Games I Beat in 2025, Ranked
It was yet another year in games. GTA 6 didn’t happen but Silksong finally did, though I didn’t play that one, or its predecessor yet, and not sure when I would. Also the Switch 2 is a thing finally, and I ended up getting one of those not too long ago because they already had a couple games I wanted, but not sure what’s coming after that though that I’d want to get there. At least I got a secondhand deal on the system and some discounts on the two games I got. I’m often trying to hunt for deals, at least in software, since hardware will be skyrocketing for the remainder of the decade at least probably. Related to finding deals, I have a ton of Steam and other PC games lined up in not much of an order, and a bunch on prior consoles on top of that. So here’s what I managed to finish up this year. And Expedition 33 isn’t on here either. I just don’t feel like playing French Persona.
- LEGO Bricktales (Steam Deck, Steam)
Sometimes there’s Lego games that aren’t just whatever TT Games is licensing lately, and this is one of them. It’s a simpler one that puts more emphasis on building solutions rather than getting through action levels, also I’m pretty sure this was a phone game given the UI design and general approach. The plot is simple, use some kind of teleportation technology in order to rebuild a theme park through concentrated happiness or something. There’s some puzzle solving in terms of using the right power to get through certain obstacles or find more collectables, and then there’s the building parts which involve some fairly basic physics system to make sure that a structure won’t just fall apart if slight pressure is applied. A lot of it is bridges of some type but there’s other things like trying to scoop up enough free-falling bricks or balance a hanging object. It’s not a very exciting game but it’s more of a thinking one, so it’s still neat.
- Pokémon Violet (Switch)
To front-load this one, it has problems, and not just in performance, but those are at least smoothed over for those playing it on the Switch 2, though I wasn’t playing on that, so I got the full performance crust experience, at least with whatever current patches. One of the big ones I’d heard about is that even though the main objectives on the map can be done in any order, there’s a recommended order due to how they all have specific levels instead of scaling to however far the player has gotten in the checklist, so I ended up following that when playing this and also not grinding excessively so I wouldn’t just plow through the true final boss or whatever, even though in a sense it still wasn’t really difficult outside of a couple specific fights along the way.
On the plus side, the monster designs in this one have a lot of hits with me, and the story has some more interesting parts, at least when it comes to stuff outside of the usual “go fight 8 Gyms also here’s your assigned rival” thing, which there’s thankfully a fair bit of. It also felt worth getting through all that to enter the final story where they put all their best stuff in terms of plot. Also getting around the map in general works decently, more so once the bike dragon gets more upgrades by going through the Titan path.
Long story short, it’s a weird one that’s in between some of the best in certain aspects and not so great technically and in some parts of the game design. I guess another note on that is that monsters again have to be fought to catch them, no stealth catching like in the Legends games which for now seems to be exclusive to those. It’s not a deal breaker but it seems weird to go back and forth on that. Now we just see what they make or break once they get around to the next major games.
- Sable (PC, Xbox for Windows)
This was a holdover from when it was on Game Pass, then I used whatever credit I’d accumulated to pick it up for the Xbone to finish later. However there’s some parts of the game that run very poorly on that system, mainly the one big city in the map, so thankfully the whole “Play Anywhere” thing exists for this game and I could continue on my PC. Mainly this is some kind of desert exploration thing on a hoverbike, with the goal of figuring out what the player character wants to do in life by collecting masks which apparently define identity in this sci-fi world, since everyone’s wearing them. There’s no combat but there’s puzzles and climbing around for the usual gameplay. It’s a neat setting similar to other desert-themed sci-fi stuff I’ve heard of or seen before.
However I ran into a number of recurring issues with climbing some walls and also the camera, as in there were times where I couldn’t see where I was trying to go for whatever reason, and sometimes trying to stick to a wall kinda bugs out or doesn’t happen the moment I’d think it would. Also with the comic sketch kinda art style applied to the whole game, it gets hard to differentiate terrain and other objects in the world during night or in dark areas, but this can be fixed by changing the color saturation setting from automatic to something else. Despite that it was still an interesting enough job fair kinda deal.
