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It’s time for our annual countdown to recognize the best games of the year. Over the next 10 days, we’ll be counting down the top 10 games of 2025.
As always, the votes of each member of the Press Start team were collated, weighted from 10th to 1st place, to compile the best results of the year. A game worthy of the top spot will be awarded a maximum of 10 points, and its value will go down to the 10th selection, which will be awarded 1 point.
About 10 years ago, no one was doing narrative adventures like Telltale Games. Robert Kirkman’s interpretations of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us established them as household names in the video game industry, offering stories and character work rarely seen before within the framework of a “choose your own adventure” plot.
The Icarus-like course they had charted for themselves would eventually burn them out, and from the ashes would rise AdHoc, a startup from developers who spent time at Ubisoft, Night School, and, of course, Telltale. They faced adversity throughout their founding as a studio and struggled to secure funding, so much so that the founders went without paying salaries for six months to keep their staff afloat. Dispatch was eventually released to critical acclaim and proved a success for the team.
Ad Hoc proved once and for all that there is still a demand for episodic narrative adventures, if done right. They hit their planned release schedule and delivered a story that players wanted to know more about each week. It’s unclear whether or not Season 2 of Dispatch will ever air, as it features an incredibly well-known cast including Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright, but we were really lucky to get our hands on this game.
harry says
“Arguably my sleeper hit of the year, ‘Dispatch’ is a near-perfect debut from Ad Hoc Studios. Despite occupying a subgenre of superhero media where the novelty has worn off a bit, ‘Dispatch’ feels neither tired nor exciting.
The impeccable script, tight pacing, and endlessly lovable characters will keep you riveted for the entire 7-8 hour running time. It’s really fun, incredibly innovative, and the best example of how episodic storytelling can work in video games. ”
In our review, Brody gave Dispatch a score of 9.5 out of 10 and said:
“Thanks to a brilliant, funny and heartfelt superhero story that peeks into life behind the mask, Dispatch launches a belated onslaught of this year’s best gongs with a glorious, near-perfect eight-episode run, all the while surpassing even Telltale’s hallowed best.”
On review aggregation site Metacritic, Dispatch rests with an average score of 89.
Congratulations to AdHoc on making it to the top 10 of 2025!
2025 Game of the Year
#10 – Ghost of Yotei
#9 – Ball x Pit
#8 – Dispatch
