If I was to combine the themes of the gaming industry in 2025 into a singular word, that word would be ‘wait’. For some, that has been the continued wait for something to arrive. Grand Theft Auto VI won most anticipated game for the third year running at The Game Awards, and we’re still no closer to the end of the “We got X before we got GTAVI” memes. It has often felt like half of the gaming industry has been watching this behemoth with baited breath, trying to anticipate its next move so that they don’t get caught up as collateral damage when it finally arrives and sucks all the air out of the room. There have been a number of other extended waits too; Crimson Desert (originally planned for 2021!), the Prince of Persia remake, Pragmata, Fable, Marvel 1943, Marathon and Subnautica 2, among others, were all planned to arrive in 2025, but find themselves taking aim at 2026 instead.
For many others however, 2025 was about the end of a wait. The highly anticipated Silksong dashed to release this year, as did Blue Prince, Lost Soul Aside, Dead Static Drive and Routine, all of which had been featured on many “games to watch” list features for a number of years.
I think many would agree that this has been a challenging year for game developers and publishers, no matter how big or small. The war over generative-AI usage rages in any forum where it can be discussed. More developers found their studios shuttered, or at risk of closure, due to continued financial fragility (and ceaseless capitalist greed) across the globe. To that end, my favourite use of the word “wait” in relation to the events of 2025 is the intransitive verb version which is “to look forward expectantly”. Despite the challenges, there have been countless moments of inclusive positivity, of creative achievement, of underdog victories and bold artistic expression that make me excited for the future. 2025 has raised the bar for games of the future. It’s a year that has featured more than a few games that are likely to become all-time greats, to be discussed for years to come. It’s a year that has drunkenly stuck its head out of a limousine sunroof and shouted “We didn’t even need Grand Theft Auto VI to be brilliant”. And it was right. What a year it has been, as you’ll see from the list below.
As is customary here at Finger Guns, we won’t be picking a singular ‘game of the year’. We’re all different people, with strong, often polar-opposite subjective tastes in video games. To choose just one game would be silly, and you know it. Instead, the entire team has their say on what they consider to be the best of the best. Each year, this results in an eclectic blend of honours that bridges across the entire gaming spectrum. Hopefully it’ll inspire you to take a look at any of these games you’ve let pass you by this year.
Without further ado, allow us to introduce to you the “Finger Guns Games of the Year 2025”. Enjoy.
MILES
It’s almost become a faux pas to consider Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as game of the year, given its rapturous praise and clean sweep of the Game Awards. However, a piece of art becoming universally popular does not detract from its inherent brilliance. Expedition 33 is so far ahead of everything else this year (and possibly, multiple previous years) for me that I’d be deluded even contemplating anything else. Not only did it deserve the praise, accolades, review scores and awards, it probably deserves even more.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the first game in an age to genuinely surprise me at every turn. Its story is beautifully crafted, with layers and deviations that fundamentally change your views and perspectives of characters and events. The art style is beyond stunning, consistently wowing with whimsical French Renaissance flair. There aren’t even words to quite grasp how special and spectacular the music this – Une vie à Peindre/Taimer are incredible tracks outside of the game, never mind inside of it.
But what’s most struck me, and cemented the game firmly in my top 10 of all time, is the layering of themes, from differing meanings of grief and tragedy, to commitment to family and facing adversity for the future of others. Expedition 33 has led to more philosophical discussions than I can remember. I’ve been more reflective and introspective from my conversations with friends about the meanings of it all than is scarcely believable. Oh, and the turn-based gameplay is some of the best you’ll find in the genre.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be talked about long after the discourse about game of the year dies down. The stories of its development, the hilarious unintentional Charlie Cox memes, and the wonderful characters and voice acting. All of it culminates in one of the best games of the generation, not just of 2025. The game is for now, and for those who come after.
