Games Inbox: What is the best video game soundtrack of 2025?

The Tuesday letters discusses the most annoying thing about Metroid Prime 4, as one reader tries to guess if Tomb Raider will be at The Game Awards 2025 or not.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

PLEASE NOTE: We are currently preparing articles to run over the Christmas and New Year break, so if you’ve been thinking of writing a Reader’s Feature now would be the perfect time to send it in. It can be on any subject you want, as long as it’s a minimum of 500 words long.

In contention
I know most people aren’t really interested in the awards at The Game Awards, especially as this year is going to be dominated by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (haven’t played it, so couldn’t say if that was fair or not) but I am interested to see the winners in some categories, especially Best Music.

I guess Expedition 33 is going to win that as well but looking at the categories I’m kind of shocked that Mario Kart World isn’t nominated. For me that’s the easy winner but I don’t know why it didn’t get mentioned, maybe because most of the tracks are remixes? That hardly seems fair.

Anyway, of what has been nominated, and I’ve played, I’d say Ghost Of Yōtei is the best. I really liked how it wasn’t just the usual traditional approach but had a kind of spaghetti western vibe, with guitars and relatively modern music at times. It sold the whole cowboy angle and was a nod to the fact that the developers aren’t Japanese, just like Ennio Morricone wasn’t American.

Curious to know what other people would vote for that is or isn’t nominated already.
Grackle

A lifetime of Tekken
Crazy to think that one guy has been working on pretty much nothing but Tekken for 31 years but you’ve got to say that Katsuhiro Harada has done a great job. It kind of lost its way a bit in the middle, round about the PlayStation 3 era, but it’s been a thing for that whole time, with no big breaks like Street Fighter.

I hope he hasn’t had a falling out with Bandai Namco, as I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just given him a chance to work on something else, but whatever he does next, including possible retirement, best of luck to him. I’m tempted to have a go on Tekken 3 tonight in his honour.
Brucie

The vault
I really hope EA sell off Dead Space to someone that can make good use of it. I’m not certain who that’d be, but it almost wouldn’t matter, because as long as EA has the franchise there just isn’t going to be any more games at all, good or bad.

Like you said, I’d love for them to sell off other games too, like Burnout and all the old Bullfrog games like Dungeon Keeper and Theme Park. They won’t though. They won’t make enough money for them to bother with and so they’d rather just sit on them and let them be slowly forgotten, until no one would want them anyway.
Heathcliffe

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Notch levels
No offence to the reader that wrote in yesterday, calling Nintendo a ‘spent force’, but come on, touch some grass. People used to joke about Nintendo being criticised if their games aren’t literally the best ever in their genre and here we see absolute proof of it.

Now, I’m not saying the Switch 2 hasn’t been a mild disappointment, but the key word there is ‘mild’. Donkey Kong Banaza is top notch and Mario Kart World is only a notch below that. I’m not sure where Metroid Prime 4 stands, because I’ve never been into the series, but I don’t see anyone saying it’s a bad game.

There were a lot of thought pieces a few years ago, asking what Nintendo would do after perfecting so many franchises last gen, well this is it. They’re in a difficult spot because it’s hard to pull off another Zelda: Breath Of The Wild or Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It’s difficult to reinvent the wheel so often, so I can imagine that there’s more controversy to come.
Lentz

Semi-grimdark
I could maybe see that Game Awards statue thing being Tomb Raider. It’s weird because it manages to almost look like abut half a dozen things, but not quite. To me it seems a little too cartoonish (that crocodile is almost smiling) to be FromSoftware or anything more serious. I think that’s why the first guesses were for something to do with Diablo.

So you’re looking for something that is reasonably serious, because of the skulls and all that, but isn’t 100% grimdark. I think Tomb Raider fits that description. But then again so could a lot of things, including plenty of games I’ve never heard of.
Korbie

Myles more annoying
I have Metriod Prime 4 but after seeing some streams I’m not in any rush. It looks like Nintendo hasn’t any real clue what to do with the Prime games and they may as well stick it in the same cupboard they keep Star Fox in.

