The 5 Best-Looking Video Games of 2025
As 2025 comes to a close, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the year in gaming, and today we’ll be focusing on graphics. While many titles were visually memorable for their artistic styling, this list is specifically looking at those games that pushed the graphical limits of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
5) Mafia: The Old Country
It was a bit of a dogfight here between Mafia and Routine, which does a nice job of creating that sterile futuristic vibe of the original Alien films. I ultimately settled on The Old Country, though, due to its exquisite recreation of the Italian countryside circa the early 1900s and great-looking character models. The linear experience allowed the developers to really lean into the detail work, creating something truly impressive to behold.
4) Doom: The Dark Ages
This is one of those games where, if all you look at are screenshots, you might come away saying it doesn’t belong on this list. Fire it up on a PS5 or Xbox Series X, however, and it delivers detailed action at high speeds without ever succumbing to significant drops in the frame rate. Creature design is strong, and just the sheer number of things happening on screen at any given moment is impressive. It’s eye-opening to be mowing down dozens of hellish foes while in the background a giant mech does battle with a massive demon, not to mention the satisfyingly visceral way your weapons cut through enemies, often ripping them limb from limb.
Related: Top 10 Video Games of 2025
3) Battlefield 6
Across dozens of hours with Battlefield 6’s online multiplayer, I cannot recall a single time when the game couldn’t handle whatever manner of destruction was thrown at it, no matter the size of the map or number of players populating it. It’s one thing to have a great-looking campaign and then have the multiplayer be less than, but any differences between the two experiences are modest at best. While I would’ve liked to see more variety in terms of locations, everything on offer looks great, sounds incredible, and the ability to reduce buildings to rubble is both visually impressive and helps keep the experience fresh.
2) Assassin’s Creed Shadows
With all due respect to Ghost of Yotei, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the best-looking depiction of feudal Japan. While I’ve always considered the Assassin’s Creed series to be consistently impressive in the graphics department, Shadows takes things to another level, being the first game in the series developed exclusively for the current generation of consoles—the previous release, 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage, was also available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The open world is beautiful, the destruction elements look great and are enjoyable, the weather effects are gorgeous, and the way the characters look and move is clean.
1) Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
While all the games on this list--and many that didn’t make the cut--look excellent, none of them hold up to Death Stranding 2, and, quite frankly, none of them come all that close. Hideo Kojima wastes literally zero time in dropping jaws with an opening sequence that looks so realistic I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around the idea that it was a video game and not actual footage. It’s more than just the landscapes, too, as there’s a ton of performances from actors that look impeccable. The design of the buildings, the technology, the scale of the world as you explore, it’s consistently jaw-dropping. Even with some heavy hitters set to release games in 2026, they face an uphill battle to dethrone Death Stranding 2 as the best-looking game available.