Hello everyone. Hope you have all had a good week, and if you've been celebrating the holidays, have had a chance to unwind and enjoy. Its the last Sunday of the year so let's use this thread to talk about what games we played in 2025, our favorites, least favorites pleasant surprises etc.
Games I played that released this year:
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Elden Ring: Nightreign: This is probably my GOTY, but I didn't play too many games that released in 2025. Anyway, I think a lot of people were rightfully skeptical about Elden Ring Fortnite edition but it's an incredibly fun co-op game. I haven't tried the Deep of Night Mode or the DLC, but thats something I am thinking of picking up when I return home from my holiday vacation
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The Outer Worlds 2: the gameplay is markedly better than the first game, once again proving any movement system in any video game just needs a double jump. A lot of people complained about the lack of skill points you get from leveling up, but I thought it wasnt that big of an issue. One aspect I think they knocked it out the park was with the in game radio stations, they were absolutely fantastic and once i turned them on i never once turned them off. The one area I think it comes up way short of the first game is the companion characters: they simply do not match the energy of the ones from the first game. I look forward to the promised expansions.
-Becoming Saint: i picked this up because I saw Northernlion play it and I thought it looked interesting, but unfortunately there was little meat on its bones. The game bills itself as a rouge-like but there is very little variation between playthroughs. Also the devs suffered a huge aura loss in my eyes when I checked the steam reviews and they were replying to every single review. I liked the art style though. 5.5/10
Stronghold Crusader Definative Edition: 97 Year Old Game Studio Still Makes Crossbowmen The Old Fashioned Way. Stronghold crusder is one of my favorite childhood games (it taught me how the economy works). I actually didn't even know they were releasing a remaster of it until I saw that you could buy it bundled with Becoming Saint. Its the good kind of remaster: fixes longstanding bugs and actually ads some content to the game. I have worked my way through the co-op trail with my brother the past few months and we are eagerly awaiting fresh missions to be added to it.
Games I played this year that releases prior to 2025:
-Balatro: crack cocaine
-Dark Souls 1 and 3: i replayed 1 for the hell of it but I did a SL1 playthrough of 3. Very challenging, very rewarding
-Fallout 4: I began 2025 with a brutal, soul crushing period of unemployment and job hunting. To keep my spirits as low as possible, I did a playthrough of FO4 on survival difficulty. Extremely brutal in the early game, I ending up immediately siding with the Brotherhood so I could get access to vertibird transport early. Became the perfect mixture of fun and challenge once I got good armor and put in enough perks so I didn't die in 1 bullet
LA Noire: my comfort game tbh, shame they had to burn through hundreds of University graduates to make it
Rome Total War: still whips
Mass Effect 1 and 2: Playing Outer Worlds 2 made me want to play more space games, so I fired up the legendary edition for my second playthrough of the trilogy. My first playthrough I did male paragon shepherd, so this time I'm doing female renegade shepherd. They really tried to make the paragon/renegade dichotomy akin to good cop/loose cannon but full renegade means you swing between asshole and psychopath. The conversation you have with Anderson and Udina at the end of ME1 after letting the council die floored me with the renegade dialogue options; you and Udina basically become Darth Vader and Palpatine. Anyway, I will start ME3 when I get back from vacation
Hope everyone has had at least a tolerable 2025, and here's to maybe a better year in 2026!
So, I've kept a list of games I've finished over the last decade or so, including what # it is, platform totals, and dates. This is my list for 2025 and it probably won't grow in the next two days so:
Dragon Age II was because I was a fan of Dragon Age Origins when it first released. When Veilguard came out, I had the idea that I wanted to play through the earlier games so I could import my choices all the way through, even though you get to do this less and less as you move forward. I finished DA2 and will say that a lot of the criticisms it had when it first came out are valid, but after also starting Inquisition and not finishing it, I honestly prefer it because the movement and combat is tight (though repetitive) whereas Inquisition feels like an MMO on 50% speed. The party AI does kinda suck and requires some micro. It's basically impossible to spec party members into something like a Blood Mage without them killing themselves over and over. I also realized a lot of reasons people avoided it on release were pre-GamerGate culture war bullshit, like how there were too many gay/player-sexual characters. Still an average game, but not the worst of the worst. I never made it to Veilguard.
Spyro was for nostalgia. After finishing it though, I didn't really feel compelled to play the other two immediately. I only finished the first one in the remastered trilogy. It was okay, but I ran into some stuff like a bug that required me to limit my FPS or else the level physics broke and I wasn't able to progress. It took me like 2 hours to figure that out and by that point I was ready to uninstall the game. This wouldn't be the end of my PSX nostalgia trip as you can see from the rest of the list, but I do think that journey is over and I'm going to leave most of them in the past.
Resident Evil 4 is one of my favorite games and I've beaten it at least once on every platform it released on. So I had to play the remake, then do new game+ and Separate Ways immediately after. I think the remake is just as good as the original and better in a lot of ways. They're distinct enough that I think you can play them both close together and it'd still be fun. I love the RE Remakes because they look pretty, they run super well, have few bugs, etc. They're just all so tightly made and feeling experiences that I think should be the standard for remakes like that.
