The Ten Best Games of 2025

0:02 It is a rare game that manages to lock you in from the first second of gameplay.

0:07 It is even more rare to capture your attention

0:11 before the photosensitivity warning has faded from view.

0:14 And yet from the moment you choose to launch SEKTORI,

0:18 a relentless thumping bass grabs you

0:21 by the shoulders and announces a simple message:

0:24 you will not be able to put this game down.

0:27 Sektori is a kaleidoscopic twinstick shooter,

0:30 in the vein of Geometry Wars or Resogun— in fact,

0:34 the developer is a former employee of Housemarque, where he helped make Resogun.

0:39 Sektori is the genre heightened to a flow-state nirvana,

0:42 where a constantly changing arena and giant,

0:45 bullet-hell bosses offer an endlessly high skill ceiling— but no run gets stale,

0:51 because the game also offers a number of different, irresistible, upgrade paths.

0:56 Throughout this year, I’ve played many games that have filled

0:59 the screen with flashing lights and images,

1:01 all while encouraging a sort of overstimulated passivity.

1:04 And— to be clear— I have enjoyed those experiences as well.

1:09 But Sektori is a reminder that razor-sharp design and continuous,

1:14 split-second decision making can induce a far more rewarding gaming trance:

1:19 a commitment to making your best attempt a little better,

1:24 if you only play one more game.

1:27 WELCOME to the end of 2025,

1:29 a hell of a year and a hell of a year for playing games.

1:32 Through the haze of continuous industry layoffs,

1:35 collaborations with human rights abusers, and AI dipsh*t clusterf**ks,

1:39 a number of wonderful pieces of art still managed

1:43 to push their way out the door and into our hands.

1:48 This year saw a surge of inventive co-op triumphs,

1:51 an unexpected bounty of gamified memoirs,

1:54 and a number of technically accomplished triple-As

1:57 failing to create the same impression as smaller,

2:01 shorter, weirder projects— but what else is new?

2:05 Before we get back to the list proper,

2:07 there is one more thing I need to do: establish my Certified Gamer Credentials.

2:12 I beat a lot of games this year!

2:15 Nearly 60 at the time of recording!

2:17 So, without further ado, here is every game I rolled credits on (or otherwise

2:22 played to satisfaction if “credits” aren’t a meaningful finish line).

2:27 Hit it!

4:21 It may seem a little damning with faint praise that Hades 2

4:26 only reaches number 9 on this list— and in a way, it is.

4:31 The direct sequel to Supergiant Games' 2020 game Hades,

4:35 Hades 2 suffers from a number of sequel-y problems.

4:38 Its story isn’t as emotionally engaging as the first,

4:42 the character interactions are expanded, but not revolutionized.

4:45 It would be easy for me to list a number of small disappointments with Hades 2,

4:51 which largely stem from me wanting another brand new world

4:54 from a studio that’s proven how successfully it can sculpt one.

4:59 BUT, what those complaints obscure is that every single run in Hades 2 is a joy,

5:05 a nearly faultless mechanical experience that manages to teach

5:08 you novel ways of playing well past the 50-hour mark.

5:12 Enemies and bosses that feel

5:15 overwhelming gradually reduce into observable patterns,

5:17 branching trees of offered upgrades coalesce into exciting new playstyles,

5:22 and NPCs spout nearly endless dialogue throughout.

5:25 Only in Hades 2 can I die to a rocker-diva

5:29 Scylla the sea monster and not be angry for a second,

5:32 because as soon as I get back home I’m

5:35 asking Nemesis to jump in the hot springs with me.

5:38 The standard of visual quality in Hades 2 is just through the roof,

5:42 the progression systems are nuanced and interesting,

5:45 Chronos is a cool and menacing and seemingly-insurmountable villain.

5:49 It’s easy for me to nitpick Supergiant’s work

5:53 because my bar for them is so, so high.

5:56 But I put a full 70 hours into Hades 2, enjoyed nearly every minute of it,

6:02 and I will be there day 1 for whatever they make next.

6:08 Oh, to be scared in a new way.

6:11 I play a lot of horror games, I like a lot of horror games,

6:15 and yet with my experience, I think I’ve gotten to know most of their tricks.

