i love video games.
this is my second year working outside of journalistic games writing, and it’s been crazy to play video games without having to generate and dish out hot takes on the daily. it’s been hard, rewarding work and i’m enjoying it. it allows me a peace to experience games in a fresh light for 2025; i’ve fallen deeper in love with this digital, transformative craft.
i feel a duty to write about what i love, so i write.
honorable mentions:
until dawn the movie - listen guys it’s actually better than you’d think. i’m not saying it’s good i’m just saying it’s better than you’d think. it was the best game adaptation i saw this this year.
peak - this one is fun to play with friends. i don’t like that term that people use to refer to this genre. what happened to “multiplayer” and “co-op”? those are good words.
unbeatable - i didn’t beat it yet lol but it’s really cool
silent hill F
lost records bloom and rage
angeline era
2XKO
consume me
dear me, i was...
GAMES OF THE YEAR 2025
#5 - hades 2
i fuck with supergiant games’ work heavy. they are a studio that has been hard at work honing their practice over a series of bangers: transistor, bastion, pyre, hades. this is the first time they’ve done a direct sequel--i respect their courage and restraint in holding off until now, as it’s been fun to see them creatively catapult from each world they cook, learning more and trying. it’s a beautiful way to go about it. inspirational, even.
when i first played during early access i was impressed, but i put it down very quickly because i wanted to play the final version. it is only in re-picking it up this month that i’ve felt the congenial flames of the crockpot that is hades 2.
it is a massive, sprawling improvement that strives to /see/ the player and respond to their choices (<- side note. this is the ultimate thing a video game can do, as it is unique only to the medium!). hades already reimagined roguelike narratives with its upgrade-based relationship mechanics, and the sequel builds on those with more of that, and everything else. if you are using a weapon, or speak to someone, or accomplish something, or see something, most characters have something to say about it. there are so many of those voice lines recorded that they still ring intriguing hours deep into a playthrough.
it is marvelous, and i’m impressed. it’s at #5 because i expected this studio to knock it out of the park, and to no surprise, they did. i’m happy for them!
#4 - detective instinct: farewell my beloved
a masterclass in honouring old school western adventure games and japanese visual novel mechanics, while modernizing the genre with a solid mystery.
huge recommend for detective instinct! this is the studio’s first game, and it’s quite fun! the mystery wasn’t the most intriguing thing to me, but i am mystery-poisoned and have been reading agatha christie every day. i do like the pacing of the story though, it’s a nice length for a game, around 4-5 hours in totality.
i only have a few issues with the game. i critique because i want the next ventures to be better. i critique with love.
- at some points the command menu feels a bit outdated, often times i wanted to click around the screen freely; the method of interaction always had a bit of a clunkiness about it.
- the bulk of the characters are british/european, and it’s a point to mention that, but the whole game is strikingly obviously written by an american. the characters all sound very american through their colloquialisms, it crafts a crude dissonance when the game keeps telling me to imagine them as british.
- the name is really long!!!!
anyways. back to what i love. the pixel art sprites are on another level, just so amazingly human without striving for hyperrealism. it’s definitely inspired by late 80s/early 90s anime. every character’s pose is evocative and animated, feels very stage-play in a great way. the way they juxtopose 2D sprites and 3D environments is also good on the whole, my fav fav part is when they show shots of the train in motion. and when you’re looking at a character and you can still spot the outside moving through the train’s window. it creates a great sense of motion which is great for a story that takes place on the train.
also the music is phenomenal. such a great ear for composing, especially the character themes and sound design for key moments. loopable and mysterious, just what i like.
#3 - death stranding 2: on the beach.
i love death stranding 2 and i don’t care if anyone feels differently about it. i’ve sat through countless conversations where people tell me they do not like the game. that’s fine, i think it whips heavy. i’m having a ball out here.
my main issue--i’ll get it out of the way early. it is that they changed the core button mappings for crouch, and a couple other basic traversal options. which to me, is bonkers. my years of muscle memory of the first game, from delivering across america, was lost like a grain of sand in death stranding 2’s beach. why would they do that mannnnn. ok anyways.
light spoilers and context to the world--you are the best delivery guy in the world. you’ve rebuilt america with your deliveries and now you’re tasked with rebuilding australia and mexico as well. it’s a lot of the same, but better. i love how many structures you can build and see from other players, it creates a web of empathy that was a ever present in the first game. some people have complained about this, but you can turn it off if you want to be a lone wolf.
it is mesmerizing to look at a sunset in this game. i haven’t finished it because i am too caught up in 100%ing the game, which i never do and i’m not sure if i ever have, aside from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. i deliver the non-story standard and bonus packages to people stranded at various outposts and build up the relationship for that zone. they all give great upgrades as you hit a milestone for helping them out, and they’ve added a great dialogue system to allow the player choice (even if they aren’t dramatic cascades or decisive character flair).