Resident Evil 7 was my continuation of the RE series since I hadn't moved past 5 and 6 yet, which I played and finished co-op. I honestly didn't like it that much. I did appreciate that it was a "return to form" as a more horror-oriented game, but I didn't dig the first-person view and I honestly hate the "pursuer" gimmick that they put in all of the games now. I don't think it's scary, it's just kind of obnoxious, because those enemies don't function like actual people. If you get too far away from them, they just teleport a certain distance away to continue chasing you. They're tethered to you at all times until you pas that section. It's the same with Mr. X in the 2 remake. I played the main story DLC, but didn't bother with the small side DLCs because I just wasn't interested anymore.
Thronefall was a neat little tower defense. There are a lot of indie Tower Defense games coming out now and they all are trying unique things like adding more active involvement in combat ala Orcs must Die or some other gimmick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I wouldn't say Thronefall is one of the best TD games I've played, but I did appreciate what they went for.
RE2 was the 3rd time I played it after finishing it originally then doing New Game+. This was a randomized archipelago run with other people where I spent the first 3rd of the game with only my knife and flash grenades, but ended with the minigun. These games are really fun with randomizers.
It was my first time playing Metal Gear Solid. It was another one of my "I want to play this series" moods that was curtailed after actually playing one. I did NOT like the camera angle in this game and will die on that hill. Having to enter first-person view to see what the hell was happening on the map in front of me felt like the kind of bone headed decision that could only have been made on older consoles with limited input methods (except they kept doing it). MGS V perfected the movement, camera, and control scheme for that kind of game. I guess I liked it? Like Spyro and DA2, it didn't inspire me to want to play the next one immediately. Someday though.
FFT was another nostalgia trip. I loved the original on PSX and used to play FFT with my action figures by creating grids out of string. That's how I obsessed I was. The remake is very good and has all the conveniences and QOL stuff it should have. The only thing missing is the War of the Lions content, so a close 2nd would be just playing that version but with a patch for turning on JP Up by default. It makes it so you don't have to spend 90% of the game with it equipped to be efficient or deal with just having to grind more. It's a stupid binary choice with no interesting consequences that causes anxiety in either direction. The game was a lot easier than I remember, but I was also not that old when it came out and so didn't really understand how to take advantage of ability synergies or what was/wasn't OP. I just liked being a Ninja.
Finally, I finished my first Total War: Three Kingdoms campaign. I've had the game for a long time and have played a lot of other Total War titles. I just didn't really get into this one at launch because I was busy and then they abandoned it after making some really bad DLC decisions (8 Princes, literally who, lmao). It's a good game if not a little samey because you really only have like 3 bundles of troop types. Han, Nanman, and Yellow Turban. Outside of those, there isn't a lot of variety between Han factions, for example. The diplomacy and spy mechanics are better than previous games, but I'm still not finding it as interesting as something like Attila or Warhammer even though I have also always been obsessed with the 3K setting.
I am currently playing another 3K campaign as the Yellow Turbans and on Legendary for the first time. I'm not finding it all that difficult, but I have realized that I am not nearly as aggressive as I should be when I look at the turn lengths of other players. A lot of people say things like "the game is over around turn 65" whereas I'm on turn 130~ and I have a little over a quarter of the map and still need to eliminate my two main rivals for the throne.
I'm also playing Outer Worlds 2 and I like it because I like Bethesda/Obsidian type games like Fallout but they're all so old that they run really poorly and or just don't feel as smooth. I dropped Fallout London relatively quickly for that reason. OW2 feels smooth and runs well. The writing is still a little mediocre so far and there doesn't seem to be a lot of variety in how you can complete quests. There is in the solution, as in you can find 2 or 3 different ways to fix a broken generator, but the end result is the same that you do fix it for X faction. Like in the first town, a lot of quests are either just Do or Don't Do X, with the latter meaning you just ignore the quest essentially. There's no option to sabotage any corpo sellouts. I don't really understand my character motivation either like most of the backgrounds for you joining your main organization are just happenstance or to escape a bad situation, but then you're still doing work for them after the prologue as if nothing changed. It seems like the set up for a game that should be a lot more open and that would allow you to just fuck off and choose to not pursue the main story, but that's not an option due to story reasons.
DA2 is definitely a bit underrated both because of what you mentioned, the cultural bullshit was heating up and it landed right in it, but also the love affair gamers were having at the time with open worlds. Like you said, it's a little limited and repetitive in the level design, but the story is tight, it's cool to see choices and their effects years later and the characters are very well done. The ending, unfortunately, suffers from typical BioWare downfall where no matter what you do, you basically have to fight every boss because they'll all turn on you no matter who you ally yourself with. I definitely prefer it to Inquisition, which like you say, feels like an empty MMO, and Veilguard, which feels like it was written by Wattpad authors.