The Best Video Games of 2025 … So Far – Slant Magazine

While it’s impossible to tell what big-ticket games like Grand Theft Auto VI or Marathon would’ve looked like if they weren’t delayed by their respective studios, the best games of the year released thus far present a fairly strong argument for not rushing and letting studios—big and small—cook. Even the Switch 2, this year’s shiny new thing, had the good sense to launch with only one first-party game that was good and ready.

That patience has certainly paid off for the games on this list that captured more than our hearts. The one thing these titles all share in common is an ambitious, uncompromised vision, from a daring yo-yo-inspired riff on the Legend of Zelda games, to a painterly reclamation of turn-based RPGs, to a roguelike twist on an established and celebrated property.

Each year, there are more games to choose from, to say nothing of big “forever” games that threaten to consume all of our free time. We appreciate, then, that so many of the games below push against FOMO stealing your joy, as they force us to slow down and deeply appreciate the nuances of their worlds, be they cryptic hallways, haunted swamps, or shattered laboratories.

Above all, these sumptuous, slow-cooked creations remind us of why we play and continue to want to play games: not simply to reach a destination but to lose ourselves for a moment, perhaps gaining a new appreciation for life along the way. Aaron Riccio

Editor’s Note: Since the publication of our review of Days Gone in 2019, Sony Interactive Entertainment hasn’t issued us code for their games. As such, we were unable to consider Death Stranding 2: On the Beach ahead of publication of this list.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Ubisoft Quebec)

A near-perfect blend of focused missions and leisurely exploration across a massive open world, Assassin’s Creed Shadows teaches you to take in the scenery, not just as a means for reaching your target without being seen, but as a way of learning about Japan in the 1580s, during the Sengoku period. It also does a fine job iterating on what’s come before in earlier Assassin’s Creed titles: Its optional tomb-raiding segments offer clever little labyrinthine puzzles, the parkour Paths make good use of the grappling hook, and nonviolent activities make the world feel even more lived-in. And while everything you learn about real-life figures like Hattori Hanzô or locales like the hillside fortified Azuchi Castle might make it clear that you wouldn’t want to live in this unforgiving era, it’s a great place to have a 60-hour power fantasy. Riccio

Avowed (Obsidian Entertainment)

Incredibly likeable for its unflashiness, Avowed doesn’t promise that you can go anywhere and do anything. It doesn’t get bogged down chasing the illusion of boundlessness—or, worse, endlessness—settling for something contained yet distilled, and it’s more potent as a result. At their most ambitious, Avowed’s characters respond believably to the choices you make, with new options opening up to you as a result of your actions. The game’s minor shortcomings can’t dull the fundamental RPG hooks that make it sing as well as it does. Its brand of knotty dialogue and good old-fashioned adventuring is also what defines the games that Obsidian is best known for. And with many of the studios that swam in similar waters a decade or two ago far from the height of their powers, Obsidian’s deft hand feels as vital as ever. Mitchell Demorest

Bionic Bay (Psychoflow Studio and Mureena Oy)

As befits a chaotic physics-based action-adventure game, Bionic Bay begins with a big bang. What follows hews to that scale, with your playable scientist character generally appearing as a tiny cluster of pixels amid the massive pipes, lasers, conveyors, and machinery of an alien laboratory torn asunder. This platformer, which maintains a thrilling sense of momentum across its eight-hour campaign, is nothing if not mindful of its scientific theme: You’ll jump, roll, and dive as you dodge explosive mines and disintegrative goo, but you’ll have to combine those skills with know-how of the world’s technology. There’s always something new to contend with, whether that’s a series of red-hot spheres that chase you down corridors, gravitational cores that suck you into their circumferences, or cryogenic rays that keep objects frozen in mid-air. Riccio

Blue Prince (Dogubomb)

