I was just reflecting on games I’ve played in the last year, and wondering when Steam’s year-in-review thing would be happening (probably within the next week).
However, I thought it might be interesting to ask this question before that drops, because I’d expect that people will respond differently before they’ve seen the data, and I think that subjective aspect of the reflection is interesting. So tell me what games you’ve played in the past year that have most stuck out to you. I think it’s more fun if you try to go by memory, but if you want to go check stuff like whether you first played a game in December 2024 or January 2025, that’s fine too; just try to not get too deep into the data, I’m interested in the vibes here.
For me, a recent highlight was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I didn’t expect to be able to play it for a long while because of its cost, but a friend got it for me in November, for my birthday. I like that I’ll always associate it with them for that reason. The game is also very me, what with its artsy fartsy themes and the like.
Before that, I played a heckton of Hades 2, which I thoroughly enjoyed, even if it didn’t quite scratch the same itch that the first game did. I’ve not 100%ed it yet, but I plan to. My favourite part of the game is the music — the boss fight that incorporates music in a cool way is so awesome
And before that was Hollow Knight, partly motivated by hearing all the hype in the runup to Silksong’s release. I’d been weirdly resistant to playing Hollow Knight for years. I think it’s because when something is so universally lauded, it makes me feel oddly anxious. Like, if I don’t enjoy it, does that mean I have bad taste? What if it is objectively amazing, but it just doesn’t click with me, and I feel sad that I’m missing out on whatever magic everyone else is experiencing? Or what if everyone else is wrong, and the game is way overhyped? They’re silly thoughts, but this is fairly common for me (this is why I resisted watching Breaking Bad for years). Fortunately I loved it, and I expect that Silksong will be one of my highlights of 2026. Beautiful soundtrack that I’ve listened to so much that it was in my Spotify wrapped.
The most interesting part of my year is that I branched out more and played smaller games, outside of the typical stuff I’d play, and for a delightfully silly reason: this Venn diagram(Source).
I stumbled across that when I was voraciously consuming as much Disco Elysium analysis as I could back in 2024, when I played it. I had already played Pathologic 2 (largely due to hbomberguy’s video essay on the first one), as well as Planescape:Torment (because so many had cited that as a clear influence on Disco Elysium). This gave me enough points of reference on that venn diagram that I became determined to play all the games included (i.e. Disco Elysium, Pentiment, Felvidek, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, Planescape: Torment, Pathologic 2. The middle section is not a game, but a book (which I haven’t read): Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose)
I was utterly enchanted by this Venn diagram to an absurd degree. According to it:
- Pentiment = Disco Elysium - Pathologic 2;
- Felvidek = Disco Elysium - Planescape: Torment; and
- The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante = Felvidek + Pentiment Based off the first two statements, I felt like I could approximate the vibe of Pentiment and Felvidek, but I was intrigued to test that, and I played two games I don’t think I would have otherwise.
Pentiment was delightful. I played a bunch of it when a medievalist friend was visiting me, and they verified that every weird and wonderful animal drawings were actually drawn from real medieval manuscripts. They worked with multiple historians to ensure the history depicted was accurate, and it made for an incredibly immersive experience. I loved how the text in the speech bubbles were written in a different script depending on how the protagonist perceived them — more educated people speak with a fancied script than peasants, for example. It really grounds the game in the protagonist’s subjective perspective, which synergised so well with the historical setting. I learned so much from this game and from analysis content of it. Apparently Josh Sawyer studied history as an undergraduate, and he’d been wanting to make a game like this for years; I’m so glad he got the chance to make it.
Felvidek is a much smaller game than Pentiment — small enough that I would have felt grumpy at its price if not for the fact that it was clearly a labour of love by a small team. It’s a JROG based in a psuedo-historical version of Slovakia, which I found cool, because I knew next to nothing about Slovakian culture. I still don’t, because it’s not really that kind of game, but I felt like I came away understanding more. It’s the kind of game where I felt close to the developer, given that it was such a small project. If you were going to try any of the games I mentioned here, I’d recommend this one, because I’d wager you’ve not heard of it. If it looks like the kind of game you’d play, I’d advise you go in blind to maximise the impact of the generally absurd vibes. The soundtrack was a highlight for me — it really drove home the absurdity.
