neo's 2025 end of year gaming summary

holy fuck I played a lot of games this year. Roughly in play order since I'm going by my steam year in review.

Fatal Fury City of The Wolves

I was really excited for it after the beta but it kinda sucks. There's fun mechanics like guard cancels, but doing them punishes you. You're just supposed to play it like sf6 instead. I hate sf6. Just play KOFXV.
2/5

Ninja Gaiden 2 (sigma black mod)

Instantly one of my favorite character action games ever, the only game I've seen that understood how to transfer beat em up mechanics into 3d. Extremely unfair so it feels rewarding when you break it open.
5/5 (with some parts that are 1/5)

Ninja Gaiden 4

Best game platinum made in years, yet they couldn't help but shoot themselves in the foot a bunch. Laughable gaps in quality of life features with some of the worst save points I've seen in a videogame. Lots of really annoying subway surfers segments. Initially I just wanted to play Ryu but Yakumos weapons are all really fun. The combat is fun enough but it has drive impact for some reason. I hate sf6.
3/5

Dark Souls 3

Last year I played dark souls 2 and 1 so I had to go through this to finish the run. Easily my least favorite of the bunch, it feels like they purposefully took out every interesting mechanic from 1 and 2 and made a very smooth crowd pleasing game (derogatory). I will never forgive fromsoft for what they did to powerstancing.
2.75/5

Battlefield 6

Shooting feels good, movement feels ok. Good time waster
3/5

Dispatch

It's a telltale game. The characters are likable, but the writing feels a bit juvenile while trying really hard to be adult (there's swearing! and nudity!!!!). The dispatching gameplay has literally no effect on the story which I appreciate as I've failed most of the missions.
3.5/5

Absolum

From the demo alone I thought it'd be my game of the year but the full release was slightly disappointing. Amazing art, fun combat and enemy designs. The roguelite part of the game is very undercooked, builds all feel very samey and making a good build means you don't get to engage with the combat system (which instantly makes the game way less fun). It's also by far the buggiest game I've played this year with enemies constantly dying mid cutscene and triggers not firing.
4/5

Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse

The last game of the telltale sam&max remasters. Not my favorite episode but it's still pretty funny
3.5/5

Resident Evil 5

Really fun coop game, don't have a lot else to say about it.
4/5

Split Fiction

Gameplay is pretty generic, writing is atrocious. Wouldn't be anything special if not for the final level, which is IMO one of the most technically impressive things a game has done in the last decade.
3/5

Skin Deep

Fun immersive sim with charming blendo games humor. Haven't finished it
3.5/5

Elden Ring Nighreign

I hate Elden Ring. I don't care for battle royales. Yet this is somehow my personal game of the year. Turns out all they had to do to make Elden Ring fun is make it 60 minutes long instead of 600 hours. I love the non stop ADHD pace of it and the characters are all unique and fun.
5/5

Aliens Fireteam Elite

My coop shooter of the year, you can tell the developers care about the franchise because the pulse rifle sounds right. Main issue with it is lack of content - you can finish the whole campaign in 10-15 hours.
4/5

Abiotic Factor

It's a Half Life survival game, but I mean that as highest praise. There's an actual story progression and it goes into places I didn't expect. Never finished it because it's a coop game and coordinating sessions is impossible.

Spoilers

You eventually end up dimension hopping but instead of Xen it's weird SCP style worlds which is really neat. There's an extended homage to the mist that's quite fun.

4/5

Q-UP

The hottest modern esport. A combination of an automation designer like factorio and an idle clicker, I had to uninstall it because I played something like 14 hours of it in two days.
Q/UP

Jade Empire

Haven't finished it but it's significantly more interesting than most bioware games. Kind of the middle point between mass effect and the more traditional RTWP bioware stuff. The combat is really fun to break and the party has some cool characters. I heard the story gets actually good later but the parts I'm at are very standard bioware renegade/paragon slop.
still playing

Blazblue Entropy Effect

Just started but it seems like what I wanted absolum to be. Waiting for my boy Naoto to get to pc.
still playing

Wildgate

Really weird concept for a $40 multiplayer shooter but I had some fun flying around and stealing shit from enemy ships. It's the type of game that will never have an active playerbase again.
3.75/5

Silent Hill F

It's a good silent hill? Probably a 5/5 based on that alone but I'm still on playthrough 1. Hinako is fucking strong
still playing

Pentiment

Finished over the holiday break so this is the last game I've played in 2025. Not really a full on RPG like you'd expect from obsidian - it's somewhere between a Wadjet Eye style point and click and disco elysium. Really enjoyed my time with it, the writing is excellent the art is gorgeous and the game overall does a good job of respecting the player's time and intelligence. The game's structure is really repetitive but the game is fairly short so it doesn't overstay it's welcome
4.5/5