It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.
With another stellar year of gaming squarely in the rearview mirror, the staff here at PlayStation Lifestyle decided to take a trip down memory lane, tally up what new games we played over the past 12 months, and see which ones got enough votes to land a spot on our coveted list of best games from 2025.
Interestingly, in what might be an all-time record low, only five Sony first-party titles launched this year (discounting ports and rereleases), so a vast majority of our list is comprised of indie and AAA titles from other publishers. Chances are, you’ve heard of or played most of the games that made the cut, but a couple of our inclusions might take you by surprise.
And without further ado… the list!
Showing just how loaded this year with great games, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 barely managed to lay claim to the number 10 spot. However, there’s no denying the sheer artistry on display with Sandfall Interactive’s debut title. Most RPG fans worth their salt are at the very least familiar with Clair Obscure, but if this one passed you by entirely, we’d love to know what rock you find yourself living under.
We wouldn’t blame you if you forgot that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II even came out in 2025, seeing as how it launched at the very beginning of February. This is the second, and final, European-developed RPG to make it onto our list, but unlike Clair Obscur, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II trades in the linear, dark fantasy Belle Époque setting for a truly stunning recreation of 15th-century Bohemia. If an unrivaled sense of freedom, a vast open-world that’s begging to be explored, and the unforgiving, harsh realities of medieval life and warfare pique your interest, you shouldn’t pass this one up.
With a handful of Metal Gear fans on staff, it’s no surprise that Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has slithered its way onto our list. Even though series creator Hideo Kojima parted ways with Konami a decade ago and had zero involvement with the development of this remake, the original PS2 version was (or rather, still is) such a remarkable game, that its success was all but guaranteed. With a handful of quality of life improvements, a modernized control scheme, and a next-gen coat of ray-traced paint, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater looks and plays like a proper remake; anyone claiming that it’s a simple, by-the-numbers cash grab is woefully mistaken.
Much like the previous entry on our list, Lumines: Arise doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel when it comes to its moment-to-moment action. In fact, aside from the newly-added Burst mechanic, Lumines: Arise’s gameplay is almost identical to the original PSP version that launched over 20 years ago. Of course, if you know anything about the series, the gameplay is only a part of the magic. From its entrenching, mesmerizing visuals to its stellar soundtrack, Lumines: Arise is a feast for the eyes and ears, and is also a sight to behold when playing in VR.
Having laid out the foundation with A Way Out and upping the ante with It Takes Two, it’s hardly a surprise that Split Fiction was a smash hit right out of the gates. Developer Hazelight Studios has perfected its craft of creating compelling co-operative gaming experiences, and with Split Fiction, it has even managed to upend our expectations once again. Whether you’re taking to the skies on the back of a dragon or fending off cyber-ninjas, there’s plenty of fun to be had here. If we were to make one suggestion, if you give this one a go, try to find a co-op buddy who can play on the couch next to you if that’s at all possible.
Like a few other titles on this list, Blue Prince sort of took us by surprise when it launched, and once it sank its roguelike hooks into us, we couldn’t get enough of it. Granted, some of its puzzles border on cruelly obscure, and at least one writer on our team lost hours of progress to the dreaded (and thankfully, fixed) save bug, but Blue Prince successfully wormed its way into the inner recesses of our brains, keeping us hooked on its addictive loop of drafting new rooms, uncovering more lore, and peeling back more layers of its seemingly never-ending puzzle. It’s an onion lover’s dream! Or, parfaits, if you prefer.
After a string of middling releases and years of losing ground to its competitors, Battlefield is finally back, and baby, it’s as good as it’s ever been. Sure, there are dozens of other shooters, competitive and casual alike, that are constantly vying for our attention, but Battlefield 6’s objective-focused, squad-centric flavor of running and gunning offers an experience that few other games come close to matching. The environmental destruction and sheer number of vehicles and weapons to master are just the icing on the cake.
Even though its story is a rather conventional revenge tale that doesn’t exactly break the mold, Ghost of Yotei is still a top-tier experience from start to finish. Building off the foundation laid out in Ghost of Tsushima, developer Sucker Punch is firing on all cylinders this time around and pushes the PS5 (and PS5 Pro, for that matter) to its limit. It’s one of the most gorgeous games we’ve seen to date, and with a handful of visual filters and audio mixes to choose from, it’s almost begging to be replayed a second (or even third) time.
2025 saw the launch of a handful of different skating games, but none of them came close to matching the sense of wonder and awe that Sword of the Sea manages to evoke. It strikes an amazing balance between offering up platforming challenges and puzzles, and letting you explore a beautiful world that’s chock-full of surprises that are just waiting to be discovered and experienced firsthand. If you enjoyed Journey, or either of developer Giant Squid’s previous titles (Abzû, The Pathless), this one’s a no-brainer.
Sure, its detractors will be quick to label it as a glorified walking simulator, but Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is so much more than that. It’s a reflection on our current society, a world in which everyone is more connected than ever, but simultaneously, more isolated and alone. It’s a stunning achievement on a technical level, serving up some of the best visuals and most lovingly crafted cutscenes we’ve seen to date. And, for a handful of us staffers and contributors, it’s another opportunity to take a peek into the mind of Hideo Kojima, an absolute juggernaut of a game developer who’s been reinventing genres and subverting expectations for four decades at this point. But, above all, it’s a game about sticks. And ropes. Oh, and chiral networks. And don’t forget Timefall. Plate gates too!
