2026 is almost upon us, so naturally, everyone is thinking about end-of-year awards. Geoff Keighley hosted his ceremony last week, and today, it’s time for the tech experts from Digital Foundry to get involved, as they run down their best graphics of 2025.
It will come as no surprise that the shortlist this year is mainly comprised of titles found on PS5 and Xbox Series, with the likes of Ghost of Yōtei, Mafia: The Old Country, and Silent Hill f getting their flowers, but a handful of Switch newbies got a nod too.
Digital Foundry dedicated the entirety of its honourable mentions section to the Switch 2 this year, giving a shoutout to Mario Kart World, Kirby Air Riders and Fast Fusion for “maximising the Tegra T239 in different ways”, and Star Wars Outlaws, which DF calls “currently Switch 2’s best ‘impossible port’.” The outlet also highlights Panic Button’s work on the Switch 1-to-2 upgrades.
That’s not to say that Switch 2 is entirely absent from the official top 10, mind you. Metroid Prime 4 lands a spot all of its own, with DF calling Samus’ latest “a lighting masterwork – a prime (pun intended) example of how pre-baked lighting inside carefully crafted environments, whether fully indoors or exposed to outdoor elements, can implement attractive lighting phenomena like emissive lighting while also organically leading players.”
The Switch 1 version of MP4 even gets a shoutout in the Digital Foundry listing, with the outlet praising how it delivers “so much ecosystem diversity within large exploration zones at a steady 60fps, building upon the already impressive likes of Metroid Prime 1 Remastered to push the 2017 console to its limits.”
As ever, Digital Foundry’s top 10 is unordered until hitting the top three, with the seven preceding entries sorted alphabetically instead. Here’s the full list, as laid out on the Digital Foundry website:
– Dying Light: The Beast
– Earthion
– Ghost of Yōtei
– Mafia: The Old Country
– Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
– Routine
– Silent Hill f
3. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
2. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
1. Doom: The Dark Ages
A pretty good year for good-looking games, then! You’ll find the team’s explanation for each entry either in the video at the top of this article or by heading over to the DF site.
Are there any other titles that you’d add to this list? Let us know in the comments.
[source digitalfoundry.net, via youtube.com]
- Related Games
Jim came to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, despite his insistence that The Minish Cap is the best Zelda game and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (yes, really), he has continued to write news and features on the site ever since.