The layers to Blue Prince’s roguelite design are what keep the game so captivating, with each new discovery giving you a new context in which to view previous areas. This brilliant first-person architectural puzzler’s architecture doesn’t just offer multiple routes through the house or multiple hints to its puzzles. It also provides multiple objectives, each one equally satisfying. Perhaps the highest praise that can be bestowed upon Blue Prince, and a validation of the near-decade that Tonda Ros has spent working on it, is the way in which the game successfully inspires players to follow the advice of the protagonist’s great-uncle: “Abandon the path and go where you want it to lead.” In the end, that’s not the elusive Room 46, but rather deeper into a game that you will want to make your new home, or at least a full-on obsession. Riccio

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (Jump Over the Age)

If Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector had just offered more Citizen Sleeper, it would have been enough, but a sense of expansion is startlingly on display here. Partially, this comes down to an increase in scale: Where the first game took place on a single space station, Starward Vector sees you hopping between various hub areas, trying to stay one step ahead of your would-be captor, a gang leader named Laine. More significant, though, are the myriad additions to the series’s suite of mechanics. More than its predecessor, Starward Vector is concerned with the relationship between the human soul and its body, even and especially when that body doesn’t look or function how it’s expected to. More broadly, it’s about being a misfit in a world filled with other misfits and figuring out how to work together anyway. Demorest

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive)

Desperation, regret, and sadness are all woven into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but so is the defiant joy that drags the characters kicking and screaming away from the nihilism lurking around every corner. During battles, something occurs that sums up the whole game. At the end of a fight, once you’ve earned your XP and currency and such, the words “We Continue,” a short paraphrase of a mantra our heroes cling onto like grim death throughout their journey, ushers you out of combat. Even in the Dadaist dreamscape that they find themselves in, this crew of survivors still create new bonds, indulge their curiosities, and give voice to their pains. This is what it means for them to continue—that life, and this game by proxy, will continue to present the unexpected, and that it very much is worth enduring to experience it. Justin Clark

Despelote (Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena)

In its suffusion of overlapping details and mechanics, Despelote creates a world that seems to exist independent of your input rather than, as in most games, ensuring its every bespoke crevice is vying for your attention. There are sights that you’ll miss, and there are conversations that you’ll only catch the end of. But that’s childhood, after all, which can make one feel left out and disenfranchised. A child’s time isn’t to be organized and optimized. To play Despelote is to move like a child who’s not yet certain of himself, unable to fine-tune his aim. You’re presumably capable of kicking the ball and hitting a bottle perched on a fence post, but it feels apt that you miss time and time again, until one of the other, better kids steps in to take the shot and does what you can’t. At which point, you keep at it, because the world goes on. Steven Scaife

Elden Ring Nightreign (FromSoftware)

Directed by Ishizaki Junya, Elden Ring Nightreign is a thrilling roguelite riff on FromSoftware’s open-world masterpiece Elden Ring. A solid run, which you can embark on with a pair of allies or alone, lasts about 45 minutes: two days searching for equipment and supplies, two nights battling bosses, and a final, brutal confrontation with one of eight Night Lords. The game’s action jolts Elden Ring’s foundations with substantial kineticism; there’s the familiar rolling around, jumping, and hacking foes to pieces, but you run at blistering speed and nimbly vault over obstacles. Most exhilarating is the selective rejection of the laws of physics: No fall, no matter how severe, can hurt you. The result is a bracing freedom of movement. Niv M. Sultan

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Warhorse Studios)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II opens at the siege of Suchdol Castle in 1403, with the player assuming the role of Henry of Skalitz fighting back soldiers. The game then jumps back several weeks, where Henry and his friend Hans Capon travel from Rattay to confront Otto III of Bergau over his allegiances, only to be attacked by bandits. Barely escaping with their lives, conflict brews between the two and they part. Repairing this rupture between friends is just one important narrative thread of a superb open-world action RPG centered around a truly singular protagonist and the characters around him. This mechanically dense sequel builds on the gameplay of its forerunner to truly immerse the player in its world and, after so much politicking and bloodshed, returns to that opening battle, where you’ll feel in your gut how its outcome is colored by every decision Henry made across his journey. Ryan Aston

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio)

