The Best Games Of 2025 So Far

Id Software’s latest Doom game, Doom: The Dark Ages, is quite different from what has come before. Sure, it still has big guns and lots of demons to kill, and you still run through every level like The Flash. But this time around, the setting is more gothic and medieval, while levels are bigger than ever, feeling almost open-world-like at times. Though some might miss the sci-fi vibes and narrow corridors of the past, Dark Ages is a confident and excellent FPS that shows the current Id Software team truly “gets” what makes a good Doom game. -ZZ

Elden Ring Nightreign might be one of the best games ever made, or at least one of the best games of the decade. It takes the flow, formula, and frustration of a single-player FromSoftware Soulsborne and condenses it into a 45-minute race to master randomized maps, opaque loot tradeoffs, and challenging boss fights with complete strangers or, ideally, close friends. Instead of flattening the highs and lows and sanding off all of the sharp edges and annoying snags, it ramps everything up to 11 thanks to the timer-fueled chaos. If Elden Ring was the natural end point of a certain kind of open-world action-RPG that’s come to dominate the preferences of modern players, Nightreign blows up that framework and sends it back to the stone age, using the radioactive fragments to power an all-time classic co-op arcade experience online. - Ethan Gach

The first Fantasy Life on 3DS was a strangely captivating to-do list wrapped up in the trappings of JRPG comfort food. A decade later, the sequel delivers on preserving those virtues while blowing them up and streamlining them with quality-of-life improvements. It’s not some revolutionary take on the life sim RPG, but it offers a distinct flavor of the crafting loop married to a rich, class-based progression system. Animal Crossing meets Bravely Default might be overselling it a bit, but not by much. It’s well crafted with decent writing. The grind feels like knitting a warm, colorful sweater: repetitive, relaxing, and purposeful. Fantasy Life i doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it’s still the best answer to the question: what if Final Fantasy V was a cozy sim? - Ethan Gach

There was pretty much one game that was a “must buy” at the Switch 2 launch, and that was Mario Kart World. It’s definitely a good “one of those,” though not everyone loves how Nintendo has implemented the game’s open-world design into the races themselves, or how the company has responded to players’ efforts to get around this.. But even if some of the nuts and bolts are grinding against how people have typically played Mario Kart, World remains peak kart-racing chaos. With 24 players on the track at once, Mario Kart has never been this messy, frenetic, and fun. Nothing beats the rush of throwing a blue shell and hearing your friend groan as it makes contact, dropping them from first place as you zip past them. — Kenneth Shepard

Death Stranding 2 is as strange and singular as any game Hideo Kojima has ever directed, and some of its best moments come not when you’re navigating the terrain of Australia or battling fearsome BTs or ghost mechs, but as you’re watching your little companion Dollman do a spectacular choreographed dance to a Japanese pop song on a tabletop, or experiencing the remnants of another man’s memories in a dreamlike realm. Having said that, the terrain traversal remains Death Stranding’s signature appeal, and when it’s good in this sequel, it’s very good. You feel the rocky ground beneath your feet, the pitter-patter of rain (sorry, “timefall”) as it lands, the wonderful relief of cresting a mountain and seeing your destination in reach as a moody tune gets cued up on the soundtrack. Death Stranding 2 has no shortage of lows, and its narrative has some serious issues that deserve serious criticism. But it’s also full of gorgeous, absorbing, uniquely Death Stranding moments, the kind that emerge from friction and struggle and the ordeal of transporting items across hostile terrain, perhaps with the help of structures and resources left by your fellow players, and when you’re experiencing those, there’s nothing like it. — Carolyn Petit

In 2025, it almost feels illegal to get more classic, single-player, run-based Tony Hawk goodness. Yet, here it is, and I’m so happy about it. THPS 3+4 is a fantastic remake of the third and fourth games in the long-running series, but it’s also more than that. It includes new levels—the first new THPS levels in many, many years—and a ton of new skaters, too. At times, it feels less like a retread of the past, and more like a glimpse at something truly hard to fathom: a totally new and actually good Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game. Maybe one day! –ZZ

