Yeah, we’re kind of late to the party…
Today we’ll take a look at our 2025 reviews on platforms such as Steam, GOG, PlayStation, and so on. The titles we played the most, we loved the most, and how 2025 differed from 2024 in terms of gaming.
Without further ado…
Ida:
Believe it or not, I’ve (unfortunately) been a pretty busy person lately, and my gaming hobby has suffered for it. Out of the games I was excited about this year, I was looking forward to Avowed, Atomfall, The Alters, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Tales of the Shire. And out of all of those… the only one I actually played was Tales of the Shire. Not great, huh?
Sadly, the combo of not having a good PC and barely having any spare time means that even when I’m hyped and dying to play something, I sometimes have to just watch the excitement from a distance — or I download a game, and it just sits there on my drive, patiently waiting for the moment I finally give it some love… When I do manage to carve out some time, my first stop will be The Alters, which is already waiting for me on PS5.
And how do I rate THE HANDFUL of games I did play in 2025? I already mentioned this when we published our indie ranking — for me, Tales of the Shire feels like a small dream come true. It’s a cozy, Animal Crossing-style game set in my beloved LOTR universe. Calm, charming, absolutely perfect for winding down!
Tales of the Shire
Release Date: July 25, 2025
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Indie
Crow Fitzroy:
As gaming years go, 2025 was on the chiller side. Steam claims I played 29 games, 11 fewer than in 2024, and who am I to judge its accounting. For my money, were I to say what games I played in 2025 it’d have been just Monster Hunter Wilds, Clair Obscur and DRG Survivor. Clearly, the year was longer than my memory, because there’s also some No Man’s Sky in there, and Temtem Swarm, of all things. Allegedly a full 12 new games in the 29, plus 7 demos and 6 playtests. Wild.
I also apparently got 370 achievements, including 112 rare ones, all of them against my will and better judgement. I did, however, narrowly manage to avoid platinuming Clair Obscur thanks to not reaching level 99 with anybody. That’s the true achievement, right there.
A more interesting stat, is that I spent 80% of my gaming time on a controller, a substantial increase from 2024’s 57%. Playing with the sword and board mouse and keyboard is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me, so while I don’t actively avoid games that require KBM, I do prefer using my Carbon Black Xbox pad. So much so, that I got myself a second one as a spare. Maybe if I got the vertical mouse earlier in the year, the stat would’ve looked different: using it to play Avowed this year was perfectly comfy.
Timewise, the year was absolutely defined by Monster Hunter Wilds at 43% of playtime, as I was spared from the performance issues that plagued a large chunk of the playerbase. Critically, the best game I played was definitely Clair Obscur, but my actual favourite discovery was probably No Man’s Sky, all told.
The game got me so good I had to stop playing it simply to save my sleep schedule from evaporating. The fluid structure and extreme sandboxiness turned out to be really good at making me lose track of time. Great game, and getting greater with every update, but I decided it must remain a sometimes-treat for long weekends and other extended bouts of free time.
Avowed
Release Date: February 18, 2025
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Release Date: April 24, 2025
Genres: Role-playing (RPG)
No Man's Sky
Release Date: August 12, 2016
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Adventure, Indie
Monster Hunter Wilds
Release Date: February 28, 2025
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure
Bartosz “Resurrect” Wiktor:
I’ll remember 2025 as the year I fell in love with roguelikes and indie games.
My Steam recap especially shows it. I tried a ton of titles in those genres: Back to the Down, REPO, Content Warning, PEAK, Necesse, Asgards Fall, LORT, Guntouchables, Deadzone Rouge, Balatro, Megabonk, Hades 2, Risk of Rain 2, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Ball x Pit, and Raccoin: Squanch Games.
But it wasn’t all dungeons and dopamine hits. Bigger releases mattered too. I spent the most time hunting Vaults on the planet Kairos in Borderlands 4 (for anyone interested, here’s my BL4 review).
And of course, there’s Monster Hunter Wilds, which pulled me in for countless hours thanks to its new “open-world” formula. I had to put it down for a while because of optimization issues, but it’s clear Capcom has been giving performance a lot of attention. And players are noticing, whether it’s the rising player count in MHWi or the steadily improving reviews on Steam.
On top of that, Battlefield 6 – something I play pretty much daily – has met every expectation I had. Chasing tanks across the entire map or shooting down “metal birds” (helicopters, etc.) is unbelievably relaxing, almost as relaxing as spending a whole match sitting in one bush and trading ammo with other snipers.
Switching over to the console that’s been with me for five years now (seriously, when did that happen?) – the PS5. I’ll focus mainly on my Top 5 from the PlayStation Wrap-Up.
Battlefield 6
Release Date: October 10, 2025
Genres: Shooter
I spent the most time playing Vampire Survivors, including all available DLC. And boy, what a ride that was. Sure, with the sheer number of projectiles and visual effects on screen, my eyesight probably got even worse…but it was absolutely worth it.
