Game of the Year: Push Square Readers' Top 20 PS5 Games of 2025

Ghost of Yotei misses out on top honours again.

A third party title that was available day-and-date on Gamepass wins out against PlayStation first and second party exclusives eh… maybe this isn’t a site full of rampant fanboyism as is the usual accusation from ‘some’ quarters. How bout that? 🤔

I didn't see NG Ragebound nor Shinobi on the list. I guess there's only a few PS members who played and loves both games...

I've only seen Shinobi Art of Vengeance pop up on one of these lists recently, you people have no taste

This year broke the Sony cycle. But I’m a hater because a turn-based game did it. GG anyway E33.

Nice to AC Shadows in the top 10.

@NathanKang Started it yesterday and played for five hours straight. Can confirm the clear lack of taste lol.

No monster hunter, y'all have no taste /j

Whilst I enjoyed E33, I think this is also perhaps a sign that Sony's open-world-cinematic-story formula is getting a little stale.

If Ghosts of Yotei was released a few years ago, it would have cleared house in this vote.

@NathanKang I just hope Shinobi sold well enough to greenlight a new game. But if it's a flop and Sega decided to put the series back inside the coffin again, i guess as a long time fans i already did my part by buying the game on day 1, well day -1 since i pre-ordered it.

@somnambulance Yeah we're in the minority here. Really sad that Ragebound and Shinobi didn't get a lot of attention.

This was remarkably close! I expected E33 getting more votes than the second and third combined. And 420 votes for the forth game KCD2 is a high number.

Definitely not how I voted. I put one of the many more deserving titles in the #1 spot.

I got to say in all honesty, that's a very respectable top 20.

Im actually shocked Indiana jones is number 5 in a bad way

@Max_the_German I just checked, there were about 5K fewer votes this year than last, probably explaining the close counts of the top few. Last year, Astro Bot got 1st with over 1900 votes.

Though, based on the general sentiment, E33 probably would’ve claimed the majority of those missing votes.

@PuppetMaster @NathanKang ragebound and shinobi likely sold a lot less than the top games so less people likely played them and voted. If all games sold equally I’m sure there’d be some changes in rank.

It would be good for PS to republish this list taking into consideration total sales to the ratio of votes. Or am I just being too geeky? 😅

@Fiendish-Beaver im swinging between Cronos and Silent Hill F as my next game. Just wondered if you had played SHF as well to get your thoughts?

Nice i like to see more of these Classic JRPG games with turnba combat

Forza Horizon 5 robbed of the Top 20!

@graymamba To be fair Yotei has no right to be in top3 with likes of KCD2, DS2 and even Silksong releasing this year.

There definetly is fanboyism here, its just E33 is so good even PS fanbois cant deny it.

I think I like this top 10 more

@species ahh so we’ve finally found the definitive arbiter of what is and what isn’t good. Brill, this’ll make everyone’s life far easier 🤣

edit. And I’ve found that often in these situations it’s the pot calling the kettle black tbh.

Lumines arise is my goty

2025 was a year of many really good games, and my top two games are the same as yours 🙂 hope 2026 can be an awesome year for gaming as well!

No Sektori in the list at all indicates that real gamers are more or less extinct.

Glad to see Silksong super close to the top 5.

I went with Ghost of Yotei so glad to see it in second.
Expedition is not my thing.

No Shinobi! Other than that, a solid list, although I think next year's will be better

The Game Awards, Goldenstick, game sites etc...maybe how winners are decided should be looked at again. Cause it's looking like once a game is great and cheap/free it's likely to sweep all awards. Millions would've bought it and would skip the other more expensive ones that are equally great. And then you ask for public voting, the expensive ones don't stand a chance, cause most likely most people bought that one £50 game the entire year. It's like free to play Wuthering Waves winning over Clair for Player's Choice in TGA. Same with game sites, when you hold a poll, people are likely to vote for the single game they own by default. So I think public voting could be quite flawed.

@Balaam_ look we all wish PAW Patrol Rescue Wheels: Championship won platinum, but some years we have to give other franchises a chance

Hell is Us is my personal GOTY.

@SeaDaVie Well, to be fair, PlayStation only had two big first party games and those both made the top 5. I’m sure if there were others, they’d probably be in positions 2-5 just like PX with Microsoft games. It’s the nature of the beast.

@SeaDaVie Good way to show that Push Square isn’t overly biased.

@Jammer @Fiendish-Beaver thanks both, appreciated.

@SeaDaVie Two things can be true at the same time no?

@themightyant is it so hard to believe that some people may like Yotei more? I believed that Pure Xbox’s Ben Kerry liked South of Midnight more than Expedition 33… and I’d argue that the majority of gamers prefer GoY over SoM.

It just seems that Push Square opinions (from both staff and punters) are instantly resigned to fanboyism, while there is just as much evidence of this behaviour (if not more) on the other side of the divide.

@SeaDaVie While i dont disagree with what you said,

I feel like the “its way worse over there” argument doesnt really add anything to the discussion about the phenomenon were experiencinf here.

@graymamba
Ofcourse people can prefer other things. Also people prefering exclusives on their platform(what some peiple would call fanboism) isnt necessarily bad thing, nobody said that.

Youre doing the same thing, no need to attack my opinion just because i think Yotei was extremely underwhelming. I dont see where i implied that im an arbiter of anything, what a toxic thing to say. Im just expressing my opinion in an internet forum. Isnt that the point of it?

