It’s only the beginning of March but 2025 already has some bangers worth spotlighting, including real standouts like Split Fiction and Avowed, so we decided to start compiling the best games of the year early and update this list as the days, weeks, and months go by. Here are some of the best games we’ve played so far in 2025.
Fight a giant pink baboon that tries to kill you with its farts. Bob and weave on the back of a bird-like raptor as you track a majestic dragon across a desert during a booming thunderstorm. Monster Hunter Wilds offers these experiences and more in a tightly wound, streamlined package that’s lavishly presented and fun as hell to play. Yes, the inventory is a mess. No, the story won’t win any awards. There’s still decades of franchise design baggage to occasionally grapple with, but it’s all in service of some of the most entertaining emergent battles ever produced in a video game, powered by an elegant but deep combat system that never misses a beat. - Ethan Gach
Afterlove EP is a heartfelt, narrative-focused social sim with rhythm elements that puts you in the shoes of Rama, a musician who recently lost his partner and essentially went into hiding for a year. As he tries to reintegrate into his social circle and band, Afterlove EP focuses on the mundane and ugly parts of grief and how it can distort us into unlikable versions of ourselves. Repairing yourself after you’ve gone through something painful isn’t glamorous, it’s just work. Afterlove EP takes you through one month of Rama’s life as he tries to figure out his shit when his entire world has been shattered. That work takes longer than mere weeks, but at least through your decisions, you can give Rama a good head start. — Kenneth Shepard
Don’t Nod’s return to supernatural young adult drama is off to an excellent start. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage’s first half blends the deceptive allure of ‘90s nostalgia with an unsettling modern-day mystery, and the result is one of the studio’s most tantalizing stories since Life Is Strange 2 in 2019. Through its awkward but likable heroine Swann, Lost Records illustrates the hardships of growing up sensitive, shy, and unsure of yourself. The connections between its cast of four young women are raw and earnest, and it makes the mystery of what could have happened to these friends that would cause them to go decades without speaking all the more compelling. I can’t wait to see where it goes when episode two launches in April. — Kenneth Shepard
Hazelight’s third go at its signature cooperative adventure format is its best one yet. Split Fiction blends video game and narrative genres into a constant dopamine drip that never seems to run out of ideas. Its many fantasy and sci-fi worlds are pretty derivative, but Hazelight manages to design so many clever puzzles and mechanics within them that the game’s takes on those ideas still feel fresh. As generic as those levels are, Split Fiction gives them meaning by insisting on the importance of the human element of storytelling and art, which makes fighting through those stages to save them from corporate clutches all the more satisfying. It also has one of the most mind-blowing final stretches I’ve played in recent memory. What a game. — Kenneth Shepard
The discourse around Avowed’s release was fascinating. It felt like a process of elimination, the wider gaming public trying to work out what Obsidian’s RPG wasn’t, before it could figure out what it actually is. It’s not like Skyrim, as some had tried to say it would be, and it’s not like a BioWare RPG either, with 100+ hours of intricate questing. It’s also not like Pillars of Eternity, the isometric traditional cRPGs from Obsidian in whose universe it takes place. But when this all eventually settled, the result was something an awful lot of people realized was exactly what they wanted: a manageable first-person RPG with a rich story, great characters, and chunky combat, that “only” asks for 30 to 40 hours of your life.
