The 25 Best Video Games of 2025

Nintendo didn’t really need to do much to ensure that their next Mario Kart game was a hit. Customers have been gobbling up the last entry, 2017’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, with nearly half of all Switch owners worldwide picking up a copy. A little iteration could’ve made bank, but they decided to one-up their game just the same. Mario Kart World is the biggest installment of the franchise ever, introducing a fully interconnected world to explore and 24-player races that add a Fury Road-like urgency to each chaotic chase.At its heart, it’s basic Mario Kart; just pick any number of Nintendo mascots, customize your favorite vehicle, and hit the track. The free-roam mode adds a nice touch to time-killing in between online matchups, and gives curious drivers secrets to find in their offline downtime. The biggest and best addition is Knockout Tour, which links together multiple courses for one extended cross-region race with a battle royale twist, as lowest placing competitors are eliminated at each checkered flag. Some would argue that Mario Kart World plays it a little safe, especially compared to the more ludicrous gameplay of Kirby Air Riders, but it’s the perfect middle ground between accessibility and endless replayability that its more confounding peer just can’t quite crack.

Formally announced back in 2019, Hollow Knight: Silksong has taken so long to arrive, fans began to fear it had become vaporware. But the game was very real and arrived this September to a rapturous reception, crashing digital storefronts as everyone who’d even heard the name rushed to download their copy. However, what many found — especially newcomers — was a blindingly difficult exercise in self-flagellation that catered more toward experts of the first game than entertaining any amount of handholding.Does that make it any worse? Not really. The first Hollow Knight was no picnic, but its sequel aims to force players to think outside the norm on how to tackle its many traversal-based puzzles and deadly boss duels. Everything can (and will) kill you in this game and making it all the way through its extended three acts will demand only the best from its audience. It’s not exactly revolutionary; Silksong began as a downloadable expansion for the original and plays more like a double-sized direct continuation than a meaningful leap forward. But when the foundation is one of the greatest games ever made, getting a second helping isn’t exactly an issue.

In our risk-averse capitalist culture, it can be hard to push through any kind of thought-provoking ideas, especially at a company as big as Microsoft. But Xbox Game Studios has been surprisingly great at publishing unexpectedly fantastic projects — perhaps the best of which is Compulsion’s South of Midnight. An action-adventure title set in the Deep South, its Gothic fantasy roots blend with Black culture by way of the bayou in this folklore-heavy tale.The story centers on Hazel, a young woman desperately trying to prepare for an impending hurricane that will ultimately wipe out her home, taking her mother along with it. To pick up the pieces, players will explore a fantastical vision of the Deep South, filled with rich characters like a massive catfish and a litany of Pan’s Labyrinth-like creatures that will make your skin crawl. The game’s narrative explores many cultural and societal issues that face the real-world residents of the American South, and never shies away from uncomfortable truths. With a jittery stop-motion style, it’s aesthetically unlike anything else out there — a fully realized vision of artistry that celebrates those who are often ostracized by pop media and the gaming industry at large.

Although many have tried to make the “extraction shooter” subgenre work on a casual scale, only a select few have succeeded. PlayStation found success last year with the fascist satire Helldivers 2 but floundered on their second attempt with the currently shelved Marathon. Nobody really knew how Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders would do; its trailers looked great and strong word of mouth seemed hopeful, but chatter doesn’t make a hit.But once it arrived in late October, ARC Raiders proved to be everything the scene needed to thrive. Its post-apocalyptic world (set in Italy rather than the recycled wasteland of North America) feels different enough, and its robotic enemies feel like a refreshing change of pace from endlessly waves of zombies and monsters. But what surprised everyone the most was the game’s unexpectedly kind community; as a PvPvE game, it’s intended to be played with squads all gunning to steal each other’s resources, but players quickly found that they could all band together to thrive as a collective. It didn’t last long (how could it), but the friendlier aspects of the game made it a popular with streamers and empowered players who might otherwise skip this type of game to give a go.

Sometimes, a game comes along whose title says it all. Ball x Pit is one such game. Players are dropped into a subterranean gorge on a high-powered lift and left to shoot balls at waves of marching enemies. Part-Arkanoid, part-roguelike, it’s a game whose simplicity belies its deeply addictive nature.Players get to choose between an increasing number of characters, all of whom have their own pros and cons. Some shoot balls faster than others, or two at a time in divergent directions, or straight through enemies to catch them with hits on the bounce back. While it seems straightforward enough — you don’t even have to manually fire, just aim and move — there’s layers of strategy to it. Hitting enemies on the sides or the back is key to critical hits (an RPG-like element), and choosing the right upgrades and plotting a course for powering up and combining abilities gives the game true roguelike credentials. There’s even an entire town-building sim aspect that helps move progression along, but really, it’s as simple as ball-meets-pit. Have fun trying to explain why a game with that name kept you up until the wee hours on a weekday.