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (PS5)
One of the big games I was wanting to check out since I’d played through the previous ones, it certainly has a lot, even to a fault. And despite there being so much going on and so many side activities, I still nearly completed everything, really only just calling it once it was mainly just the kinda annoying wave defense missions left. I remember the first game in this particular series making my hands hurt after a time due to just how much damage standard enemies could take and there being so many of them meaning endless punching and kicking and sometimes actual combos. At least that didn’t really happen here, probably partly due to playing on an easier mode just for that sake, but also there was a little more variety in things, and not just from playing two Spider-Men.
While the newer Man has all those electric powers and cloaking, the classic Man also gets some gadget powers and later Symbiote ones to even things out between them in terms of pulling off interesting moves and combos. They also have side missions exclusive to each other which means no coasting through as just one Man, though as far as leveling up and such, some core upgrades are also shared. And of course the MJ stealth missions return, but with a continued evolution from where they left off on the previous game. Most importantly she still has a stun gun to take down enemies and also doesn’t immediately get murdered if spotted. And this is fine enough, but it still continues to evolve over the course of the story to be much more action-focused where stealth is more of an afterthought, so I thought that was kinda weird but I figure less arbitrary stealth is more welcome in general for games that aren’t stealth-focused.
Long story short, it’s more of the same but bigger and now there’s two (plus one). I found it fun enough to stick with, particularly when there were some side activities to break from the main plot. Also I guess one particular complaint I have about this is that for some reason the podcast segments can’t be replayed, so if one gets interrupted then it has to be found on YouTube, meanwhile the previous games had this feature, so not sure why that was dropped.
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5)
I put this midquel kinda thing a little higher up on the list than the true sequel. The main reason I have for that is because not only is it shorter so it doesn’t overstay its welcome while still having plenty to do on the side, but the stakes involved are a bit more personally-focused while still being a major threat to the city overall, and I seem to lean more toward stories about stopping a non-world-ending threat or saving the community rather than saving the world or universe in some big epic adventure kinda thing, so I guess in this case it’s a relative scale. Plus this game focuses on the cooler new Spider-Man with his electric powers and cloaking ability, so there’s that going on the additions from the previous game, which this is more based on mechanically compared to the sequel being a total upgrade of sorts. Also this is where they added a more positive alternative podcast to JJJ’s familiar rantings, which continued in the sequel, but thankfully the old brushhead is still there to not quite understand just what the Spider-Men are up to. And the podcasts are replayable in case one got overridden by an event.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (PC, Steam)
While I’ve played Oblivion before long ago, and again more recently, this was different enough to catch my interest and it happened at the right time to do so. Thankfully I found a discount at least so I felt like it was worth looking at again in a shinier form. Long story short, it’s Oblivion, about as janky and laggy as it was back around its original time, but with a few things smoothed out like fewer random crashes (though this may vary) and the leveling system in general, meaning going over level 10 or whatever doesn’t turn the game into a damage sponge-filled death festival.
The character creator is still weird as hell, and even has a couple tweaks to make it potentially even weirder with more colors and the sliders doing some crazy things at their extremes. There were even a few more notable bugs introduced, including one I saw someone else encounter involving infinite goblin hordes during a certain quest that’s normally supposed to involve just a small horde, but also some weirdness involving NPC animations breaking between sneaking and resurrecting, and an infinite lockpicking leveling exploit on top of there being the presence of an item duplication thing, which for all I know that last one could have been left in on purpose as tradition.
Of course the stuff that’s there intentionally is fine too, and it’s pretty much as it was, but with a few more voice actors including some from Skyrim for just a little more NPC variety, which ends up replacing some of the classic line reads unfortunately, since they still generally follow a one voice actor per species/gender combination rule, but many of the cheesy classics are still in. Some of them still do also have weird faces, thankfully. I don’t know that I recommend this one over the original though, as it depends on what someone wants, whether something that’s cheaper and might run better after some fixes, or more modern and demanding but still classic jank. In either case it’d be up to the modding community at this point to fix any remaining major issues, and the original release definitely has a bigger following given how long it’s been around.
- Indika (PC, Steam)
The deliberate clash of retro game aesthetics with a photorealistic take on a slight fantasy-distorted historical fiction caught my attention with this one. This involves a nun, whose covenant hasn’t taken a liking to her in the slightest, being sent on a journey that soon takes a bunch of weird turns, and meanwhile hears a mocking voice in her head implied to be from the Devil himself while seeing strange visions at times. While this is going on, she can find things in the world or perform little tasks to get what I’ve dubbed Jesus Points, which are tracked on a relatively persistent score counter and level her up along a slightly branching skill tree of sorts to increase her ability to get more Jesus Points, and again this is deliberately clashing for what’s otherwise a narrative adventure thing.
