch 2 models might have already resolved this issue, I’m afraid I may just get burned for being an early adopter.
Everyone’s favorite game that didn’t crack my top 10 – Dispatch
Don’t get me wrong, I found Dispatch to be a deeply entertaining experience. I laughed, I cried, and I played large portions of it with a big stupid smile on my face. The storytelling and characterizations are both uniformly excellent and show how you can still play around in the predictable tropes of superheroes if the execution is on point.
I genuinely have nothing bad to say about the story, but more than any Telltale Walking Dead game or 30-hour-long visual novel, I found myself struggling to get excited for the gameplay of Dispatch. In Dispatch you play as Robert Robertson, a.k.a. Mecha Man, a superhero who has lost their suit and powers. He gets a job offer to become a dispatcher for other superheroes, in particular, a group of reformed villains known as the Z-Team.
As each episode progresses, Robert will eventually sit down at his computer and the dispatching gameplay will commence. And while it has its charm and does a decent job of tying in with the plot of the game, outside of the final climactic dispatching sequence, I never felt particularly excited to engage with it.
I hate to be the jerk saying, “Dispatch is barely a game,” and I’m normally cool with long cutscenes and games with minimal engagement. So I’m not sure why it bothered me so much here other than the sense that what little gameplay there is just isn’t very entertaining. Dispatch is an incredible season of television with branching path choices. I’m just not sure it’s a very good game.
Best video game as museum piece – Despelote
Despelote is interactive fiction at its best. It’s a slice-of-life narrative that puts you in the shoes of a small child in 2001 Ecuador at the height of a soccer craze. The game is short but packed with creative gameplay moments and evocative scenarios. You can’t help but get absorbed in its world and play around in what is essentially a “shitty little kid” simulator. You’ll break glass bottles and get chased by grumpy neighbors, troll your parents, and listen in on bits and pieces of the adult conversations happening all around you.
Mixing simple child-like drawings of its cast of characters over a 3D environment that looks like it is textured in old photographs, Despelote feels like an interactive memory. Characters talk to each other the way a natural conversation would happen in real life, often interrupting and talking over each other. Subtitles appear if you are looking at the characters talking, so unless you are fluent in the language you’ll often miss little bits of chatter happening around you. The end result gives the game an even deeper sensation of a distant childhood memory.
From that evocative look and feel, to the history behind it, and the way the developer eventually steps in to offer some more direct commentary, I can’t help feeling like Despelote belongs in a museum. You’re likely to get something meaningful out of it whether you play it from beginning to end or for only a few minutes.
Best game I didn’t finish – Hollow Knight: Silksong
I’ve been off and on with Silksong ever since it launched. There is much to love with this follow-up to the original Hollow Knight and I absolutely think it’s a better game than the original. I don’t think I have a particular reason why I have taken so many breaks with the game, but I can say that nearly every session with it has been a treat.
Perhaps it is the increased difficulty compared to the first game? I haven’t had a ton of trouble with it (outside of The Last Judge), but it does have a bit of an oppressive vibe that doesn’t leave me craving it between sessions. Every new area seems to be more poisoned, on-fire, dark, or haunted than the last. The developers seemed to be laser-focused on creating a game that is simply very good, very challenging, and very beautiful. They are unconcerned with making a game that plays it safe or coddles the player to make sure they come back for more.
I think my pace with Silksong is more of a me-problem than an actual issue with the game, but it also doesn’t have quite the same pull as some other games I played in 2025. Perhaps it will be my 2025 game of 2026.
Best 2024 games I finished in 2025 – Nine Sols
…or maybe it’s just that I’d already played an incredible game that was so similar to Silksong earlier in the year? Nine Sols is a bit of a relentless masterpiece. It’s a work of uncompromising challenge and dark storytelling that, frankly from what I’ve played so far, hits a lot harder than Silksong.
This game is tough love from top-to-bottom. I would argue it hates you, but frankly it is the kind of challenge that feels impossible for the first few tries, and then becomes increasingly readable until suddenly you are parrying every attack and defeating a boss in a nearly flawless run.
It continues to escalate and escalate, all the way to a final boss that broke me. I tried at it for a while, but ultimately worried I’d never play any 2025 games in 2025 if I kept at it. And there is where the extra bit of brilliance comes in: developer Red Candle Games is not so precious about their work as to block players from never seeing it through. The difficulty can be adjusted however you want, allowing even the most casual players a path forward to see the entire world and story they crafted.
Red Ring Circus 