By stripping back various elements from the genre, and creating a more focused interpretation of a usually more sprawling format, Obsidian was able to give great emphasis to the excellent combat, making a game that felt enormous and still offered huge amounts of side-questing and exploration, but also maintained a clip that propelled you toward its narrative conclusion. It’s also just tremendously fun, and despite the plague-ridden setting, maintains an upbeat feel that matches its colorful design. A splash of happiness is just what we need. — John Walker
The Yakuza series is like a chameleon that somehow always finds a way to play with different genres and storylines. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii takes the crime soap opera series and turns it into a swashbuckling pirate adventure, and commits to the bit so hard that it actually works. Fan-favorite antihero Goro Majima takes on the starring role for the first time, and he’s the perfect frontman for the series to lean into an implausible premise with. But while this game sees the series charting wacky new narrative territory accompanied by new ship battles and other pirate-y accoutrements, Pirate Yakuza still has plenty of the beat-em-up action and endearingly silly social antics fans have come to know and love. How much longer can RGG Studio keep shifting genres while still feeling true to the series’ roots? With Pirate Yakuza, they clearly haven’t jumped the shark yet. — Kenneth Shepard
Part cyberpunk RPG, part gig economy sim, Citizen Sleeper 2 expands on the incredible first game with a much more expansive world, more characters, new systems, and tons more fantastic writing. It cleverly weaves together disparate tales of corporate oppression, fallen empires, and interstellar communities using the power of dice rolls and skill checks. The result is a winning formula that fuses top-tier video game storytelling with engrossing tabletop mechanics. - Ethan Gach
Soulslike metroidvanias are a dime a dozen, but few are as good as Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist. It takes place across a sprawling 2D kingdom full of automatons that have become corrupted by a mysterious blight. You fight them to gain their powers and then use those to win even bigger, more spectacular boss fights. The story is more of a moodboard than a fully-fleshed out tale, which works perfectly to give the proceedings a compellingly grim fantasy flavor without ever weighing down the combat and exploration, which is where Bloom in the Mist really excels. - Ethan Gach
Dynasty Warriors is so back. Origins isn’t everything I want the historical hack-and-slash series to be but it’s a perfect foundation for the game on modern platforms. It cleverly melds the possibilities enabled by new tech with the tried-and-true arcade formula of being a one-fighter, army-stomping machine. Combat is excellent with new parry mechanics, and an overhead map section gives the connective tissue in between battles a massive upgrade. There’s never been a better time to pursue Lu Bu. - Ethan Gach
Keep Driving—a 2D pixel art RPG about going on a long road trip in the ‘90s—offers the thrill of a road trip without breaking the bank or using up all your vacation time. In Keep Driving, you’ll have to manage your car, your hunger, and your sleep, keep going in the right direction, and deal with hazards like traffic jams and deer. Pull it off and you’ll reach your destination, a music festival, before the end of summer. Of course, like any good road trip, detours might lead you to something unexpected… - Zack Zwiezen
An RPG doesn’t need to be bigger than Skyrim to be good, and Eternal Strands gets this. Instead of offering a massive sandbox, this third-person physics-focused fantasy RPG provides exciting combat and smaller, more detailed zones to explore. Get ready to climb big monsters and chuck small creatures off of cliffs in this colorful indie RPG. - Zack Zwiezen
Not only is Slender Threads a splendid point-and-click adventure game, with top-notch art and voice acting as well as great puzzles, but it’s also the most extraordinary meta-exploration of the form, yet without any of that tedious knowing winking that often plagues games committed to such commentary.
Harvey Green is a wannabe writer and door-to-door book salesman, living in an ambiguous era, having just arrived in an anonymous small American town. Things are…eerie here, but it’s not until you solve a fairly standard bizarro point-and-click puzzle—dressing up a mannequin to put into a busy road crossing to try to distract a policeman—that the real nature of Slender Threads begins to reveal itself. And no, I shall not spoil it here. Let’s just say it explores the notion of the amoral central character.
It’s also, crucially, a really good adventure game at the same time. A really fantastic find. — John Walker
I’m scared to look at how many hours I’ve put into Two Point Museum, the latest entry in the wacky Two Point sim series. There’s just something supremely satisfying about slowly but methodically building up a thriving museum complete with decorations, gift shops, and employee-only areas. If you want a sim game that will make you laugh, tickle your brain, and suck away hours of your life, you should play Two Point Museum. -Zack Zwiezen
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders is part ragdoll physics racer and part serene sightseeing sim. It nails the feel of shifting your weight and controlling your momentum as you cruise down white powder slopes and perfectly manages to balance the thrill of the race with the calm satisfaction of working through each map like a platforming puzzle. It’s as exacting, elegant, and effortless in its design as it is to play. - Ethan Gach
