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2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Original Music

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/03/2026

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Music can literally drive a game forward emotionally for many gamers. I personally have a huge game soundtrack CD collection that I listen to regularly. Some of the best music ever written comes from video games.

Silent Hill f

Akira Yamaoka isn’t just a genius, but is a master of dark and moody sounds. Silent Hill has some of the most memorable music and style ever created. SHf is no exception, giving players a unique blend of traditional Japanese folk music with Western horror sounds.

Runner-Ups

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Sword of the Sea

Undying Flower

Hades II

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Indie Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/03/2026

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Indie games have kept the game industry alive and that’s a fact. Some of the best video games ever made are created with fractions of the budget of a AAA title. These continue to be the light at the end of the tunnel for many gamers.

Dispatch

Dispatch isn’t just a good superhero game, but a good adventure game. Without the ties of licensed comic book characters the developers had free license to do as they please and it’s a breath of fresh air. We really need more of these. Not since Freedom Force has a unique superhero game been so memorable.

Runner-Ups

Blue Prince

The Midnight Walk

Sword of the Sea

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Least Evolved Sequel

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/29/2025

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Some sequels can be good or mediocre, but that can also be okay. A game may be considered “fine”, but sequelitis is a huge problem in the game industry. While there were many “fine” sequels this year many just didn’t evolve that much and played things to safe.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

Call of Duty is the epitome of “fine”. The campaigns get more boring and ridiculous every single year and Black Ops 7 feels no different than Black Ops game from a decade ago minus some balancing tweaks here and there. Far removed from gritty and realistic, Black Ops 7’s campaign is an awful excuse for weird, but not in a good way. Only the most hardcore fans can stomach the series at this point.

Runner-Ups

Sniper Elite: Resistance

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Borderlands 4

The Outer Worlds 2

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Most Exciting Return

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/29/2025

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Games can be dormant for years and a new announcement, and an actual release, can garner huge amounts of excitement for gamers. This year saw the return of many long dead franchises or delayed sequels come back to life.

Silent Hill f

Silent Hill isn’t just an exciting new reboot for the series, but one that’s actually good is a miracle. The late 2000’s was followed up with mediocre to terrible sequels and spin-offs. The series went off the deep end including bad ports and updates. SHf is fantastic with good combat, an interesting story, and an incredibly intense atmosphere with fantastic music. I can’t believe the series is back for good.

Runner-Ups

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

Mario Kart World

Donkey Kong Banaza

Hollow Knight: Silksong

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Most Disappointing Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/28/2025

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This year wasn’t a small year for disappointing games. From poor launches to terrible content and buggy and glitches releases from the start 2025 was one of the worst. Games just keep getting bigger and buggier and harder to develop and it just seems like a never ending cycle. Instead of picking outright terrible games I wanted to go back to the actual disappointing part. Games that were decent, but didn’t live up to their hype, potential, or pedigree.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2

Bloodlines 2 is probably one of the most disappointing games ever released. Not only was it in a decade long development hell cycle, but it just didn’t capture anything that made the first game charming and well regarded today. The boring combat, buggy and glitchy mess, uninteresting story and characters, and the awful paywall issue leading up to launch didn’t help. Here’s to hoping another game in the series can fix things up.

Runner-Ups

Atomfall

The Outer Worlds 2

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour

Sid Meier’s Civilization VII

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Story

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/28/2025

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Story is some of the reasons why games are memorable. You can have great gameplay, but without a good story in certain genres it means nothing. Some of the best stories are in the RPG and action-adventure genres and this year didn’t disappoint. We’ve had quite a few anemic years in terms of story recently. It’s good to see them come back.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur doesn’t just have a good story but it feels like it cares about the world and characters they are in. The world building is fantastic and everything feels organic. The setting feels foreign and confusing, but intriguing at the beginning of the game and slowly opens itself up to the player. It’s one of the best video game stories told, and very memorable at that.

Runner-Ups

Silent Hill f

Split Fiction

The Alters

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Voice Acting

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/25/2025

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Voice acting can bring a video game to life, but it can’t save it. This mostly just adds to the cinematic feeling whether there’s a celebrity voice attached to it or not. Many games are well known more for their bad voice acting than good, but these days, AAA video games tend to have come a long way and that goes for indie games as well.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Troy Baker’s performance as Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones is just nothing short of remarkable. Every single part of Ford’s performance is copied to a T fooling many to think Ford himself voiced the character. This is some of the most impressive work I have ever seen. To truly bring someone to life by not just copying the voice but getting the nuances of mouth movements, stutters, grunts, and everything in between is nothing short of amazing.

Runner-Ups

Split Fiction

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Mafia: The Old Country

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Graphics, Technical

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/24/2025

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The most technical graphics usually indicate something that pushes the industry forward, uses a cool new engine or feature, or pushes a console beyond what anyone was thought capable. While consoles and PCs are blurred today there are still some incredibly impressive games out there that wow us.

Ghost of Yotei

Yotei wasn’t just a beautiful game artistically, but technically this is one of the best looking and well optimized games ever made. The 60 FPS with ray-tracing on PS5 Pro is a technical marvel and just looks and plays fantastically. The beautiful sweeping vistas of flowing blades of grass and flowers with tons of water reflections and flowing fabrics just looks so good.

Runner-Ups

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Kingdom Come Deliverance II

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Doom: The Dark Ages

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best New Game

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/22/2025

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New games are what help drive the industry forward. These are daring and brave developers who think they have the next best idea that everyone will love. Sometimes it really does work and most of the time it just does not. Not all new games become multi-million dollar blockbuster franchises, but can also spark intrigue into a niche crowd or interest and become successful that way.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur pretty much came out of nowhere. We got a lot of awesome new games this year and it was hard to choose just one, but sparking new interest into an already growing stale genre from a French studio is something I didn’t expect. Yes, it had the large budget to allow something like this, but large budgets for JRPGs are usually reserved for tried and true franchises and even those are shrinking every year. Clair Obscur may be snuggling safe into a huge genre, but it has some new ideas and takes on the genre that really helps lift it above all others. Games like this only come once a decade.

Runner-Ups

The Alters

Cronos: The New Dawn

The Midnight Walk

Sword of the Sea

2025 Game of the Year Awards — Achievement Awards — Best Graphics, Artistic

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/21/2025

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Artistic graphics don’t always have to be a technical marvel. A well painted texture or cleverly placed lighting effect can give the same aw as a photorealistic ray-traced water puddle. The most artistic games in the past have inspired people to become artists themselves even. The of the most iconic video game characters, art, levels, and bosses are incredibly artistic being either over exaggerated in certain ways or the silhouette is something you can spot a mile away. Art is an intrinsic part of video games and without it there wouldn’t be much to wow us.

Sword of the Sea

Sword of the Sea doesn’t just feel like an emotional journey through sand and water, but the music helps with this as well. Sliding your board around and flying through the air while wall riding alongside sea life is something you don’t get to do often. Sword of the Sea is a rare treat that we don’t get often. A beautiful work of art to play in, a sandbox of talent and artistry that transcends any technical power that you would otherwise need to think about. The beautiful gold, green, and blue will take your breath away no matter who you are.