For those who’ve been holding their breath since 2013, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii plays like a spiritual successor to the beloved Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. But the game, historical accuracy and reality be damned, is also the most delightfully bonkers pirate simulator that you’re likely to ever play. It’s so successful on that front that the traditional Like a Dragon storytelling weaving in and out of the pirate material almost feels intrusive. But it’s a necessary evil—if one even wants to call it that, given that the traditional Like a Dragon elements here are as delightfully chaotic, weird, and overly earnest as ever. Clark

Mario Kart World (Nintendo)

Despite its title, the most exciting part of Mario Kart World isn’t its open world, but its blistering new Knockout Tour mode. The structure obviously borrows heavily from the battle royale genre, and it suits the Mario Kart formula well. The ever-present threat of elimination means the stakes of each leg of the tour start high and just keep ratcheting up. Mario Kart World is also a visual delight that retains both sharpness and personality even when the scenery is zipping past at high speed. But perhaps the best showcase of the Switch 2’s tech can be felt in Mario Kart World’s impressively nuanced physics, which open the door for new ways to tackle each course, with nifty but tricky methods for jumping, wall riding, and rail grinding that can be optimized for efficiency or simply used for an expressive dash of player freedom. Demorest

Monster Hunter Wilds (Capcom)

Once you roll credits and proceed to Monster Hunter Wilds’s High Rank section, the story takes a decided backseat to the game’s real meat and potatoes: tons of hunts against an expanded roster of monsters, with a difficulty curve that slowly but surely continues to tick up. While learning how to handle the game’s 14 weapons rewires your synapses in a way that’s somewhat reminiscent of a fighting game, combat here mostly evades comparisons to any game save the rest of the Monster Hunter series. This is illustrious company, and the game sets a new high-water mark. Though as great as its action may be, the game’s secret sauce is expectedly its fascinating creatures. As in your skirmishes against Rey Dau, Gypceros, and Blangonga, the boss fights here display an unrivaled level of carefully detailed lifelikeness that will only feel unremarkable to those who dare take this wonderful series for granted. Demorest

Monster Train 2 (Shiny Shoe)

Like the shrill whistle of a steam engine, roguelike deck-builder Monster Train 2 evokes an almost unstoppable sense of locomotion. As you roar along the track from hell to heaven and beyond, amassing creatures, spells, and trinkets, the game’s turn-based battles spiral from modest exchanges into manic slugfests sparking with status effects and ability interactions. Each run has you enlist two of 10 distinct factions—and select a cornerstone “champion” from twice as many options—affording dizzying space for creativity. (Shiny Shoe, the game’s developer, made the winsome decision to include the clans from the original Monster Train as surprise unlockables.) There’s a propulsive rush to discovering and exploiting devious synergies between cards. It feels like you’re shoveling more and more fuel into a voracious firebox, hurtling forward, faster and faster, until you fly off the rails. Sultan

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo (Pocket Trap)

From the moment in Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo where the young prodigal bat Pippit first arrives at his aunt’s spooky manor, every colorful, jam-packed screen adds to the character of the game’s corporate-run city. Every room also presents an interesting puzzle or battle, sometimes both, which is impressive given that there are hundreds of rooms. And just about every element of Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo serves to critique capitalism. Folks, Gordon Gekko had it wrong. It’s not greed that’s good, but the yoyo, which “clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” And if those words sound as hyperbolic as they do in Wall Street, just wait until you get your hands on Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo and see how gloriously right this weird, wonderful yoyo-centric adventure is. Riccio

Rift of the NecroDancer (Brace Yourself Games and Tic Toc Games)

Everything is about the rhythm in this genre-shifting follow-up to Crypt of the NecroDancer. That’s true whether you’re flipping burgers in a WarioWare-style minigame, closing an interdimensional rift by syncing each strum of a magical guitar to the movements of a demonic army, or going mano a mano with skeletal sorcerers in boss battles that suggest a gene splice of Punch Out! and Let’s Dance. For those struggling to stay on the beat, the comic plot provides plenty of opportunity to catch your breath between songs, and Rift of the NecroDancer also lands solid points about the importance of moving to the beat of your own drum. Negative emotions may not be so easily dispelled for us as they are with Cadence’s guitar, but music can help us to motivate ourselves, making this a feel-good game in more ways than one. Riccio