Having completed these two pillars of the Venn diagram, I was finally able to complete my quest with The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante. However, I find myself running out of steam and unable to write much more, but it was a fun little experience. Not quite as out there as Felvidek, but definitely something I wouldn’t have played ordinarily.
Experimenting with new games also encouraged me to push myself out of my comfort zone further, with games like Fear & Hunger, and Signalis. I’m not great with horror, but that’s part of why this was fun.
Anyway, what games have been highlights for you guys? Don’t feel pressured to write anywhere near as much as I have — I mostly just wrote this much because I appear to be procrastinating making dinner.
You must log in or register to comment.
Discovering the open source remix of 1997’s Total Annihilation was a gaming highlight of 2025 for me.
The game I’m speaking of is Beyond All Reason.
There were many but the one I wanna mention is Dredge - a horror fishing game that is creepy fun. Wasn’t on my radar but popped up on gamepass and I love it.
For those of you who may be on the fence, go fucking play Dredge
There are too many games I want to play and not enough time to play them, and with a programming background, I decided to basically use Agile methodology to schedule which games I can reasonably finish in a given month. I’ve been tracking my completion times and comparing against How Long To Beat to get good ballpark estimates. This year, I’ve beaten 30 games, 15 of which came out in 2025, and I think I can beat 3 more before the year is done. When a new game comes out, I don’t like to play it unless I’ve played the earlier / mainline / canon entries in the series, so not only did I play Borderlands 4, I played through 1-3, the Tales games, and the Pre-Sequel. I played through the first three Mafia games and intend to play The Old Country once the Steam sale starts. I played not only Kingdom Come: Deliverance II but also its predecessor.
Speaking of KC:D2, that’s the best game I played this year, by quite a margin. Obsidian put out two great games this year in Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, but despite obviously sharing a lot of the same bones, they deliver quite different experiences. Dispatch was a treat. Split Fiction was what I wanted as an iteration on It Takes Two. Borderlands 4 continues what Borderlands 3 set up in making its systems fun for math nerds. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was fun and novel in so many ways, and I love the story behind its development; I do wish that I loved the execution of its story more, and I wish the combat wasn’t so feast or famine, but those things didn’t seem to bother most people. The Alters might be the most slept on game in 2025 relative to its quality; seriously, it’s a great story, and it’s nice to see that level of presentation in a game of its scope and genre. (A lot of Unreal 5 games in that list…)
I’m curious what your take on Borderlands was after paying them all back to back. I’ve been a fan of that world since the beginning, and I’m curious how they stand up without the nostalgia. And of course, which was your favorite?
This series is pretty crazy to play through back to back, because they have to escalate so many times.
Borderlands 1 has the flattest progression curve of the series, and I say that in a good way. I very much prefer flatter progression curves in RPGs, or loot games in this case. It solves a lot of problems with scaling difficulty, eliminating grind, and so on. That said, this is the only game in the series that checks this box. This one sticks fairly close to its North star of Halo meets Mad Max; the premise is simple and it works. I played Roland, because the turret seemed to be helpful when playing solo.
Borderlands 2 is where it finds its identity that it’s known for; actually, they sort of found that identity in the DLC for the first game, but here the characters get much talkier. It comes with a major upgrade in game feel and pacing.
The Pre-Sequel is the blandest of the series by far. The characters are boring, and the elements they use to spice up the formula are not very spicy. The boss fights are well designed though, even in a way that gives it something it does better than 2. But something else interesting happens in this game. I played the class where you get a little drone that comes along and marks targets. Later up the skill tree, this gives you access to a little mini game of killing the guys that you marked to extend the timer of your active ability, plus one or two other gimmicks that create a positive feedback loop. This makes the moment to moment decision making far more interesting in a fight, but it’s a shame how boring a lot of the game can be otherwise.
Tales from the Borderlands is probably the only truly standout writing in the series.
