The curtain is about to fall on 2025, so it’s time to take a look at what this year has offered to those fond of video gaming. And there’s no doubt that some incredible games have been released in 2025. Games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have won numerous awards and offered top-notch entertainment. Also the likes of Oblivion Remastered, Assassin’s Creed Shadows and The Sinking City remaster delighted players this year. However, quite a few duds were released in 2025 too…
Over the years review aggregator site Metacritic has become a port of call for gamers hoping to find out whether a game is worth their time, avoiding those that have been cursed by reviewers with pitifully low scores…
Of course, you might still pick up one of these games and have fun with it, but there’s probably something else out there you could have a better time with, though.
And for better or worse Metacritic recently posted its list of the worst video games of 2025, the 10 games on this list being considered the worst releases of the year by the review aggregator site.
What’s interesting is that this list not only includes little-known names made by unknown studios with small budgets. There’s also a Nintendo-published game belonging to a long-running video game series, one based on a world-renowned movie franchise, and another coming from a storied GTA producer…
Actually, Leslie Benzies of GTA fame (he was producer of GTA V) and his studio were behind MindsEye, the worst game of the year according to Metacritic. Not even its Las Vegas setting, pseudo open-world gameplay and sci-fi story could save it from being mauled by the critics, who thought MindsEye was one of the worst video games of all time. Its Metacritic score of 28 surely is proof of that.
MindsEye wasn’t liked by reviewers this year.
It’s a pity when a promising game like this one turns out to be this bad, but it really had no chance, with big hitters like Battlefield 6 and the latest Call of Duty dominating the shooter market this year. MindsEye has improved since launch thanks to patches and updates, though, but is likely still far from being even a passable game.
Also, fans of the Fire Emblem series were elated when Nintendo announced a new entry in the series would be releasing in 2025. Fire Emblem Shadows, though, would not launch on Nintendo consoles but on mobiles (iOS and Android). Also, this is not a pure tactical RPG like the other games in the series, but more of a social deduction game like Among Us. But reviewers were not fond of its “pay to win” gameplay, with the likes of Metro calling it “atrocious”. So maybe Nintendo’s reputation suffered a bit this year as a result of this game…
The launch of Fire Emblem Shadows wasn’t Nintendo’s finest hour.
Racing game Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition ended up with one of the worst Metacritic scores of the year despite being based on the world-famous movie franchise. Obviously that’s no guarantee of success, but you would have imagined the developers would have put in the effort to make sure this turned out to be a success. This ended up being a dud though, a racing game which should have remained at the arcades and not made the transition to home consoles as critics pointed out.
Other games which made the list include Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator, one of the first games to use AI to generate voices, but turned out to be a boring “ambulance simulator”. Actually one IGN reviewer said stealing an ambulance in GTA V and driving around in it would be more fun…
Fast and Furious: Arcade Edition was amongst the lowest-scoring games of the year.
There was also Spy Drops, which tried to imitate Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid, it featuring PS1-era graphics and randomly generated levels but failed at it this year.
And Blood of Mehran (seen in the image which accompanies this article) looked like it could be an interesting Assassin’s Creed / Prince of Persia clone but did not hit the right notes according to critics. So sadly it went down as one of the lowest-scoring games of the year too…
Here follows a list of the 10 worst games of 2025 according to Metacritic.
10. Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition (scored 45 on PS5)
8. (tie) Scar-Lead Salvation (scored 44 on PS5)
8. (tie) QUByte Classics: Glover (scored 44 on PS5)
7. Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator (scored 44 on PS5)
6. Tamagotchi Plaza – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition (scored 43 on Nintendo Switch 2)
5. Gore Doctor (scored 40 on PS5)
4. Spy Drops (scored 39 on PC)
3. Blood of Mehran (scored 38 on PS5)
2. Fire Emblem Shadows (scored 37 on iOS)
1. MindsEye (scored 28 on PS5)