The post PlayStation LifeStyle’s 10 Best PS5 Games of 2025 appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.
HIGH Tutorials that help me get better at Lumines.
LOW Visual overload can make it hard to focus.
WTF How is the soundtrack this good?
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi everyone, Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.
I haven’t played a lot of Lumines, historically.
The remastered version from 2018 was my first intro to the series, and honestly… well, I didn’t really enjoy that first pass at it. It felt too loud, both audio and visually, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the horizontal puzzle style. Knowing that the people behind Tetris Effect were also behind Lumines, though, I wanted to give it another shot and see if this new entry was a better way to get into this franchise.
Mea culpa, Lumines — I was wrong about you. (At least in some ways.)
Lumines: Arise is a block dropping puzzle in conversation with Tetris, but rather than the classic tetrominos filling horizontal lines, it instead focuses on asking the player to create 2×2 blocks anywhere on a horizontal plane. Blocks drop from the top of the screen, and players need to move them around in order to create 2×2, 3×3, or larger, in order to score points. A “timeline” moves across the screen and erases any complete blocks it comes across, clearing more room for players to create more blocks, and so on. There is also a rare “chain block” that will allow all linked blocks of the same color to be erased from the timeline, even if they’re not in the shape of a square.
The big mechanical addition to this version is “burst”.
As players create blocks, a meter will fill at the top of the playfield. At any point, players will be able to activate the burst, which then stops blocks from falling for a few moments. If players can create a block during this burst period, it will cause blocks of the opposite color to fly above the screen. Players can continue and make more fly up. All of those blocks come rushing back down once the burst is over, then creating a large chunk of squares to combo with.
Gameplay is broken up into a couple of modes for Arise.
Journey takes players through sets of stages (four or five, normally) with increasing difficulty as things progress. Playlist mode allows players to combine their favorite stages together in a custom order to play, or just to watch if they want to take in the visuals and music. Lastly, there’s multiplayer, which consists of some solo leaderboard competition or battle modes.
I also will shout out the tutorials specifically as Arise tailors them to new players and gives small missions that make it easy to understand and learn not only how to play, but also how to grasp more advanced techniques. These tutorials made me better in a way other puzzle titles haven’t.
At this point in the review, it feels a little like burying the lead to only just now mention the visuals and the music.
Since each stage only has two colors players need to match, this mechanical simplicity allows for some creative and striking ways to keep the play field visually interesting, and the developers lean hard into delivering over-the-top sound and graphics, far above what you might expect for a puzzle title.
One in particular that I enjoyed was a food-themed level. Blocks started as red apples and green melons, but then changed to broccoli and tomatoes as I got further in, while classical string music played in the background. Another had orbs of fish and hermit crab shells that changed color to reflect the sun setting on the beach landscape behind the playfield while listening to slow, smooth pop vocals. The visuals and music combine masterfully to pull players into Arise on a level above just block-matching, and it eats up time in a way that hasn’t happened to me in a long while.
With that said, some of the levels do get overwhelming as previous versions of the game. However, there is a moment of pause and the music fades out between each song, giving a welcome break to catch your breath and reset before going into the next stage. There are also a wealth of accessibility options that allow players to adjust any of the visual stimuli including background effects, particle effects on the playfield, and so on. If it’s too much to take in visually, it can be turned down.
While my memories of playing it in the past weren’t great, the masterful music and visual presence combined in Lumines: Arise really turned me around on the series. It’s not one to miss!
For me, Lumines: Arise gets 8.5 blocks exploding into glitter out of 10.
Disclosures: This game is developed by Enhance and Monstars, Inc. and published by Enhance. It is currently available on PS5, PSVR2 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Around 1 hour was spent in multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence. The blocks will explode into particles on screen, fantasy violence amounts to spiders and snakes that fight each other in the background (but these can be turned off in accessibility menus).
Colorblind Modes: There are multiple colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sound is not needed to complete the game. Captions for character dialogue can be resized. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: The controls are completely remappable.
The post Lumines Arise VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.
November was filled with action-packed experiences, puzzling goodness, dazzling exploration, and more. Did Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Lumines Arise, or Where Winds Meet, or something else top your most-played lists for the month?
How does it work? At the end of every month, PlayStation Blog will open a poll where you can vote for the best new game released that month. After the polls close we will tally your votes, and announce the winner on our social channels and PlayStation Blog.
What is the voting criteria? That’s up to you! If you were only able to recommend one new release to a friend that month, which would it be? Note: re-released games don’t qualify, but remakes do. We define remakes as ambitious, larger-scale rebuilds such as Resident Evil 4 (2023) and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
How are nominees decided? The PlayStation Blog editorial team will gather a list of that month’s most noteworthy releases and use it to seed the poll.
In this episode, Carlos returns and we talk about:
Dying Light: The Beast
Mind’s Eye
Ball x Pit
Lumines Arise
Arc Raiders
Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
Where Winds Meet
Instruments of Destruction
Outer Worlds 2
Deathless: The Hero’s Quest
…And more!
You can also hear the show on iTunes
Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!
The post So Videogames Episode 462 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.