Borderlands 3 is one I seemingly enjoy more than most people. The villains are terrible, I’m sure we all agree, but what’s important to me about the writing in this series is that it has personality more than anything else. I’m not really expecting to hear a ton of great jokes, though I’ll admit I consider the part with Ice T in the body of a teddy bear to be pretty damn funny. The mini game that I noticed in Pre-Sequel that creates a positive feedback loop? It’s kicked into overdrive here. Building out my skill tree is so much better and more interesting than in its predecessors, and there’s yet another major upgrade to game feel over 2 and Pre-Sequel. The decision making in each fight is all about that feedback loop rather than just mindlessly shooting until health bars deplete. I really enjoyed this game. I’m somewhat new to the loot game genre in general, but I have finished Titan Quest before this series, and this positive feedback loop seems to be a relatively recent innovation in the genre; maybe around Diablo 3? I took a brief walk through some other games and couldn’t find anything like it.
New Tales from the Borderlands should have been thrown right in the garbage. It is the worst writing in the series by far.
Borderlands 4, I have yet to finish, but I’m probably 3/4 of the way through, and this time I’ve got a co-op partner. It stands on the shoulders of all the improvements in 3 and adds some new movement stuff as well as some subtle changes to the general design of classes. I once again play a gadget class, but even though my class was functionally nerfed, the way they did it made it more interesting to play. Even with a performance patch, the game still runs pretty shit, but I’m having a good time. The open world may actually be a detriment compared to the old way the game did things, but not so much that it’s a huge drag.
If I’m picking favorites, at this point, it’s a tough call between 3 and 4.
Fantastic write up! Thanks for sharing!
2 is by far my favorite story with the BEST character development, but it definitely has it’s flaws. And the later games have acknowledged and overcome most of those flaws, but it seems like they haven’t had the substance to make me think “That was SOOO GOOD!” like 2 did.
Abiotic Factor, has been a pearl. Survival in a 90’s science center complex in the middle of Australia. Good mechanics once you get past the water hump. The story has the right amounts of dread and humor, and the stakes /difficulty / rewards ramp up just right for me.
Oh and still playing noita… Finally cleared it this year
Oh yeah. Abiotic is a throwback to half-life in graphic sense. I love it and played it a lot with friends. Very well made game in all regards.
And there is a lot more to noita than winning ;)
I’ve played Abiotic twice and have enjoyed it, but both times I’ve stopping before finishing it. I’ve been playing solo and know that playing with friends is a much better experience but sadly none of my friends want to buy it. Would you say it’s worth finishing? I’ve gotten to third third lab area
Void Stranger, all of the ways it fucks with you even up to the end made it very memorable. The catharsis of finally getting it, and turning insurmountable challenges into not even a bump in the road was incredible. Place your faith in the void and jump in blind.
Your pitch has sold me on it. Yet another game to add to my wishlist
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Dave the Diver
- Another Crab’s Treasure
- Cataclismo
- Black Myth: Wukong
(*note some of these were Let’s Play’s I watched instead of played as combat mechanics like Clair/Wukong don’t interest me.)
I also spent a lot of time with an old friend, Heroes of Might and Magic V, Tribes of the East.
Edit/PS: Have to include Tactical Breach Wizards. Hilarious and very different take on the “Xcom-esque” genre. Great characterization and story. Requires a very different style of thinking to master it.
Thanks for reminding me to grab Dave the Diver
Balatro inspired me to download other simple rogue likes on my phone.
I also branched out on console and played both South Park RPGs and Farcry 3.
And somewhere in the middle of all that Oblivion remastered made me play that game all the way through for a fourth time.
Played several games this year I liked.
Hollow Knight with the release of Silksong I figured I should probably finally play this. Great game and deserves the praise it gets. Didn’t get anywhere near 100% completion on it but I am OK with that
Strangers of Paradise played on PS5. Once I figured out the battle mechanic I fell into a rythem with this game and really liked it. Ended up getting the platinum for it because I wanted to keep playing.
Iron Meat finally got a chance to play this. Really fun if short contra style shooter game. Ticks all the right boxes.
Lately I have been playing some classic games and getting retro achievements for them. Fun way to experience my old favorites again with new challenges. I recently played Zelda LTTP and got all the RAs for it. Some fun challenges for the game
Honorable mentions: Cyber Shadow, Firewatch, Mario & Luigi: Brothership
This year was a good year for games.
Hades II is a fantastic roguelike that sucked me in for weeks.
I got convinced to play Project Zomboid by a couple friends. I get the hype now.
