Wow, gang, this is some real confidential stuff! Would you believe it, but I managed to get my hands on a Top Secret Document that contains the script for The Game Awards 2025. Let’s dive in together, and see what Big Gaming has been gatekeeping from us for the sake of flashy trailers and corporate sponsors and uh… games… released this year.
Look, I had a bit for this where I was going to pretend to leak the awards early but I forgot which day the awards were happening, so here’s how the 2025 Game Awards should’ve gone.
Should've been called the Guillaume Awards based on how many nominations E33 got, am I right folks?
In a year full of games with words and stories, one game stood out for having maybe the best words and stories and that game was Silent Hill f. I wrote about Silent Hill f previously, but I really dug it - I think it provided a simple, compelling narrative full of genuinely ugly characters and a depressing cultural context. Now that we’re here and not in a spoiler-free environment or whatever I wanna give massive, undulating props to the Fox's Wedding ending, one of the alternate endings you can get if you refuse to take the red capsules.
Fox's Wedding is one of the most disgustingly cynical endings I have ever seen in a game lmao. It is horrific, an utter betrayal of your journey so far as Hinako is subsumed entirely into a narrative about how the two boys in your life maybe can get along after all.
It is so good.
The little fist pump Fox Mask/Kotoyuki and Shu have made me throw up a little in my mouth! SHf definitely has some issues with regards to how you get to some of these endings (I think it doesn’t quite respect your time on subsequent playthroughs, particularly as you limp through endless combat towards the end!), but the rewards are just so good and often deeply uncomfortable.
If anything, I feel like people are slightly underrating SHf’s storytelling because of how gnarly some of the narrative and character questions and implications are. Not here though, here we rate it correctly - well done for winning the Best Narrative award at the real actual game awards.
Winner: Silent Hill f
Runner Up: Silent Hill 4: The Room available now on GoG with a bunch of improvements.
Best RPG
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| What a nice little cat. I hope nothing bad happens! |
Welcome to the best RPG award, presented this year by aaaaa star of some kind! Holt McCallany maybe!
Wow, what an absolutely stacked year for RPGs, JRPGs, CRPGs, and SRPGs (FF tactics does and always will go super hard). With all these wonderful adventures available to us, it’s a wonder we have time to play any of them at all, which is why this prestigious award goes to one that I actually got around to playing near the start of the year: 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim.
It is silly how good 13 Sentinels is, and I am so disappointed in myself that it took me until big ol 2025 to play through it. A genuinely jaw-dropping experience available on a bunch of platforms, it’s worth giving it a go even if the elements that make up the game (anime, mechs, cats, yakisoba pan) aren’t really your thing. The game is supremely difficult to talk about in detail; the way 13 Sentinels treats twists, turns, and spoilers is utterly bonkers, and every story beat and development is part of an incredible ride that will stick with me for years.
Also the mech-based pseudo-real-time strategy sections are real fun - a lot of DNA from this game and the battles in this game clearly made it over to Unicorn Overlord.
Winner: 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim
Runner-Up: The new physical edition of Blood Bowl that I’ve been really enjoying, or E33
Best Blorbo
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| I love them...... |
Between the little patchwork creatures and Esquie and the silly rock creature, E33 deservedly and decisively won the best blorbo award for its breadth, depth, height, and heft of the blorbos on offer. If E33 was a Nintendo product we'd be able to look forwards to merchandise of these creatures and critters for years to come, but alas I fear they might go the way of Emile from Nier and only show up occasionally. Bask in their glory while you can, I can only hope this marks the beginning of a true blorbo renaissance in western game dev the likes of which hasn't been seen since that one kangaroo mascot platformer.
Winner: Expedition 33
Runner-Up: Digimon Story: Time Stranger
Best Shape
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| The tone of this list is jokey, but this is a 100% real recommend. Please try it!!! |
Games aren’t just squares and blocks anymore - we’ve got all sorts of triangles, polygons, shapes I haven’t even heard of yet, all packed together into wonderful combinations that both delight and intrigue.
Many games this year used shapes and honoured the legacy of shapes, but very few games took the time to really be about shapes, which is why the illustrious Best Shape award goes to To a T.
To a T was a real delightful time, one of those weird games that sits alongside Tearaway where you feel deeply and fundamentally uplifted and full of the energy needed to go change the world or create something or eat a nice pastry outside.
It is a quintessential ‘touch grass’ game: respectful of your time, encourages you to take brakes, and full of an infectious joie de vivre that should really be like… prized more in our gaming experiences, maybe even prized slightly above things like addictive gameplay loops or battlepass rewards. Not just joy - and not to sound like I’m talking up the game too much - but To a T has a fundamental respect for life and for the dignity of life, which is a deeply odd and affirming thing to encounter in a video game about shapes and aliens.
The songs are real gnarly earworms as well - check em out
Winner: To a T
Runner-Up: Triangle Strategy
GOTY
That's right the French RPG made it again what a grand day - wait hold on folks I'm getting a live update from the venue, something completely unexpected has happened.
By gawd - a surprise contender has come to claim the belt at the last possible second, knocking out all the competitors with its affordability, accessibility, depth, rollback netcode and patented organic farm-grown grain-fed fun! That's right, the winner this year was Guilty Gear XX AC+R with a shocking come-from-behind victory!
Fighting games have always been slow to build momentum, but to win GOTY 2025 at the Sportsbet dot com presents the Coinbase Mr Beast Game Awards fifteen years after release is a massive achievement. An inspiring tale of never giving up despite age, relevance, or eligibility, well done to Guilty Gear XX AC + R.
Winner: Guilty Gear XX AC + R
Runner-Up: Guilty Gear XX AC + R
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