Top 10 Games of 2025

10. BACK TO THE DAWN
XBX, PC (Metal Head Games)

Shawshank Redemption meets The Lion King in a prison drama where life behind bars is literally a zoo. Players pick one of two characters – a fox journalist unjustly imprisoned or a black panther undercover detective. This indie charmer is built around an old-school RPG. Liaise with other inmates, work to earn money, and avoid getting your ass kicked in the prison yard. Like the Sims, you’ll need to sleep, eat, brush your teeth and shower to keep healthy. Unlike the Sims, you’ll get the chance to spike inmate’s food with laxatives and extort money from new fish. It’s Legend Of Zelda with shanks and drug deals.

Back to the Dawn

9. ATOMFALL
PS5, PS4, XSX, XBO, PC (Rebellion)

An unapologetically British dystopian folk horror, drawing from the movies The Wicker Man and 1980s nuclear annihilation drama Threads. This Escape From New York in the Lake District is based on the true story of a catastrophe at a nuclear power plant in England in the late 1950s.

You’re stuck in the exclusion zone, trying to escape but pitched against bands of marauding psychos (and the occasional ally). Bullets are few and the hand-to-hand combat is rusty, so combat is sometimes best avoided in favour of stealth. Not always easy, sometimes laborious, but definitely thought-provoking in its musings on nuclear annihilation.

Atomfall

8. DONKEY KONG BANANZA
Switch 2 (Nintendo)

Nintendo’s dumb ape has come a long way since his 1981 arcade debut, lobbing barrels as Mario climbed a construction site to rescue Pauline. In this fantastic 3D platformer, DK is reunited with Pauline, and the only whiff of Mario is the game’s resemblance to the mighty Super Mario Odyssey. Bananza is groundbreaking. Literally!

Players are immersed in a fully destructive environment – punch through mountains, and tear chunks from the ground to use as projectiles to lob at enemies, or as surfboards to slide over dangerous terrain. Glorious graphics, imaginative level design: puzzles, mini-games and other monkey business besides.

Donkey Kong Bananza

7. SILENT HILL F
PS5, XSX, PC (Konami)

The long-running survival horror series takes its grim antics from Midwest America to 1960s Japan where the protagonist, a school girl with a miserable home life, wanders about an abandoned town. Bouts of unconsciousness send her to an even more hellish underworld, where a man in a fox-mask gaslights her exploring the shadows of her own psyche. Freud would have a field day with this stuff: surreal, disturbing horror with something to say.

Silent Hill F

6. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Tape One + Tape Two)
PC, XSX, PS5 (Don’t Nod)

A dreamy, nostalgia-drenched exploration of teenage friendship in the mid-1990s. The story rotates around Swann, an introverted teenager experiencing her last summer in Michigan before her family moves to Canada. Swann befriends fellow 16-year-old misfits, Nora, Autumn and Kat and they form a riot grrrl band. The game is split between memories of the past and the present day, in which the girls reunite when supernatural phenomena from that summer come back to haunt them. A charming portrait of the pre-digital era, accentuated with dreamy synth music and smartly written characters.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

5. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
PS5 (Sony)

Only Hideo Kojima, legendary auteur behind the Metal Gear Solid series, would dare begin a major video game with the lead character nursing a baby to the tune of ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’.

World weary courier Sam (Norman Reedus, aka Daryl Dixon from the Walking Dead) plans delivery routes, and traverses open world desert landscapes to deliver cargo to cities and settlements. Every ridge, rock, river and bridge, and a dynamic climate (wind, sandstorms, earthquakes) threaten to hamper your progress. Use stealth to sneak around enemies or go in guns blazing like a deranged Amazon delivery driver.

Death Stranding 2

4. BLUE PRINCE
PC, PS5, XSX (Raw Fury)

A mansion full of rooms, each containing its own clue or puzzle, each potentially opening a door deeper into the house: deeper into the mind of its mysterious creator, bringing you a step closer to the mysterious 46th room. Blue Prince is a magnificent, architecturally genius Rubik’s Cube.

Every time you step into a room, you lose a “footprint”. Completely run out of footprints or reach a dead end, and you have to start all over again. Problem is, each time you enter the house, the rooms rearrange themselves. A puzzle box pushing your brain to its limits.

Blue Prince

3. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
PS5, XSX, PC (Kepler Interactive)

Clair Obscur is a deeply moving experience: a baroque adventure inspired by classic Japanese role-playing games, yet so French you can practically smell the garlic. The game is set in a dystopian world, in which a god-like creature paints a descending number each year on a distant monolith.

The numbers represent the age at which people die, leaving it up to 33-year-old Gustav and his fellow crusaders to set sail and save the last vestiges of humanity. Clair Obscur has gorgeous art, characters to care about, turn-based rhythmic battle sequences, and plot twists to break your heart. Final Fantasy with a beret.

Clair Obscur Expedition 3

2. MARIO KART WORLD
Nintendo Switch (Nintendo)

Load up on bananas and bring your friends, to quote Kurt Cobain had he joined Mario, Luigi, Bowser and the other gang of maniacs in this revved up launch title for the Nintendo Switch. Bouncing around colourful tracks, sending rivals spinning off into the gutter with torpedo shells has been given a Switch fresh lick of paint. There’s the usual three laps and across the finish line in Grand Prix, but also a Free Roam mode for racers who like to race off piste.

Mario Kart World

1. GHOST OF YOTEI
PS5 (SONY)

Revenge is a dish best served with a sharp katana in Sony’s epic adventure, set across the plains of Hokkaido in northern Japan. You play a haunted mercenary seeking retribution from the Ytei Six goons who murdered your mother. The open world setting is amazing: rolling planes, grasslands, snowy peaks, forests, campsites and villages.

The action is a martial arts display of swordplay, bows and arrows, defence and stealth. Play music on your shamisen instrument to summon a wolf companion during sieges, solve puzzles, clamber up cliffs, and learn new fighting skills from tough senseis. Tastier than a hot bowel of ramen.

Ghost of Yotei

Capping off another inspiring 12 months for music, sport, film, comedy, literature and activism – both at home and around the world – we're thrilled to bring you the brand new Hot Press Annual!

Inside, the HP critics deliver their verdict on 2025, including the albums, tracks, movies, books, games, quotes, photos, events and political happenings of the year. We also sit down for insightful interviews with cover stars Kingfishr, Nell Mescal, RÓIS, Yusuf / Cat Stevens, Ewan McVicar, Booker Prize winner David Szalay and many more. Plus: special end-of-year reflections from the likes of Aisling Bea, Ardal O’Hanlon and BP Fallon...