Game of the Year 2025 — FAKE RONJAN!!

Previous game of the year posts: 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

2025 was a wild year for me in video games. New job, new gaming systems, a new passion project. And of course new games. Let’s get into it.

First, the job. I’d joined 2K Games in 2023 after being caught up in one of the many mass layoff waves at Meta.

It started off as a dream job, combining my passions for analytics, sports, and video games as we built a high-performing analytics & data science team. I had a manager who’d specifically brought me in for my general leadership skillset, who led with EQ, who took me to the NBA draft to see the Spurs draft Victor Wembanyama because he knew how much it would mean to me. It was going well.

Then, the dream became a nightmare.

A re-org layered me under managers with a decade less leadership experience than me, who also happened to be the weakest and most toxic leaders I’ve ever seen in my career, by a wide margin.

The type of people who measure their success by how smart they sound in the boardroom, not the quality of teams and people they develop and coach. The type of people who were perfectly comfortable talking about you with others without ever talking to you. The type of people who would say “let’s lean into the toxicity of our player base” but would never ask “are you okay?”. The type of people who’d tell me I spent too much time focusing on coaching and developing my team of 25 people who were doing amazing work and not nearly enough time leading my own individual projects instead. The type of people who’d never in their careers facilitated learning or proper career conversations, because that kind of thinking doesn’t directly help them. The type of people who’d never built teams before and had no concept of how to use complementary skills, styles, and approaches to make an organization stronger. The type of people who attach their name to success, but attach other names to failure. The type of people with 80-20 talk-to-listen ratios.

Having seen what great leadership is at every other stop in my 21 years in the corporate world, it was never going to last. We parted ways in January. I missed the data & analytics teams that I led and worked with tremendously, but I was so grateful to never have to talk to the toxic leaders ever again.

I took my first-ever career break, a sabbatical that lasted three months. And then I went back to media & advertising, where I thrived for decades at Nielsen and Meta, where I know and have learned from dozens of amazing leaders, where I belong. I’m at Samsung now, and I’m home.

Next up, new gaming systems.

With the original Nintendo Switch winding down in the spring, I first reflected on the legacy of the original Switch, and then focused my attention on getting its sequel.

The preorder process was a chaotic mess, and I spent two hours after midnight one day in April refreshing every retailer’s website and app over and over. I ended up snagging four consoles, selling the extras at cost to friends who had missed out.

They were for friends! No profit was made.

Once our Switch 2 arrived in June, I had expected it to dominate the rest of the year, but in reality this ended up being one of the most disappointing Nintendo years ever for me.

Mario Kart World made a great first impression, and I loved exploring the open world. It initially reminded me of another all-time favorite racer, Burnout Paradise.

But as I kept playing, the lack of substance in the open world started wearing on me and I fell off the game pretty quickly. It has an incredible soundtrack, perhaps even better than its predecessor’s, but I won’t be playing this one again until there’s some significant content expansion or DLC.

Then Donkey Kong Bananza released and was an even bigger disappointment. The original Donkey Kong Country is still to this day my favorite game of all time, and the studio’s previous game Super Mario Odyssey was my 2017 game of the year and is among my all-time favorite Mario games.

Despite this pedigree, I didn’t even come close to finishing Bananza. I found the smashy smashy gameplay to be surprisingly dull, the visuals to be garish, and the overall level design a snoozefest. So despite Donkey Kong’s expressive new redesign and the title’s focus on Pauline developing her musical voice, this was a total miss for me. What a bummer.

And that was it, honestly, for Nintendo. I can’t play Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, as first-person shooters give me vertigo. Nothing else Nintendo released seemed interesting. Oh well, we’ll try again next year.

My favorite “Nintendo system” I got this year was the LEGO Game Boy which my son got me for my birthday.

And my overall favorite new system of the year was the recently-released AYN Thor. I’m still setting it up and figuring out how I want to use it, but it’s fun to have a new toy to tinker with that isn’t completely locked down by a corporate conglomerate.

Can’t wait to really unlock the potential of this guy

On the passion project side, I became the Mario Paint Music Guy.

It’s a me, Mario Paint Music Guy!

I spent hours in the last few months of the year writing and publishing Mario Paint music, and it’s made me feel whole. I cataloged it all here, and I’m excited to keep going next year.

Okay, I’m over 900 words into this post and I still haven’t said a single word about games I actually liked this year. I should probably do that. First off, what did I actually play?

Well, I started the year on Steam weaning myself off of my Balatro addiction from last year:

By the summer I’d completely stopped playing the game and watching Roffle stream it. I’m proud of this accomplishment.

Over on PS5, Persona 5 Royal, which I played during my sabbatical, dominated my time spent. No surprise there. More to come on a couple of other titles in this list in a bit.

That is a ridiculous amount of college football, though ….

So with the Steam and PS5 “wrapped” segments done, let’s start counting down my favorite games of 2025!

Honorable Mention #1 - Stimulation Clicker

I found this to be simultaneously a hilarious, borderline-stupid experience and also an incredibly profound allegory for digital enshittification and attention optimization. I’ve played through it to completion multiple times and I still think about it every day. Play this game, you’ll only need an hour.

Honorable Mention #2 - Lost Records: Bloom & Rage

I’m a sucker for these types of games, and I love how Don’t Nod built on the Life is Strange formula. I came away impressed by how many outcomes there are for the story, the overall vibes and setting, and of course the 90s nostalgia.

