‘Tis the season of giving, but also the season of year-end lists. gamexplore published its own list of the 50 best games of 2025 on Friday, which included some surprise entries and unexpected placements for expected titles. (Spoiler alert: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not our GOTY, despite my best efforts.)
Plenty of 2025’s great games can be found on Xbox Game Pass, including several that gamexplore included as the best of the year, like Blue Prince, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Hollow Knight: Silksong. Here are three we’re revisiting this weekend.
Avowed
Avowed seems to be one of those games you either love or hate — and gamexplore very much loves it. Obsidian’s RPG didn’t just make our Game of the Year list: It landed the #5 spot. If you haven’t played it but are surprised by that, I invite you to give it a shot. Rather than trying to recreate the grand scale of The Elder Scrolls, Obsidian went in a leaner direction to great effect. Avowed is a refreshingly streamlined RPG that cuts down on glut to focus on its choice-driven narrative and great mix-and-match combat. But what’s really special about it is its writing. Avowed is a game clearly built during the COVID-19 era, telling the story of a pandemic that has left a continent in crisis. It uses that to examine how authoritarianism can rise in times of panic, as a fascist group uses the chaos as an excuse to implement its rule. Go in with that in mind and you’ll probably appreciate it a lot more. —Giovanni Colantonio
The Alters
The Alters is one of the most engrossing games of the year. It’ll test your wits as you try to successfully get Jan and his alternate consciousness clones off an irradiated world doing everything it can to kill them. It’s a stressful endeavor, but that stress is part of what makes it so intoxicating. That, and Alex Jordan’s standout performance as 12 different characters, all versions of the same man. There’s no better time to revisit The Alters, or check it out for the first time, than now. A free update earlier in December added options to make it a little less stressful, a card game mini-game, a new mysterious storyline, and more. —Austin Manchester
Ball x Pit
Ball x Pit is pure chaos in the best way. You start in a corridor, at the bottom of the screen, and bounce balls toward the top of the screen to destroy brick-like enemies. It’s fundamentally like Breakout — and then the powers kick in. Kill enough enemies, and you’ll unlock projectile earthquakes, blizzards, poison bog, laser beams, and more abilities you’d have never imagined on an Atari cabinet from the ’70s. Within minutes, the screen is a flurry, to the point where it’s hard to know what’s going on (besides, y’know, something awesome). There’s a reason Ball x Pit is one of our games of the year: The most challenging part about this game is figuring out how to put it down. —Ari Notis
