Avoid these games: the top ten worst releases of 2025 according to Metacritic
2025 delighted with a huge number of cool, creative, and unusual games — just remember Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Donkey Kong Bananza, Hades 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Split Fiction, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and Ghost of Yotei!
However, not all developers can withstand such a level of competition, and there were plenty of failures this year as well.
What is known
On the rating aggregator Metacritic, it's not hard to gather statistics on the most failed games of the year, and this is exactly what our colleagues from VGC did. They noted that the worst game of the year was MindsEye — the debut game from the studio Build a Rocket Boy, founded by former Rockstar producer and ideologist Leslie Benzies. He promised a captivating criminal story in a near-future world, but the game had so many problems and ridiculous decisions that They succeeded! MindsEye is the worst game of 2025 according to Metacritic, and it's unlikely anyone will surpass it soon.
The “silver medal” of the anti-top went to Tamagotchi Plaza — a game released by Bandai Namco for Nintendo Switch 2. Critics agree that it is an absolutely mediocre collection of games, the existence of which cannot be justified even by nostalgia.
In third place is Ambulance Life: A Pandemic Simulator — a game dedicated to the work of paramedics. It also had big ambitions and loud promises, but poor technical execution and blatant embellishment of gameplay in trailers brought the simulator down to the list of the worst games.
The worst games of 2025 according to Metacritic:
- MindsEye (PC) - 37,
- Tamagotchi Plaza (Switch 2) – 43,
- Ambulance Life: A Pandemic Simulator (PS5) - 44,
- Scar-Lead Salvation (PS5) - 44,
- Captain Blood (PC) - 50,
- Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos (PS5) - 51,
- Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact - 53,
- Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection (PS5) - 53,
- Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour (Switch 2) - 54,
- Fast Furious: Arcade Edition (PS5) - 55.
Source: VGC
