How time flies – my most played games in 2025

Domagoj Belancic

24/12/2025

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Pictures: Domagoj Belancic

2025 was a great year for gaming, with countless excellent releases. Here are my most played titles.

As always during the festive season, I’m taking a look back at my personal gaming experiences from the last twelve months. I’ll look back at what thrilled me the most, as well as the biggest disappointments.

What intrigues me, however, is finding out which games I spent the most time with. This year, my list is dominated by Nintendo – partly down to the Switch 2 launch in June, and a series known for extremely long games.

I’m surprised Death Stranding 2 made it into my top ten. After all, this sequel to Kojima’s weird masterpiece didn’t truly grip me at any point. Sure, it all looks snazzy and the strange gameplay around delivering parcels is still fun.

Overall, however, Death Stranding 2 was too much of the same for me. I feel like Kojima already implemented all his coolest ideas in the first game. Part two features a lot of recycling. I was particularly annoyed by the story around recurring character Higgs. I love Troy Baker, but come on – at some point it’s enough.

And so I focused on the main missions, playing through the game in «only» 32 hours. That’s over three hours less than the minimum listed on howlongtobeat.com.

I love Obsidian. And in my opinion, The Outer Worlds 2 is the studio’s best action RPG to date. Its colourful alien worlds invite you to explore, the role-playing systems add a lot of freedom in designing your character and the humour – heavily critical of capitalism and religion – is on point.

Just a shame the game’s so short – at least for a role-playing game. I reached the level cap (level 30) too quickly, and the credits popped up after only 37 hours. With more content, the sci-fi adventure definitely would’ve ranked higher on my list.

The perfect launch title for the Switch 2. This game was with me every day during my first few weeks with the new console. I'd drive a few laps online or invite friends over so we could race each other from the sofa. Good times.

But even though I had a lot of fun with it, I have to admit I miss that old Mario Kart concept. You know… only twelve racers, no open-world tracks. I was also disappointed by the anaemic Free Roam mode – I’d have expected more creativity from Nintendo in terms of missions and content in the open game world.

But hey, 38 hours is still an impressive time. And I’m sure there’ll be countless more fun multiplayer hours to come over the years.

Never in my life would I have thought I’d play another casual racer longer than Mario Kart World in 2025. But little Kirby actually managed to knock the plumber off his throne with Kirby Air Riders.

The unique controls in particular impressed me, and feel satisfying to boot – once you get the hang of them. Vehicles accelerate on their own, and you trigger almost all actions with the B button. In addition to classic racing modes, the game also offers something unique with City Trial. In it, 16 racers compete on an open map, powering up their vehicle with items for five minutes. These items provide advantages in important skill areas such as Speed, Turn, Flight and HP. After the time has elapsed, a mini-game begins – depending on which items you collected, you get bonuses or drawbacks in different mini-games.

The mode is so incredibly fast, chaotic and entertaining that I want to start a new round as soon as the leaderboard is announced. Then another one. And another. Before I know it, 40 hours have passed.

To be honest, I didn’t really play Assassin’s Creed: Shadows voluntarily. No one in the editorial team had time, so I sacrificed myself. The game meets my expectations perfectly. It’s a mediocre open-world game wrapped in a beautiful Japanese shell.

Like many other Ubisoft games with open worlds, Shadows is insanely bloated. Even if exploring the game world is more organic than in previous instalments, the repetitive missions and open-world tasks quickly feel like work. Here’s my verdict: alongside Death Stranding 2, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is the second game on my list I’d have enjoyed playing less.

When I played Days Gone for the first time on my PS4 in 2019, I was shocked. The open-world zombie game didn’t fit my vision of high-gloss, polished PlayStation games at all. Ridiculous dialogue, boring open world, slow start. Disappointed, I uninstalled it from my console.

Six years later, I dared a second attempt with the remaster. True, it doesn’t offer many substantial improvements. Better performance, more precise haptic feedback… just standard PS5 remaster features. Still, to me it was a sign from the PlayStation gods to give the game another chance.

Lo and behold, my second attempt went great. I approached the release without any expectations and wasn’t put off by the flat characters and borderline obnoxious dialogue. I could even cope better with the slow start to this open world. In the end, I was rewarded with epic zombie battles and an exciting transportation system centred around a motorcycle I had to keep fixing and refuelling. I never would’ve expected the trashy zombie spectacle to end up so high on my list this year.