#2 - kirby air riders
image cred: polygon / nintendo.
oh my god kirby is back in a big way. i bought a switch 2 for this. burn me at the stake. i don’t care. i’m a grown ass adult. i had to see what sakurai (the game director) and the teams had been up to. he teased it on his youtube channel and i hoped it was smash, but i knew whatever he was cooking with a hand selected team would be incredible. AND IT IS. and it is here.
i joked with a friend that i could play this game and hallucinate that it was a new smash bros, but i really don’t need to do that because it’s just so well done and carries Team Sora’s design approach, shoutout to Michiko Sakurai and the design team for upgrading the UI sensibly, while keeping a distinct style. did you know that in all of Team Sora’s games on the main menu you can continously press “A” on the controller to get to the main game mode? i just think that’s neat.
do not let this game deceive you. this is a party game. it is also a vehicular combat game with racing elements. it behaves very differently than mario kart. if i try to explain its idiosyncracies i risk “scaring the hoes,” but i’ll try to sum up stark differences nonetheless.
- you don’t press forward or hold any button to accelerate, this is done automatically.
- you have a melee attack, and doing any sort of damage speeds you up.
- vehicles and riders vary orthogonally on top of stats. if we treat the basic machine, the warp star as our control--other vehicles removing core elements and stacking twists on top to make it so that it feels like a completely different set of mechanical skills its using. riders are designed similarly, a bit less of a striking difference between them outside of their ultimate move. okay also one issue here is that there is no way to see this depth in the main multiplayer menu. it’s only visible in the single player game modes, which means that any prospective players are not able to gleam the depth of the characters and vehicles on a vanilla playthrough. they just look like different guys and different cars. but they are so much more than that...
wow okay. i’m typing so much about this one. i need to do other things this new years so i’m gonna wrap this post with bullet points of the rest of my thoughts:
- the unlockable system is genius. so fun. IT’S LIKE SMASH BROS I LOVE SMASH!
- theee best party game, so fun to watch my friends pick it up and leave them in the dust. or watch them rise up and destroy me so quickly that i have to think of a good excuse as to how i lost to them on their first race (the best excuse is that it’s a party game).
- sakurai said no dlc and no microtransactions and built an in game economy where you earn money doing anything and can use it to buy cool hats and buy people’s cool machine designs and get music. it’s cool. you don’t see that too often.
#1 - deltarune - chapter 3 + chapter 4
man. i actually dreaded writing about this game because i know, if unrestrained, i could write a book about deltarune.
this game frustrated me when i first saw it, mainly because it looked like undertale and toby fox, the director, described it like “this isn’t a sequel to undertale, but this is a game for people who have played undertale.” that is a cryptic-ass way to talk about a video game, no? it’s a premise equal parts intriguing and mildly annoying. i picked up and played chapter 1 when it dropped in 2018, but i bounced off of it when i realized it wasn’t the full game and there would be 7 chapters in total. i only continued deltarune this year when my friend wouldn’t stop talking about it so i was like “FINE, i’ll play it!. i’ll give it the old college try.” and it infected my brain like video game fungus.
that team is trying to make this generation’s chronotrigger and nobody is talking about it. okay people are talking about it but the press and games industry isn’t, really. and i don’t think it will be taken seriously and widely dissected until it is complete. which is a shame, deltarune releasing episodically is dastardly smart choice. the mysteries sprinkled throughout combined with the multiple playstyles (weird route) creates a mystery machine, but the more interesting part is that it also creates corkboard and string people who want to solve those mysteries. and if you play the game without that knowledge and then hear about it, it can be freaky. the game notices you, and it does that frequently.
the music is so good. i don’t even wanna type about it, i love it. after playing through i’ve been bumping those tracks a lot.
there are so many layers at play in the game, i don’t want to spoil it but it is a champion of the medium. Deltarune is an homage to RPGs, a self-referential examination of itself and the player, and all in all a stylistic, surprising celebration of interactivity. if an alien came down to earth and asked me what a video game was, i’d pass them deltarune.
last notes on games this year
outside of work, i’ve been working on a few games and it’s been so fun. game design helps me see and articulate, and it has quickly become one of my favourite crafts. i can’t wait for you to play them. i hope you have fun :Dthank you for reading all my words, it means a lot! i hope you have a great new year <3
i wonder, what were your favourites?
- Fūnk-é, signing off @ 5:08PM ET, Dec 31, 2025.