HONOURABLE MENTION: KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE II
From barely getting 6 hours into the original, to lamenting that 110 hours of the sequel wasn’t enough, I’ve been on some journey with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. I was so close to giving it a 10/10, and I still wonder if I should. This is one of the most stunningly realised, immersive RPG experiences ever crafted, with a ridiculously lavish and beautiful 14th-century Bohemia to lose dozens of hours of your life in. Any other year, this would be a shoo-in for my game of the year. I laughed, I despaired, I roared in victory, and most of all, I enjoyed every second of this odyssey alongside Henry of Skalitz. You can read more of my thoughts in my review, but Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a masterclass in RPG design.
JOSH
Surprise, surprise, the person who makes skateboarding the majority of their personality deems a game about skating their game of the year – but let me explain. Sam Eng’s Skate Story is vehemently about the sport; not just defined by its gameplay, but the challenge, the ethos, the restarts, the catharsis, the journey of improvement. And this year has met that similar criteria for me.
It’s a shallow problem, but reflecting on a singular game to call the best of the year has proven difficult. My mind has been in a million places, and it’s all just noise detracting from my attention. This has meant beating any game I’ve been excited about impossible. So instead, I’ve leaned on live service games that have no end, that fill my time with stuff to do, but none of it is ultimately satisfying.
That is until I take control of a demon made of glass, skateboard in hand, and with an appetite that can only be satiated by eating the moon. Whether it’s the rewarding gameplay that felt like a challenge to overcome, the blasting bass from the Blood Cultures soundtrack, or the abrasive visuals, that noise in my head stopped.
I started to just play, never overthinking or overanalysing – despite knowing it was for a review. No other game has ripped me from my desire to be done with something the moment I attach myself to it. I was in a flow state, not too dissimilar from ten or so years ago when I was learning tricks at my local skatepark. I always knew I was going to enjoy Skate Story, but I never anticipated the comfort it would bring, and how I need to enjoy the process that little bit more.
HONOURABLE MENTION: CITIZEN SLEEPER 2: STARWARD VECTOR
A bigger, bolder sequel that presents its themes through gameplay moreso than its storytelling this time around. Being present in the minutiae of overcoming the odds through unrelenting randomised dice rolls, as opposed to passively receiving what Jump Over The Age wrote, took me a while to relish.
You’re still rolling dice and taking chances in the predecessor, but the high-wire act of managing your resources felt comfortable, nearly infallible. The writing is just as poetic here, but I often found myself stressing over the overbearing pressure of failure. I was in the shell of my compromised Sleeper this time around, managing the many fragile game mechanics Starward Vector hurls at you, and I think that felt too close to home to reflect on its ingenious design.
However, time has passed, credits have rolled multiple times, and Starward Vector is the perfect follow-up to Citizen Sleeper. There’s a more lived-in world, more fleshed-out mechanics and words are transformed into gameplay when tackling the brute force of capitalism with compassion and community.
ROSSKO
It’s very difficult to decipher what makes Promise Mascot Agency so damn great. When looking back at this year there’s games that I’ve played more, games that I’ve probably connected to more emotionally. And yet when I take a look at the reviews I’ve written in the last 12 months, this utterly bizarre video game stands out above the rest – there is genuinely nothing else like it and it deserves its flowers for that reason alone.
The premise? Why, you’re a disgraced Yakuza member exiled to a tiny town, crumbling and about to lose itself in its own misery. Fortunately, you have terribly good business acumen and you re-open the town’s mascot agency, giving the real life actual mascots themselves reason to work again, bringing life back to this sleepy borough.
And your mascots are what make you all the dollar needed to revitalise the world around you. By sending them to events, store openings and whatnot, you’re simultaneously returning the town to its former glory whilst improving your business and giving work to these sweet mascots – think Pokemon, but instead of making them fight they stand there and look cute whilst the humans open a Debenhams – who are terribly grateful for your efforts.
It’s difficult to really quantify why it’s just so damn addictive (I did try in my 10/10 review from earlier this year, mind) but nothing else put a smile on my face quite like it this year and for that reason it stands head and shoulders above the rest. It’s just so fun, so joyous, so rewarding and so utterly adorable, I implore the world to check out the madcap insanity of Promise Mascot Agency as soon as possible.
