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All of all! / Re: Games of 2025
« Last post by Archem on January 18, 2026, 01:03:08 AM »I swear each year is just flying by at this point. Wasn't it January 2025 like three months ago?
This past year was a tumultuous year for me, with a lot of difficult moments and loss that made for a pretty miserable 12 months of my life. I'm glad it's over, but I still have a few phantoms of the past that I have to deal with before I can start forgetting everything awful that last year had in store for me. As a result, I didn't play quite so many games, and my list is shorter than usual. It's still got a few things worth mentioning, but you can kind of tell when shit really hit the fan by when the list abruptly kind of just ends.
January
Quake II (64) (N64, PC, everything)
This one's a little different. I've beaten Quake II multiple times throughout my life, but I never played through the N64 version of it until this past year following Nightdive's remaster (spoiler: a large chunk of my games listed here are related to the Quake and Quake II remasters). It was a fascinating way to see all the changes that were made to get the game running on such underpowered hardware back in the 90s. Really, it's kind of impressive to see the end result. It's a heavily trimmed down version of the original Q2, with only a few traces of the original levels intact. It completely lacks the format of levels being seamless progressions from place to place with load screens, instead having individual levels that are connected via a level select screen, the maps are fairly compact by comparison, the recreations of spots from the PC version are usually simplified in a number of ways, some enemies are absent, and the whole thing feels like it was built on the Quake 1 version of the engine, and the balance of everything feels a bit off. It's a pretty janky port (remake? demake?), but it's just cool to see it exists at all. I found it interesting as a piece of history, but I would never choose it over the PC version. Honestly, I'm not even sure how some parts of it were even possible to beat with an N64 controller; some parts were just brutal. I wonder how the PlayStation version was? I'll have to check that out and see the differences. I know it had mouse aiming if you had a PlayStation mouse, so that's a neat bit of trivia. I bet it had a lot of the same truncation that the N64 version had, and I'll have to check it out some day.
February
March
Golf Peaks (PC, Mac, iOS, Andriod, Switch, Xbox One)
This was a very neat little puzzle game. You play golf on an isometric course, but all your moves are predetermined "cards" that you use to set how you move the ball around. There's over 100 courses, most of which were really awesome. For $5, it's a remarkable deal. Uh, I guess I don't have much else to say. Check it out if you love golf, puzzles, or both.
Quake II: Call of the Machine (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series)
This was a brand new expansion made by Machine Games (makers of the modern Wolfenstein games) for the Nightdive Quake II remaster, and like we've seen in the past with other Nightdive remasters that featured new levels, they're really well made. It's really incredible to see two decades of level design advancements being forced into an old engine and getting a taste of what could have been. The new maps are visual treats, with all sorts of well-hidden secrets (and secret maps) that show how good a game Quake II really was. I think it's better than anything vanilla Q2 had to offer, and it really seems to understand how to use the enemies and weapons to their fullest potential. Instead of being a single campaign, it has a series of mini-campaigns that follow different soldiers through their own missions that all connect to a singular military operation, and a central hub that lets you choose which campaign to play through in any order you want. It culminates with some very cool story thread connections that I won't spoil here, but if you care about the classic Quake games, it almost feels like a tease for the future of the franchise. It probably isn't, but I can dream.
Fantastic Fist (PC)
This is an awesome indie puzzle-platformer with a silly premise where you play as a girl (a princess I think?) who has her arms stolen by the villain, so now all she can do is run and jump on her own. Lucky for her, she also has a magic giant fist that she can control to help her overcome obstacles. You move her around with the keyboard, but you control the fist with your mouse to interact with all sorts of things in the environment. Every world introduces new obstacles and enemies, and it can get pretty difficult at times. A couple of features don't work quite as well as you would want them to, and a few puzzles require what I believe to be an unrealistically high level of speed and precision to complete for most people, but I still find it very fun and charming. Check it out on Steam, there's even a demo.