6:20 Something jumps out from a closet, something takes away your guns,

6:23 something tells you that it’s erased your save file.

6:26 I don’t go into many horror games expecting to be surprised.

6:30 And then, along comes a game like Dead Letter Department.

6:34 I quite recently talked about Dead Letter Department

6:37 in my video on digital horror— this is

6:40 the game where you type out the unreadable sections

6:43 of undelivered letters in an oppressively atmospheric office room.

6:46 It is a simple game— no health bar, no inventory management,

6:51 no meters going down or sidequest list going up.

6:54 But the mileage the game gets from this simple of a concept is just remarkable.

7:00 I just cannot believe how many different

7:02 stories the addresses on an envelope can tell.

7:05 One of my favorite things a horror story can do is warp the ordinary,

7:10 take something incredibly normal and distort reality

7:13 around it until even nondescript things become unnerving.

7:16 By the end of Dead Letter Department,

7:19 the most straightforward letter feels sinister.

7:22 Dread leaks out of a suburban address.

7:24 Secrets hide in the wrinkles of an envelope.

7:27 The game is my favorite example of what an indie horror title can

7:31 do— it presents a new idea and explores every dark corner of it.

7:37 I imagine the Silent Hill franchise looks

7:40 at Resident Evil with some level of jealousy.

7:44 What’s a Resident Evil game?

7:46 Easy: shambling monsters, inventory management,

7:48 involved puzzles with gems and different colored keys,

7:52 some invocation of “umbrella.” What’s a Silent Hill game?

7:56 Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

7:59 Is it simply a low-hanging fog?

8:01 A soundtrack that seems to play inside of your brain?

8:05 Repressed guilt, locked doors, hidden alien endings?

8:09 Sure, all of those things.

8:11 But what Silent Hill F understands— why I

8:14 knew this game was operating on the correct

8:17 wavelength from the first few minutes— is

8:20 that Silent Hill rests on the ineffable, unsettling oddness of its characters.

8:26 Overt villainy is easy.

8:27 But unease, the feeling that something is “off” about this whole situation,

8:32 is a much harder tone to strike.

8:35 Hinako, a high schooler in rural 1960s Japan, lives in this unease.

8:40 The feeling that something is wrong, with her, with her classmates and parents,

8:44 with the whole culture, permeates the game.

8:47 And this wrongness leads to unforgettable

8:49 scenes of seemingly inexplicable behavior.

8:52 Fear and murder and self-mutilation are all present and yet often

8:57 treated with a detached coldness that leaves us as players adrift.

9:03 The most exciting thing to me about Silent Hill F

9:06 is that there’s just so much to talk about here,

9:08 so many standout sequences and interesting character beats.

9:11 While the game doesn’t reach the towering heights

9:14 of Silent Hill 2 or the environmental excellence of 3,

9:18 it also doesn’t stand in either game’s shadow.

9:21 I am so glad that F is interested in testing that question,

9:26 “what is a Silent Hill game?”, and finding a bold new answer.

9:32 I’ll actually be arguing for a specific sequence from Silent Hill F as one

9:36 of the “best moments of the year” in the massive awards episode of MinnMax,

9:41 the gaming podcast I’m on.

9:43 MinnMax…truly means so much to me.

9:45 Because of the podcast, I went to Summer Game Fest this year,

9:49 and I also went to freaking Brazil, to Latin American Gamescom.

9:53 It is, kind of, the thing that keeps me sane when

9:57 I’ve been researching something like the Nuremberg trials for weeks on end.

10:01 Anyway, back to the list.

10:03 The second of the indie sequels on the list,

10:06 Citizen Sleeper 2 accomplishes what Hades 2 struggles to do—

10:10 take the basic mechanics of the first game and twist them,

10:14 using familiar verbs to tell a story altogether its own.

10:18 Citizen Sleeper 2 is built on the same dice system as its predecessor.

10:22 Each day you’re allotted a number of pre-rolled

10:25 dice which you can then “spend” on different activities.

10:28 Once you’re out of dice, you can’t do anything— so,

10:31 in order to keep up with the game’s multitude of doomsday clocks,

10:34 you’ll need to roll on activities you’ll likely fail,

10:38 a rich metaphor for anxiety, disability, the perils of capitalism, you name it.

