The Action-Adventure category gets more intense and serious year on year. With the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S capable of delivering high-end games that no one thought possible two decades ago, we’re seeing the best of the best in the genre. This year’s Insider Gaming Action-Adventure nominees are incredible, and one stands above the rest in 2025.
Combining exhilarating action you’d normally associate with a Hollywood blockbuster epic with the storytelling and nuances of an adventure movie, book, or game is a difficult duality to master. Masterfully succeeding at two genres means you’ve created the ultimate hybrid, and Insider Gaming has picked out four key contenders for this award.
The breakdown begins with the winner.
Best Action-Adventure Game Of 2025 Winner—Hollow Knight: Silksong
At Gamescom 2025, Insider Gaming got a chance to play Silksong before most, and claimed: “The game you’ve been waiting for is worth the wait.” Come release day, this statement aged very well. Silksong is an all-time Metroidvania great, and its intricate level design pairs up beautifully with the usual tropes of dropfeeding abilities and blocking your way with tough bosses.
Unusually, Silksong offers more freedom than the typical Metroidvania. There are multiple optional areas and bosses; you don’t have to go on the same path each time, and there are so many side quests and gambits to consider. Sometimes this is to get away from the game’s excessive difficulty, mind, as Silksong is certainly not an experience the casual gamer will enjoy. It requires a gut full of fortitude and patience to beat, but the alluring graphics and beautifully designed enemies and environments make it worth it.
Hollow Knight: Silksong took longer than anyone would’ve liked to arrive, but it’s earned its place.
Best Action-Adventure Game of 2025 Nominations
Ghost of Yotei
Ghost of Tsushima wasn’t perfect, but it sure was pretty and plentiful. Ghost of Yotei is an improvement in most areas, but still stumbles into the same pitfalls as its predecessor, and the story perhaps doesn’t quite live up to the first game. Still, this is a PlayStation 5 exclusive worth the money, and further flexes Sucker Punch’s creative muscles.
The studio has admitted it might move onto Sly, inFamous, or something new entirely moving forward. If this happens, Ghost of Yotei is a good note to end on (or briefly put on hiatus) and was a strong contender for the Best Action-Adventure prize.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Another in the ‘sequel to the original that basically does it better’ department. Hideo Kojima’s schedule is busy with OD and Physint, but Death Stranding 2 was always going to be the focus. With returning cast members and another glittering array of video game royalty joining the action, there’s no expense spared for Death Stranding 2.
As with any Kojima title, there’s an unbelievable sense of grandeur and pomp in DS2. The game sometimes crumbles under its own lofty premise and vision, but take nothing away from what Kojima Productions has achieved here. It’s a technical marvel and one worth the price of admission for that spinning lights section!
Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios has quickly gained a reputation as a studio that can’t do any wrong. The new-ish studio already has A Way Out and It Takes Two under its belt. When you win Game of the Year in only your second try, every subsequent release comes with the unenviable burden of expectation. If there was one way to describe Split Fiction, it’s more of It Takes Two: Two-player-only gameplay, two different characters going through a host of mini-games and new and innovative mechanics, and a heartwarming story to pull them together through the adventure.
Split Fiction is near-enough on par with It Takes Two, but there might be an argument that it’s a trick we’ve already seen before—lessening its spectacle and impact. Hazelight’s newest work is still a GOTY contender—one Insider Gaming think was cruelly overlooked by The Game Awards 2025—and needs to be played.
Was Hollow Knight: Silksong the clear and oustanding candidate in this category? Or has IG made a misfire on this list somehwere? There’s an ideal place to let us know: The free-to-join Insider Gaming Discord Server.
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