Best Surprise of 2025 - Article
by Mark Nielsen , posted on 25 January 2026 / 2,445 Views
Sometimes everything turns out as expected and you sit in your chair stroking your cat with a satisfied smirk like a supervillain. Other times things surprise you. Sometimes those things are games and sometimes that surprise is a positive one. 2025 had a few cases like that thankfully, where something flew in from left field and turned out much better than people expected. Those are the games we're here to talk about today.
The Shortlist:
Dispatch
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Kirby Air Riders
Silent Hill f
Blue Prince
The Runner-Up:
Kirby Air Riders
When people where theory crafting what video game legend Mr. Masahira Sakurai was up to after his more or less official retirement from the Smash Bros. franchise, I don't think a sequel to a Kirby spin-off that last appeared on the GameCube was anyone's first guess. Top five maybe, knowing Sakurai, but not first. But not only did that turn out to be exactly what he was making, it also turned out to be pretty damn good. It's always refreshing to get a modern rendition that takes an old concept to new heights, and also a real treat to see Nintendo acknowledging that other racing games can co-exist with colossus that is Mario Kart. Now about that new F-Zero game...
The Winner:
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Let me just start out by stating for the record that Clair Obscur was my original pick for Most Anticipated Game last year... before it lost out in the preliminary vote. Even if it did show promise beforehand, there's certainly no denying that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was a surprise; a surprisingly ambitious game from a small studio, a surprising critical success, a surprising hit with a wide audience, and featuring a surprising plot with twists and turns. It turns out the French are surprisingly good at making Japanese RPGs and that is most certainly... well, surprising.
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Althought I voted for Expedition 33, Silent Hill f was also a very nice surprise. Good to see the Silent Hill franchise into the spotlight after so many years.
Typical. -_-
Yes, you are.
E33 is not a surprise for me. From the moment it was shown at that Xbox thing in 2024, I saw that battle timeline (FFX like) and knew it was for me, as soon as I heard it was by former Ubisoft devs, I knew it would be good. How anyone was sleeping on it, I have no idea. Is it a surprise it became as big as it did? Yes. I thought it was going to be a niche fanbase style thing and I could boast to people about this great game I've played that they never will. :P
Yet over in horror land, I had next to zero expectations for Silent Hill. Konami are a shadow of their former selves and yet here they and the devs produced one of best Silent Hills in years.
Kirby Air Riders was very refreshing. It was definitely surprising to see it release with such a generous content since the previous game didn't reach mainstream status.
Sh f was the best surprise a dormant franchise bringing something new
This is a weird category. A better one would probably be "Most Surprising Game", in which voters should pick the game that surprised them the most. "Best Surprise" suggests that there is a list of "Surprises", as if it was a genre, and the voters should pick the best game from that. That, for me, is the only explanation for Kirby Air Riders, a game from a publisher which very rarely publishes anything that's not at least good, directed by a guy who has directed some of the most critically and commercially successful games ever, to be a contender, let alone the runner-up.
I think my take on it is we should just take the category in its literal sense as any game that surprises this year whether it was because it turned out completely different/better than expected or was a game that got revealed out of nowhere which no had seen coming into the year. Kirby fits the latter pretty well at least, I don't think anybody could argue that getting a Kirby Air Ride sequel in 2025 isn't surprising and a positive one since it turned out so good.
For me it was Blue Prince. That game wasn’t on my radar at all but I randomly tried it out on GamePass. I still need to beat it though
I had fun with Air Riders. Great to see the original concept get
a second chance and be so enjoyably filled out and polished.
I loved Air Ride too, but the lack of content and the jank understandably
saw it not go mainstream even with some very fun multiplayer
and surprisingly deep mechanics.
Ninja Gaiden II Black for me