10:43 This was all in the first game.

10:46 But what 2 does so well is pairs that need to constantly

10:50 move forward with a meditation on the highs and lows of labor itself.

10:55 In Citizen Sleeper 2,

10:57 you’ll need to constantly engage in “contracts,” discrete projects

11:00 that become your sole focus for a couple in-game days.

11:05 These can be as simple as looting a derelict

11:08 spacecraft or as complex as staging a mutiny.

11:11 But each requires intense,

11:13 devoted work from your character and their companions.

11:16 It is exhausting, stressful, and resource-intensive.

11:19 But within nearly all of them lies some hint of beauty and wonder,

11:25 a pride in your own craft and the skill of others.

11:29 It’s a testament to the skill

11:30 of the game’s writing that the intrinsic satisfaction

11:33 of a job-well-done can exist alongside the everpresent

11:37 themes of exploitation and cruel economic systems.

11:40 Citizen Sleeper 2 is a game about carving out

11:43 spaces for the humanity of yourself and others— to work, to create art, to live.

11:49 One of the nice things about making your own top-10 list is you get to cheat.

11:56 Who defines what “ten” means, or “games,” or “top”?

12:01 Me, in this case.

12:03 And I’m adding as number five-and a half,

12:06 the best expansion I played this year, Lies of P: Overture.

12:10 In the years since Lies of P’s release, the game has only grown in my regard.

12:16 It is, easily, the best non-Fromsoft game made in their signature style,

12:20 and the one that most meaningfully expands on that established formula.

12:24 And in the tradition of Fromsoft,

12:27 this year’s generously-sized expansion, Overture,

12:29 represents an elevation of all the very

12:32 best elements of that already-phenomenal base game.

12:35 Overture’s environments rock: a zoo overrun by mutant animals,

12:40 a decrepit carnival with mechanical carnies still going through the motions.

12:45 Its bosses are grotesque and wonderful— the first is a particular highlight,

12:49 in which midway through a fight with an elephant carcass,

12:52 a sort of giraffe-neck bursts out of its skull.

12:56 The new weapons are all a blast,

12:58 like a rocket-spear that will physically propel you through each level.

13:03 And, after I somewhat dismissed the base game’s narrative,

13:06 Overture managed to make me sit up and pay attention to that story again.

13:11 You’re not just a soulslike to me, Lies of P, you’re a real boy.

13:17 “Consistency” may be an overrated value in games.

13:21 And look, I get the appeal.

13:24 “My whole game should be good,” you might say.

13:27 “I want every aspect of the story to work.

13:30 I want to create a cohesive experience.” And to that I respond,

13:37 “Death Stranding 2.” Death Stranding 2 stumbles as often as its protagonist.

13:43 The early stages of the game are easy enough to be uninteresting.

13:47 The story, though as exposition-laden as ever,

13:50 struggles to introduce as enthralling concepts as the first game.

13:53 Death Stranding 1’s thematically resonant,

13:55 de-emphasized combat has been replaced with “non-lethal”

13:59 heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.

14:02 And YET, and YET, when Death Stranding 2 works, it works like nothing else.

14:09 Much of this is due to the staggering art direction and world

14:13 design— cresting a hill and walking down into a green valley,

14:17 wandering along a shoreline and seeing

14:19 long-abandoned apartments sunk into the riverbed.

14:22 My favorite moments of the game— in all likelihood,

14:25 my favorite gaming moments of the year— all took place

14:28 on the massive mountain in the center of the map.

14:31 On the first hike up the mountain, my vehicles ran out of charge,

14:35 my canteen ran out of water, my Sam Porter Bridges laboriously pulled himself,

14:40 one footstep after another, up the barren and snowy expanse,

14:44 pausing to huddle in the corner of an unpowered shelter

14:48 in a bivouac and regain even a trickle of stamina.

14:52 And then, later, returning to that mountain, determined to reach the summit,

14:57 scrambling over a ridge to find the moon at a hundred times its normal size,

15:03 staring right back at me.

15:05 Death Stranding 2 is, for me,

15:07 made out of these moments, this attention to minutiae.

15:11 The strangely cozy feeling of picking up a crate and throwing it

15:14 in the back of your truck without having to navigate a menu.