Vampire Survivors
Release Date: December 17, 2021
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie, Arcade
Second place? My Game of the Year —no, it’s not Expedition 33 (though I’ll mention it in a bit) — Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. But let’s go in chronological order. My year started with my FIFTH attempt at finishing the first Death Stranding, and this time it finally clicked. I completely fell in love with Kojima’s work. I didn’t expect On The Beach to be such a phenomenal sequel, one that I still keep thinking about. The story, the characters, the world, the gameplay, and the MUSIC. Low Roar fit the atmosphere of the first Death Stranding perfectly, but what Woodkid composed for the sequel is the best gaming soundtrack of the 2020s.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Release Date: June 26, 2025
Genres: Action-adventure
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33…mes amis. The game that absolutely crushed last year – an incredible mix of “Weeeee” gameplay and “Woooo” storytelling. A truly wonderful experience.
Last on the list is God of War Ragnarök, the continuation of Kratos and Atreus’ journey. Hot take: it’s a really great sequel, but the Baldur fight in the first game was one of the best “absolute cinema” sequences I’ve ever seen in gaming. In Ragnarök, in my opinion, that cinematic spark was missing in the major antagonist fights.
God of War Ragnarök
Release Date: September 19, 2024
Genres: Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure, Role-playing (RPG)
I can’t wait to see what 2026 brings (hopefully GTA 6), because gaming has never felt this good.
Luke Kyle:
As I look at my 2025 Steam review, I realize this has been pretty hardcore year for me gaming-wise.
80 games played (8 more than last year): 53 new games, 55 demos, and 1 playtest.
194 achievements, including 6 rare ones, in 24 games.
My longest streak? 23 days, 19 games played. 15 days longer than the last year’s one.
My most played game in 2025 is Outcast: A New Beginning. I’m a huge fan of the original, released in 1999. But, for some reason, I didn’t really dig the sequel’s reveal in 2021. Guess I didn’t think much of it back then, though I was still moderately hopeful.
Cue 2025. I finally get to play the full version of the game. Boy, what an amazing adventure this is. I couldn’t help but grin throughout the entire playthrough.
Sure, it has its share of problems. First and foremost, 1999’s Outcast was totally unique and original back then. A New Beginning, though? This one looks like a rehash of all modern open-world action-adventure game tropes.
Bugs? Quite a handful. Quest structure could use some improvement. The game does too much handholding. There’s very little stuff returning from the first game. Even Cutter Slade looks different and is voiced by a different actor. Marvel-tier final battle is trash.
All this is hard to overlook.
And yet I was completely captivated by ANB. The world looks amazing, the soundtrack by Lennie Moore is pretty much fantastic (though the 1999 one is still more powerful in my book), and the gameplay’s great. The jetpack’s a great addition and it works pretty well. All in all, I loved it.
Still, it’s hard for me to recommend it to anybody. Fans of the original might hate all the changes. Newcomers have better open-world games to play. Guess you should try the demo first, though I doubt it’ll convince you, as it doesn’t really play like the full version. Either way, I loved it, so you might enjoy it, too.
Outcast: A New Beginning
Release Date: March 15, 2024
Genres: Shooter, Adventure
Other most played games? Ravenfield, Project Wingman, and RoboCop: Rogue City.
Project Wingman is that “Ace Combat at home” game. Does a whole bunch of things better than Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, but also has a whole slew of problems. There isn’t much variety to missions plus the fact that there are no checkpoints is a bummer. Imagine losing in the final minute after, like, 30 minutes of playing. That stings. Bad. I enjoyed this one, anyway, though I don’t really dig the roguelike Conquest mode. The expansion was pretty fun, too.
Still, out of all the jetfighter action games I enjoyed Tom Clancy’s HAWX the most, I suppose.
Project Wingman
Release Date: December 01, 2020
Genres: Action, Indie
Ravenfield is basically Battlefield with Skyrim-tier modding. There are literally boatloads of skins, vehicles, weapons, maps, mutators, and other things out there. Want to pit US Marines against Imperial Stormtroopers and have them use WW1 weapons and Warhammer 40K vehicles and planes? No problemo! Still, as much as I want to like this game, there’s something off with how it plays. Gunplay feels off and rag-doll sucks out all the fun. You can turn it off with a fan mutator, though (I think it’s called “No Knockback” or something along these lines). Do it. You’ll thank me for it.
Ravenfield
Release Date: May 18, 2017
Genres: Shooter, Indie
I don’t know, man. I picked up Easy Red 2 last November and enjoyed it much more thanks to excellent gunplay, much more refined gameplay mechanics, and much bigger sense of payoff at the end of the day.
Easy Red 2
Release Date: January 06, 2022
Genres: Shooter, Simulator, Strategy, Tactical, Indie
The RoboCop game? It’s a fun shooter with lots of attention to in-universe details. A very solid 7 out of 10. 8, perhaps. I wasn’t as impressed as I was with Outcast: ANB, but still enjoyed it very much.
RoboCop: Rogue City
Release Date: November 02, 2023
Genres: Shooter
GOG also launched its own year in review in 2025. My stats here are somewhat puny, though. Just 6 new games, 9 hours played, and 2 new achievements unlocked. What a wild ride, right?
My most played GOG game in 2025 is HIND, a great flight sim from 1996. Not many games let you fly the infamous Mi-24V Hind-E gunship. And this one really does it justice. Dated graphics might be a turn-off, but if you want to try something from the golden age of flight simulators, HIND is one of the best picks.
Anyway, I don’t really want my 2026 stats to be anything huge. Just a game or two and a couple of hours of gameplay. That’s all I need this year.