I’m Already Scared Of 2025’s Gaming Release Schedule

As we all know, 2023 was an all-timer year for games. 2024 couldn’t quite fill those very big shoes, but we still got plenty of bangers, especially on the indie side. What will 2025 be like? It’s hard to say right now, but we know for sure that it’s going to be stacked.

Anybody working in games media will tell you that there isn’t enough time in a year to play every new release that looks cool. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on games over the past 12 months, and I haven’t finished most of them. That’s with me skipping major releases like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Silent Hill 2, or Persona 3 Reload.

I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t have spent so many of my precious gaming hours playing
Helldivers 2
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If it was tough to find time to play games this year, 2025 is going to be even worse. There were already a ton of games slated for release before titles from this year got delayed into the next. Here are the ones I’m most excited for, and therefore the ones I’m dreading the most because they’re going to ruin my life.

Grand Theft Auto 6

Yeah, big whoop, it’s everybody’s most anticipated game of the year. I don’t need to explain Grand Theft Auto 6 to you, you’re probably one of the hundreds of millions of people who watched the trailer when it dropped last December. It’s probably going to sell more copies than anything has ever sold. It’s also going to take up at least a month of my life.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Oh, surprise, Tessa’s excited for a Like a Dragon game. Look, I don’t know how you could not want to play Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, just look at that title. It’s Yakuza’s best antagonist Goro Majima, as a pirate, in Hawaii. I’m already the person yapping about Yakuza at parties, and this is going to make me three times more annoying than I already am. Thank god this one is a shorter spin-off, because Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth sucked up most of my January this year.

Avowed

Early previews for Avowed haven’t given me much hope that I’m going to fall madly and deeply in love with it immediately, but I don’t think Obsidian can go too wrong with a story-driven RPG, which it is very good at making. I liked The Outer Worlds, which is what the developers most compare it to, so that’s promising. Promising to suck up all my time, that is.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I love that turn-based RPGs are coming back in vogue, and Clair Obscur’s dark fantasy Belle Epoque setting is very intriguing. We haven’t seen much of this game just yet, but I’m very into the mix of real-time and turn-based combat (inspired by Final Fantasy and Persona) that we’ve seen in trailers.

The Alters

I previewed The Alters earlier this year, and what I got to play left me hankering for more. This survival game has you play as Jan Dolski, a miner who creates multiple versions of himself from various branches of his own life’s timeline and has them populate his base on a hostile planet so that he can stay alive. It’s a wild concept, and the game melds base-building (like Fallout Shelter) and survival mechanics. I was very disappointed to see it delayed into 2025, because now it’s going to have to compete with everything else for my time.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

I’m Assassin’s Creed’s number one hater, but mostly because I feel like the series has lost its soul by chasing open-world breadth and deprioritising character depth. That said, a lot has been made about Ubisoft’s development team recognising those issues and trying to fix them during Shadows’ delay into 2025. I’m not, like, optimistic, considering the company’s track record, but I’m curious to see what happens with Shadows.

Mafia: The Old Country

I’ve never played a Mafia game, but I went and bought them all after Mafia: The Old Country was officially announced. I’m just a real mark for a crime story. I love The Sopranos. It has a “deep linear narrative”? I’m sold. I’m planning to try and play through the other games in December, even though I don’t really have to, as it’s a prequel to the first.

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

I am not a Hideo Kojima fan, unlike many here at TheGamer and in the wider world. I actually hated Death Stranding. I have written the words, “God’s light does not shine on this game” about it. I found the experience of playing it so intolerable that I tossed it aside within hours of first booting it up, and repeated this exact chain of action when I tried to give it another chance years later. Its writing is incomprehensible. Its gameplay is nightmarishly sluggish. I said I would never play Death Stranding 2, because it was probably going to be the same.

And yet here I am, hat in hands, telling you I’m probably going to play it anyway, purely out of curiosity. Or, at the very least, I’ll convince one of my housemates to play it so I can do something else on the couch and walk over to watch the interesting bits. That seems more likely.

Fable

I’ve never played a Fable game – I did try once to get through the first game, but it didn’t go that well. The reboot looked great, though, from the cinematic trailers we’ve seen, though we haven’t seen much yet. Apparently, alpha footage of the game has been circulating, meaning we might actually see this one this year. According to an industry insider, it’s got Witcher-inspired combat, which is definitely piquing my interest. I will also be pleased to see more Richard Ayoade.

And… More? Maybe?

There are a few games I’m really looking forward to, but that aren’t confirmed for a 2025 release yet. The surreal roguelite architectural indie Blue Prince is one of my most anticipated games – I love a game that all but requires you to take notes as you play it. Exodus, a sci-fi game about time stretching and alien relics (I… think?) has been releasing a lot of weird cinematic trailers recently, and it also has Matthew McConaughey.

Will Ken Levine’s Judas pop up next year? Who’s to say – it’s been projected to release by March 2025, but we haven’t seen much of it in the lead up to that date. We mostly know that Levine is playing with a “narrative Legos” concept, whatever that means. And while I think Perfect Dark is unlikely to release next year, the gameplay trailer at last year’s Xbox Games Showcase looked fantastic. I’m kind of hoping it doesn’t release this year, so I’ll actually have time to play it.\