This isn’t a Game of the Year list. It’s a look back at the games that lingered in my brain long after I stopped playing them — whether they were brilliant, deeply flawed, or simply hit me at the wrong (or very right) moment in 2025.
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.
In the grand spirit of Christmas, I want everyone to know that for this year's RPS Advent Calendar, I nominated a bunch of games about Japanese assassins and at least one point and click thriller featuring a netherworld of torture devices. Some of those assassins appeared on the final calendar, but not all, and the point and click didn't make the cut.
It’s finally that special time of the year where families physically assault each other for 10% off a TV in Walmart at 3 am. Gamers are notoriously civilized folk; however, we get our deals from the comfort of our homes, and boy, do we have some games for you to keep an eye out for […]