When it comes to cinematic experiences in gaming, few names have as much draw as Hideo Kojima. The creator of the Metal Gear franchise helped pioneer the idea that interactive media could tell stories at the level of films, and since departing Konami in 2015, he’s made it his personal mission to hybridize the art form, one A-list actor scan at a time. In 2019, Death Stranding became his first big foray into a more singular vision, featuring an all-star cast including Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Margaret Qualley, and even his directorial peers Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn.The sequel goes even bigger — and frankly, more pretentious. But that’s what people expect from the gaming auteur who somehow convinced PlayStation that a 70-hour walking simulator with FedEx delivery elements was going to be a blockbuster (and he was right). Death Stranding 2 picks up the threads of the first game with protagonist Sam Porter Bridges (Reedus) opting for one last job to reconnect the scattered remnants of humanity to a shared terminal network. What follows is impossible to summarize in a few sentences, but there’s interdimensional spirits, mental possessions, time-jumping apparitions — just all kinds of crazy shit. It’s an experience that demands to be played rather than recapped on YouTube, and to its credit actually makes the video game part much more engaging than the first go around.

Occasionally there’s a game whose eclectic mix of genres shouldn’t really make sense, but in practice just kind of works despite itself. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy blends visual novel storytelling with tactical role-playing combat, social simulation elements, and deadly board game mechanics — and it’s fantastic. The plot is grim. Players embody Takumi Sumino, a Tokyo-based high school student who resides in an underground dome that’s frequently hit with emergency sirens. Monsters are perpetually invading, with humanity forced to hunker down in shelters, but most of the context — the what and why — remain a mystery. One ill-fated day, Takumi gets caught in the open and is transported to secluded complex that he’s told (by a mouthy stuffed animal) is the last line of defense for society. It’s up to him and a group of misfits to learn to work together and save everyone.Little makes sense at first, but over the course of 100 in-game days, the various threads become increasingly twisty to an almost dizzying degree. You see, there’s 100 different ways the story can pan out, and it’s up to the player to take the journey to exhaustive lengths to find out how things can shake out. It’s quite an investment, but The Hundred Line packs in an entire series worth of anime lore and excitement into a single package worth wringing dry.

Each year like clockwork, there’s that one indie game that hits and causes an uproar. This is the game of the year, no question. Sometimes it’s hyperbole, other times you end up with decade-definer like Balatro, but in 2025 the early shoo-in for the most talked about indie was Blue Prince — a first-person puzzle game that had people enraptured.The premise seems simple: a man named Simon must explore the various chambers of his grandfather’s 45-room estate in search of a mysterious 46th room. The catch is that players themselves will be charting the path, determining which room comes next in the blueprint based on a limited number of options. It’s a choice-driven puzzle that unfurls in real-time, and leads to many dead ends, but once the code is cracked there’s more to find than you can fathom. It’s the sort of game where the end is just the beginning, and the mysteries of Mt. Holly Estate just keep coming. It’s befuddling at first, but once Blue Prince’s bones are laid bare, it’s a riveting puzzle adventure that’s so much more than it seems on the surface.

Nobody quite does the cinematic single-player game experience quite at the scope of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Series like God of War, The Last of Us, and Horizon all utilize best-in-class motion capture technology and high-quality graphics to bridge the uncanny valley with deeply realistic picturesque acting. Ghost of Tsushima (2020) was a solid example of this, leaning heavily on the foundation of samurai cinema — specifically the work of director Akira Kurosawa — to elevate a decent enough open-world action-adventure into something more.Its sequel, Ghost of Yōtei, picks up the banner and runs with it; it’s even more visually arresting, more cinematic — pulling from a deeper pool of film references, both Japanese and Western. The story of Atsu (played by Erika Ishii) is sharper and more tragic than her predecessor Jin’s; it’s a bloody tale of vengeance in line with Lady Snowblood and Kill Bill, but doesn’t feel so reductive as to merely ape from the best. But the real improvements lie in the gameplay, which is much more varied than Tsushima’s. Atsu’s role as a mercenary means she isn’t bound to rigid samurai structure, and it makes for a more diverse set of skills to employ in an even more dynamic world.

