Fred Wood's Video Games of 2025 List
Here's the thing, too many video games came out in 2025, and too many of them were amazing. I don't think I could possibly actually pick a game of the year. And since I worked on them, DELTARUNE and SPACE HOLE are not contenders on my list. But because I like to write stuff down and I have a lot of thoughts, here's a pretty exhaustive list of the video games of 2025.
The games I played in 2025
Metal Gear Solid Δ Delta: Snake Eater I'm glad to see that the new blood at Konami, led by some of the old blood, does have the chops and understanding of what makes Metal Gear Solid such a great series. While it misses the mark visually from time to time, every other aspect of this remake is a loving recreation of one of the best games of all time. The few additions to the game feel right in line with what I'd expect, and I was relieved that the room by room gameplay of the original wasn't as jarring with the over the shoulder modern shooter gameplay that early reviews made a lot of noise about. I can't speak to the narrative chops of this team, but I'd trust them with the gameplay of a new entry or remake in the series.
Also, gosh, what a good lookin' video game. I hope they bring the XBox exclusive Bomberman mode to PC.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach I haven't finished Death Stranding 2. I really want to. When I finished Death Stranding 1, I felt pretty confident that I didn't want a followup. I was very, very wrong. Death Stranding 2 does an incredible job of taking everything that was special from the original and improving on it, while simultaneously sanding off the edges of a lot of frustrating aspects without sacrificing the game's vision. The story, too, is compelling. It's obviously very much in Kojima's milieu, but that has never been a knock against a KojiPro game for me.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy I want to tell everyone that this is my game of the year, but the truth is that I'm 81 hours through the game and have seen 28 of the 100 endings in this game, and the route I'm currently playing through has fully transformed my understanding of the world, the characters, and the threat that this game is even about. Coming from the creators of Danganronpa, Virtue's Last Reward, and more -- I'm confident this game will rock my brain a dozen more times. It's also difficult to recommend, as the game is very much for folks who already know what the game is and want it very badly, and if not, it's a slog to get to the point where the game begins to impress.
I like Hundred Line enough and have gotten far enough into it that rather than switch to the Nintendo Switch as my handheld of choice for bedtime gameplay, I picked up an AYN Thor and have been continuing my Steam save via GameNative. I don't regret it a bit.
Metal Garden I randomly saw Metal Garden in the ResetEra screenshot thread and decided that $5.99 was a reasonable price to check out a thing that had a clear visual style to it. It ended up being a fascinating walk through a brutalist megastructure with some competent gunplay and a delightfully brisk runtime. As of writing I have seen the credits and have 77 minutes of playtime. It's an easy game to recommend, and I'd love to see what this developer does next.
Nubby's Number Factory Nubby's Number Factory is secretly the best video game of the year, but they won't tell you that. It's plinko/pachinko/ball droppin' fun with Web 1.0 visuals. I've put 35 hours into the game and it has been a comforting treasure in a trying year. If you like seeing numbers get big, this game does it like the best of 'em. When the mobile versions come out, just like Balatro, I'm gonna be in trouble.
Arc Raiders AI Generated assets have no place in a shipping game and the use of generative AI for voice acting in this game works so hard against how good this game is. Arc Raiders is a phenomenon in that it's an accessible extraction shooter available on consoles with working proximity chat and it hit hard while the iron was hot. I've had so many incredible experiences running into other players, having fun and emergent moments, and of course situations where I cursed the very birth of some other human beings.
Early on I had a quest where I was looking for some wires, and I ran into a guy in the swamp. I told him "I don't want any shit, man. I'm just looking for wires." The guy said cheerfully, "Oh, I have wires!", and he gave them to me. I threw a nice gun I found to him, and he thanked me. It was a wonderful moment of camaraderie, and we decided to extract together. New to the game, I ran to the bushes as he pulled the switch to call the elevator. A moment later, he ran back to me and loudly proclaimed "Well that's weird, it was already ca--", and he was cut down by sniper fire. I watched him die in front of me, as I silently waited in the bushes for the elevator to surface. Once it did, I ran onto the elevator and started the exit sequence. A guy ran onto the elevator, likely my fallen wire buddy's killer. He said "I don't want any shit", so I quitely finished the exit sequence. I learned a lot in that experience. About the game. About man. About myself.
