Private Decide
Along with our primary Sport of the Yr Awards 2025, every member of the PC Gamer workforce is shining a highlight on a recreation they liked this yr. We’ll put up new private picks every day all through the remainder of the month. You’ll find all of them right here.
Over the previous 12 months, I’ve performed a complete of 32 new video games. Not simply new to me, however new to market (i.e. they had been launched in 2025). Admittedly, a few of them I solely performed for a short whereas, as a result of I used to be solely doing recreation efficiency testing, like Monster Hunter Wilds, however I’ve sunk over 100 hours in others (principally Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2). However the one recreation that actually stood out for me is the one recreation that I actually should not like: Grounded 2.
The factor is, I should not have favored that recreation, both. It isn’t the elemental style that I’ve points with; actually, I actually like survival crafters. I am unable to get sufficient of them, and my Steam library is filled with early entry ‘surv-ters’ (I am unable to consider a quick sufficient single phrase to make use of right here) which can be principally totally terrible. However I nonetheless carry on shopping for them.
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That is not the issue: it is multiplayer. Co-op, MMO, PvE, PvP, PvPvE. I do not take care of any of it. Single-player all the way in which for me. I get to play the sport how I need to play the sport; my tempo, my type, my hamfisted gameplay. Having to undergo different folks in video games is my thought of Hell.
Grounded was the primary recreation that began to alter that for me, and I’ve to confess that 2025 has been the primary yr in nearly 20 years the place I’ve actively loved enjoying multiplayer video games. Effectively, three of them: Grounded 2, Peak, and Cut up Fiction.
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What they’ve in widespread is that my companion and our households have liked enjoying them, too, and I believe that is what has made all of the distinction. Sure, I do know we may play a number of different multiplayer video games collectively, and we now have tried, however solely these three have gelled us collectively, and Grounded 2 (plus the OG) has performed this greater than the rest we have tried.
It helps enormously that they don’t seem to be PvP, although leaving your companion stranded on a mountainside, whilst you leg it to a well being equipment in Peak, wavers very near that type of gameplay, if the curses I heard in my headset are something to go by.
What makes Grounded 2 significantly good is its sense of journey. Whether or not you stick with a workforce strategy to amassing assets or comply with a high-risk, solo escapade to recon a brand new space, the sport does not punish you, nor excessively reward you, for selecting to go it alone or ganging up on the bugs en masse. As a substitute, the sport desires you to have enjoyable, to exit and see the sights, to share laughs and scares and people ‘Hell’s tooth! Did you see the dimensions of that factor?’ moments.
Simply as with the primary one, Grounded 2 has been launched in early entry, and the total recreation most likely will not be prepared till the tip of 2026, probably longer. I truly fairly like that, because it means when the following huge content material replace comes alongside, we’ll be capable to bounce again in, discover, craft, and battle away for some time till one other recreation comes out and all of us get distracted by one thing else.
Grounded 2 is not my absolute ‘greatest recreation of 2025’: it is not the one I’ve performed essentially the most, it is not even the one I’ve loved essentially the most. But it surely definitely deserves credit score for making me truly like multiplayer gaming, and that alone is an indication of simply how particular it’s. If something extra like this comes out subsequent yr, I may truly be absolutely transformed.
Who am I kidding? Persons are terrible. I will be a single-player gamer for the remainder of my days.
