Hiya, this post is about my personal best 'games of the year 2025'. As with my last one it is not about games that released in 2025, just my favourite games that I got around to playing in the past year. I generally prefer older games anyway, and don't really follow new releases due to lack of interest and their ever increasing expense. While there are no 'worst games of the year' I will have a bit of a rant near the end about games or gameplay that kinda fell off for me, and at the very end will be a 'usuals' section that's more about what I got up to in games I play regularly.
Some of these I did do individual posts on during the past year, these will have a shorter summary with a link to the relevant post :)
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Dreamfall
Just straight out of the gate, possibly the best game I have ever played. Sequel to 'The Longest Journey', that moves from the isometric point-and-click style to a 3D third person adventure with extremely 2007 graphics and style. I found the vibe of the world(s) and characters felt effortlessly cool, but I'm a sucker for seeing different people's versions of architecture and fashion from 'the distant future'. It also has the music/scoring of like a WB/CW show aimed at young adults from the ealry 2000s, genuinely one of the best soundtracks ever. The story continues from The Longest Journey, familiar characters and places return, and it SOMEHOW expands the lore further and grander than before, which was surprising given how large in scope the original already was. I made a post when I finished the game which was totally off the dome and possibly my favourite post I've made, the game just had such a huge impact on me.
Dreamfall: Chapters
I was initially a bit hesitant about this third and concluding game in the Longest Journey-Dreamfall series for a few reasons. 2014-2018 'chapters based' release cycle (does it do the DLC thing of omitting stuff for the next release?), Unity engine (good engine used by a lot of slop games), 'choices based gameplay' (is it just copying telltale?), and a bad game trailer that I feel doesn't do the series or this game any justice (also some of the main voice actors changed which takes a bit to get used to). It's still TLJ-Dreamfall though, with great music and VA performances, further character development and AGAIN somehow lore is expanded even further in fulfilling ways. Very emotional feel throughout, as it brings a cherished 15+ year series to a final end. I did a post about it.
GTA 3
Hey everyone, popular seminal open world game from 25 years ago is good actually. But seriously, it was a fun experience to play through the story for the first time, as I only ever rampaged around when it was contemporary (I was a child). I was surprised by how many elements it retained from GTA 1 and 2, I was really expecting it to be more of a clean break/fresh start like Vice City and San Andreas are. It also is much harder and more unforgiving than the following two titles, which I think is a mix of the latter having improved gameplay and aiming overall, plus that era of games just being more tied to 'arcade difficulty' (you gotta lose a lot to pump in more money). Anyway, I did a post about it, mostly from the perspective of playing GTA 2 and San Andreas the most growing up, it was interesting to see the influences flow to and from both chronological directions.
Riven: The Sequel to Myst
It is the sequel to Myst... I really enjoyed the stellar additions to the lore, and as always with the Myst series it is a visually stunning game with great FMV acting and soundtrack. I don't prefer it over Myst or Uru though, for a few reasons. The puzzles were infuriating, I ended up having to use guides to get through a bunch. The world is super spread out, something I felt immediately when I first launched it months ago (only coming back to finish it last week). It was also a lot less linear than Myst or Uru, so I was frequently backtracking and travelling long distances for pieces of a puzzle solution, which was discouraging. Myst and Uru handle this better in my opinion with hub-like spaces leading into various 'ages' (worlds/levels). It honestly feels like the game would be 2 hours long without all the travel and high complexity of puzzles, lmao. Still a cool game to experience though, in the right frame of mind and with a lot of patience.
Fallout 76
I have played this before and was probably level 50-60 when I got back into it near the end of 2025, but what I have experienced in the past few months feels like I'm playing it for the first time properly. Similarly to my time with ESO at the end of 2024, I always felt pretty directionless or like I was meandering about in FO76. The early game in the Forest region is kind of overwhelming and contradictory because of the NPC-less launch questlines are intermixed with later quests that have NPCs. I think the thing that saved it for me was just pushing through the main story questline. I was stuck on the Raiders section of that quest which was boring and annoying (like idc about these people and the robot questgiver was well voice acted to be annoying XD). But it came good after that, taking you through the Mire with the Free States story, and eventually into the Cranberry Bog with the Appalachian Brotherhood story. Enclave section was meh, but it does lead to you launching a nuke to conclude the questline. The final event which usually brings in the whole server, where you all fight a scorchbeast queen inside a fallout zone was genuinely thrilling, as were many points through the Mire and the Bog. I'll do a separate longer post about all this soon!