15:17 The hidden nightmares that may or may

15:19 not occur anytime you’re onboard the Magellan.

15:21 The way Sam hops from one side of an incline

15:24 to the other when you’re walking on an uneven surface.

15:26 The song on the soundtrack that goes absolutely nutso

15:30 and only plays when you’re in the easily missed VR missions.

15:33 The experience of a Kojima game is watching

15:36 a multimillion dollar cutscene completely whiff on an emotional beat,

15:41 only to, minutes later, get bowled over by a much more subtle,

15:46 much more nuanced beat that was somehow landed perfectly.

15:50 Low Roar starts playing and all is forgiven.

15:54 Keep on keepin on.

15:56 “Time” is a mechanic explored by many games— but none

15:59 have done it in quite the way Despelote does.

16:02 Set in Quito, Ecuador during the country’s 2002 world cup qualification,

16:08 Despelote is freezing time for an entire city,

16:11 capturing the moment in amber when every person, conversation,

16:15 and TV program was laser-focused on the same dream.

16:19 And Despelote is also a game about being a child,

16:23 so lazy afternoons wandering the neighborhood feel endless,

16:26 until you start trying to kick that can off a roof

16:29 and realize that you’re already late to pick up your sister.

16:32 Time is core to Despelote’s design: the timing of the conversations in the game,

16:37 for instance, which feature some of the most naturalistic,

16:41 overlapping dialogue I’ve seen in the medium.

16:43 Or the time remaining in a football game before halftime.

16:46 Or the way time takes memories of 2002 and distorts them,

16:50 painting them with a palette that can’t be perfectly recreated.

16:55 Despelote is a singular creation, about a single moment in time.

16:59 And it’s about all the moments that come after, too.

17:04 Look, I— I try to have good segues for this stuff but it

17:07 always feels a little forced and so I’m just going to say it.

17:11 I got a book published this year.

17:13 And it’s really cool, and I’m really proud of it.

17:15 How a Game Lives is the book and you

17:18 can now get the retail edition in your local bookstores,

17:21 ask your local library to stock it, or order it online.

17:25 AND, somehow, I’m also, already, working on the next one.

17:29 That one is called “You’re Not Overthinking It,”

17:31 you can pre-order it from the publisher right now.

17:34 Links to both in the description.

17:35 I’m…an author now, maybe.

17:37 It’s pretty surreal.

17:39 There are a number of impossible tricks that Consume Me performs.

17:45 For instance: the whole game is based around the trick of crafting

17:49 a narrative about an eating disorder

17:52 out of genuinely fun WarioWare-style minigames,

17:55 without downplaying the severity of the core issue.

17:58 Or the trick of an art style that looks incredibly

18:01 rudimentary and yet is so funny and delightful that even

18:04 doing repeated tasks is a thrill because you get to see

18:07 that amazing animation of watering the houseplant one more time.

18:11 OR, the trick of depicting how something can

18:14 affect your whole life without being your whole life,

18:16 how joy and whimsy and growth can happen alongside

18:20 pain and self-destruction because THAT’S JUST HIGH SCHOOL, BABY.

18:25 Consume Me is a hard game to recommend, not because it’s hard to play.

18:29 It’s hard to recommend for the opposite reason,

18:31 that it seems beyond belief that a game about the worst

18:35 elements of adolescence could be so effortlessly charming and warm.

18:38 And maybe what I admire most about

18:41 Consume Me is its commitment to autobiography makes

18:44 it a game about so much more than its core premise— how, in playing it,

18:49 you’re not just exposed to a march of disordered eating but a person,

18:53 whose problems don’t resolve easily and whose

18:55 coping mechanisms don’t always align with our own,

18:58 and whose self-image is still grappling with how her past affects her present.

19:03 This is one of the year’s games I’ve thought most about after finishing it.

19:07 I think— I hope— Consume Me will become

19:10 a touchpoint for memoir-style games in the future,

19:13 full to bursting with every element of the human experience.

19:17 In working with MinnMax,

19:18 I’ve gotten a chance to play more “review” copies of games,

19:22 getting code a few days or weeks before something comes out.

19:26 And usually I think no more than, “oh neat,

19:29 a chance to get a jump on a game.” But this year I had

19:33 an experience I’ve never had before— playing

19:36 a game before release and thinking “what is happening.

