We’re here already. The 2025 Game of the Year justifications. Arguably the biggest piece to write every year. Collating past thoughts, looking back on things and seeing how they feel after time has passed.
The problem with looking back over a full year is that emotional attachments dwindles. A double-edged sword, for sure. Any Game of the Year should be objectively great, right? But it’s subjective to me and how a game makes me feel during my time with it. That’s incredibly powerful, and there’s likely always a recency bias that comes into play.
That’s all important in Game of the Year, for sure. But, that’s my problem, not anyone else’s. So let’s look at all the contenders with some context as to why they’re in contention. Then at the end of the year, there will be a winner with a piece explaining exactly why it’s been chosen.
In no particular order, here are our Game of the Year 2025 contenders.
Monster Hunter Wilds
This was easily the most anticipated game of 2025 for me. A series that I’ve grown to love in a significant way. More in the vein of Monster Hunter World, but with the quality of life and learnings from Rise.
What more could I want? Well, nothing really. It’s become my favourite Monster Hunter and a genuinely exceptional game in 2025.
Having said that, there is a lot of fair and just criticism of the PC launch, performance and fixes. It’s hit and miss. I’ve been unable to stream it with any success and Capcom still haven’t really optimised it in almost 12 months.
Title update 4 due shortly, promises to have some fixes, but only time will tell.
The game itself does the best job of telling a story in the series, the end game content has been fleshed out continually to great effect. It’s a game I come back to regularly, and in terms of hours played, the highest in this overall list. That has to count for something, for sure.
So many updates and events have come to the game that have kept it engaging, and the core hunting loop is as fun as it’s every been.
Hades II
I’m struggling with Hades II as a Game of the Year contender. Not because it’s bad, but because it suffers from the first game being brilliant.
Hades II is arguably better in every way, and I’d fight that fight, for sure. However, it doesn’t matter how much better it is, it’s still Hades. It will (and should) always just feel like more of the same.
A victim of it’s predecessor’s success? It feels insane to say that I don’t think it has what it takes to fully contend. But that’s where I’m at.
I haven’t been able to finish it yet, or get the review done, because I’m not engaged enough.
If you said pick Hades or Hades II. I would pick Hades II every time. But in 2025 it isn’t doing anything that feels new or unique. Hades II is one of the best games of the year, for sure. Mechanically incredible, stunning to look at and listen to and satisfyingly different to the first.
But it always feels like more of the same, and I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not enough to take it to the next level. Which a game in a similar situation, like Monster Hunter Wilds manages to do by shaking things up in more significant ways.
Arc Raiders
Biggest surprise of 2025? An extraction shooter being considered as Game of the Year? Insane.
Yet here we are.
Arc Raiders is barely a couple of months old and it’s the game I think about playing the most, recently. A finely-balanced third-person PvP/PvE looter that just takes a whole genre and makes it accessible, keeps it intense and has created so many memorable moments.
The continual potential threat of the Arc AI robots, that feel like a legitimate threat to your second to second survival. Combined with the continual potential threat of other players taking you out when you’re filled with precious gear. It’s exhilarating.
Pair that feeling with the elation of making it out alive. Getting the loot you wanted or needed and living to tell the tale. And you have an amazing mixture that just makes one of the most satisfying and frustrating games in a long time.
It feels like PUBG combined with Destiny and The Division. Filled with excellent audio and visual design. Using Unreal 5 better than most studios manage to muster.
Arc Raiders feels like a very serious contender.
Ghost of Yotei
One of the best games of 2025 without a shadow of a doubt. Ghost of Yotei is stellar from top to bottom.
Taking everything that made Ghost of Tsushima great, and turning it up a notch. Adding significant changes and improvements.
The best looking game of the year? Absolutely. What a stunning game. Combined with the music, audio and cinematic direction. Ghost of Yotei feels hand-crafted to perfection.
The combat is fluid and varied. Traversal and exploration are excellent and the world feels borderline real. It feels lived and and the people in it feel like they genuinely live and belong there.
There’s so much work done here to apply polish and deliver an exceptional experience from launch, that needs to be factored-in. It’s borderline miraculous for a game to be released in such a finished state.
With an interesting character development and a story with legitimate beats that are interesting and sometimes emotional. Ghost of Yotei delivers the perfect open-world experience, in a genre that may have been wrung-out in a significant way over the last 10+ years.
Incredibly impressive work and absolutely a contender for Game of the Year 2025.
Two Point Museum
One of my most played games this year. Not quite on the level of say, Monster Hunter Wilds. But again with continual updates and content releases (largely for free!), I’m always coming back to Two Point Museum.
Taking all the learnings from Two Point Hospital and Campus. Two Point Studios have delivered their best game yet.
Super-satisfying management sim, mixed with their trademark humour and visual style. Then they’s added layers to keep thing interesting, with expeditions, exhibits and customer engagement.
