2025 in Games
Jason SadlerBeing unemployed gives you a lot of time to work on side projects, spend time with family, and play video games. Here’s what I played in 2025. It’s a long one, buckle up!
Some highlights, if you don’t want to read all 3500 words 😅
January
Wow. I played (or at least starting playing) a lot of retro games this month. You’re going to have to scroll a while to get to February!
Chrono Trigger
Who should play this: everyone!
Length: 25 hours
What is there to say about this masterpiece that hasn’t already been said? I picked up a little Game Boy style emulation handheld late last year, and played Chrono Trigger partly on there and partly on my Steam Deck hooked up to my TV. Shaders that emulate the look of an old CRT TV really help old pixel art games look great, although emulating the bulgy shape of a CRT on my 65″ OLED was a little nausea inducing.
Anyways if you want to hear why this game is so awesome, one of my favourite gaming podcasts, Into the Aether, has a 3+ hour episode all about it! But really, if you haven’t played this yet, just go do it. It’s tight at about 25 hours, and I only needed a guide for one or two unreasonably tough enemies.
WarioWare (various)
Who should play this: people who like silly, delightful fun
Length: ~3 hours each
For the uninitiated, each WarioWare title is crammed full of 1-5 second long micro-games which get played one after the other. They are extremely silly and so much fun. Each game usually only uses the D-pad and A button, and often not both of those. WarioWare Twisted! has games that use the accelerometer, so you control them by tilting and rotating your console. If it doesn’t have you grinning ear-to-ear within 10 minutes, I’ll eat my hat. I also played WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!, which was also great.
Super Mario Bros.
Who should play this: you’ve already played at least some of it
Length: took me 3 total hours over the course of several months, with copious amounts of cheating via save states.
Really nothing to say about this one either. The difficulty really ramps up. Thank goodness for save states – getting slapped back to the very beginning every time you run out of lives, or every time you need to turn the game off, would have meant I’d never finish it.
Picross 3D: Round 2
Who should play this: puzzle nuts
Length: 40 hours over many months
This is a really great nonogram game on 3DS. Instead of the traditional two-dimensional nonograms, it uses a similar set of rules that you use to carve shapes out of a 3-dimensional grid of squares. There are some really fun objects that come out as result, including several sets that individually don’t look like much, but together form a much more interesting shape. A highlight is a fully F1-style pit crew changing the wheels on a car!
Box Boy!
Who should play this: puzzle nuts
Length: 5 hours over a month or two
A deceptively simple-looking 2D puzzle platformer for 3DS in which you play a box that can extrude more boxes from himself to reach distant places, block deadly lasers, and so on. It keeps adding tiny new mechanics and exercising them in interesting ways.
Mario Golf Advance Tour
Who should play this: golf game afficionados
I still haven’t finished this game…the courses get pretty tough. I pick it up for a round maybe once a month, which I find a pretty nice way to play it.
It’s wild how well the game manages to model golf physics on such basic hardware designed for 2D games. It looks beautiful, and I have no idea how they’ve done it. (Other than the characters. They look cool too, but it’s clear their sprites are pre-rendered 3D stuff like Donkey Kong Country.) I hear Mario eventually shows up but the parts that I’ve played are just…regular humans. Not even Toad Kingdom humans like Peach.
Pokemon Blue
Who should play this: you already know
I never played a Pokemon game before, and I dropped off of this one after a dozen hours or so. I was having a pretty decent if relatively mindless time with it until I got frustrated and then I stopped. I’ll probably try out a later generation to see how the games evolved, but I might just not be a Pokemon guy.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Who should play this: fans of the modern Tomb Raider games or Uncharted
Length: 17 hours
Finally, a modern game!
Up front: this game is in first person. It seems like a mystifying decision since these kinds of action/adventure games tend to be exclusively in 3rd person for ease of getting around and cinematic vistas. I was skeptical they could pull off a similar game in 1st person, but this one is really great. It’s most similar to the recent Tomb Raider games because most of the game is spent in one of a few small open-world areas which reward exploration and snooping around. There are guns but ammo is very limited. The game wants you to focus on sneaking and hand-to-hand combat. Again, odd that they’d choose 1st person for that, but it works! And it also allows them to double down on feeling like an Indy movie instead of a shoot-a-thon like most other action games.