19:40 Am I insane?

19:41 Is this one of the best games I’ve ever played?

19:45 Does anyone else feel this way???”

19:47 And that game was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

19:51 Ohhhhh boy.

19:52 Look, I have already spoken— at EXTREME length— about this game.

19:58 I wrote an essay about it.

20:00 I discussed it on Nebula with a bunch of other essayists.

20:03 Over with MinnMax, we did an EIGHT HOUR deepest dive on the game.

20:06 And somehow, that doesn’t feel like overkill.

20:09 This sounds reductive— this is reductive— but the game

20:14 feels like it deserves this level of analysis because nothing

20:17 within Clair Obscur feels “default,” implemented simply because “this is

20:22 what games do.” Every character feels purposeful in the story.

20:26 The skills of each party member works

20:28 as an individual and as part of a larger group.

20:31 The overworld is directed enough that you always know where you should go,

20:34 yet open enough that exploration and stubbornness can

20:37 result in a delightfully earned sense of overpowered-ness.

20:40 And yes, turn-based combat designed by a Sekiro speedrunner

20:45 DOES SOUND like someone created a game for me specifically,

20:49 but what can I say, sometimes you just get lucky.

20:54 It’s also hard to believe that Clair Obscur can introduce a story

20:57 so full of Concepts and Proper Nouns and make them so immediately meaningful.

21:02 I’ve played lots of video games before,

21:05 you have to earn me caring about your lore!

21:08 And yet here, I do, because it so

21:11 immediately grounds these concepts and proper nouns in people,

21:15 in unignorable metaphor and meaning.

21:17 And unlike so many games with Concepts and Proper Nouns,

21:21 which start out feeling like they’ll be about…something,

21:24 and end up only being about themselves,

21:27 Clair Obscur manages to hold both at once.

21:30 This is our modern Majora’s Mask,

21:32 a game I predict we will collectively return to again

21:35 and again because our need for art about grief will never disappear.

21:39 Clair Obscur doesn’t need to convince us to care about its lore,

21:43 Clair Obscur has sculpted its lore around the most core of human emotion.

21:48 It is a story about the meaning of stories, art about the power of art.

21:55 It’s just the f**king best.

21:57 And then…is there something better?

22:00 Something better than the f**king best?

22:04 I’ll tell you, I’m just not sure.

22:08 I know it’d be a cop-out to award a tie to a number 1 spot,

22:12 and I’m not doing that, but this choice is tearing me apart man.

22:16 On one side is the radiance,

22:18 the feeling and the choices, of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

22:22 And on the other side… is Hollow Knight: Silksong.

22:27 Part of that divide is how the games’ brilliance present themselves.

22:31 Clair Obscur is something that is immediately, wonderfully, impressive.

22:35 The opening cutscenes are huge and dramatic,

22:38 the combat is instantly cool-looking,

22:39 it presents itself all at once as something you should

22:43 be Paying Attention To, Because This Story Will Do Things.

22:47 And then it does!

22:49 And upon replay, maybe those big moments hit a little

22:52 less hard and the combat is a little more repetitive,

22:54 but there’s still enough foreshadowing and character work that you stay

22:58 interested for maybe even a whole second loop through the game.

23:02 This is not how Silksong feels.

23:06 Silksong starts like a lovely, polished,

23:08 follow-up in a genre we’re all familiar with.

23:11 And the ways it begins to differentiate

23:13 itself— its shocking difficulty, its lower key,

23:17 more cohesive world design— don’t cause

23:20 the same Big Reactions as a cutscene-heavy, dramatically acted adventure.

23:24 Your first playthrough of Silksong,

23:26 though hopefully full of wonder and discovery,

23:29 may be something you drag yourself through,

23:31 each checkpoint claimed in spite of the game working so hard against you.

23:38 And then you might start it again.

23:40 Something pulls you back, to see if maybe you’ve improved at all,

23:44 or to test if you can navigate the world more quickly,

23:46 or maybe it just feels weird that you

23:48 didn’t love it quite as much as Hollow Knight.

23:51 And you start playing again and suddenly every frustration

23:54 has been replaced with just…just the most gorgeous game design.