Project Diablo 2 is an excellent revival of LoD with rebalancing, new features, and controller support. So much fun on the deck.
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was yet another great addition to the off the rails nonsense that is the Yakuza series.
Yakuza 0 Directors Cut was also a good remaster and English dub. People shit on Yong Yea as Kiryu but I like his performance. Could be because I never played the game in Japanese.
Also spent a lot of time playing Subnautica. An oldie but a goodie, especially with a multiplayer mod.
Yup, this was a good year for gaming.
EDIT: Oh! Can’t forget Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. Pretty fun, challenging but sometimes a bit cheap in the challenges. One optional challenge relied on firing a knife through a narrow gap, but there was no reliable way to line yourself up. And since it was timed and at the very end of the challenge, if you mess up you have to do the whole thing all over again. Other than that, really fun.
I’ve finally bitten the bullet and tried emulation. I can just say the sheer amount of possible playable games is enough so supply multiple lifetimes.
Emulation seems neat to me, but I know behind every comment on it there’s a whispered implication: Piracy. Very few people are imaging their own game discs. That unfortunately makes it less appealing to me, especially as trustworthiness shifts at many of those sites.
roms aren’t really a virus vector, though. The worst they can really do is try to trick people into downloading and executing something that isn’t a rom
Most of those games are no longer being sold outside secondary markets (used games, collectibles, that sort). Neither the publisher nor the developers will ever profit from a “legitimate” sale.
For other games that are still being sold on first-party marketplaces, which is more or less limited to Switch 1 games, you tell me why Nintendo deserves to be treated charitably.
I mean, if you can find and afford the games, yeah, buy them. Problem is most of the games people need to emulate are unavailable or astronomically expensive, and that’s even if you live in the west/Japan… if you leave in the rest of the world, forget it.
Yup, Nintendo in particular has a bad habit of just sitting on a bunch of old games, keeping them unavailable on modern system despite the fact that there’s clearly a market for it. And occasionally they’ll reach into their great big bag of classics, pull something out and say “we’ve done the bare minimum so you can run this on our current gen system (Switch), that will be 50 dollars for a 20 year old game”.
Depending on the system it can be really easy to dump/rip your own discs. Hacking a Wii for homebrew requires jumping through a few hoops but then you can dump Wii, GameCube, and even Gameboy games. You can dump WiiU games by inserting an SD card and going to a single web page in the browser!
Did you ever play them back in the day? I emulated old games for years before I realized how much some of them were designed to be viewed on a CRT. CRT shaders have gotten to be pretty good these days, and it does a lot for the experience for me.
Haven’t played Silksong yet, but its release did get me to play Hollow Knight which had been sitting in my library forever.
I’ve gotten partway through Expedition 33, but decided to take a break after spending ~20 hours on act 1 alone (speaking of, I think it’s about time to get back on that soon).
As much as I like single player games, I imagine the most significant amount of my time by far has probably been spent on multiplayer games like cod
I don’t wanna hype you up too much - but I’d been looking forward to playing Silksong almost since it was announced and had very high expectations, and it did not disappoint!
Uboat
Even though I did not like it at first because of the (optional) management and (also optional) zoomed out cut-out camera view. I loved Silent Hunter and was hoping for a modern take but the above mentioned features of the game kind of clashed with my expectations. Luckily, there is a captain 1st person only mode and walking through your super detailed boat as the captain while listening to 40s radio stations (through mods) and blasting British freighters with well calculated torpedo shots is a lot of fun.
Skyrim VR ( MadGodsMod)
It is always fun to play Skyrim from time to time, but this version has to be my favourite, and after finally having a PC that is beefy enough for VR makes this ancient game one of my highlights this year.
I got Monster Hunter: Wilds finally, but surprisingly, I have not dropped a lot of time into it despite playing the franchise since the first, with usually 100-250 hours spent on any given title I purchased in the series. TBF, my PS5 controller is in a terrible state right now, forcing me to use K&M, which is genuinely surprising to me that they added support for it in the PS5 to begin with. As far as I know, that is very rare. And while I’m no stranger to K&M, I’ve never used it for Monster Hunter and I just don’t dig it much.