Quake: Dimensions of the Past (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series)
Did I mention that Nightdive and Machine Games also did a remaster and new expansion for Quake 1? Because they did. It's about as good as the things they did with Quake 1, but the visual quality of some of the levels seem even more impressive when compared to how simple the map geometry of OG Quake maps were. This one feels kind of like one of those "master pack" expansions from back in the day where the levels were needlessly difficult as a way to challenge players who had already mastered everything the base game had to offer. The quality of the maps here is far better than those, since half of the map packs from back then were basically scraped from online map hosting sites and weren't always tested very thoroughly for quality. I thought it was a lot of fun, but it seems a lot of players disliked how little ammo you get or how nasty some of the traps and ambushes could be. And you know, that's fair. They definitely weren't playing around with this one. Lucky for me, I'm an old pro at this, so I got through without too much trouble. Pretty fun, but they really nailed it with the next expansion.
April
Quake: Dimension of the Machine (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series)
Similar to the Quake II expansion Call of the Machine, this is also broken down into mini-episodes, although more in the style of how Quake already had separate episodes where each one has a rune you're trying to collect. These maps are probably my favorites from any of the Nightdive remaster Quake games. They just really go all out here and make some crazy impressive maps. I had a really fun time with this expansion, and I really, really want to see Machine Games make a brand new Quake game. They've shown us that they really know what they're doing with this kind of gameplay and level design from these three expansions. Maybe one day.
Paper Mario (N64, Wii (VC), Switch (VC))
Yeah, somehow I've never finished Paper Mario. I always got to Shy Guy's Toybox and lost interest. It almost happened again. I think I just really don't like that chapter. Otherwise, what's there to say about this game that hasn't been said before? It's remarkably charming, has an art direction that feels timeless, the story is just the right level of silly, the dialogue is perfection, and the gameplay is still fresh. This game is just so good, and it's a bummer that Nintendo seems so unwilling to just make more entries in this series without messing up the gameplay in some weird way. If you've somehow managed to avoid playing it until now (like me), then please, do yourself a favor and play it. It's so good. Now then, I think I need to check out Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door soon.
May
Lost in Play (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Mac, iOS)
I love point-and-click adventures. I love that there's been a resurgence of these games over the years, too. While a lot of the classics had the issue where there was always some hair-pulling puzzle with seemingly no answer, modern games in the genre often do a much better job of making them solvable. No major brick walls killing the flow of gameplay here. This is a charming world of make-believe where you play as two kids who keep getting involved in antics with all sorts of cartoonish characters. There's no dialogue, so the game has to communicate everything with imagery, and I love when games (or any media) try to do this. It mostly works just fine, though a couple of things didn't come across all that well at first. Still, it's just such a perfect cozy comfort game.
Animal Well (PC, Switch, PS5, Xbox Series)
The first game from YouTuber videogamedunkey's game publishing company Bigmode, and it's a gem. This is another wordless game that's a puzzle-platformer metroidvania. While there's no real combat, the world gives off this vibe of hostility and danger at all times, and it makes exploring the halls and passageways of the world just feel both satisfying and scary. As you slowly start to pick up new tools, you slowly begin to figure out not just how to navigate the world, but how to deal with all the threats. It's one of those games that hides so many secrets that you'll probably never find them all without looking things up, but that's fine. If you have the patience to slowly unravel everything, you'll be very satisfied with it. Definitely recommend.
Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD (PC, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 (kinda), Xbox (very super kinda), Switch)
Okay, so this is kind of a technicality. I've played Serious Sam TFE tons of times as a teen. I never played it through from start to finish, though. I would always just use level selects to play the levels in a nearly random order with friends This applies to the whole series, really. I've played every level for several of the games, but never the way they intended. This was me playing through the newer version of the HD remaster from years back (which I believe was itself a remaster of a remaster), and I had a nostalgia kick that left me replaying Serious Sam solo. It's pretty much just like I remembered: relentless, fast-paced action with insane amounts of enemies on screen and turn-off-your-brain shooting. Tons of fun, very silly vibes, still a great game. Definitely better with friends, but not bad to play on your own.
June
July
August
Toree Saturn (PC)
The latest entry in the Toree series, and it's more of the same. Low-poly, bright colors, fast, movement-based platforming that's obviously inspired by the 3D Sonic games. Pretty much every game in the series is the same game, but each release is like a remix of the last. This is the most expensive entry so far ($5 compared to the usual $1), but it's consistently fun, and since you can get the whole series for less than $10, it's kind of hard to be mad about them being so similar. This one even has a Tony Hawk-inspired minigame. The minigame is, admittedly, not the best, but it's still pretty cool. There's enough bonus content here that I think it's worth the 500% price increase.
