I love video games and I love that I can escape into them, something I needed a lot of in 2025. Some painful cuts this time around. Games like Gris, Deliver Us Mars, PowerWash Simulator, Dead Island 2 & The Stanley Parable were great PlayStation platinums to earn and are worth playing, but I feel that a good winnowing criteria is “what lingers in my mind about this game?” and I feel my Top 10 this year does that. I can look at this list and have numerous moments from all of them pop into my head. As always, these games do not need to be 2025 releases, I simply must have “finally gotten to them” this year. Without further ado…

10) Coffee Talk 1 & 2

The first two Coffee Talks aren’t much more than visual novels with some light puzzles throughout, but man oh man did I enjoy inhabiting its world anyway. If a PlayStation Plus freebie makes me want to seek out a physical copy AND buy its soundtrack, it’s definitely scratched an itch I hadn’t even known I had.

9) SOMA

I played SOMA in “safe mode” without the monster chasing and deaths and I enjoyed it exceptionally. Without the threat of death it’s a walking simulator with a poignant story about existentialism, the nature of being & one’s perception of oneself, which are all things I think about more and more as I get older. I quite enjoyed trying to wrap my head around it from a sci-fi perspective as well. I’m sorry it took me over a decade to get to Simon Jarret’s story, because it was such a great ride.

8) Bugsnax

Bugsnax started off as a lovely little colourful collectathon game that slowly and subtly evolved into Baby’s First Body Horror so gradually that I didn’t really notice until it was too late. The Pokémon Snap-esque charm suckered me in, the realization that all the puppet creatures aren’t just one-dimensional caricatures kept me going until the very end, and the ending gave me whiplash. Then that ending credits song happened. 

7) Subnautica 

My biggest knock against Subnautica is that it gives the player no direction whatsoever; you’re just left to stumble around in its massive map. Once I found myself some direction, though, I fell in deep with its world. It’s hostile, beautiful and as dangerous as it gets if you’re not careful, a tremendous pain in the foot, but save for the part where I had to remember exactly which deep crevice to find my way back to over and over, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

6) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

I never played Oblivion back in the day so I approached Oblivion Remastered as if it were “Skyrim 0.” Is that fair to it? No, not at all, but I guess I truly am a sucker for Bethesda’s RPG blueprint. I role-played Oblivion as an ancestor to my Skyrim three-times-rolled Dragonborn and I’ll be damned if that approach didn’t work incredibly well. The sprawling world, the specialized combat, the janky characters whose conversations with each other make no sense, the various factions I remember so well from Year 200 of the Fourth Era, the main questline I can take a break from for a few dozen hours, they’re all here and they’re all wonderful to experience, 19 years late or not.

5) Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 was not the game I was envisioning when I started it, but as I got used to it I came to appreciate it. I played actual, IRL Dungeons & Dragons eons ago so it was very interesting to have those ancient, vague memories come back. I’m not a huge fan of BG3’s combat and the menus are a bit cumbersome with a PS5 controller, but the exploration is addictive, the characters are well-rounded if a little bit too horned up and any game that gives me the ability to speak to animals and then lets me roll a speech check to trick a massively giant spider into not fighting me just can’t be bad. It’s some kind of law or something. XD

4) Final Fantasy VII Remake

Final Fantasy VII Remake really, really feels like a game that I shouldn’t have liked but somehow, somehow I do. I have no nostalgia for the original FF7, the early-to-mid sections are not paced great and I rage-quit the game at least once during a boss fight AFTER a lengthy sewer level because it explains its combat exceedingly poorly, like I’m just supposed to press buttons and figure it out for myself. But once I FINALLY broke through that barrier circa the end of chapter 7 / start of chapter 8, what I found on the other side was characters I liked, a combat system I finally had my head around, and a world and story I really wanted to explore more and know more about. Remake did just enough to make me feel satiated when it was over while also wanting more.

3) Ghost of Tsushima

I’ve noticed in the past how much I like this phrase, but Ghost of Tsushima epitomizes the saying “if you don’t do anything new, be sure you do everything right.” Vengeance, honour, your world turned upside down AND going to five hundred icons on a map, this game really has everything. 😁 Jin seems like such a generic grizzled hero when you first take control of him, and by the end SO many blanks have been filled in that I just wanted to inhabit his world for a while longer. The critical path is beautiful and blood-soaked, the “side” quests always add to the story and never detract, and the combat grows and expands without managing to get too bogged down. It’s huge and it follows the open-world template just right, and I can’t think of this game as anything less than a massive home run.

2) Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Nathan Drake and Lara Croft spent their careers ripping off Indiana Jones, so it’s only fair that he rips them off right back and comes into his own as a great video game character. If you somehow managed to position the camera so that this could be watched as a movie, it would not be out of place at all. Everything is perfectly done: Troy Baker’s voice, the scenery, the “oh come on now” ways Indy can escape danger all feel like they come out of some lost Indiana Jones film from 1987. BUT, once you put the video game parts back in, everything just gets enhanced. Sure, we need to find this stolen cat statue, but OOH notes and photos to take, OOH a light puzzle to solve, OOH a fascist to beat up with a broom! My favourite YouTuber said “the critical path feels like a perfectly fine Indiana Jones film, and the side quests feel like the director’s cut scenes put back in,” and I really cannot phrase it better.

1) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I don’t follow gaming news and previews like I used to, so I had not heard of this game at all until its release was imminent. Once all the universal acclaim started rolling in I finally thought, “well, OK, I should at least try this at some point.” 

A little while later, there I was, halfheartedly playing a game that I’d heard was good but wasn’t clicking. I was just going through the motions when it suddenly got incredibly frustrating and I was quite tempted to just say “duck it” and rage quit. BUT, I refused. There was something to this game, and I was going to dig for that something until I found it. Six hours later I fully understood the controls, had a good idea about the combat mechanics, I grasped the stakes and finally knew who all the characters were, and only after all that did the game made me cry for the first time. I’m not sure I’ve ever done such a violent U-turn of opinion on a video game in my life. I challenge you to not fall in love with all the characters; I couldn’t get enough of Maelle’s sweetness, Verso’s somber exterior & warm heart, Lune’s determination to fight on and the immense pain for her family that Sciel carries.

For what feels like such a bleak game and terrifying world, I think Clair Obscur’s greatest feat is the hope it conveys. “Don’t give up,” it seems to say, “all the fighting you do today WILL matter to someone someday, no matter how hopeless it may feel right now,” and that’s a beautiful message. Now, it’s not a perfect game, quite far from it in fact. There are numerous pedantic nitpicks I could make like the lack of an overworld fast-travel system or how bad I am at half the enemies’ parry timing, but these little issues are like microscopic flecks of rain rolling off a mighty umbrella. The dodging and parrying are a joy to finally come to grips with from the tiny cannon-fodder enemies to the bosses that fill the entire screen, the music is incredibly haunting while also being hummable, and vitally, the story made me shout “WHAT? …wwwwWWWHAT??” more than once, making me tear up in sadness, disbelief and rage while ripping my heart out and spinning my brain like a playground merry-go-round while also leaving me thirsty for more.

I had no expectations for the game whatsoever and it blew me away. I dislike using the term “gut feeling,” but I’ve rarely had such a strong gut feeling that this game is right where it should be, standing atop my personal annual pinnacle. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is my 2025 Game of the Year. Merci beaucoup, Sandfall. What an achievement.