23:59 Every fight feels like a dance.

24:01 The world is so artfully stitched together.

24:04 Hornet seems to move at the speed of thought.

24:06 Every boss is tuned just right,

24:09 lightning fast but still allowing for self-expression within your moveset.

24:12 And when you’re not dragging yourself along,

24:15 you think about the thematic relevance of the idea

24:18 that you once did drag yourself along,

24:20 and the game becomes about perseverance and mastery in the same way

24:23 that some of the most important games to me are about perseverance and mastery.

24:28 Silksong has so much faith in you, the player,

24:32 that the simple act of playing it— not watching a cutscene,

24:35 not reading its lore, but just playing it— is a moving experience.

24:40 It is remarkable that someone would build a game like

24:45 this and trust us to see the grand vision holding it together.

24:51 But I have.

24:53 And I did.

24:54 There’s something I want to tell you, about the video you’re watching right now.

24:58 And that is that it’s the 100th proper video on this channel,

25:03 the 100th essay I’ve made.

25:05 My first essay was published on October 23, 2018.

25:08 It has been two thousand six hundred and six days between then and now.

25:14 Between then and now I have… quit my day job.

25:18 I have… paid for my own health insurance.

25:21 I have lived in three different houses, I have turned 30, I have got married,

25:25 I’ve written, I’m going to say, probably around half a million words.

25:29 I’ve spoken to you, here and on podcasts, in Boston,

25:33 Oslo and Brazil, through a written book and from my local library.

25:38 And for five of those seven years, I’ve also been working with Nebula— wait,

25:42 yes this is kind of a sponsor,

25:44 but I promise it’ll be worth your time, I’m not just selling you something.

25:49 My first video working with Nebula was the one

25:52 on Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, in June of 2020.

25:55 Since then, they have been the sponsor of nearly every essay I’ve made.

26:00 On Nebula, I just have fun— I’ve

26:02 made cooking videos with my then-girlfriend, now wife.

26:05 I’ve done essays on stuff not “heavy” enough for the main channel.

26:09 Somehow, I’ve released even more writing about Resident Evil 4.

26:12 This job, for me, falls in that magical spot of something I didn’t know existed,

26:17 and yet simultaneously seems like the thing

26:20 I’ve been training my whole life to do.

26:22 I love working on this stuff, I love writing,

26:25 I love being directed by my passions.

26:27 And so often in passion-led places like this, the love for the work

26:32 is undercut by the exhaustion of everything

26:34 surrounding it— a contract screws you over,

26:37 someone just “forgets to pay you” for 18 months.

26:41 It is, genuinely, a miracle that I have never felt that with Nebula.

26:46 In fact, this December,

26:47 the whole damn website just decided “we don’t need to be charging this much.

26:51 We can actually be less than $3 a month, because that is just a better price,

26:57 it’ll let more people in the door.” This December,

27:00 like the past three Decembers,

27:02 I’ve made a big ol’ companion to my year-end video.

27:05 Over on Nebula, you can see me chatting about my favorite books of the year,

27:09 my favorite movies, games that just didn’t make the cut.

27:11 It’s great, it’s fun, it’s a chance for me to tell you

27:14 about my obsessions so they can become yours too.

27:17 It, and all my other essays, and everyone’s other essays on Nebula,

27:21 can be yours for just $30 a year with my link in the description.

27:27 And, whether you sign up for Nebula or not, I want to thank you for being here,

27:31 for watching these videos, for allowing me to do this thing that I do.

27:35 To the people who have been here since my very first video,

27:38 on Night in the Woods and Tacoma and workers’ rights.

27:41 To the people who found me this year, maybe through this video.

27:44 To the friends I’ve made,

27:46 the people I’ve connected with, the people who have been

27:49 moderating a discord server for more than half a decade,

27:52 to everyone who has ever stopped me to say “hi” in public.

27:57 This job could be a very lonely, very isolated thing.

28:01 But it doesn’t feel like it— because of you.

28:06 So now, if you’ll permit me a SECOND wildly self-indulgent montage,

28:11 here is every one of those 100 videos,

28:14 alongside everyone, every single one of you,

28:17 who has ever given me even a single dollar on Patreon.

28:22 Your support means more than you could know.