Donkey Kong Bananza is a grandiose platforming masterpiece that can rival even the best Mario games. Destroying environments with Donkey Kong’s fists (and later his trunk) feels so incredibly satisfying, I never get enough of it. Combined with the wide array of collectable items, the release sets off a collecting frenzy in me, something I’ve never experienced before.

I just can’t stop collecting bananas and fossils, damn it. This game is dangerously addicting. And so it came to be that within a few days, I’d suddenly invested 50 hours in this silly adventure.

Even before release, I knew I’d spend a lot of time with Ghost of Yōtei. After all, I unlocked the Platinum Trophy for its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, five years ago.

I just love the exaggerated colourful Japanese world that PlayStation studio Sucker Punch has created. And despite endless open-world tasks and missions, it never feels like I’m working through a checklist as with Ubisoft. I discover the world organically. Another cool feature: the fluid combat system is close to perfection. With my arsenal of razor-sharp melee weapons and explosive projectiles, it’s hard to get bored.

By the way, I haven’t unlocked the Platinum Trophy yet. I’m still missing a few side missions and a duel against a legendary sword master. So it’s quite possible that a few more hours will be added.

I always wanted to get into Xenoblade Chronicles, but always hesitated due to the reputation it has. The long-running JRPG series is known for playtimes in the triple digits. This year, I finally plucked up all my courage and started with part one of the saga, originally released for the Wii in 2010.

You can tell its age. The level design is a product of the Wii hardware’s limited capabilities, and some gameplay mechanics such as the real-time combat system feel dated. Nevertheless, the game entranced me with its unique world, somewhere between science fiction and fantasy. I wanted to know what the next section would look like, which crazy characters I’d meet and how all the confusing story threads resolved at the end.

And before I knew it, more than 60 hours had passed. If I really wanted to see everything in the game, I could spend another 80 hours on it. But I don’t want to do that. After this first game, I’d already set my sights on the next entry in the series. And this year, it even snatched first place.

After entering the world of Xenoblade Chronicles, I wanted more. So it came in handy that a remaster of the spin-off Xenoblade Chronicles X was released on the Switch in 2025. The title originally came out in 2015 on Nintendo’s flopped Wii U console, where it sank without a trace.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that demands much more from me than the first instalment. The role-playing mechanics are complex, the real-time combat system is overwhelming and the game world is near endless. It’s exhausting – but worth sticking with. The more time I invested, the more magical goosebump moments I experienced. I’ll never forget one mission in the middle of the game where I finally unlocked flying mechs. Seeing the huge open world from the air after exploring it on foot for dozens of hours is just… wow!

In short, no other game this year has surprised me with such special, unforgettable rewards for my playing time. To celebrate this, Xenoblade Chronicles X rightfully sits atop this list with 85 hours. Next, I’m going to tackle Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

How to see your playtimes

Now it’s YOUR turn. Which games and platforms have you spent the most time with?

All major platforms offer annual recaps. Click on one of the links below and log in with your account. You’ll then see a summary of your gaming history on your chosen platform. Just bear in mind that as soon as you start a recap, any hours you spend after that are no longer counted.

• Nintendo Year in Review
• PlayStation Wrap-Up
• Steam Year in Review
• Xbox Year in Review

These recaps only show a handful of games you played this year. If you want to find more playtimes, you can check the in-game saves for some titles. But not all games will tell you how much time you spent with them.

A third option is looking up playtimes at the system level of your platforms:

• On PlayStation, you can see your playtimes per game in your profile under Games. There, you can filter by time spent, genre and platform.
• On the Switch (2), you can see your hours played in your profile on the console or online in the Android- and iOS Switch apps. However, this is only possible if ten days have passed since your first session with a particular game. In your profile, you’ll only see the 20 most recent games in the list. If a game is no longer in your top 20, you can launch it briefly and the game will be added back into the list. Alternatively, you can use the mobile app for Switch age restrictions. These are available for Android and iOS. It’s actually intended for parents who want to monitor their children’s gaming time, but it’s also well suited as a tracking app for frequent gamers.
• On Xbox, finding your playtime is a little more complicated. Press the Xbox button and navigate to the Game activity tab in the pop-up menu. There, click on All achievements. Then select a game to check your playtime. Finally, click on Stats. Alternatively, log in to account.xbox.com and go to your profile. Go to Achievements and select a game. Then click Achievements again. Once there, you’ll see the minutes you spent playing.
• In the Epic Games Store, you can see your playtimes in the library. However, you first have to activate list view there.
• Steam is the easiest. The hours you played are automatically displayed in your game library.

You can find lists on my most-played games for the last two years here:

Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.

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