2025's Most Anticipated Games - Tim's Picks
2025 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years in video games of all time. No matter whether you play on PC, PlayStation 4 or 5, Xbox One or Series X|S, or the Nintendo Switch, and maybe the upcoming Switch successor, you’re going to have a lot to play in 2025. Given that, we couldn’t simply pool the team’s thoughts into one top 10 countdown of the most anticipated games, so we solicited 10 from each person to discuss. Today, hear what Tim has to say about their 10 most anticipated games of 2025.

10. Grand Theft Auto VI
The arrival of a new GTA (and to be clear, it will have been around twelve years since the last) is somewhat like Thanos: inevitable and likely to result in the deaths of half the population. Seriously – expect whichever month Rockstar eventually launches this in to become barren of other games. Nobody is going to want to be in the splash zone. Not even remotely close to it.
I’ve been on record as not being the biggest GTA fan (and truthfully, I do believe that GTA3 and Vice City are massively overhyped trash), but I didn’t mind the last couple of games. It helps that they got a little less problematic with the humour, tightened up the combat and were able to render cities with enough detail so as to approximate interesting places.
Could I love GTA VI? Unlikely, but it still makes the list in part because how could it not? I just want to see how it is, see the Digital Foundry breakdown, and witness the evolution of conversations surrounding it. I might even buy it myself. Maybe. But also maybe not.

9. Broken Sword: Parzival’s Stone
Here’s a game that I had on my list last year! What fun! Honestly, though, while I don’t want the next Broken Sword game to quietly slip yet another year, I am glad that it discreetly excused itself from 2024. That year had a pretty good remaster of the original game already, and what was shown during the reveal of Parzival’s Stone looked pretty rough. Some more time was likely needed.
The big question, of course, will be as to if this can top said original, especially after the aforementioned shiny new remaster. This will be the sixth Broken Sword game, and while nobody can agree on the second and third best games in the series, it’s pretty much universally accepted that the first remains untouched.
That timelessness speaks to the classic adventure genre that the Broken Sword games belong to, that the narrative and design can be timeless and impactful regardless of technical accomplishment. Just so long as it’s technically sound, at least. Fingers massively crossed for this.

8. South of Midnight
It’s basically a tradition at this point that I will put a game or two in these lists that end up falling well short of the hopes and dreams placed on them. In that regard, South of Midnight is an unenviable frontrunner for this year. But, by George (Stobbart?) I hope it lands. I’m just still a little burned by how promising We Happy Few was before people… actually played it. Likewise, I was psyched to find that Contrast was added to the PS Plus lineup (in lieu of Driveclub) for the PS4’s launch, only to not really be grabbed by it.
If those two games both had a great sense of style to entice me, though, then South of Midnight has a positively sublime one. I just want to soak in it all day long, and I earnestly hope that the action-adventure that is wrapped in all this style is good enough to keep people hanging around.

7. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
I keep flip-flopping on this. A ground-up remake of the most widely-liked Metal Gear Solid game is probably justified at this point, but everything that I’ve seen of this makes me wonder if perhaps it’s trying to be just a little bit too faithful to the PS2 classic?
This likely won’t end up mattering much to me, nor will it likely affect the legion of fans that Snake Eater has, but I do worry about the wider appeal here. Will it feel too boxed in for younger players? For that matter, will all of the shiny modern gloss be at odds with all of the classic elements? There’s a chance that this one faceplants a little, but I can’t possibly imagine it being bad. And, on the other hand, I can equally imagine it being a GotY contender if it does stick the landing.

6. Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4
Lord, Deltarune might be even more confusing to place on a list like this than early-access nightmares like Hades 2 and Windblown. The release of this game, an anagram of and follow-up to the seminal Undertale, has been befuddling-ly staggered. There was a huge gap of time between parts 1 and 2, and since then there has been a stretch of time so long that it almost didn’t occur to me to check when the next is expected. Reading up on Wikipedia made me wondering for a moment if part 3 was already out and I had just managed to miss it. Apparently we can expect the next two (and final? The original plan was for seven chapters, but things have since gotten confusing) chapters in 2025. And I do hope it’s a good sized content drop, too, as both previous chapters we basically wrapped-up before I finally clicked with them.
5. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
“Hey, I’ve got a great idea for a game! You know how that Majima guy that everyone loves has an eyepatch? Let’s make a game where we turn him into a pirate!”
“That sounds like a fun little project, but we would need to create a lot of beach and ocean art and that would cost too much for a one-off.”
“Okay… so how about we take one – or both! – of the main characters for Like a Dragon and set a core game in Hawaii so that we already have most of the assets we need!”
“I love it! We could call it Infinite Wealth. We could also make it one of the best games of 2024, but also release it in January so that nobody remembers when award time comes.”
“So, you like the pirate idea?”
“February, 2025, baby!”
4. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
Here’s a franchise that usually wouldn’t make my own personal list, and certainly wouldn’t make the top half of it. Is the exception here because I expect Shadows to be one of the top five games released next year? Not really… but it is nonetheless one that I have personal reasons to be keen to check out.
That said, Ubisoft’s last couple of big releases (Avatar, Star Wars) have been better (and, eventually, more polished) than a lot of people likely expected. I expect that this game will be great. But really, I just hope that it explores parts of Japan beyond the over-used and very familiar. How much I end up liking this game may well depend as to if you can train at the Akame 48 Falls, or if Ubisoft just plays it safe and keeps us in Kyoto most of the time.

3. Metroid Prime 4
It’s not vaporware! Nintendo showed footage in a Direct! Surely there is no way that it’ll get postponed into 2026 now! (Who am I kidding? Nintendo would totally do this just to kick Metroid fans between the legs).
There’s not much to go on for Prime 4 as yet, beyond the reasonable gameplay reveal trailer linked above and an impressive (if aged) reputation from the first three games. Also, the remaster of the first game showed some age, but also held up remarkably well even if it’s not the best Metroid Prime game (fight me). I have little reason to believe that Prime 4 will be anything other than excellent; the main concern is the likelihood of a split-generation release leaving the Switch version that we currently know about feeling compromised.

2. Mixtape
Nobody told me about The Artful Escape when it came out. I stumbled across it almost by accident, and I still consider it the best game of 2021 that nobody played. It certainly put the developer, Beethoven & Dinosaur, on my radar… and then it turned out that we’re talking about a local Aussie developer, to boot!
While one might be able to describe The Artful Escape fairly effectively as story of self-actualisation conveyed through a gentle sidescroller with plenty of epic, psychedelic musical moments, Mixtape is looking to stretch its limps out even more and the trailer shows a mix of side-scrolling and 3D gameplay. How will it all come together? I can’t say I know, but I’m very keen to find out, and I dearly hope that the implosion of Annapurna Interactive hasn’t harmed or hindered the team or its development schedule.

1. Death Stranding 2
As with many people, I spent my first few hours in Death Stranding wondering if I had been wise with my game purchasing decisions. The sheen from the polish was clear, but this was a game that had presented itself as being about carrying shit from one place to another, and it turned out that… that this was a fair representation of things.
With time, though, the mechanics started to slot together, the nature of the shared world made more sense, and the fact that this was an open world game that made the actual journey part (you know, the bit where you traverse that massive world) key to the experience started to seem like simple genius. Of course, it also got weird in all sorts of Kojima ways that basically presented cutting social commentary as a rain of fish.
It has since become the second most played game on my Steam library, and with expectations rightly set I am now legitimately very excited to return for the sequel. That a game predicted to be as outrageous as this is going to be presented with the kind of production values usually reserved for the safest of safe blockbusters should be enough to have anyone excited at this game’s merest existence.
So that concludes Tim’s list of their most anticipated games of 2025. What are some of yours? Hit us up via social media to let us know what games you are keen on in 2025!