HONOURABLE MENTION: SPLIT FICTION
I’ve no doubt Paul has already gone hell for leather on how utterly wonderful Split Fiction is, so I won’t keep you long. Split Fiction is Hazelight’s masterpiece. We could talk for hours about how the story may not be as strong as It Takes Two, how the gameplay loop reimagines itself with each new level, how the visuals are utterly glorious and how myself and my fiancee said ‘THIS IS SO FUCKING COOL’ out loud several times playing this wonderful game, but the fact is, it’s a spectacular experience that I’m eternally glad I played this year.
I’ll spend the rest of my days wondering how on earth that final level was created. It absolutely blew me away, and I simply have no idea how Hazelight pulled it off. That Josef Fares, man. He’s rather clever.
Listen to our Games of The Year Podcast below!
SEAN
I truly believed that the ‘Telltale Formula’ was dead and gone for good. Interactive storytelling that puts the narrative and performance before all else seemed to have been almost eroded away entirely by the waves upon waves of soulslikes that swap a well paced, comprehensive story for cryptic lore nuggets that you need a 4 hour YouTube video to understand. Then came Dispatch and it felt like 2012 again.
To put it bluntly, Dispatch is what happens when you examine the Telltale formula, strip away all of the filler you don’t need, and then blend it with a character driven narrative that’s equal parts absurd and relatable. Playing on the juxtaposition between the life of super heroes and the everyday mundanities of corporate office life, Dispatch manages to carve out a world that’s deeply familiar yet full of surprises for the player. The cast of characters, brought to life by some world class performances, would feel as at home in the Justice League as they would in a new season of The Office.
I’ve completed Dispatch 4 times now, exploring its web of narrative branches, and have been continually impressed by how well the game respects your choices, represented in tiny details that craft immersion and help build the impression that the path you choose isn’t just one of many. It’s your path. It’s your blossoming office relationship. It’s your team of misfits that cause you aggravation on a daily basis. It’s your work that has course corrected the ship and has overcome insurmountable odds.
The developers Adhoc Games have been quoted in saying that they wouldn’t advise anyone else do episodic game releases. It’s probably good advice, but for 2025, Dispatch became “the water cooler game”. Each week, both my social media and my IRL friend group would talk about the game. “What did you choose when…”, “I gasped when he said…”, “How did you deal with…” became the topic of conversation. For me, experiencing this incredibly well made game as it unfurled along its weekly schedule was an experience I thought lost to video games. Dispatch is, in my opinion, the best game to release in 2025, even without the episodic excitement. The animation, vocal performances, musical choices, narrative twists and turns, mini-games, character development; for me, it was near faultless.
HONOURABLE MENTION: BORDERLANDS 4
Borderlands has reached Marmite status in the gaming zeitgeist. You either love it, or you hate it. As it’s on this list, you can infer that I’m in the former camp. For me, Borderlands 4 felt like the maturing of a series that recognised that much of what made it popular in 2012 wouldn’t land as well in 2025. So instead, it became a bit more cerebral, relied less on being edgy, but still managed to be funny enough to force a laugh out of ne every so often.
The open world, the gun play and the traversal are all incredible in action, and the variety of well designed Vault Hunters to choose from this time meant playing the game felt vastly different depening on who you play as. More than anything else however, I’ve chosen Borderlands 4 as my honourable mention because of the lengths that Gearbox have gone to to ensure this game works as a local co-op experience. Split screen multiplayer complete with adjustments of difficult for each player so it’s engaging for everyone is such a rarity in 2025, and makes Borderlands 4 feel like a real curio. For the first time, I’ve got kids older enough to play a Borderlands game, and it was been an absulte pleasure to share this experience with them. Thank you Gearbox for many evenings of entertainment where I get to see my eldest gasp at the scale of the enemies we’re taking on, and rush to check whether that purple weapon that drops after we win.