I’d actually have to give my personal GOTY to a game that’s not at all new. I’ve eyed Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous for some time, even though I don’t think I’ve played a traditional CRPG since Planescape: Torment (granted not in 1999, I bought it thru GOG, so it had to be sometime after 2008.) And despite it being a CRPG and me knowing that, I played it via Playstation+ on PS5… with my controller, which still had stick drift at the time but not as bad. I sunk between 200-250 hours into it and I still have not beat the damn thing. I kept remaking my party as I grew more familiar with the game’s system. My last and favorite being subclassing all my regulars to have dinosaur pets. Game went on sale for like 6 or 7 bucks a little while ago so I just went ahead and bought it permanently. I’m sure I’ll revisit it again just like I do Elder Scrolls and Borderlands franchises.
This year I unsubscribed from FFXIV. Speaking only for myself, Dawntrail was a massive drop in nearly all aspects after Endwalker. The music and environment were great, I was positively giddy when I reached Solution Nine… but the characters are unlikable, the antagonist is boring and one-dimensional, there is hardly any payoff for setups, one of the most significant conflicts gets resolved with a fucking pep talk, most of the first half of the main story only exists to extol about how much of a chad the current monarch is. Somehow the second half gets even worse with multiple contrived plot points relying on characters being idiots and the player being a passive observer, including the reintroduction of a high profile issue that had been present for the entire DECADE of the game’s existence and resolved in a high profile way in Shadowbringers. Wuk Lamat was fine. Overused and dumb as a pair of boots, but fine.
I got to the final region, got the “I will now genocide the multiverse because my obviously unsustainable economy is running out of resources” monologue, and just stopped playing. Unless 8.0 sees some massive improvements, I have no plans to finish Dawntrail.
On the completely different end of the spectrum, Warframe is in the best place it’s ever been. The last four major updates (1999, Isleweaver, Vallis Undermind, and The Old Peace) have been fucking phenomenal, both in terms of story and gameplay. The Old Peace (released literally a few days ago) also contains the most valid crashout in history. Rap tap tap, little piggy. The new gamemodes are fun, fast-paced, and so far haven’t outstayed their welcome, although like always, I’m worried about their longevity since they’re essentially content islands.
Warframe’s music is exceptional. I’ll always appreciate the works of Keith Power (he gave us We All Lift Together and This Is What You Are), but the current composer Matt Chalmers has elevated the game’s music both in quality and variety. Starting with 1999, there are no songs that I ever want to skip, and that includes the virtual boy band. Even if you have no interest in the game, you shouldn’t skip the music: TennoConcert 2025 (Matt is the eternally chilled out dude who sings From The Stars), Tethra Jahrak, Lullaby of the Manifold, and (potential spoilers) Roses from the Abyss.
In terms of smaller games, I fell off the wagon and had several all-night benders in Factorio. If you’re anywhere near the spectrum, that game is like crack cocaine. I had a lot of fun in Project Wingman and the biggest furball in history, I replayed Star Wars: Republic Commando, and rediscovered my appreciation for games where the player is not the Chosen One. Against all wisdom, I finally played The Mystery Of The Droods. Even knowing what awaited me, I was unprepared for the absolute jank.
I play a lot of games every year and nowhere complete anything so whatever I do complete they go into great games I recommend to friends.
Clair obscure expedition 33 was my highlight of the year. Long time since a game made me cry and laugh like this one. Completed chapter 2 but then I had enough but I want to return and look more at this and the next chapter.
No rest for the wicked is in EA but it totally captivated me for a couple of weeks. Had a lot of fun and looking forward to multiplayer and playing with my friends. I love that the devs are following their own vision and doing stuff a little bit different.
Reality Break. This one is a bit odd. I managed to buy the wrong game somehow but this was totally a hidden gem for me. No regrets and they had some big updates after I was done so I plan to return one day.
Metaphor Re Fantazio. My first game like this one and while I never completed it it made a mark.
Heart of the machine will get a small spotlight also. Very different game and something that I really have to visit again when it releases in 1.0.
I guess my 2026 will be a lot of revisits and (hopefully!!) less buying games. Another good overhaul mod of Factorio would save me a lot of money and Guild wars 2 occupies quite a bit of my gaming time.
