Out of all the brand new video games I've performed in 2025, Grounded 2 deserves a particular nod just because it makes me like a style that I actually don't like: multiplayer survival
Private Decide
Along with our important Recreation of the Yr Awards 2025, every member of the PC Gamer crew is shining a highlight on a sport they cherished this 12 months. We’ll put up new private picks every day all through the remainder of the month. Yow will discover 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 quick whereas, as a result of I used to be solely doing sport efficiency testing, like Monster Hunter Wilds, however I’ve sunk over 100 hours in others (largely Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2). However the one sport that basically stood out for me is the one sport that I actually should not like: Grounded 2.
The factor is, I should not have appreciated that sport, both. It isn’t the basic style that I’ve points with; in actual fact, I actually like survival crafters. I can not get sufficient of them, and my Steam library is stuffed with early entry ‘surv-ters’ (I can not consider a quick sufficient single phrase to make use of right here) which can be largely completely terrible. However I nonetheless carry on shopping for them.
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 best way for me. I get to play the sport how I wish to play the sport; my tempo, my model, my hamfisted gameplay. Having to endure different individuals in video games is my thought of Hell.
Grounded was the primary sport that began to alter that for me, and I’ve to confess that 2025 has been the primary 12 months in nearly 20 years the place I’ve actively loved taking part in multiplayer video games. Nicely, three of them: Grounded 2, Peak, and Cut up Fiction.
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What they’ve in frequent is that my associate and our households have cherished taking part in them, too, and I believe that is what has made all of the distinction. Sure, I do know we might play numerous different multiplayer video games collectively, and we’ve tried, however solely these three have gelled us collectively, and Grounded 2 (plus the OG) has executed this greater than the rest we have tried.
It helps enormously that they are not PvP, although leaving your associate stranded on a mountainside, when you leg it to a well being package in Peak, wavers very near that model 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 crew method to accumulating sources or comply with a high-risk, solo escapade to recon a brand new space, the sport would not punish you, nor excessively reward you, for selecting to go it alone or ganging up on the bugs en masse. As an alternative, 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 complete sport in all probability will not be prepared till the top of 2026, presumably longer. I truly fairly like that, because it means when the subsequent large content material replace comes alongside, we’ll have the ability to leap again in, discover, craft, and battle away for some time till one other sport comes out and all of us get distracted by one thing else.
Grounded 2 is not my absolute ‘finest sport of 2025’: it isn’t the one I’ve performed probably the most, it isn’t even the one I’ve loved probably the most. Nevertheless it 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 12 months, I might truly be totally transformed.
Who am I kidding? Individuals are terrible. I will be a single-player gamer for the remainder of my days.