KAT
I said it on the podcast but my demand avoidance got the better of me this year. While I gamed throughout the year, many games that release this year will likely be a 2026 project and so I continue this annoying pattern I’ve observed in myself that any hype around games and their release are sat on.
That being said, I did play a few bangers released this year and this makes my GOTY no less deserving of its title as it likely still would have taken my top spot regardless! Two Point Studios is on a fantastic trajectory with their releases and Museum is a winning example of that that absolutely deserved its 10/10 and my GOTY spot.
Ive absolutely waxed lyrical about its greatness here, but I think every sentance and flower given holds up well as we see the end of 2025. Two point for me, lies top spot of the sim genre, it’s managed to make what is usually a difficult-to-play-on-console entry one of the most accessible sim building games of today. Museum builds on every passionate decision made on the previous two entries, hospital and campus and injects so much imagination on what can be done to build, design and run your own museum and all the parts in between.
I am so excited to see what is next for the studios because not one back step has been had since the studios birth. If you’ve never played any of these games or you’ve played prior titles but museum’s are not your thing. I urge you to jump in to Two Point Museum. It’s a spectacle and one you would not be disappointed in
HONOURABLE MENTION: DAYS GONE REMASTERED
I always have a little bit trepidation giving a remaster GOTY despite really enjoying it which is why I think something like this fits nicely in an honourable mentions category. If you’ve experienced the PlayStation first party Big 4 (Uncharted, TLOU, God of War and Horizon) and you’ve not played Days Gone. There is literally no better time to jump in.
Days Gone, while experiencing some difficulties and controversy among its release initially and following the sequel debacle from PSPlus after it gained significant positive recognition (we won’t talk about this it’s a sore spot). Days Gone has gotten a refresh and looks absolutely stunning.
The story is as rich as the big 4, the game is absolutely humongous and will fill the itch for a story driven third person adventure. There’s also new game modes if you have played before or even if you just want to re-experience the game again, I did. It’s worth it.
My rally cry for playing Days Gone is here. It’s unexpectedly brilliant, underrated and deserved a sequel. Now. Is. The. Time.
GREG
I am very aware that my choice isn’t a new game, per se, and is also a remake so it probably contradicts a few things. But I don’t care, for one main reason: Metal Gear Solid 3 is one of my all-time favourites.
So a remake, much in the vein of the 2018 Shadow of the Colossus remake, that keeps everything intact is what makes it my “comfort zone” game of 2025. It may be low hanging fruit, but… there’s a reason why it’s comfortable and easy to reach.
I won’t sell you the game here, this is meant to be short. If you’ve played it twenty years ago, you’ve played this. It’s the same, except with some quality of life improvements, control options and some very good looking visuals.
The silliness is there, the convoluted, “What’s a Philosopher?” plot is there… all of it is the same. It’s just better, and that’s what made me enjoy it again. Nostalgia is a wonderful drug and Konami tapped that into my vein.
HONOURABLE MENTION: DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH
I was originally going to put Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, but as I pondered, it occurred to me that Death Stranding 2 came and went. Whilst it was a much better game to play than the original, it didn’t have that same WTF impact that its predecessor did.
It’s still bonkers, but we’ve come to accept that from Kojima. Don’t get me wrong: if you didn’t gel with the first one, don’t expect this to change your mind instantly. But it’s still great, if you’re invested in the Strandiverse (yes I made that up).
PAUL
Released in early 2025 by Hazelight Studios, the team behind It Takes Two and A Way Out, Split Fiction quickly becomes a “Game of the Year” frontrunner. It takes Hazelight’s mastery (Witchcraft?) of co-op play and pushes it into amazingly imaginative new territory.
The fact that it launched so early in the year and has still remained my Game of the Year, despite some genuinely stellar releases since, says everything about how special it is. From the very first level, I knew this was going to be my top pick. Without question, it’s a monumental achievement in both storytelling and gameplay.
Split Fiction is the kind of game where you finish a level thinking there is no way it can top that, and then it does. Every single time. The creativity never lets up, and the sheer confidence of its ideas leaves your jaw on the floor more often than not.