Red Faction Guerilla
Feels good to be back in Red Faction. Mars workers revolution but with fully destructible environment! It is really fun to find different ways to fell the buildings, and it's a pretty solid 'heat' system that forces you to stick with short hit-and-run guerilla style engagements, otherwise you get overwhelmed by enemy force. It feels a bit like Saints Row to play, in regards to physics and even in graphic design (a lot of metro/vector style menu stuff), which makes sense because they are both by Volition. I haven't finished this yet, just liberated one region so far, but I feel like I 'get' it. It's probably going to continue with the same gameplay + escalating enemy response and escalating weapons/armour over time. I am playing the plain version (not re-mars-tered or steam editions) just to see the original experience :)
Stuff That Fell Off
A section where I just blab about stuff that wasn't fun or declined this past year, for me anyway.
Hell Let Loose: I still think this is a solid FPS game, possibly the best available, with a lot of good gameplay elements and mechanics. I just felt like it became more of a struggle to play casually now, to the point that I stopped trying. Private servers were added to all platforms, so the main screen matchmaking has way less players (and way duller games). Then a lot of those private servers have very strict rules and conditions and want you to join a discord to find all that out, and it's like I don't want to feel like I'm doing 'work' in order to play this fun game, you know? It already kind of is a game where you have to play it somewhat regularly to understand the mechanics, so I understand why it's gone that way. I just had to acknowledge that I don't have the time or mental energy to devote to games like that anymore. Also this is just my experience, probably not other people's, blah blah blah.
Casual Roleplay: In a similar vein, I understand why roleplay servers exist and why they have strict rules (because people break them, and in turn break the roleplay), I just again don't have the massive amounts of spare time or ability to be 'on-call' that some of those servers demand. I tried out a more casual and less rule-heavy RP server on DayZ for a bit, and yeah the rules heavy ones are for sure the way to go XD, like almost nobody was roleplaying at all. I have had better experiences with organic roleplay in vanilla official servers, but that's unpredictable/random, so you can't rely on having that all the time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Usuals
Blabbing about the games I am forever tethered to :P
Minecraft: Spent most of the year just slowly improving and expanding the spawn town in my personal friends server. Fleshing it out with more like believable farmland and stuff, more amenities in the city and so on. Also expanded the road system to connect more towns. Near the end of the year started helping another friend with his original town (est. 2020), and decided to focus on that town more this coming year :)
DayZ: Had a few fun playthroughs with my regular friends. We finalllyyy got around to doing the Livonia bunker (kinda like a loot dungeon) and I think we did the Sakhal bunker too? (might have been last year tbh). Had an fun time exploring a private server for a while which had custom locations/dungeons, but the promised 'RP' was lacking.
GTA Online: Barely played it, other than to hang out in (it's pretty solid as a virtual world space). I had a brief look at the next-gen version, it has that motion smoothing thing that a lot of modern TVs have (which I dislike, gives me an uncanny valley effect), and there were near constant audio bugs. It's just frustrating because they removed the rockstar editor from last-gen for no reason (in 2024 I think), it used to allow a photo-mode type thing within pre-recorded video that was helpful for virtual photography. I honestly couldn't tell you if there were any updates to the game this year XD
Conan Exiles: Tagged along with friends as they built a very cool large base in a new server, and we worked on going through the Exiled Lands dungeons again. As is tradition, we forgor to check the base one time and it all decayed :/ Also this game is essentially abandoned by the devs at Funcom, they moved on to on Dune Awakening, which they have also now essentially abandoned XD. It is their way, see Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, and Secret World. Luckily this doesn't effect their single player stuff like The Longest Journey and Dreamfall.
Sea of Thieves: Played it solidly for a few weeks near the start of the year, tagged along with friends working through levelling various factions and doing a few of the dungeons. Again, very solid game with other people, just don't often get motivated to play it by myself.
Snowrunner: I completed the base game finally, I had been close for a while but couldn't be bothered with the last few missions/cleanup. The third set of base game maps in Taymyr are a slog, every road is a mud bog, overall it just felt more punishing than rewarding. Got the year 1 DLC on huge sale and have been slowly working through it, first map is cool looking but very scout forward with dense snow (not my fav play style). Also been having fun joining in on a friend's hardcore mode save file, I think I will start my own and go back to the early regions in Michigan and Alaska :)
That's it for now, thanks for reading!