{"id":339693,"date":"2025-12-28T18:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T18:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/339693\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T18:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T18:46:08","slug":"the-best-ps5-games-from-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/339693\/","title":{"rendered":"The best PS5 games from 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this new era of console\u2026 inclusivity<\/a>? driven by Sony<\/a> and mostly Microsoft<\/a> bringing their exclusives to other platforms, it\u2019s getting harder to highlight games that make a singular console shine. Indeed, the top-performing games year after year on both PlayStation and Xbox are multiplatform releases, and often the best games of the year, like 2025 GOTY winner<\/a> Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, similarly launch on most everything<\/a>. (Once again, like in all things, Nintendo is the exception.)<\/p>\n

But while lists like this will probably disappear as we get deeper into the era of everything being an Xbox, Sony still seems committed to high-quality exclusives. Here are its best of 2025.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

As software exclusivity goes the way of Sega\u2019s console business, console makers have other ways to attract consumers to their part of the video game ecosystem. For Microsoft, it\u2019s Game Pass; for Sony in 2025, it\u2019s the PlayStation Portal<\/a>. This year, Sony launched an update for the Portal that enables cloud streaming<\/a> and making the device a must-have for PlayStation households. For $200, roughly half the price of a PS5, you essentially get a second one, able to play select games without the need to stream them from the console. The list of streamable games isn\u2019t comprehensive, but there are over 2,000 of them<\/a>, and the ability to play them on the go is a literal game changer.<\/p>\n

Get into a discussion with true Final Fantasy sickos about the top 10 games in the franchise, and you better have a lot of time and earplugs on your hands as everyone debates entries two through 10 \u2014 because No. 1, invariably, is Final Fantasy Tactics. Having finally played the game for the first time, taking advantage of the remaster Square Enix released this year, I get it<\/a>. The best video games are often timeless while also able to speak to a specific moment, and Tactics\u2019 story is and does exactly that.<\/p>\n

But more than narrative, Tactics\u2019 brilliance is also in its expansive job system that grants players a facsimile of godhood that\u2019s so much fun to wield. The arithmetician class has the ability to cast any learned spell in the game instantly and without requiring mana. To offset the class\u2019s ruinously slow speed, pair it with white mage to create the most diabolical unit in the history of strategy RPGs. Ramza Beoulve is just a guy trying to save the world, and FFT made me believe he can because I made his ragtag band of misfits into walking nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Sucker Punch\u2019s sequel to Ghost of Tsushima plays things relatively safe. It doesn\u2019t change things up dramatically but instead polishes the experience. Which means the experience isn\u2019t all that different from its predecessor \u2014 that means lush landscapes to explore, lots of combat techniques to learn, and, uh, plenty of hot springs to bathe in \u2014 but everything feels more finely tuned this time around. That\u2019s especially true of the game\u2019s tale of revenge, which is both more gripping than the original and also gives the open-world experience some much-needed structure.<\/p>\n

The original Death Stranding was so weird that half of the fun was just wrapping your head around the experience. I\u2019m not sure I really understood it until I was almost done (if at all). The sequel is still plenty weird, but because it builds off of the previous game, it\u2019s also much easier to understand from the get-go. It\u2019s still a delivery simulator where you trek across a postapocalyptic landscape to get goods and people where they\u2019re needed. But now the setting has shifted to Australia, which means there are new environmental elements to deal with \u2014 hello, sandstorms \u2014 along with a whole new cast of weirdo characters to meet, played by everyone from Elle Fanning to George Miller.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t worry; the story is still as inscrutable as ever.<\/p>\n

Bennett Foddy sure made you feel the \u201cwalking\u201d part of this elaborate walking simulator<\/a>. In Baby Steps, your job is to walk, and you do that by controlling every move involved in taking a step, down to the fine motor details. What results is a hilarious examination of human psychology, emotional maturity, and a newfound appreciation for just how hard it is to ambulate a body with nothing more than DualSense trigger buttons.<\/p>\n

When Lumines Arise<\/a> was first announced, I made the mistake of asking, \u201cOh, is it a series or something?\u201d, unfamiliar with Lumines\u2019 days as a PSP powerhouse. My elders have never let me live that down, so I thought I\u2019d see for myself what the game is.<\/p>\n

Lumines Arise is Evil Dr. Tetris Effect Mean Bean Machine. Mean Bean Machine in that the game is played by globbing together matching blocks in two-by-two configurations. It\u2019s part Tetris Effect<\/a> because the game has an incredible synth \/ pop-house soundtrack that\u2019s synced to the action, creating a full-body puzzle-playing experience. And evil in that the game is hard as shit. My skills as a Tetris player, limited though they are, just do not transfer to Lumines Arise. But! There is a flow state I can reach. Throughout playing, the shapes of the blocks will change from blocks, to eggs, to clocks, whatever, and I\u2019ve found some patterns are easier to group than others. It\u2019s interesting and fun to figure out what shapes make the game easier for me and which ones are impossible to configure.<\/p>\n

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