I’ve finally able to control the cost of a drink or snack, or each item in my gift shop. It feels the closest to Theme Park in many ways, and that can only be a good thing.
Never not fun, always something fun to do and work towards. Two Point Museum is light hearted but deep and engaging.
As lovingly crafted as Ghost of Yotei, and as well updated post-release as Monster Hunter Wilds. This is a significant contender, for sure.
Death Stranding 2
Another tricky one for me this year. I haven’t finished it yet, and I’m working to get it done and reviewed by the time it comes to deciding on an actual game of the year.
It’s stunning to look at and maintains the hallmark Death Stranding/Hideo Kojima uniqueness.
Having re-played the first game not too long ago, I have this slight tinge of burnout. It kind of suffers in the same way as Hades II. An exceptional game but it feels like more of the same.
Filled with changes, improvements and new quirks. There’s so much to like, and the play through is currently very fun and engaging.
If you asked me a year ago, I would have almost certainly said this would be the 2025 Game of the Year. It still could be, but there’s a lot to play and see still, so this one is going to go down to the wire before any final decision in made.
Spider-Man 2
The first game I’ve ever been interested in getting a platinum trophy for. That’s not an insignificant note, right there. As someone that goes from game to game to game throughout a year, taking the time to unlock every achievement/trophy is alien to me.
Spider-Man 2 is so solid in everything that it does, it just meant that looking for more stuff to do, after the story concluded, felt like a no-brainer.
I’ve loved the previous games in this series and Spider-Man 2 take all of that and improves it significantly. Harnessing the power of the Playstation 5, it’s another game that has left me in awe just as I swing about.
The story was good, but the massive amount of boss fights really forced things to stop, and sometimes become frustrating. It didn’t serve to add weight to encounters, more delayed story beats and that was a pain when trying to complete it.
A stunning, fun and engaging game. But hampered by the narrative and the over-use of boss fights to tell the story.
Jedi Survivor
Like a souls like-lite, but sluggish and not quite clicking for me. Jedi Fallen Order was a game that never really felt good to me.
So waiting for Jedi Survivor to be cheap enough to take the risk of being burned twice, we sensible.
But Jedi Survivor trumped the original game immediately. Better combat and movement (highly important in a game so reliant on combat and platforming). Better character development and world building, and a chance to see more of the story of a cast of characters you got to know initially.
Where games like Hades II and Death Stranding 2 are suffering from being more of the same (to a degree). Jedi Survivor made the series actually good.
This completely changed my view of the series and got me excited for another installment if we’re going to see one, one day.
A solid story with some twists and turns that deserve your attention. Jedi Survivor is a great game and was a really great experience this year.
NBA 2K25
This has become a yearly tradition for me. Get the latest NBA 2K game about 6 months after release, when the price has dropped. Then go nuts on a career for about 30 hours.
The core gameplay is amazing. With tweaks to shot taking and playmaking. it felt like this is the first time playing one of these games, it really clicked for me mechanically.
The sheer amount of gameplay options outside of the core career mode, shouldn’t be sniffed at here. You can play as a manager and manage a franchise instead of working to be the next star player.
Trade cards, play 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 online. Re-live iconic NBA moments from history, and get stuck into the WBNBA, too.
Yes, it’s an annually-released sports game. In that regard it isn’t any different to say, Fifa or EA FC. So it’s hard to consider it a significant contender. But those games just aren’t as gripping.
With 40+ hours just in a career mode and not even getting through my rookie year. You know there’s a lot to go at, and being so mechanically excellent, means it needs to be added to the conversation at the very least.
Battlefield 6
Who saw this coming? Battlefield returns to form, gets released in a perfectly playable and accessible state, and just dominates the genre again for a while.
The moment to moment action is as good as it’s ever been in the series. Absolutely killer, with additions to the series there to make it more accessible and faster paced.
I understand the community upset around the pace feeling more akin to modern Call of Duty games. But it doesn’t feel like it’s really to the detriment of the overall enjoyment.
Smaller maps, but much bigger than the competition. Allowing for vehicles in the air and on the ground. Lines of sight for snipers, and corridors for support to lay-down suppressive minigun fire. Tight streets, enclosed spaces, and wide-open fields. No match is the same, and playing Conquest feels as good as ever.
This is my Sunday night, TV on, wind-down before the week starts, game. I get as much joy from this as I did Battlefield 3 and 4.
As a Battlefield 2042 apologist (it was great!), I feel like we’ve had plenty of Battlefield to go at. But Battlefield 6 feels like a return to real form, filled with those “Battlefield moments” we all remember from days gone by.
It looks great and runs really well on a wide-range of hardware, which absolutely can’t be discounted, either.
Stacked!
This year has been a great year for the site and for gaming in general. We’ve got a great list of contenders for our 2025 Game of the Year and it’s genuinely very tough to pick a winner.
We’ve got time to re-visit games, finish games and come to final conclusions. So let’s see at the back-end of the month, who comes out on top.