When you've finished playing the big-name video games, try,,, and some of our other favorites from 2025. It's hard to keep track of every game launch. While a handful of titles like,, or are sure to top the year's Best Of lists, many more will go unrecognized for their brilliance, fun, or sheer absurdity. The good news is we've got you covered. Whether you're stuck at home for the holidays and itching for something to play, or you just want to make sure you don't let any hidden gems slip under your radar, here are five games from this year's slate you should not miss.

Designed by ex-Atari luminary David Crane (Pitfall, Decathlon), Activision's wonderful tie-in captured the humour and spirit of the classic comedy. Players set up their own ghostbusting franchises, buying equipment before setting out to capture spooks. With its use of digitised speech and a jaunty reproduction of the film's soundtrack, it showed that games really could provide an authentic movie experience. Developed by the UK-based movie tie-in specialist Probe Entertainment, Die Hard Trilogy is three games in one: a third-person action adventure, a light-gun shooter and an arcade driving challenge, each based around consecutive instalments of the film series. Though the visuals were rough, the game perfectly captured the locations, themes and black humour of the movies, providing a real bargain for early PlayStation and Saturn owners.

Squaresoft's environmentalist fable pitches a small group of eco-rebels against the might Shinra Electric Power Company – part energy supplier, part terrifying interplanetary dictatorship. The designers were prescient in their imagining of a multifaceted company equally adept in weapons, genetic engineering and politics, and with its own 24-hour news channel to help with propaganda. Formed and managed by the Ashford family (surely gaming's answer to the Sackler dynasty), Umbrella is the pharmaceutical megacorporation responsible for creating the zombifying T-virus then spreading it around the globe. With a chequered background in grotesque human experimentation and shower curtain sales, Aperture Science is the creator of megalomaniacal artificial intelligence GLaDOS, which traps player character Chell in its labyrinthine laboratory. Founder Cave Johnson is the archetypal techbro entrepreneur: brilliant, ruthless and completely nuts.

Do you love nothing more than to backtrack through a part of a video game you've already been through? I surely do--I love to confidently revisit an area I struggled through once I've powered up and am now able to take it on with ease. Backtracking can be divisive (my very own editor can't stand it), but if you, too, find it satisfying, you need to get yourself Metroid Dread--the first original Metroid story in nearly two decades, now on Nintendo Switch. It's a game that finds innovative ways to deliver the surprising pleasures of returning to an area again and again, reaffirming my love for this conceit that others may still scoff at.. What exactly are those pleasures, for those who can't fathom traveling to the same place multiple times? I'm glad you asked--because I'm not at all alone in loving this practice.

If there is a financial shoo-in more likely than the prospect of Fortnite: The Movie making hundreds of millions of dollars at the global box office, it must be a rare thing indeed. One can easily imagine Peely, the giant banana-shaped soldier of digital fortune who is a popular playable character in the game, with his eyes lit up at the prospect of all those V-Bucks (Fortnite's in-game currency). This is a title with more than 350 million players worldwide. It is a behemoth that constantly reinvents itself in ways that encourage players to keep spending money, and has become so confident in its own financial weight that its creator, Epic Games, is currently going mano a mano with Apple over fees the latter charges for enrolment in its App Store. A big-screen version, it is rumoured, is moving closer and closer.

The cinemas may be shut, the gig venues closed, but there is one place you can still meet your friends and be entertained without leaving your house: the world of gaming. For many of us, it has been years since we could really justify spending all day in our pyjamas slaying virtual dragons – now that way of life, for some at least, is a little less frowned-upon. But if you're returning to serious gaming after a few years away, where exactly should you be spending your valuable money and time? Here are no less than 100 highly recommended titles, from family favourites to epic sci-fi sagas – all available on current platforms, be it PC, smartphones or consoles. Whether you want to be moved, terrified, relaxed or intellectually challenged, alone or with pals, we've got more than enough here to keep you occupied until you're out and about again … Crossy Road (Hipster Whale; Mobile) The "8-bit endless arcade hopper" (think Frogger, older gamers) retains all its charm, as you guide your character across increasingly busy roads.

I've been reading a really great story recently. By which I mean I have been playing a really great video game. Specifically, I've been playing adventure game Kentucky Route Zero, now on its fourth episode (of five). Despite being a video game, it is also one of the best magical-realist stories I've read in years. Kentucky Route Zero's existence is a testament to the steadily improving quality of prose writing in video games.