September through December
This past year was a tumultuous year for me, with a lot of difficult moments and loss that made for a pretty miserable 12 months of my life. I'm glad it's over, but I still have a few phantoms of the past that I have to deal with before I can start forgetting everything awful that last year had in store for me. As a result, I didn't play quite so many games, and my list is shorter than usual. It's still got a few things worth mentioning, but you can kind of tell when shit really hit the fan by when the list abruptly kind of just ends.
January
Quake II (64) (N64, PC, everything)
This one's a little different. I've beaten Quake II multiple times throughout my life, but I never played through the N64 version of it until this past year following Nightdive's remaster (spoiler: a large chunk of my games listed here are related to the Quake and Quake II remasters). It was a fascinating way to see all the changes that were made to get the game running on such underpowered hardware back in the 90s. Really, it's kind of impressive to see the end result. It's a heavily trimmed down version of the original Q2, with only a few traces of the original levels intact. It completely lacks the format of levels being seamless progressions from place to place with load screens, instead having individual levels that are connected via a level select screen, the maps are fairly compact by comparison, the recreations of spots from the PC version are usually simplified in a number of ways, some enemies are absent, and the whole thing feels like it was built on the Quake 1 version of the engine, and the balance of everything feels a bit off. It's a pretty janky port (remake? demake?), but it's just cool to see it exists at all. I found it interesting as a piece of history, but I would never choose it over the PC version. Honestly, I'm not even sure how some parts of it were even possible to beat with an N64 controller; some parts were just brutal. I wonder how the PlayStation version was? I'll have to check that out and see the differences. I know it had mouse aiming if you had a PlayStation mouse, so that's a neat bit of trivia. I bet it had a lot of the same truncation that the N64 version had, and I'll have to check it out some day.
March
Golf Peaks (PC, Mac, iOS, Andriod, Switch, Xbox One)
This was a very neat little puzzle game. You play golf on an isometric course, but all your moves are predetermined "cards" that you use to set how you move the ball around. There's over 100 courses, most of which were really awesome. For $5, it's a remarkable deal. Uh, I guess I don't have much else to say. Check it out if you love golf, puzzles, or both.
Quake II: Call of the Machine (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series)
This was a brand new expansion made by Machine Games (makers of the modern Wolfenstein games) for the Nightdive Quake II remaster, and like we've seen in the past with other Nightdive remasters that featured new levels, they're really well made. It's really incredible to see two decades of level design advancements being forced into an old engine and getting a taste of what could have been. The new maps are visual treats, with all sorts of well-hidden secrets (and secret maps) that show how good a game Quake II really was. I think it's better than anything vanilla Q2 had to offer, and it really seems to understand how to use the enemies and weapons to their fullest potential. Instead of being a single campaign, it has a series of mini-campaigns that follow different soldiers through their own missions that all connect to a singular military operation, and a central hub that lets you choose which campaign to play through in any order you want. It culminates with some very cool story thread connections that I won't spoil here, but if you care about the classic Quake games, it almost feels like a tease for the future of the franchise. It probably isn't, but I can dream.
Fantastic Fist (PC)
This is an awesome indie puzzle-platformer with a silly premise where you play as a girl (a princess I think?) who has her arms stolen by the villain, so now all she can do is run and jump on her own. Lucky for her, she also has a magic giant fist that she can control to help her overcome obstacles. You move her around with the keyboard, but you control the fist with your mouse to interact with all sorts of things in the environment. Every world introduces new obstacles and enemies, and it can get pretty difficult at times. A couple of features don't work quite as well as you would want them to, and a few puzzles require what I believe to be an unrealistically high level of speed and precision to complete for most people, but I still find it very fun and charming. Check it out on Steam, there's even a demo.