South of Midnight (Compulsion Games)

South of Midnight’s building of a verdant, dazzling cathedral in worship to empathy is a blessing. And it takes many forms here, from Hazel fostering camaraderie with a giant Cajun-accented catfish, to her trying to understand what drove her mother’s ex to run out on his family. Ultimately, the soul of the game is Hazel and her relationship with her mother’s calling as a social worker. The girl never quite knew how much of herself her mother gave to the people around her, how much she changed lives with the simplest of gestures. South of Midnight’s hero’s journey is ultimately an adventure in search of the reasons why those things are important, why we need communion and community, and more specifically how people of color have always built that sense of community when they needed it and always will. Clark

Split Fiction (Hazelight Studios)

Split Fiction is a vast, breathtakingly detailed playground of a game that, across varied adventures that only gaming can deliver, ever so gently forces you and your co-op partner to communicate with one another to get past obstacles. Throughout, it flits back and forth between cyberpunk sci-fi and whimsical high fantasy, with side jaunts through delightfully surreal hidden stages that, while half-baked, are the most imaginative and unique parts of the game. And it does all of that while walking a perilous tightrope as a feat of game design. Split Fiction is a tough game that throws all manner of challenges at the player, and it’s just forgiving enough with its respawn system and simplistic control scheme that just about anyone paying enough attention can grasp what needs to be done at any given moment to proceed. Clark

The Stone of Madness (The Game Kitchen)

With its motley crew of specialized characters and top-down view of crisscrossing enemy vision cones, The Stone of Madness resembles other stealth tactics games like Desperados III and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. But it’s not long before the developers at the Game Kitchen reveal a suite of inspired idiosyncrasies, and they do it by leaning into the desperation and disempowerment of the game’s imposing setting: an 18th-century Spanish monastery doubling as an insane asylum. Where other stealth tactics games are about coordinating intricate maneuvers, this one, which is also distinguished by exceptional cartoon designs that suggest The Name of the Rose by way of Don Bluth, emphasizes the interplay of your group’s weaknesses. In an impressive feat of adapting an established format for a unique setting, The Stone of Madness is cleverly attuned to perseverance through incremental progress. Scaife

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon (Questline)

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon pulses with a pointedly political spirit. Six hundred years after King Arthur conquered the island of Avalon, your journey through his crumbling settler empire confronts you with its founding myths, original sins, and destructive legacy. Few interactions with the open world’s communities and environments lack a polemical bent; even typically rote mechanics, like foraging for resources, are imbued with historical weight. Based on the board game of the same name by Polish publisher Awaken Realms, within which developer Questline operates, The Fall of Avalon contrasts the grim gravity of Avalon’s conflicts—between Kamelot and its citizens, between humanity and otherworldly entities, between you and the piece of King Arthur’s soul that’s lodged in your psyche—with a charmingly eccentric, droll sensibility. And through it all, the makers of the game keep Kamelot exceedingly wyrd. Sultan

To a T (uvula)

Takahashi Keita’s To a T abounds in surprising details, and it’s as committed to absurdity as it is to earnestly exploring the daily life of a teen who’s lived their entire life in a T-pose, arms perpetually outstretched. It’s a disability metaphor realized through an assortment of goofy minigames and quick-time events. It’s a one-joke premise, perhaps, but the joke keeps paying off in more esoteric ways as the game goes on. How might Teen get around town when their condition prevents them from using a bike? With a unicycle, of course. A more conventional game might have foregrounded Teen’s ability to fly, bending the story into a superhero origin story as an excuse to display their newfound powers. But To a T remains a life sim, lavishing idiosyncratic detail on its ground-level view of the world. Flight is just one stop along a broader, sillier journey that depicts Teen’s growing comfort in their own skin. Scaife