Even the soundtrack gets in on this with more intense moments being punctuated with chiptune music, essentially the “video game action sequences” involving running from or dodging something. These aren’t very frequent, and thankfully so because this game involves controlling a nun and not Lara Croft by comparison, who would be much more nimble even with tank controls. There’s also flashback sequences which are depicted in a full pixel art 2D style, and these are much more video game-y down to borrowing from several game styles, but are also optionally skippable, and again thankfully so because there’s some really stupid-ass jumps and things in some of those. The story dives into the topics of religion (of course), doubt, redemption, and temptation among other things and I found it quite interesting through all its strange events, pushing through whatever was just a bit annoying along the way for the sake of just seeing where the game was going next.
- Just Crow Things (Steam Deck, Steam)
This game comes from the developers behind Rain on Your Parade, a game I tried on Game Pass but didn’t like, particularly because certain annoying genre shifts popped up in the middle of what’s otherwise a sandbox chaos kinda thing. However, I did try the demo of this game and found it interesting enough to pick up and hoped it wouldn’t take the same turn. Fortunately, this is much more of a sandbox chaos thing with occasional leaning into other genres without so much overriding the usual fun, also it involves a cute bird and other forest animals causing havoc and terror among the humans, with a few other civilizations thrown in the mix. They even end up referencing their previous game in one of the levels, which is thankfully not a pain because the crow just bounces around whenever hit by anything hostile and doesn’t seem to mind otherwise. Also the crow naturally has weaponized droppings, including the standard kind as well as flaming ones, as well as bean-powered speed boosts that can help in the racing objectives, provided there’s not drop targets mixed in the course which requires something more solid. Each level has a minimum number of objectives to continue to the next, but I usually ended up clearing out all of them since it was just fun to mess with.
- Smushi Come Home (Steam Deck, Steam)
This is a cute little adventure involving mushroom folks living in a Pikmin-esque environment that mixes natural features with man-made pieces, and one of them gets dragged away from their home and has to make their way back. There’s the usual kit of gliding and climbing, though climbing is a bit more like a wall jump instead of having a stamina meter, which sprinting does have. All these things can be upgraded somewhat over the course of doing sidequests, in addition to getting tools to cut down vines or mine rocks. It’s all platforming and exploration without combat or any real danger, punctuated by the character who gives you a blade saying that it can never be used on another being. The game is short and cute much like its protagonist, who can also be customized with different caps when they’re found and unlocked. I found it fun to mess with for at least as long as it lasted, and there’s still some side things to do if the mood catches me again.
- LEGO DC Super-Villains (PC, Steam)
Yet another comic book game of sorts, but this time from the weird world of DC in the form of a usual TT Games level-based Lego action thing with an open hub world. This time, the focus is on the villains as indicated by the weirdly-hyphenated title, particularly one of the player’s own creation. I decided to go with Evil Gex after finding a few reptilian parts in the bin on offer from the start. This created villain then goes on to be involved in a thing where new superheroes have appeared to take the place of the usuals who have gone missing, and the villains are the ones who have to take on these new heroes, though who’s really the heroes in this situation also soon becomes a whole thing in itself.
The story turns a bit into one of those self-insert OC fanfictions where the player character starts getting a bunch of powers, explained as some experimental technology to absorb power sources, so I was finding the whole power fantasy approach a bit funny in general. Also there’s the scenario of being “the newbie” in the established hierarchy, pantomiming as a classic Lego game character would while everyone else has the usual fully voiced dialogue, and also maybe not quite catching on to what villain-ing is but still being pretty reliable. I just found this to be a fun focus on the weird rogue’s gallery of DC while also rolling one’s own, plus whatever side missions would pop up to highlight other oddballs whether hero or villain, and to be my main Lego game I beat this year, in addition to the other one mentioned previously.