The likeness of young Harrison Ford is at times very good and at times absolutely stunning. The animators have done a phenomenal job nailing his physicality and wry facial expressions, and Troy Baker (of The Last of Us fame) does a similarly amazing job with the voice. Sometimes it’s indistinguishable from the real thing, but every now and then you can catch a glimpse – almost literally! – of Troy. His facial structure sometimes seems to emerge for a second before Harrison takes over again. It’s not too distracting, but it is fascinating.
The game is fun. The story is fun, if silly. The environments are very cool. I played it when I was still subscribed to Game Pass. Highly recommend.
Hi-Fi Rush
Who should play this: people with zero audio or video lag in their system
Cool concept, but the fact that they have a tool to show whether you have lag in your system between the audio and video, but no way to compensate for the lag like the Rock Band games, is completely mystifying. I couldn’t play this game on my home theatre system. I played on PC a bit, which worked, but the game didn’t stick for me. This begs to be played on big, loud speakers.
February
Wow, January was ridiculous. Luckily, my video game habits for the rest of the year were dramatically more normal.
Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition
Who should play this: people who have never played a Dragon Quest before; and Dragon Quest sickos
Length: 53 hours. Or 100 hours, depending.
This game’s full title is ridiculous. And, okay, technically I started playing this on January 29, but I figured January was getting silly and it’s close enough to February, so here we are.
This is a JRPG in a series that, my friends tell me, prides itself on not changing a lot over the years. As only the second JRPG I’ve ever played (after Chrono Trigger; see January), it’s a bit of a culture shock. It has none of the propulsive, cinematic epicness of Mass Effect (my favourite series of all time). People suggest treating it more as a gentle bedtime story to play for 20-60 minutes in a day, and I think that makes a lot of sense. It’s a long game, the story is straightforward and sparser than I’d like, but the characters very much grow on you over time. For my (very western) money, I’d have preferred this to be a 20-30 hour game.
And that’s before you get to the post-game, which apparently almost doubles the playtime but fills out the story and brings you to the “true ending”. I look forward to playing the second half someday, because I really did enjoy the game and fall in love with the characters, but by the time I’d played my 53 hours I was ready to move on. This was the main game I was playing from February through early June.
Oh, and the game is cute. Including every single enemy, and the slimes most of all. Adorable.
March
Opus Magnum and Shenzhen I/O
Who should play these: programmers, makers, and similar nerds
In Opus Magnum you design machines to perform alchemy by positioning them in certain ways to upgrade atoms, create bonds, and do all manner of weird things.
In Shenzhen I/O you lay out chips and traces on circuit boards to achieve the correct outputs for the given inputs. The game gives you data sheets for each available chip, which are not always comprehensive, and which you should either print out and put in a binder or have on a nearby iPad or something. You will want to mark them up as you learn more from in-game emails.
Both grade you against other players’ solutions based on criteria like cost, time complexity, and footprint. It’s highly satisfying but eventually each got complex enough that I dropped off.
Elite Beat Agents
Who should play this: fans of music rhythm games like Guitar Hero
Length: 4-5 hours
This is just a phenomenal music rhythm game for 3DS. Each song is a real pop song from the era (like Sk8er Boi 😂) and has you tapping and swiping along using the stylus in time with the music. Each song contains an extremely silly story of the Agents coming to solve a situation, always starting off with the Chief authorizing the mission with a bombastic, echoey “Agents Are… GO!” The best.