When I say it offers the best of both worlds, I mean that literally. Games usually sit firmly in either sci-fi or fantasy, but here you get both, sometimes at the same time. The transitions are seamless and never jarring. One moment you’re flying on dragons, the next you’re racing Akira-style bikes up a neon skyscraper. It’s relentless, thrilling, and packed with genius-level design and co-op moments I genuinely didn’t think were possible. These two words would be nothing if the gameplay didn’t match the ambition, but Split Fiction backs up its ideas with endlessly inventive mechanics, near flawless co-op , and platforming that feels tight and intuitive throughout.
Beyond the huge main levels, there are also hidden, experimental side sections tucked away throughout the game. These short bursts of madness constantly ask you to adapt to new mechanics and strange ideas, each one a nice change of pace and a surprise. And honestly, any game brave enough to let you play as a sausage desperately trying to get barbecued deserves serious recognition for that alone.
It’s creative, it’s brilliant , and it’s an absolute must-play.
HONOURABLE MENTION: ARC RAIDERS
ARC Raiders really came out of nowhere for me. It’s not my usual type of game, but the 80s aesthetic immediately caught my eye, and if you know me, you’ll know that’s a huge selling point. So I decided to give it a go, and I’m very glad I did.
It’s an excellent extraction shooter with stellar sound design, and those 80s vibes I mentioned earlier fit perfectly with its post-apocalyptic, machine-run world.
The crafting and looting systems are both excellent, and the graphics and animation are top-notch, easily on par with a AAA title. The game is also incredibly tense. You’re constantly wondering whether the sound upstairs in an abandoned building is friend or foe, or if that electronic creaking noise in the distance is slowly heading your way. Still, nothing compares to the tension of waiting for extraction.
There’s so much to craft and level up that it can feel almost endless, and occasionally overwhelming. But setting that aside, I’ve never really been into extraction shooters, and now I think I might be. That alone deserves recognition in its own right.
TOBY
I think Hell Is Us was the only game this year where I just forgot I was playing a game and got pleasantly lost in a fictional world. Hell Is Us had this great design philosophy of making you actually read about the things you picked up and the relics you found, to look for clues, and work out where to go next. It did far less guiding than your average game, and frankly, it was a breath of deep water. By that I mean, the philosophy immersed me completely in the world of Hadea because I wasn’t simply skimming over the top of it like a flat stone; I was sinking deep and breathing it in.
Hell Is Us was interesting narratively as it occupied this Lagrange point between Fromsoft’s enigmatic lore-based worldbuilding and the plot-driven narratives behind things like Uncharted, or a Final Fantasy. Hell Is Us managed to present a compelling narrative mystery, far more so than something like Dark Souls, because what’s hidden in the items and NPCS and audio logs actually drives the plot. I found it game-changing and engrossing.
It’s too rare these days to find not just a plot, but a world and a mystery, and relics and symbology that all seem deeply real. Gameplay and design that had something to say, and supported the style of the plot and mystery like this many-layered onion. As I penetrated further into Hadea, the mysteries just kept unfolding, and I never could be sure I’d really found the deepest point. A smashing success not just in its fiction, but in its design philosophy.
HONOURABLE MENTION: GHOST OF YOTEI
It might sound jarring after the reasons I loved Hell Is Us, to have my honourable mention be an open-world with too many icons to clear off a map, but Ghost Of Yotei was the exception to the rule. Where I have grown tired of open worlds with too little narrative and too many pointless tasks, Sucker Punch managed a pretty perfect balance of diverting episodes alongside an engrossing tale of revenge. Also, picking up dropped weapons and hurling them into your enemies somehow never got old.
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And that’s us! Everyone at Finger Guns wants to wish you a very Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays and a wondrous new year. 2026 is going to be quite something for video games (if everything launches as it’s supposed to) and we’ll be there to cover the lot.
Thank you for reading. We’ll see you in 2026!
Team Finger Guns
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