A bonus for folks interested in picking it up: If you buy it on XBox or the Microsoft Store, you get it on both. So if you're an XBox enjoyer or want to do XBox Anywhere with it, that's worth considering. But you unfortunately DO have to have an active Game Pass subscription to play this online only game.
Sektori Sektori is what if Geometry Wars had progression, a reactive soundtrack, and oppressive visuals. I'm really, really bad at Sektori, but Sektori is really, really good. I'll take a moment to say that one of the best things it did was remind me to revisit Geometry Wars Galaxies for Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, which was someone else's take on what if Geometry Wars had progression, and that's always a good time.
Donkey Kong Bananza I haven't played enough Donkey Kong Bananza to speak on it properly, but it's impressive how hard they swung for the fences with this one. It's a weird world where we got a sequel to Super Mario Odyssey, but with Donkey Kong instead of the colorful plumber. The world is reactive, destructable, and colorful. In a year where we didn't have so much treasure, I'd try to find everything there is in Donkey Kong Bananza.
Mario Kart World Mario Kart World is a perfectly fine racing game with a novel open world area that suffers under the weight of expectation for the followup to a Mario Kart game that had 11 years of staying power.
There's nothing wrong with Mario Kart World. It's really very good. But it doesn't feel like the generational leap or a particularly impressive successor to the most impressive entry in the franchise. I think it's a good look at what might happen when we finally get the first Smash Bros game without Sakurai.
Kirby's Air Riders I've played a few hours of Kirby's Air Riders, having never played the GameCube original. I've done the tutorials, run a number of races, and have been slowly playing the Road Trip mode. Every time I boot the game up, I play for a bit and stuff happens and I succeed. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but it's always fun, frequently incredible, and so seamless. This game is the culmination of folks who are true professionals at the craft of Video Games doing what they do best, and it's a triumph.
Counter-Strike 2 Counter-Strike 2 didn't come out this year but I played it almost more than any other game this year. The weekly loop of playing to unlock a crate, then opening the crate with some friends is not a healthy one, but it's one that I can afford to spend $2.49+local tax on.
Counter-Strike is frequently a collection of all of the worst parts of the internet: flagrant racism, homophobia, sexism, and every kind of toxicity you can think of. But that's only most of the time. But every once in a while you'll join a Wingman game with a friend, and have a hilarious, lighthearted time with a couple of other dummies playing this game. Maybe you'll have a round where you throw your gun out a window to scare a sniper, then get the jump on them. Sometimes maybe your buddy will have two terrorists dead to rights with an AWP shot and you happen to intersect that moment at the wrong one. Counter-Strike 2 contains multitudes, and some of them can be pretty great, but you have to be willing to put up with things you shouldn't have to.
Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection This collectio -- ugh, Kollection of Mortal Kombat entries is so worth exploring. I spent my Halloween night playing through each Mortal Kombat game on each platform, and it was a wonderful way to revisit these games from my childhood. I haven't even booted up MK4 or the non-fighting games, OR the documentaries, but I've fully gotten my money's worth. Mortal Kombat may not be everyone's favorite fighting game, but this is a perfect way to tell this important franchise's story.
Megabonk Megabonk is a 3D 3rd Person Vampire Survivors clone with much worse writing and very compelling hooks. I had a great time unlocking weapons, items, characters, and attempting challenges, all while turning the music off and listening to NADDPod's Eldermourne campaign. Maybe I like Megabonk so much because it was a vehicle for more NADDPod, but that doesn't feel like a slight against it.
Once Upon a Katamari I feel bad that I didn't get around to Keita Takahashi's to a T, but did spend money and time on the continuation of the Katamari Damacy franchise that he's no longer a part of -- but I'm so glad to have a fresh new Katamari game that seems to have recaptured the joy of We Love Katamari. It's so nice to have a well optimized PC Katamari game with a ton of stuff to do with ultrawide support. If you've played Katamari before, this is more of it, with a thin narrative wrapper that we're doing some time travel shenanigans. Some of the levels have some frustrating limitations and goals, but on the whole I had a blast with Once Upon a Katamari.