The chatty and helpful non-player characters actually look the least of the problems. I think you can mute them too.

The open world just looks so barren and boring but also looks to have had a negative impact on the world design. Instead of a beguiling Dark Souls interconnected world we get something more akin to Dark Souls 2. A centre with some independent paths or zones off of it.

But Dark Souls 2 at least recognised that structure would become tedious without fast travel from the start.

Also, progression looks to be very linear and the open world just there to give a reason for the bikes existence, which looks to be mainly used for commuting. You can’t explore the open world like an open world in say Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.

The puzzling looks basic, the abilities look to be all the normal ones just prefixed with the word ‘psychic’. It just doesn’t look like a good game to be honest.

I’ll find out for myself eventually. But Routine, Total Chaos, and Skate Story on the sub services I have will be put before it.

In general though I’m pretty happy with the Switch 2. Hardware is great, GameCube on Nintendo Switch Online is great, indie console exclusives like UFO 50 and Hades 2 are great, Donkey Kong Bananza is great, performance upgrades on Switch games is great.
Simundo

GC: The other characters are pretty far up the list of problems, and you can’t mute them. They’re certainly far more frustrating than the open world, which is a non-issue – neither good nor bad.

Unfinished symphony
I don’t think anyone’s written about Deltarune yet, so I just wanted to say that it is such a great game so far.

It’s only $25 and is definitely worth it for what’s in the game right now, theorising about while waiting is part of the fun. Just wanted to say I would definitely recommend.
therealpizza

Timewaster trouble
I’d argue disrespecting player time is a far more serious complaint with games that aren’t focused on compelling challenges. So many aim to offer value for money just by having what amounts to no more than about 15 hours of gameplay stretched over 60+ very similar hours. I strongly doubt I’ve ever been stuck on parts of a difficult game for a cumulative total of more than 40 hours but I’ve certainly played that amount of arguably redundant content in many games.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is probably more disrespectful of my time, solely based on the overlong and meandering plot (and that prologue, which I sat on for two years before bringing myself to complete it). I certainly didn’t feel more rewarded just because I didn’t die a lot.

I think arguments about failure representing a waste of time are missing the point. Yeah, if by dying in games that are designed to make you die a lot, you feel like you’ve lost something valuable instead of having learned a thing or two and gained a bit of experience or insight (as well as some crucial renewed determination), you’re going to have a bad time. That’s not how you’re meant to treat death in these games.

I’d disagree with the wording in the Reader’s Feature about ‘only the best’ being able to beat some games as well. Most of us who enjoy them aren’t the best in any aspect of gaming and I’m sure that applies to most critics who praise them. In fact, our ability to engage positively with failure speaks to the opposite of any sense of elitism.

If you’re baffled because you feel some popular games are punishing and disrespectful, maybe entertain the possibility that it’s a you thing rather than insist something needs to mould itself around you.

As it is, the player reflecting and adjusting accordingly is usually the solution to overcoming the challenges in these games. So it’s probably no surprise to see the ones that don’t want to reflect in that way and who just resign to the difficulty seem to be the same ones who insist challenge is a failure of the games and not a deliberate and largely embraced core principle.
Panda

Inbox also-rans
Didn’t the regulator do a poor job trying to stop the Activision Blizzard deal going through, then appealed, which was rejected. I’m sure that’s what happened, unless I’ve got it wrong. Either way when the Warner Bros. deal goes through jobs will be going.
David

GC: Well, they didn’t win their argument so you could say they did a poor job. But it’s a court case, so there was never going to be any guarantee.

I have never heard of Skate Story until your review but what a weird sounding game. Goes without saying that it’s something only an indie dev could come up with, so maybe that reader was right about this being their year.
Gordo

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

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