Quickly Reviewing Every Game I Beat In 2025

2025 was a year where I got to try LOTS of games, I counted 35 I finished or played enough of to truly understand well. Here's some quick reviews of all of them!

Horizon Chase Turbo - Lovely racing game with nice graphics and animation that do give you a sense of speed and enough variety in collecting stuff in tracks to always keep it interesting - 9/10

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men - I thought it had something special, but it straight up doesn't. Controls are wonky, art style isn't great, the story is so disjointed, and the voice acting is atrocious. At least It's over quickly and some of the set pieces are alright. - 3/10

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 - Very fun stealth sniper that actually makes you feel like you're taking out targets at a great distance, nothing greatly wrong with it, just wish it had more. - 8/10

Doom 3 - Not gonna lie I had a tough time getting into it. Perhaps It's the fact that despite having a great atmosphere and graphics that do still hold up well, the structure becomes repetitive early on where you almost know where an enemy will jump you from, and it never ends up with a great pace of gunplay. - 5/10

Buckshot Roulette - Simple, memorable, fun to pick up and replay and just see if you can make it further. Play it. - 8/10

Descenders - Fun biking game with procedurally generated tracks where challenge is gradually increased and it feels so satisfying to master, despite some wonky physics at times and the maps sometimes feeling samey. - 8/10

Styx: Master of Shadows - Solid stealth, with a super charming main character that's pretty funny, but platforming that's inconsistently wonky plus drab repetitive visuals hold it from true greatness. - 7/10

Styx: Shards of Darkness - Fixes most of my issues with its predecessor, while having a story that doesn't feel as complete. I like the faster gameplay and challenging scenarios though. - 8.5/10

Tokyo Dark - Great visual novel-esque detective story where your choices do affect plenty and the paranormal does create a great creepy atmosphere, held back by significant backtracking and some slow gameplay. - 7/10

Bomber Crew - Very simple systems, very fun and engaging to try your best to survive with your bomber plane through different missions that become absurdly punishing in the end. - 8/10

Star Wars: Republic Commando - I think lots of pieces are there for an awesome Star Wars game, but I didn't love how most of the guns felt other than the shotgun. I do love the level design though, and wish there was more game than the short campaign present here. - 6/10

The Darkside Detective - Great humor, fun puzzles that aren't too challenging, feels like a great modernization of a point-and-click with great personality. - 8/10

Battlefield 1 - Great war stories campaigns, fantastic multiplayer, amazing visual effects. Loved playing it just for the vibes as I couldn't get enough. - 9/10

Ganbare! Super Strikers - Football (soccer) turned into turn based tactics? Hell yeah! Unfortunately it doesn't have much complexity so eventually you get samey games where you abuse the AI. - 7/10

Golazo! Soccer League - Simple arcade version of something like a FIFA. Fun for parties, but I frankly think you either go all Mario Strikers or all FIFA. - 7/10

Later Alligator - Fun minigame collection that rewards completion, on top of having impeccable humor and great art. Great for completionists of all sorts. - 8.5/10

Kill The Crows - Very tight controls on this arena top down shooter, where you actually wanna experiment with your loadout and it doesn't take long to get back into trying again. - 8/10

Spiritfarer - A beautiful experience that combines platforming with life sim stuff that seriously overstays its welcome. I think the biggest mistake was having the most emotional bits being set at the beginning rather than spread throughout. So many tasks later on feel like busywork. - 7/10

Blasphemous - I loved it. Really great visuals and atmosphere. Amazing controls that feel tight and reward mastery. Just an overall great 2D soulslike experience. - 9/10

World of Tanks - 6/10 for P2W experience, 9/10 solely on gameplay. This deserves a longer post, but what was once my "main" game truly has improved lots over time in terms of gameplay and even the brand new player experience is better, than then the higher tiers get slogged by P2W tanks that really slow it all down.

Steel Rats - VERY glitchy on PC, which greatly messed with my enjoyment of it, and the controls just don't feel tight. I love the idea of an industrial biker platformer, but the execution is rough. - 3/10

Industria - Great proof of concept for a Half-Like, interesting environment and story, but terrible performance and not a lot of variety in enemies. - 5/10

RoboCop: Rogue City - An insanely enjoyable FPS with a story that's interesting, upgrades that feel rewarding, and guns that feel impactful that has terrible optimization but great looks. Nails feeling like Robocop. - 9/10

The Gunk - A brief, gorgeous looking, and highly imaginative space adventure where you can just relax, clear gunk, and explore an alien world. Great palette cleanser if found on the cheap. - 8/10

Need for Speed Unbound - Pretty solid NFS game, even a few years later. Story is okay as it at least has characters you can sort of care about despite the nonsensical stuff. Multiplayer is decent, despite the very well defined meta. Car customization is fun and the actual driving mechanics are well refined. - 8/10

Midnight Fight Express - Solid top down beat-em-up that has very fun combo chains, many different scenarios to play with, and plenty of challenge, while let down by an uninteresting story that interrupts things often enough to be annoying. - 7.5/10

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - A metroidvania that gives a fresh story and coat of paint to the Castlevania formula while not really modernizing it. You get a very good game with controls that feel a little less tight than what we've come to expect and some grinding that feels semi-required. - 7.5/10

Eiyuden Chronicles: Rising - A side-scrolling action RPG that has its charms including absolutely stunning animations, but is truly just a fetch quest collecion with quirky humor. It's not the best at anything, just plain average. If you want pure side scrolling action play Dust An Elysian Tail instead, and if you want more RPG choice elements in 2D, then play Dex. - 5/10

Dark Sector - Wonky gameplay, drab colour palette, and a crappy story that overshadow gameplay that can shine at times with the interesting abilities and weapons. - 4/10

Severed Steel - Rewarding shooter/platformer where good momentum and movement is rewarded and every level has plenty of optimization. Ideal for speedrunners. - 8/10

The Legend of Grimrock - Very good modernization of dungeon crawlers, I was very engaged playing this after bouncing off of it 12 years ago. The game does have repetitive visuals and enemies, but varies the puzzling enough to never make it a huge issue. - 9/10

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning - Solid short RPG with a fun sense of humor and a somewhat nonsensical story that's still quite fun. I wish the dialogue between the characters popped up every so often instead of being hidden under the "Chat" button, since a lot of the game's personality is hidden behind this. There's also a few bugs that pop up every so often during the turn based combat which makes it less fun than it truly is. - 7/10

Field of Glory II: Medieval - Great tabletop wargame translated to computer. It's very good at the things it does and has nice unit, scenario, and campaign variety. - 8/10

Cloudpunk - A nice Cyberpunk simulation, an alright game. Very interesting city with interesting characters and an alright story that really make everything feel very cyberpunk with the hopelessness and inequality there, but if the driving and walking around isn't your vibe, there isn't much else to it. - 7/10

Cloudpunk: City of Ghosts - A direct sequel to Cloudpunk that makes the story feel far more complete and actually has the most interesting side characters. More of the same, but done a little better. - 8/10

Another Crab's Treasure - Wonderful Soulslike with controls that feel actually tight, mechanics that feel fair, and a fun little story and world and overall great message. Some glitches hold it from the perfect score, but It's fantastic still. - 9/10

Funnily enough, my goal for 2026 is to play fewer games, enjoy some other hobbies a bit more, but also take time to savour longer games such as Cyberpunk 2077. We'll see next year how that works out in practice, but it was still fun to play lots of things here. Let me know what your favourites were and if you have any strong opinions about my list. Have a great 2026 everyone!