June
April and May were filled with Dragon Quest XI. Once that was done…
The Last of Us Part 1
Who should play this: people who want to play a movie
Length: 13 hours
I really enjoyed the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us (especially the first season…Pedro Pascal is so great in that!) and I’d only ever played the first two hours of the game before, so it was time to rectify that! I love Naughty Dog’s other games and this one was great too, although of course with a much darker story and themes than Uncharted! The PS5 remaster is absolutely stunning. Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson deliver phenomenal performances, but all the people online saying Bella Ramsey was bad as Ellie in the TV show need to realize that even though the game and show have (mostly) the same events, they are telling different stories and making different points. (June was a long time ago, though. Don’t ask me to remember what those points were!)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Who should play this: people who like feeling emotions
Length: 35 hours
This is my game of the year, and it isn’t close. It took a while for me to warm up to the characters, and the difficulty is tough to overcome at the start (especially if you have audio/video delays…see Hi-Fi Rush above…) but the story is super creative and I came to care really deeply about each of the characters. I cried on multiple occasions.
The over-simplified pitch is it’s a French JRPG about grief. Combat is turn-based but it’s critical to learn enemy attack patterns because you will die if you aren’t able to dodge and parry their attacks, which happens with realtime button presses. Friends tell me there are useful audio cues to help time parries, but due to my home theatre system’s audio delay, I was hearing the cue after I would have had to react to it. It was harder to react using visuals alone, but it was totally doable. (I’m not a Soulslike player, so I don’t have much parrying already in my fingers.)
The characters do have annoying tendency not to press each other for answers, even when it’s clear their own teammates are leaving things unsaid, and so there’s a feeling of slight unnecessary-ness to the central mysteries, but they pay off well in the later acts of the game. The finale comes sooner than you expect, so once you hit Act 3, make sure you do as much side questing as you want before you head to the next story encounter.
There is a monumental choice to make in the finale, and while each ending makes its own point and is thematically sound, one of the endings was much more satisfying to me than the other. I’m glad YouTube is around to answer “what if I chose differently”.
With grief as the central theme of the game, prepare to feel sad. Prepare for a bit of an unsteady start. But also prepare to be swept off your feet by the characters, the incredible score, and the beautiful environments. And Esquie. Sweet, beautiful Esquie.
August
While I was playing Clair Obscur I also tried out…
VVVVVV
Who should play this: people who like brain-tickling platforming
Length: 2 hours
There are only four controls in this game: move left, move right, interact, and flip gravity. (There is no jump button.)
I wrote on Mastodon: Just finished playing VVVVVV for the first time. Phenomenal game. It’s short (I finished in 2:20), and difficult, but it has extremely generous checkpointing and instantaneous reloads. Highly recommend.
It’s free on Portmaster if you have a Linux handheld gaming device, or on other platforms for less than $15: https://thelettervsixtim.es/
September
Sworn
Who should play this: Hades fans who want co-op
It’s a pretty direct rip of Hades, but with some pretty fun co-op. Love Hades and want to hang out with friends? Try Sworn.
October
I finally finished Expedition 33. Now for a palette cleanser.
Jusant
Who should play this: people who liked Journey
Length: 4 hours
This is a lovely little game that allmost sits in the genre of “walking simulator”, except mostly you climb. It has lots of letters and stuff to find that vaguely tell the story of a drying-up ocean told through the eyes of a handful of characters. It hews pretty closely to the Journey mold. Beautiful art style, nice music, evocative sound effects, and gentle climbing puzzles. A nice, short, meditative game.
Doom: The Dark Ages
Who should play this: fans of badassery
I only played the first three levels because this isn’t really my style of game, but it kicks absolute ass. Really satisfying weapons and traversal, and there’s a mission where you play as an enormous mech. If you have Game Pass and have any interest in FPSes, give this a shot. Otherwise hard for me to justify the full purchase price, but that’s just a personal taste thing. If you like this kind of game, you’ll love this one.
Persona 3 Reload
I’ve heard a lot of love for the Persona franchise (at least 3 and later) and after enjoying a couple of JRPGs earlier this year I figured I’d give it a shot. I’m about 3/4 of the way through and I’m having a similar time to Dragon Quest XI in that I enjoyed but didn’t love the first 30-40 hours with it, but things are finally kicking into high gear now. The first half felt very long for the story it was telling, and featured some characters with extremely cringe-worthy interactions. It’s still not completely clear whether the game endorses that behaviour or not, but at least it takes a back seat in the latter part.