Sandfall Interactive’s debut RPG is easily one of 2025’s biggest surprises. I think most people expected the studio’s homage to turn-based classic RPGs to be good, but it being one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year is a delightful turn of events. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a dense, strategic game with complex mechanics, all tightly packaged in something that never gives in to the bloated tendencies of modern RPGs. The game’s grief-driven story is gut-wrenching, though its twists have divided even its most passionate advocates. It’s the kind of game not everyone is going to come away from satisfied, but nonetheless everyone should carve out time to play it for themselves and make up their own mind. — Kenneth Shepard

I wasn’t sure about Blue Prince at first. Its first-person puzzle exploration was fine but underwhelming. Its roguelike deck-building elements made me feel like I was being unnecessarily stifled by bad luck. But stick with the unassuming adventure game and you quickly realize there is more going on here than first meets the eye. A lot more. Blue Prince isn’t just about constructing a mansion as you go, it’s about slowly excavating layers of puzzling game logic and narrative reveals to see how they connect and refract off one another in neat and unexpected ways. The deeper you delve into its mysteries, the more the boundaries between player freedom and the structure of the game melt into one another for a unique and unforgettable experience. — Ethan Gach

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy feels like developer Too Kyo Games is finally living up to its promise. The studio, co-founded by Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and Zero Escape lead Kotaro Uchikoshi, has put out a few projects since it was established in 2017, but the tactical RPG is the first game that truly has both creators’ fingerprints all over it. It’s one part Danganronpa-esque story of school life, one part tactical RPG with puzzle-like battles, all of it bound together by some truly buckwild Zero Escape-esque branching paths and timeline flow charts. I’m still chipping away at all that Hundred Line has to offer, and I get the feeling that even after all this time, there’s so much left for me to discover. Recently, I was talking to players who went in a different direction early on and their story has gone down in ways I couldn’t have even fathomed. This game’s ambition can’t be overstated. — Kenneth Shepard

Don’t Nod’s return to supernatural young adult drama is proof the Life Is Strange studio still has that special sauce. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage 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. The second episode follows through on most of the questions the first part leaves you with, but it does leave some things up in the air, perhaps for a potential sequel. Hopefully, the studio gets to explore this world and these characters further in a year or two. — Kenneth Shepard

Compulsion and Xbox’s action-platformer South of Midnight is something really rare: A video game that isn’t just set in America, but distinctly American. It deals directly with topics like slavery, race, generational trauma, and the way all of this mixes together in the swampy heat of the South to create a complicated place that many call home. So much music and folklore have emerged from this place and South of Midnight uses the story of one young woman looking for her mother as the emotional backbone to a grand journey that takes you through all the pain, sorrow, hope, despair, myths, and legends. The combat might not be the most exciting, but everything else in this game is worth experiencing. Games like South of Midnight stick in your brain long after the credits roll.

The latest entry in Ubisoft’s long-running franchise is so damn good because it shakes up the series just enough without going too far and losing what people love about Assassin’s Creed. In Shadows you still climb towers. You still stab people from bushes. You still have a big world to explore. But Ubisoft has added more to each core piece of the franchise. The world now has seasons that change up the look of Japan and impact what you can do. Stealth has more options than ever, letting you crawl prone through the bushes before stabbing your target. And when you reach the top of the franchise’s iconic towers, you now scout out nearby locations manually. The end result of all of this is a game which, thanks to its strong dual protagonists, overcomes some bland sidequests to become one of the best Assassin’s Creed games ever made.

A short point-and-click adventure about the retirement years of Sherlock Holmes’ life is just the most wonderful thing to be surprised by. This gorgeous, touching, and superbly made game gives us a view of a reflective Holmes, living in Sussex and focusing on his study of bees, his thoughts reshaped by the events of the First World War. When Watson returns from the front, he comes to stay with Holmes, and the great detective is given time and space to consider their lifelong relationship, and how he wishes it to progress. It’s funny, delightful, and has the voice cast of a AAA game, despite being an indie creation. — John Walker

It’s been seven years since Wadjet Eye released Unavowed, its adventure-meets-RPG masterpiece. How to follow it up? Well, it turns out, by making a completely traditional point-and-click adventure, but really, really well. This time-traveling escapade is made up of seven chapters, each their own contained story, but with an ever-clearer arc focusing on the consequences of a future in which people are allowed to endlessly change the past. Combine this with hand-drawn bespoke animations and a brilliant voice cast, and you’ve got an adventure game classic. It’s smart, funny, often moving, and at 15 splendid hours long, such an engrossing treat. — John Walker

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

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