Seven videogames we’re most looking forward to in 2025

Each new year brings hope. Yes, you’ve just spent a week eating Quality Street for breakfast, but 2025 doesn’t judge you for it. Instead it offers a clean slate. 365 completely new and unsullied days of change. Growth. Possibility.

And that’s why it’s important to look ahead at all the games coming out in 2025: because you absolutely are going to be playing these, and thusly need to balance your calendar space between writing that novel and getting some purple sectors done or running amok in Vice City.

Adjust your resolutions accordingly – it’s a big year for games ahead, and these are the headline acts.

Frankly, after the years of grinning enjoyment we’ve had in Assetto Corsa and Competizione, developer Kunos Simulazioni could announce that they’re releasing a hardback book about the the rate of grass growth in 2025 and it’d still become one of our most anticipated moments of the year. Evo, mind you, is a thrilling prospect for much more than the names attached.

Powered by an all-new game engine that looks especially great at vehicle interiors and changing weather effects, it’s not just a sandbox or an esports-ready motorsport series, but also a pretty massive 600 square mile open world, a la Forza Horizon and The Crew. It’s based on the German countryside that surrounds the Nürburgring, and in typically forensic style, Kunos have gone out and laser-scanned that entire region in real life.

The car list’s looking particularly tasty too, with modern thirst traps like Hyundai’s N Vision sitting alongside classic Ferraris and – appropriately enough given the game title – a Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione, to name only a few highlights.

An open-world RPG with not a single elf, dragon or +2 enchanted sword of the ancients in sight. Like the 2018 original, KCD II isn’t trying to topple Skyrim’s reign over fantasy land, but instead builds an obsessively researched, rigorously accurate corner of medieval Bohemia and lets you loose to flail various sharp objects around in it.

Original protagonist Henry is back with his old pal Sir Hans, and with a newfound knack for comedic delivery. Laughs were in short supply during the opening massacre of the first game, but the central pair’s friendship fuels many a 15th century zinger this time, captured by some impressive mocap tech.

Combat – famously tricky before – has had an overhaul which doesn’t lack for depth but feels a bit easier to learn now, and the trademark historical detail comes good for picking out armour and weapons sets that exploit your enemies’ loadouts. If they’re in chainmail, pick a spear. If they’re in plate armour, pick a hammer. And if all else fails: just leg it.

From one vision of medieval times that couldn't be more authentic if it tried, to… well, a guy with a chainsaw shield fighting off the hordes of hell in an Olde Worlde setting. Not to worry – DOOM: The Dark Ages doesn’t want a research grant, it just wants to make you feel even more monstrously powerful than ever before.

While some shooters want to tell you a deep story and mix up the pace with a stealthy section, or a bit where you’re escorting the President out of a hostage situation, id Software says: here, have these devastating weapons. Here’s room after room of monsters, each of which blow up in particularly satisfying ways. Have fun.

And we will, id Software. We will.

The artist formerly known as GTRevival has a new name, a new game engine, and a new publishing deal with Giants Software. Finally, in 2025 it’s primed and ready to hit the racing sim heights of Project CARS and GTR – two titles that members of Straight4Studios created previously.

That impressive credits list is part of the reason we’re counting down the days until PMR lands. After all, we’re still playing Project CARS 2 even after it was pulled from distribution on Steam.

But there’s also the ambition of the project. While the likes of iRacing are hamstrung by aged game engines, Straight4Studios has built a thoroughly modern engine that can implement more realistic physics simulations and leverage the power of modern graphics cards.

Plus we’ve spotted a Lister Storm in the pre-release assets, so this one’s a done deal as far as we’re concerned.

Maybe it’s still too early to get our hopes up about Forza Horizon developer Playground Games’ take on the classic Fable RPG series. But if you will insist on releasing brilliant cinematic trailers with smart writing and Richard Ayoade and biting criticism on age-old RPG tropes, Playground, we can’t help but get invested.

There’s no publicly available gameplay footage yet, so look, there’s still a chance it won’t be a refreshing spin on the epic fantasy adventure with great comedic writing and incredible systems like the old Fables had. But if original series creator Peter Molyneux taught us anything, it was to shut out the nagging doubts and lose yourself to the fantasy.

Say it out loud. It just sounds fast, doesn’t it? In the open beta (available to everyone right now, by the way) it looks at first glance like an ACC-like proposition: GT3 cars with a super-serious sim racing model where tyre and brake temps are the be-all and end-all. But Rennsport’s ambitions go beyond simply occupying the space Kunos Simulazioni once occupied before moving on with Evo - there are plans for many more vehicles, across different categories. And crucially, all of them will feel convincing to drive.

The best bit: the team at Competition Company are taking feedback very seriously, so you can hop into their Discord and shape the racing sim you want to drive.

Imagine a list about games coming out in 2025 without GTA VI on it. Where would one even go to find such a thing? It’d be like a ‘best French hypercars’ list without a Bugatti, or an office Christmas party without someone joking about photocopying a body part but not actually doing it.

No, we need these conventions otherwise chaos would preside. Also it looks really good, eh? Only one games company could drop the biggest trailer of all time and then leave us on read for a year, but there’s so much to digest about our first glance at modern-day Vice City. The everglades and the dusty highways. The Bonnie and Clyde story that seems to be emerging from Lucia and Jason, the two central characters in the reveal vid.

All the news stories, taking aim at real-world events and showing them back to us through a funhouse mirror. How real and lived in the place feels, with ads for fictional brands plastered everywhere and familiar vehicle brands popping up in precious glimpses. There’s a reason everyone’s quite excited about this one: GTA is a genre unto itself, and there’s no one else who can reach these heights.

You never see them pop up on these lists, but let’s take a moment to acknowledge that, like every year, we’re going to spend a lot of 2025 playing the new Codemasters F1 game, and the new EA FC. We’re still going to be pretending we’re good at PUBG. We’ll regularly be sightseeing around The Crew Motorfest’s Hawaiian islands, and when Football Manager 2025 arrives in March, we’ll be there, in a big coat and some stylish spectacles, pretending to know what a Trequartista does.