Here Are The Top 10 Xbox Games Of 2025 According To Metacritic

Split Fiction, my beloved 🥰

My personal GOTY, no doubt about it!

Not perfect, but literally no game is. It’s just so creative, polished, refined, and fun. A real gem. A masterpiece of co-op gaming.

Another solid year and imo Xbox is puzzling together a really solid generation. My suprise game of the year has been The Outer Worlds 2 for sure. I thought the first was a good bit overrated but the sequel has been equally underrated. Does a good job of not stepping on the toes of a Mass Effect or Starfield and instead keeps the genre fresh with own kind of flavor. Expedition 33 and Oblivion were both amazing, and the treasure trove that is game pass continues to shine despite the pains of price hikes.

I played only two of those to completion (Borderlands 4 & KCD 2).

I did try Expedition 33 & Blue Prince but they didn't do anything for me. Non of the other games in the top 10 looked interesting enough to me to try.

That said 2025 has been an excellent year for games on Xbox for me with the likes of The Outer Worlds 2, Atomfall & Satisfactory and the majority of my gaming has been on the Xbox this year by a huge margin. Let's hope 2026 offers the same variety and excellence.

That Gears of War: Reloaded gets anywhere near the 80s amazes me. Don't misunderstand me, I am probably the biggest Gears of War fan to grace these forums, and have put over 2000 hours into Gears 5 alone, but the 'effort' put into this 'Remaster' was atrocious. I use the word 'effort' in the loosest possible terms, as really all this amounted to was a performance boost which would not have been undertaken had it not been intended for a PlayStation audience, and which would have been gifted to us, on Xbox, as an update.

I went through the campaign twice, solo (including on Insane), and once on Insane in co-op, but have to say that when played solo, the friendly AI was utterly broken, and was an embarrassment when you consider that this was a flagship title that was appearing on the PlayStation for the first time.

If Reloaded can be considered among the best games of 2025, it really doesn't say much about the rest on offer...

@Fiendish-Beaver it got 75 on PC and 79 on PS5 so potentially the Xbox reviewers were wearing nostalgia goggles whilst reviewing!

Apologies if I’m wrong, but none of those games are by an Xbox studio.

If I’m correct do we all remember the old days.
When a Halo, gears of war and a Forza Horizon would be in there or another Xbox studios game with a 90 plus score. I know it depends on the year and hopefully in 2026 they can get maybe 2 90 plus AAA in that list.

And that has been the issue with Xbox studios, Sony and Nintendo may release less games from their studios per year especially now Xbox studios have grown.
But it’s the quality games they do release.
The Astro bot and Donkey Kong Bananza etc that ends up making them more memorable and longer lasting sales wise, giving general public awareness.

@OldGamer999 100% agree. While I personally didn't care of DK Bananza, Astro Bot was the best platformer on any system in a decade. Xbox's output this year was strong (I REALLY enjoyed Keeper and South of Midnight) but nothing that deserved to hit over 89 at best. That said, as I look at everyone else's internal studios using the same criteria, I don't see much of anything that deserved to cross the 90 mark - at least not in my opinion. The best games of 2025 were all 3rd party; multi-platform.

Someone is going to say "Ghost of Yotei" and no, sorry, Tsushima was a 98/100 game. Yotei is more like an 82.

Only Shinobi from that list for me.