Like Dragon Quest, the combat is fun but overabundant. There’s a lot of grinding, not necessarily to level up to a certain level, but because the game more or less demands you finish certain parts of the dungeon by certain dates, and calls you back a few times because innocents have wandered in for you to save. It’s extremely repetitive. The Persoma Fusion system, however, is how the game encourages you to try out new powers in new combinations, and it’s extremely flexible.
Now that I’ve gotten far enough into the game, the characters are opening up and the story is delving into some very interesting and dark themes. Maybe all the time I spent in the first half was necessary to set up my relationships with these characters, but it mostly felt like filler at the time.
I’m excited to see where it ends up taking things!
November
I’ve only just started these games, but I figured it was worth writing a little blurb about them anyways.
Astro Bot
Who should play this game: anyone who owns a PS5
The pack-in game for the PS5, Astro’s Playroom, plumbed the depths of the PS5 controller’s new capabilities and wrung out every ounce of fun from them. So it’s no surprise that Sony took everything they learned and expanded it into a full-length platformer! Astro Bot doesn’t go as far in every single direction like Astro’s Playroom did (at least so far…I’m only a few hours in) but it uses the haptics, accelerometer, and built-in speaker to their fullest extent and I’m pretty sure they’re doing some cool subtle things with the trigger resistance.
This game is an absolute delight and had me grinning from ear to ear in the first five minutes. Team Asobi has perfected the art of playing certain sounds through the home theatre system and some through the controller – it all feels extremely natural and it makes the gameplay feel more exciting than it otherwise might. Your little metal robot’s footsteps, especially on hard materials like metal or glass, come out crystal clear from the controller’s speaker and use the haptics for a little tap tap tap with each step. When you collect your lost robot friends (the object of the collect-a-thon game), they all sit in a little hot tub in a replica of your controller as seen on-screen. You can flick the controller up to launch them into the air, and you can feel each one land back in the controller. It’s hard to describe, but it has a really precise feeling that corresponds perfectly with the visuals.
Oh, and the game is fun, too. Each level has its own novel mechanic.
Just an absolute delight.
Blue Prince
Who should play this game: note-takers and amateur detectives
I had a great time in recent years with Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol, two excellent deduction games, and there’s been a lot of chatter this year about Blue Prince (and, frankly, a number of other cool-sounding games like The Seance of Blake Manor, which I’m excited to try sometime) as a new take on the deduction genre. Blue Prince has a bit of a roguelike take on the formula: you need to reach the 46th room in a house containing 45 rooms, and as you open each door, you choose which room will appear behind it from three possibilities. You can only move between rooms so many times in a day. Everything resets overnight.
Whereas I got through Return of the Obra Dinn without taking notes, Blue Prince seems to require diligent note-taking. Having played only 3 hours or so, I’ve built up a pretty sizable personal wiki in Obsidian already. I visited the Archives room recently, which made it clear there’s going to be more story to this game than I’d anticipated.
I know almost nothing so far. Exciting!
December
News Tower
News Tower is an engaging Tycoon-style game where you build a 1930s newspaper business…in a tower. You buy equipment, hire staff, and build new floors. As stories come in during the week you assign reporters to each one, then prioritize which ones get typeset and assembled, and hope enough stories are ready to print on Sunday. You juggle competing interests like the Mayor and the Mafia, ensure certain types of stories are printed in a given week to attract subscribers in certain NYC neighbourhoods, carefully balance your paper’s coverage to pander to your audience, and scoop stories out from under your competitors’ noses.
I bought this game after watching a let’s play by Quill18 (an awesome streamer and a fellow Canadian) and trying the game’s free demo on Steam. I immediately dumped several full evenings into this game before being pulled back into Persona and letting News Tower eventually slide off of my plate.
On to 2026!
That’s my year in gaming! Persona 3 Reload and Blue Prince will last for a while into the new year, I think, and I have a playlist as long as my arm after that. I look forward to finally playing Baldur’s Gate 3, Ghost of Yotei, and Star Wars Outlaws hopefully sometime soon, although each sounds like a pretty huge time commitment.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about anything I’ve been playing, or should be playing! Leave a comment or get in touch with me on Mastodon.
Happy new year, everyone.
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