When you look at the best games of this year on Metacritic, you see games like the incredible Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Split Fiction. It shows what fantastic shape 2025 is already in, buoyed even further by the fact that many of this year's top titles have come from indie or double-A studios.
Shields up!
As we round out the first half of 2025, though, one major Japanese outlet has decided to poll its audience on the region's Game of the Year so far, and there are a handful of surprising omissions.
Japanese news outlet Game Spark recently polled its readers to find out what games were in the running for 2025's Game of the Year. It found that the frontrunner, perhaps as surprising as some of the omissions, was Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, with players praising it as "A legitimate evolution from the previous game, with more content and easier playability."
The site noted that other popular picks were Elden Ring Nightreign, The Alters, Dynasty Warriors: Origins, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and Raidou Remastered (which we scored a 2.5/5). It's a...