Plenty have tried their hand at making interactive TV. From Netflix’s Bandersnatch to the text-to-vote gimmick of American Idol, companies have tried all kinds of ways to give audiences agency over their stories — and guarantee their engagement along with it. In gaming, that sense of authorship over the narrative has been done best in playable graphic adventures of Telltale Games, but even at their peak with series like The Walking Dead, there’s an inherent disconnect between the forced interactions of the game’s world and the story.AdHoc Studios’ Dispatch aims to do things just a little differently. Comprised of industry veterans, including many from Telltale, the developers’ vision for hybridizing gameplay and passive viewing threads the needle by designing an experience that looks much closer to an animated series than before and gutting all the most boring parts of point-and-click games (i.e. controlling the characters). As superhero workplace sitcom, Dispatch is deftly written; it’s funny, heartwarming, and pokes just enough fun at itself without falling into lazy recycled parody. By adhering closer to the cadence of a TV show rather than game, it finds the magic spot between giving players just enough control while still keeping the plot on rails. It’s the first game of its kind to really justify an episodic release — one the creators could actually stick to, doled out over the course of four weeks rather than years.

A new generation of Nintendo hardware demands a top-class platformer. And while one might assume that means Mario, for the first time in decades, it’s Donkey Kong who’s here to answer the call. Donkey Kong Bananza surprised many as the first big 3D action game the great ape has starred in since 1999’s Donkey Kong 64, and Nintendo’s pulled out all the stops to ensure that the king’s comeback is cause for alarm.Like Super Mario Odyssey and games of its ilk, Bananza is basically an open-ended collectathon, wherein players run, jump, and punch (big emphasis there) through various sandbox areas to find all kinds of banana-themed loot. The big differentiator is the complex physics system that lets DK literally tear apart the earth beneath him with each big-knuckled swing. It’s possible to spend hours disintegrating boulders, ice, and hardened magma to dust — somehow, it just never gets old. The many verbs employed in Bananza feel incredible in action; even with minimal plot or impetus to move forward, just being DK warrants the time investment to play. It’s the prettiest a Nintendo game has ever looked and sets a new standard for what 3D mascot platformers can be.

It might seem unfair to give a game like Hades II this high a spot on the ranking given that it also appeared on last year’s best of 2024 list while still in early access. But that just means you haven’t played Hades II. The sequel to Supergiant Games’ all-timer action roguelike indie (now in its full release version), it’s an evolution and iteration so staggering in scope and ambition, it’s practically two sequels in one.Set some time after the events of the first game, Hades II follows the daughter of the titular lord of the Underworld, named Melinoë, a witch trained by Hecate for a singular mission: kill the titan Chronos and free the gods and lesser beings of Olympus and below from his maniacal grasp. Oh, and he also happens to be grandfather. Like Hades, the sequel explores the familial relations, friendships, and rivalries between all the characters in Greek mythology. The goal is for Melinoë to fight her way down to Tartarus, and later up to Olympus’ summit, to quell the war that’s ripping the world apart chamber by chamber, fight by fight.Once again, Supergiants knack for subtle storytelling shines through in a seemingly endless stream of conversations that slowly unravel each character, and they grow closer and more open with Melinoë. As fun as the actual gameplay is, it’s more of a means to an end — the reward is learning more about this world and its denizens, making each cycle endlessly rich with consequence.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the kind of game nobody could’ve seen coming. It’s AA title developed by a mid-sized team from France without any established IP or even a clear basis for what the whole thing’s all about on the surface. But once players got ahold of it and word of mouth spread like wildfire, it instantly became the must-play game of 2025.Set in a fantasy world inspired by the Belle Époque period, Expedition 33 feels distinct from the start, with French accordion music and creepy mimes filling the periphery of its gloomy vistas. Its vision is bleak; reality has been splintered by a godlike being known as the Paintress, who annually culls every living person of a certain age, perpetually reducing humanity’s lifespan year after year as society molds to exist around its inevitable doom. Each cycle an expedition sets out on a suicide mission to end the Paintress’ reign once and for all. At this point, it feels futile — but there’s always hope for tomorrow.Boiled down to its core components, Expedition 33 is a pretty straightforward turn-based RPG. It utilizes a rhythmic parry system similar to Super Mario RPG and numerous PS1 era games; its graphics are impressive given the studios’ size, but not exactly pristine. Even its greatest strength, the story, veers into melodrama as various points. But together, these warts mostly fade, giving way to the most emotionally arresting game of the year that also happens to be really fucking fun to play.The reality is that Expedition 33 is an underdog in every conceivable way. For a JRPG-style game to garner this much attention in the West in astounding. Outside of Sony’s first-party lineup, rarely is anything made with this much cinematic substance and, arguably, even more to say than any of those games. But really, the game speaks for itself. It doesn’t take long to kick into gear and, even for people who are RPG-averse, Expedition 33 fires on so many cylinders, it’s bound to sink its teeth into the vast majority of people willing to boot it up.