Quake: Dimensions of the Past (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series)
Did I mention that Nightdive and Machine Games also did a remaster and new expansion for Quake 1? Because they did. It's about as good as the things they did with Quake 1, but the visual quality of some of the levels seem even more impressive when compared to how simple the map geometry of OG Quake maps were. This one feels kind of like one of those "master pack" expansions from back in the day where the levels were needlessly difficult as a way to challenge players who had already mastered everything the base game had to offer. The quality of the maps here is far better than those, since half of the map packs from back then were basically scraped from online map hosting sites and weren't always tested very thoroughly for quality. I thought it was a lot of fun, but it seems a lot of players disliked how little ammo you get or how nasty some of the traps and ambushes could be. And you know, that's fair. They definitely weren't playing around with this one. Lucky for me, I'm an old pro at this, so I got through without too much trouble. Pretty fun, but they really nailed it with the next expansion.
April
Quake: Dimension of the Machine (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series)
Similar to the Quake II expansion Call of the Machine, this is also broken down into mini-episodes, although more in the style of how Quake already had separate episodes where each one has a rune you're trying to collect. These maps are probably my favorites from any of the Nightdive remaster Quake games. They just really go all out here and make some crazy impressive maps. I had a really fun time with this expansion, and I really, really want to see Machine Games make a brand new Quake game. They've shown us that they really know what they're doing with this kind of gameplay and level design from these three expansions. Maybe one day.
Paper Mario (N64, Wii (VC), Switch (VC))
Yeah, somehow I've never finished Paper Mario. I always got to Shy Guy's Toybox and lost interest. It almost happened again. I think I just really don't like that chapter. Otherwise, what's there to say about this game that hasn't been said before? It's remarkably charming, has an art direction that feels timeless, the story is just the right level of silly, the dialogue is perfection, and the gameplay is still fresh. This game is just so good, and it's a bummer that Nintendo seems so unwilling to just make more entries in this series without messing up the gameplay in some weird way. If you've somehow managed to avoid playing it until now (like me), then please, do yourself a favor and play it. It's so good. Now then, I think I need to check out Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door soon.
May
Lost in Play (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Mac, iOS)
I love point-and-click adventures. I love that there's been a resurgence of these games over the years, too. While a lot of the classics had the issue where there was always some hair-pulling puzzle with seemingly no answer, modern games in the genre often do a much better job of making them solvable. No major brick walls killing the flow of gameplay here. This is a charming world of make-believe where you play as two kids who keep getting involved in antics with all sorts of cartoonish characters. There's no dialogue, so the game has to communicate everything with imagery, and I love when games (or any media) try to do this. It mostly works just fine, though a couple of things didn't come across all that well at first. Still, it's just such a perfect cozy comfort game.
Animal Well (PC, Switch, PS5, Xbox Series)
The first game from YouTuber videogamedunkey's game publishing company Bigmode, and it's a gem. This is another wordless game that's a puzzle-platformer metroidvania. While there's no real combat, the world gives off this vibe of hostility and danger at all times, and it makes exploring the halls and passageways of the world just feel both satisfying and scary. As you slowly start to pick up new tools, you slowly begin to figure out not just how to navigate the world, but how to deal with all the threats. It's one of those games that hides so many secrets that you'll probably never find them all without looking things up, but that's fine. If you have the patience to slowly unravel everything, you'll be very satisfied with it. Definitely recommend.
Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD (PC, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 (kinda), Xbox (very super kinda), Switch)
Okay, so this is kind of a technicality. I've played Serious Sam TFE tons of times as a teen. I never played it through from start to finish, though. I would always just use level selects to play the levels in a nearly random order with friends This applies to the whole series, really. I've played every level for several of the games, but never the way they intended. This was me playing through the newer version of the HD remaster from years back (which I believe was itself a remaster of a remaster), and I had a nostalgia kick that left me replaying Serious Sam solo. It's pretty much just like I remembered: relentless, fast-paced action with insane amounts of enemies on screen and turn-off-your-brain shooting. Tons of fun, very silly vibes, still a great game. Definitely better with friends, but not bad to play on your own.
August
Toree Saturn (PC)
The latest entry in the Toree series, and it's more of the same. Low-poly, bright colors, fast, movement-based platforming that's obviously inspired by the 3D Sonic games. Pretty much every game in the series is the same game, but each release is like a remix of the last. This is the most expensive entry so far ($5 compared to the usual $1), but it's consistently fun, and since you can get the whole series for less than $10, it's kind of hard to be mad about them being so similar. This one even has a Tony Hawk-inspired minigame. The minigame is, admittedly, not the best, but it's still pretty cool. There's enough bonus content here that I think it's worth the 500% price increase.
