Games Inbox: What was the best game at The Game Awards 2025?

The Friday letters page is a little disappointed by Larian Studios’ new game, as one reader asks who exactly stays up for The Game Awards.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

PLEASE NOTE: We are currently preparing articles to run over the Christmas and New Year break, so if you’ve been thinking of writing a Reader’s Feature now would be the perfect time to send it in. It can be on any subject you want, as long as it’s a minimum of 500 words long.

The best bit
I’d be curious to know if anyone here stayed up for the whole of The Game Awards (except GC, I guess!) but I watched the first half an hour and then went to bed. That meant I got to see the Star Wars bit though, which was a nice surprise. A Knights Of The Old Republic spin-off by the original director? That is so much more interesting than a remake by a two-bit developer.

And then I find out there was another Star Wars announcement later on, for a Pod Racer sequel? And it’s by basically what’s left of the Burnout team? I definitely wasn’t expecting that, especially with so long without a new F-Zero or WipEout.

It sounds like Fate Of The Old Republic is going to be ages but I don’t mind, I like to know well in advance, it adds to the hype. I like the Tomb Raider stuff as well, and the new Resident Evil Requiem trailer. I’d say it was a game show, even though I never watched.
Blender

A Lara good news
We’ve had quite a few people worry about the future of Tomb Raider recently and at the time I totally understood where they were coming from. But I would say that the two Game Awards reveals were actually pretty great.

You couldn’t tell much about Catalyst, except it was trying to be a lot more old school than the reboot games, but Legacy Of Atlantis was really impressive. I love that that dinos are back and while I doubt it plays much like the original (the grid-based movement would never fly today) hopefully the basics are the same.

It was harder to tell what was going on with Lara but, yes, she was smiling and seemed to have at least something of her cocky attitude back. I don’t want gloomy, serious Lara, especially when the stories she’s in are such nonsense (not that that matters, but don’t take them seriously).

So I’m pretty optimistic now and, despite all the leaks, I think it was a good The Game Awards. I’m glad I didn’t stay up for it though.
Pasto

Attention grabber
I have a really good feeling about Resident Evil Requiem. I’m not in the business of pre-ordering anything but if I was going to pre-order I’d pre-order that, just to show Capcom that they snagged my interest. It might have only been a few seconds but seeing Leon with that chainsaw was so good.

Seems like he’s the one that saves Grace from the monster, so I wonder how it’s going to break up the sections where you’re him or her. Will it have partner zapping like Resident Evil Zero or will you have to play as one or the other when the game tells you to? I don’t really mind but I’m eager to find out.

We still don’t know how the Raccoon City stuff works yet either, let alone Rose Winters, so exciting knowing there’s still much more to see.
Brawndo

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Not the time for something completely different
I’ll be honest, I’m slightly disappointed that Larian’s big idea after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, and complete freedom to do whatever they want, is another Divinity game. Don’t get me wrong, the two Original Sin games were great, but I didn’t think the world was particularly interesting or worth going back to, it was just generic fantasy.

Larian are great at gameplay and characters but in terms of plot and setting it’s total boilerplate stuff – could be any game or franchise.

I was excited by the idea of them doing a sci-fi game, like they hinted at, or something completely different, maybe even not a role-playing game. But this seems like the most obvious and least interesting thing they could’ve done.

I don’t see why they turned their nose up at Dungeons & Dragons so suddenly if they were just going to do the same thing but with the serial numbers filled off.
Pelican

Proof of concept
Absolutely no surprises about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doing well at The Game Awards. I don’t know if it deserved nine awards but I can’t point to one in particularly that was a robbery on their part.

Like they said, hopefully this exposes the lie of games having to cost £200+ million and then they end up nowhere as good as Expedition 33 and barely any better in terms of graphics.

I expect big publishers to learn absolutely nothing from this but hopefully it will encourage other developers and smaller companies to try and do things themselves for cheaper and potentially huge rewards. Vive le Expedition 33!
Heathcliffe

Keep a secret
It’s hard to know what to think of The Game Awards, considering all the best stuff was leaked before, half it by the incompetence of the publishers themselves. That 007 First Light bit was extra embarrassing because they leaked the whole thing, they had literally nothing else to add.

I just wish they’d be more careful, because the show would’ve been so much better if I didn’t know any of it beforehand. The Tomb Raider and Star Wars bits were the best, not because they were bigger games but because there was some stuff we didn’t know about before, even if there had been hints at two Tomb Raider games before.

You can complain about spoiler and leaker culture but for me that’s irrelevant until publishers start to make even more basic effort about keeping secrets. Whoever’s in charge of that 007 First Light social media had one job – don’t press publish till The Game Awards – and they still failed completely.

Why is Capcom sending Sony pics of Leon before he’s announced? It wasn’t needed for anything Sony was doing and clearly they can’t be trusted. Just send it after you know the official reveal has happened. Same goes for the GameSpot leak.

I don’t think most people actually like leaks but if the information’s out there you can’t pretend it isn’t. Publishers’ jobs is to make sure it doesn’t get to that point.
Focus

Peas in a pod
I’ve never played a Total War game before, because I don’t have that kind of PC, but if the Warhammer 40,000 one is coming to consoles then I will definitely, probably give it a go (I’ll have to see how the controls work).

I agree it does seem a bit unfair on the Dawn Of War 4 devs though. Everyone knows Games Workshop would given anyone a Warhammer licence if they asked, but it really seems like they shouldn’t be allowing two real-time strategies at once. I like the idea, but I don’t want two similar games at the same time!
Curtis

Not impressed
The much-hyped Game Awards came and passed and, in my consideration, I found them to be completely uneventful and rather disappointing concerning upcoming releases.

A new Tomb Raider and Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic are encouraging, but it seems they will not arrive until sometime in 2027. A reveal of Lenny Kravitz as the Bond villain, an artist who peaked 20 years ago, is hardly attention-grabbing. Is Leon’s official announcement as a character in the new Resident Evil all that exciting?

Perhaps Control’s sequel will impress as much as the original; Ace Combat 8 provides a superior aerial attack simulator (hopefully with PlayStation VR2 support), and Phantom Blade 0 hits. But a couple of free-to-play gacha types, another Left 4 Dead clone, and yet another Yakuza game all fail to stimulate my gaming interests.

While those were not the only reveals of the program, taken as a collective, I found the entire build-up to be excessive and the results lacklustre. Anyhow, happy holidays to the entire Metro gaming community and thanks to everyone who contributes to making Metro gaming my favourite source for video game news and discourse.
Andrew from across the pond

GC: Seasons greetings to you too!

Inbox also-rans
I’m glad they didn’t call it Control 2. I can only imagine how bad ‘Control’ is to google and I’m guessing they’ve figured that out now.
Tenf

Closing in on 400,000, next target half a million! Will gamescore even be around by then?!
big boy bent

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