Capcom Fighting Collection 2 It's so cool that I can play Capcom vs SNK 2 on modern platforms with netplay. I know folks are all about powerstone, but for me it was getting the ability to play one of Capcom's most stylish fighters again.
HACK AND SLASH FURY This game is not good, and is filled with AI Slop, but the boldness and naivete of its creator to release it like they did is worth taking a look at. (image context here)
R.E.P.O. Wait, REPO was this year? Oh gosh it was. What an incredibly fun and weird wobbly game to play with friends. Friendslop is a silly term that feels right for the kind of bumbling fun I get to have with my buddies while playing it. I didn't stick with REPO for very long, but its text to voice function never stopped making me laugh.
ROGUE LIGHT DECK BUILDER I'll always celebrate someone committing to a bit, and Rogue Light Deck Builder is a good goof. It's a funky hammering simulator where you have to kinda build a deck over and over again, with the progression system of an idling game.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A I promised myself that I'd finish this one, but only got about halfway through. It runs really well on Switch 2, the gameplay hooks are fun, and the story is nothing to write home about but at least this one didn't put me all the way to sleep like Arceus did. I've enjoyed my time with it so far, and I'll probably keep goin'.
Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate I think I might be at the end of my ten year love affair with Destiny. I badly want them to right this ship so I can sail into more incredible stories and gameplay experiences, but nearly everyone I play with has dropped off, and in full disclosure, I just had to Google the title of the expansion to write it up there. There's nothing bad about current Destiny 2, it just hasn't done anything to pull me away from the dozens of other games on this list.
A side note, I'm so sick of Star Wars, and while the collaboration in Renegades is incredibly tasteful, it bums me out to see Bungie dilute their incredible world with IP crossovers like this. I haven't played more than the first mission or so, but I'll come back to it at some point.
Games I want to play more so I can talk about them
Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero Phantom Brave 2 is a sequel to a PS2 game that came out 21 years ago that was beloved by few folks who picked up a non-Disgaea NIS game back then. So few people were asking for a Phantom Brave 2, that it feels like this game was made for me. What I've played of it has been fantastic, but the PC Port was released months after the initial release, with some pretty significant bugs, and a price tag of $99 to get all of the day one content. It was hard to swallow that price tag without seeing them make good on some updates, so I waited for a sale, and have prioritized other games since. But I'm still very excited to spend more time with Marona and Ash as we make some overpowered ghosts and stick them in some rocks and cacti and swords and junk.
It's worth noting that the original PS2 version got a pretty okay PC port a while back that received a massive update from Durante and his crew, and that game is incredible and worth your time, especially now. Go buy Phantom Brave PC!
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond It's really cool to have a new 3D Metroid game and it's real neat to have it on a shiny new handheld that looks REAL good both docked and undocked. I haven't spent enough time with it to see what it's doing, but I'm confident that I'll have a good time with it.
ClaDun X3 ClaDun X2 on PSP was the first game I was ever sent a review copy for, and was a weird little dungeon crawler that let me do whatever I wanted with it. I bought X3 as a way of saying thanks for getting me started on the review journey, and as a prominent member of my backlog. I can't wait to explore randomly generated dungeons with big numbers and multipliers and mixels all over the place.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 I was so very, very excited for THPS3+4, after 1+2 was one of my games of the year in 2020, and I was very thankful to the PR company who sent me a review code to cover it. But the BDS Movement made it difficult for me to recommend a Microsoft published product in 2025, and that made it hard for me to be willing to check out.
Unbeatable I kickstarted Unbeatable day one. I was floored by its trailers, and have been looking forward to the day I get to sit down and enjoy it. But I want to play it on a nice screen with excellent speakers, and the game came out right before I had to travel. Unbeatable seems like a once in a generation kinda game, and I'm excited to give it the due respect it deserves. Please forgive the meme image above, it makes sense to the folks who labored to make Unbeatable.
Possessor(s) I've played a tiny bit of Possessor(s), the latest and potentially final release from Heart Machine. I'm glad the team got to finish the game and that they were able to release some patches, but it's heartbreaking to see a talented crew get the axe just before a game goes gold. I hope to spend more time with the game in 2026, and I hope all the displaced developers end up on their feet quick.