@species how is implying that you’re an arbiter toxic, when you just dictated that Yotei “had no right to be in the top 3”? There was no opining about the way you said it, it was stated as if it were a matter of fact.

Honestly Push Square where do you find these… well I’ll say people as I don’t want the post to be removed.

@graymamba Aaand you continue to be toxic….

Do i have to put “in my opinion” after anything i say so “people like you” dont assume im stating a fact instead of an opinion?

@species yes please… and be a doll and learn the definition of toxic while you’re at it 😉

@graymamba Well im running into the same problem as you, if i wrote the word i want to id be banned

Altho dismissing my comments and hiding behind personal insults fits the definition of toxic flawlessly.

Oh…. for those challenged in the wits department … in my opinion!

Have a nice rest of the evening!

@species oh I will don’t you worry 😏

Another amazing year of games. I currently have 87 games installed on my PS5 that I want to get around to, and I have only bought 2 of the 15 games I'm interested in on this list.

So many games and so little time.

@graymamba @themightyant
(I will just state for the record that GoY is easily my GOTY - and as I don't really like turn based combat, nothing else came close. Though if I could have voted for Lies of P Overture (I know its a dlc) and First Berserker Khazan, these would have been 1/2, and 3 on my list respectively!)

I think the reason around what you are discussing is that Sony have been 'cultivating' a userbase over many, many years now, that likes the type of game they often release - 3rd person, open / semi open world, action adventure games.

They have been well known for releasing exceedingly high quality games of this type for all this time, and that has drawn users who like this sort of game to their consoles, and keeping them there, for 3 console generations now.

It's of no surprise to me at all that games of this type do very well on Sony consoles, and Sony console centered sites.

It has nothing to do with fanboyism - but there is a form of manufactured bias purely from the concentration / alignment of peoples preferences due to my reasoning above. A type of fanbase if you will.
I like the sort of games I like, and GoY is easily the best example this year.

I would also add that this is 1 of the main reasons Sony had such trouble with its LS push - those that were already into this sort of game had their favourites that they had invested time and money into, and almost everyone else just wasn't interested! (And in some cases very angry they were wasting time on this sort of game and not releasing the type of game they buy Sony consoles to play).

Are you kidding?
GoY above KCD2..?!
Yeah… Yōtei shouldn’t even be in top 3.
But what else to expect from biased site… I mean, in the „real GOTY” (the one that matters) Yōtei didn’t get any reward in any category.

@bowzoid I just saw a video of Sektori the other day and will be my next purchase.

I'm still playing Resogun since it launched in 2013 FFS.

@Fiendish-Beaver 100% agree Cronos was fantastic and I can’t wait to see what else Bloober has cooking along with that Silent Hill Remake

@themightyant
I wasn't referring to yourself mentioning fanboying - I only referenced this as that is what some class it as (as I read in other posts above) - apologies if I wasn't clear.

My point was that in a lot of cases, a bias towards 1st party Sony games is not a specific bias in favour of Sony or a 'fanboying' type of bias some people think it is - it is, in my opinion, simply that the people who like the type/genre of games that Sony often make (and are very good at making) have been attracted over many years to their consoles.
Hence the high number of Sony GOTY's, and why certain other games have done well / are popular on their consoles.

Is it truly a bias when these are simply the games that the audience really enjoys?

The same can probably be said of Nintendo.

@Fiendish-Beaver Got it for crimbo and really looking forward to jumping in once i finish the current thing (SW Outlaws)

Not a fan of 33 tried the demo and just meh. Not my type of game. Must b great to have all the Brit’s on its nuts.

Death Stranding 2 for me. Utterly amazing in every way.

Playstation players only vote for two playstation games and the rest of the games on other consoles? I guess people losing faith in sonys lack of exclusives lol

@SeaDaVie I mean. Of course both sites are biased 😅 They're self selecting communities of fans of the games that Xbox and PlayStation make respectively.

When your sample population is made of of people who actively like and seek out more of what a certain thing does, it's hardly surpring a poll taken on said population will skew in favour of the thing.

The question is, are said players REALLY liking those games more, or are they somewhat blinding themselves to other titles out of emotional attachment? It's impossible to say really.

So, after all those comments on how 'wack' Push Squre's top 10 list was, let's check out their list and see what a quality top 10 list looks like:
"10. Battlefield 6 - 213 votes (3%)"

...never mind.

Jokes aside, it is interesting to see the comparisons and contrasts in the two lists. Looking at both in hindsight, I'm kinda surprised that a Sonic Racing game was able to beat out Silksong, Silent Hill, and Indy on Push Square's list, and doubly surprised that neither Ninja Gaiden (either of them), nor Shinobi made either list (not even the top 20 in the user poll). On the other hand, it seems that there are five games considered unanimously among the best of the year: KC:D2, DS2, GoY, SF, and of course, CO:E33. So there was some agreement on about half the list, just not so much on the other half.
As for me, I haven't really played enough games to put together a good top 10 myself, but if I had to it'd probably look something like this:
Death Stranding 2
Indiana Jones
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound (Currently playing)
Shinobi (based off Demo)
Clair Obscur (Currently playing)
Assassin's Creed Shadows (Played Part 1)
Pirate Yakuza
Doom: The Dark Ages
A few "good, but not great" games, along with a couple of gems and some possible gems that I just haven't played enough of yet (not to mention all the possible gems I haven't even played yet).

@Jammer Have no idea as i got Shadows digitally.