Honorable Mention #3 - Springfield Island in Fortnite

I don’t care for Fortnite literally at all, but there hasn’t been a new Simpsons video game released since 2012, and Fortnite did The Simpsons right. For the first time ever, I spent money in Fortnite to get the Simpsons battle pass. I also got the K-Pop Demon Hunters skins, because why not. And I won my first game ever. I know I probably just beat bots, but I’ll take it.

5. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

I enjoyed 2024’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth enough that it made my favorite RPGs list earlier this year. I was excited to explore Hawaii again when this brawler was announced.

The sea exploration reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and it was the first time I’d ever enjoyed pirate ship gameplay, ever.

Its lighthearted theme came through in several moments, from the Broadway-style opening number to the ridiculous live-action dating show to the closing dance party. And while I didn’t ultimately enjoy beating everyone up as Majima as much as I enjoyed the turn-based combat of the prior game, I had a great time.

“One day you get to look back at how far you got, and grow old. All your dreams, the ones you had and never saw come true, you leave them to the next guy.”

— Goro Majima

My 11-year-old son’s take: “It has one of the best characters in Goro Majima. You have to fight the same guy 5 times though, like Yamai in the last game.”

4. Marvel Cosmic Invasion

This year, I got back into 2022’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, beating it with my son and his friends with several characters. Then, a Marvel version from the same development team was announced, and I was excited.

And for good reason - this game rocks! Even more so than Shredder’s Revenge, Marvel Cosmic Invasion has a wide variety of characters who play completely differently from each other. I ended up mastering a few - Captain America and his boomerang shield throw, Storm and her lightning strikes, Wolverine and his pounce-and-toss. My son mastered other characters, particularly Phoenix’s firestorms and Spider-Man’s web slinging.

We ended up blowing through this game in just a few days and loved almost everything about it. I suppose I wish there were more iconic music, a little less cheese in some later bosses, and more characters, but maybe they’ll expand off of this fantastic foundation.

We enjoyed replaying this level and beating Phoenix with Phoenix

My 11-year-old son’s take: “It was kind of annoying when Storm kept saying ‘even a goddess needs to eat’ over and over, but this game was really cool.”

3. Dispatch

I love the classic Telltale games, particularly The Walking Dead - my 2012 game of the year - and The Wolf Among Us. I was excited for this genre’s return with team members from those original games. And despite not being a huge superhero guy (my Marvel Cosmic Invasion pick notwithstanding) I was intrigued by the world they were setting up.

In the end, I loved the choice-based parts of the gameplay, I liked the “dispatch” gameplay where you sent different superheroes out on assignments, and I loathed the hacking minigames that rounded out the mechanics.

Ultimately, this game was about moments. Choosing who to boot from your team. Navigating a love triangle. And maybe the best superhero bar fight scene of all time.

I immediately want a sequel, I want to buy comic books, I want to spend so much more time in this world. That’s never happened to me with a superhero universe, ever.

My 11-year-old son’s take: “It had the most hilarious superstar in Prism, and she slays. I like the character designs and how they match their personalities. It had a great story.”

2. Split Fiction

Let’s get this out of the way - this game has stunningly in-your-face stilted writing. At least for adults. But I didn’t play this game with an adult, I played it with my son, and playing through this half-fantasy half-sci-fi title with him was an unforgettable experience.

The asymmetric gameplay design is phenomenal. We’d have different abilities and different assignments, and we’d have to rely on each other in order to overcome obstacles and opponents.

At times we’d bicker. Okay, fine, constantly we’d bicker. Why didn’t you jump? You shot too early! Where are you, come back! But that was the fun of it all. Figuring it out while next to each other on the couch, and rooting for each other when one of us needed to carry. It was amazing.

Among many stellar mechanical moments, the ending sequence is a standout. The fantasy and sci-fi worlds are rendered simultaneously, with both players having to navigate through each. It’s the kind of technically impressive sequence you have to play. And I’m glad I did.

My 11-year-old son’s take: “I love the two different stories, between fantasy and sci-fi. Zoey is an absolute sweetheart, Mio is cool, and Raider sucks. I liked turning into pigs and then turning into hot dogs that got eaten.”

1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I’m annoyed that for the second straight year, my game of the year is the same as The Game Awards. I’d never done that until last year, and I don’t like chalk picks.

That said, this game was a standout, one that immediately enters my pantheon of favorite RPGs alongside Persona 5 Royal and Octopath Traveler II. And it swept The Game Awards for a reason - this game is a standout from almost every angle.

Its gameplay is irresistible, feeling to me like a combination of Final Fantasy, Persona, and Punch-Out!! (I know the development team was inspired by Sekiro for the parry mechanics, but it took me personally further back).

The melancholic world, tone, and art design reminded me of another one of my favorites, Child of Light.

The music was sublime. I mean, you’ve got the iconic title theme, Alicia. There’s this amazing cover of the Lumière theme. (Or my Mario Paint version.) There’s my favorite battle theme, the impossibly French mime music. And then there’s my favorite piece of music from the game, this beautiful harp piece that hints back to the title track:

Then you’ve got the story, one of the most compelling concepts in gaming history, that explores loss, grief, and inevitability. Each act is truly incredible, with some of the biggest gut punches fathomable.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 nailed everything it was going for. The concept. The world. The art. The exploration. The combat. The music. The characters. The story. The ending. It deserves all of the accolades it’s winning around the industry, and it represents a transformative piece of work for what games are and how they’re made. It’s an all time triumph and one of my all time favorite games.

My 11-year-old son’s take: “The characters were absolutely amazing. Their backstories bring so much to the plotline. Esquie is a large, funny creature who loves his rocks. The Sakapatate gestrals are funny. This is my game of the year.”

I’ll close with my favorite screenshots from my play-through of the game. Spoilers abound - beware!