- Tall Trails (PC, Steam)
Another short indie climbing adventure about a little clay golem who’s looking for their purpose in this apparent grand plan orchestrated by a wizard somewhere. Even though climbing with the usual stamina meter is present, there’s the major mechanic coming from launching things out of the player character’s boot that’s strapped on their back. At its most basic, it lets the player boost upward. It only gets more varied from there, such as items that allow gliding while they’re kept in the boot, or ones that come with multiple stacks of boost on their own while only taking up one slot, or ones that allow a gradual ascension while the button is held, as well as things that aren’t even in the ascending category of traversal.
There’s a bunch of other golems and other characters along the way across the islands with various tasks to accomplish, some of which involve a quick sprint race or turning the terrain into lava and needing to hop around platforms a certain distance. And of course the player character here is customizable between selecting various glazes for color and accessories including changing the appearance of the boot. This one has some replayability as well, since after finishing the main story, or even from the start if someone wants, there’s the option for random procedurally generated islands to traverse and get further upgrades and more cosmetics. I found this little game to be pretty charming and cute with its simplistic art style, and then suddenly there’s a gigantic detailed model of something that can be climbed with some effort to get whatever’s up there. And now there’s beach crabs in a recent update.
- TOEM (Steam Deck, Steam)
This is a game I was on and off again with, but I found it pretty cute from the demo and picked it up later, just playing when the mood hit and seeing what this Steam Deck could do with a game that’s clearly not very intensive in graphics, with its grayscale diorama levels with a bunch of 2D cartoon characters populating it. The premise is this character going on a journey from home across the land to photograph this phenomenon the game is named after, and accomplishes this with free bus rides earned by helping out the folks in the area. These tasks are often either fetch quests or finding something to photograph, given the main mechanic. There are also a number of creatures to find and photograph as well because they’re there and it adds those photos to a compendium of sorts. And of course the player character can be dressed up in whatever clothes they end up finding or earning through quests. After finishing the main objective, it turns out there was a bonus level added taking place in an island vacation, with more of this sort of thing to do and fill up one last stamp card. And on top of that, there’s the announced sequel which I really hope goes well so I can check that out and see more of this cute setting, maybe while I’m doing my own traveling again with the Steam Deck.
That’s what I managed to get through myself, as far as things I’ll consider games enough that I finished on my own. At this point I’ve been trying to get through roughly one game per month, though it’s ended up more like I’ll get through a couple or more every few months because things keep coming up, like travel or wondering about my life path or living area or other questions.
For other mentions not listed above, Blippo+ is more of a serial across many short-form episodic shows over the course of several weeks, and has interactive menus and some other things, but I found it pretty neat in terms of stylistic choice and content,. It’s essentially Earth-like humanoid aliens producing micro-shows with early-to-mid 1980s budget video editing, which is now available in full color glory on PC (which I watched this on) and Switch, possibly because they didn’t feel like adding achievements which are apparently mandatory for other consoles. In the color version, there’s the included option to watch it in dithered 1-bit black (or dark green) and white, just like on the original Playdate version, which reminds me of a long ago time when I had an old portable analog TV I was given that only worked in black and white as well, though it could do a few more shades of gray. I saw someone play the Playdate version recently and there’s some other notable visual differences alongside the whole color versus not color thing, plus the Playdate version runs on a real-time clock that cycles the programming each week instead of on the color version that unlocks the next set of programming after watching it for long enough.
As far as games I’ve played through with others, I’ll mention Terraria as an interesting one that I finally got to play from start to final boss with a group of friends, though of course that was a group effort. It’s definitely more than “2D Minecraft” or “Starbound but one planet”. At least at the moment I’d be interested in further playthroughs, more likely modded, as compared to Minecraft which currently doesn’t really hold my interest much, but we’ll see if that mood ever hits again. I was also dragged into several short-form flavor-of-the-month games with that group as well, a.k.a. the whole “friendslop” thing as of recent, with some games I enjoyed more than others. I don’t know that I’d specifically recommend any of those though. I guess I’m more into deeper games to play with friends rather than a few rounds of survival against increasingly frustrating odds. Now if only I could get a steady group to play things like Divinity Original Sin 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3. Or just find the time to solo something like that I guess. But then there’s the games that can’t be done alone like all those Hazelight specials that keep happening, not sure I’ll ever get to those for that reason among others.
In any case, provided this year is survivable I’ll see what I end up finishing this time around. I’d like to get through a lot of the greats from last year, and the years prior on top of that, though of course only ones that I’d really want to play and not just ones that got some kind of acclaim all over the place in a genre or story I can’t quite get into.