Lumines Arise What if Tetris Effect but instead of Tetris, Lumines? I have spent some time with Lumines Arise, and it's incredible just like Tetris Effect before it, but some of the stages had some very colorblind unfriendly setups that made it hard to be good at a game I'm already pretty bad at. Luckily they've addressed some of these a bit, and I'll give it another try sometime soon. Been listening to the soundtrack though, and it's incredible.
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land I have finally played some of an Atelier game at release and this game seems like a great starting point for players unfamiliar with the world. But I haven't spent enough time with it to really give it a qualitative opinion, so I'll hold off until I do!
Öoo Another incredible puzzle platformer from the creator of ElecHead! I've played enough to get a feel for what the game is and appreciate it, but I wanna play more.
Doom: The Dark Ages Again, BDS. But I'll give it another try sometime. Liked what I played a lot more than Doom Eternal.
Games I haven't played but am sure I should
(I can't post any more images, sorry!)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 I downloaded this J'RPG for my Christmas trip and am looking forward to hearing Ben Starr and Charlie Cox speak sad truths to me while exploring a distressing world.
Consume Me In 2016 I saw Jenny Jiao Hsia give a talk at Fantastic Arcade about her work on this game and I think it's incredible that she and the other devs have spent this long making something so personal. It hasn't made it on my played list, but it's pretty high on my to play list.
OFF (remake) Last year I played OFF for the first time because someone brought it up to me out of context, so I checked it out. If I had more context that they were working on a remake, I might've held… off. Anywho, I'll give it a playthrough next year!
Like a Dragon Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii I still haven't finished Like a Dragon 8 and I still haven't finished Lost Judgement, but you'd best believe I will be here for some Majima pirate shenanigans.
Wanderstop I think I saw a very early look at Wanderstop in 2019 and was excited for it then, and I'm still excited for it now. Ivy Road is made of incredible people and I am so excited for this and their future games.
Freedom Wars Remastered I owe it to Liam Allen-Miller to learn why he loves this game so much. And now that they've done some more work to the PC release, I'm about ready to give it a try.
to a T Dear Keita Takahashi, I am sorry I haven't played to a T yet. It looks magical and delightful and I bought it and hooked up my XBox to play it with my wife, but then we never got around to it. I will. I promise. Please keep making video games.
Soul Sovereign (Chapters 1-3) As SOON as I'm done with Hundred Line, I'm gonna play SoulSov. They're nothing alike but I cannot play more than one VN at a time.
Mindseye Thanks to a friend I have Mindseye on Steam and I love to check out some ambitious jank.
Skate Story I've been excited about this one for years and since it came out so late in the year, I haven't given it a spin yet -- but I need to soon so I stop seeing spoilers on BlueSky.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tactical Takedown I'm really excited that my dear friend and Steam Family member Xalavier Nelson Jr got to work on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and the team behind it knocked it so thoroughly outta the park. It just hasn't happened for me yet.
Dispatch I keep seeing clips of this and I'm real into it. The workplace romances seem inappropriate and compelling.
BALL x PIT It's on the list but I didn't want to spin up a game that I knew would get its hooks in me like Nubby and Balatro.
Silent Hill f I've still never played a Silent Hill all the way through. I played a couple hours of 2 when the first movie came out, but never gave it the time it deserves. Starting with f seems like a fun way to enter the series properly.
Tribe Nine Upon googling it again, it looks like I can't play Tribe Nine anymore. I snoozed and I loozed. A real shame that this game didn't get an offline mode.
Promise Mascot Agency I wanna play Kei Truck Yakuza. It looks great.
Elden Ring: Nightreign I might not ever actually play Nightreign, but I'm putting it on this list to give the illusion that maybe I AM good at video games.
Stellar Blade (PC) I know Stellar Blade ain't a 2025 game but there's something to be said for the amount of effort put into the PC port this year.
Alright, that's it. That's enough games. I don't even need to mention all the incredible Decomp and Recomp projects like Unleashed Recompiled (Sonic Unleashed), Marathon Recompiled (Sonic 06), Starship (StarFox 64), SpaghettiKart (Mario Kart 64), or the very recently released drmario64_recomp_plus (Dr Mario 64).
Anywho, dogshit year for Fred Wood, incredible year for video games. Let's all look forward to what 2026 has in store!
