It is hard to shake the feeling that Monster Hunter Stories 3 is going to slip under the radar, and that would be a real shame. This is not merely a charming sidestep for Monster Hunter fans. It is a confident, ambitious JRPG in its own right, with strong storytelling, smart systems, and a clear identity. For the first time, the spinoff feels every bit as essential as the main series.

The most impressive thing to me about Guitar Hero Live is the way the developers have breathed new life into a series that became notorious for doing the same thing over and over again.

Cities Skylines is a ridiculously clever and enjoyable game, and one that I expect I will spend a lot of time playing down the track. EA looks like it will not be revitalising Sim City as a franchise anytime soon, so I’m so glad that another developer has stepped up to the plate and created the game that the last Sim City should have been… and I am so glad it’s finally on PlayStation 4.

It’s simple enough to pick up and play while waiting for the bus, yet also deep enough to put in marathon sessions when you should be asleep.

A simply beautiful example of minimalistic elegance and functionality, refined to a near perfect degree.

Untitled Goose Game is the most charmingly misanthropic game that has ever been created - and that's something I didn't even think was possible.

If anything, the release of Captain Toad goes to show just how confident Nintendo is, and more so with how much it understands its audience. In a blockbuster season filled with plenty of firearms and fistfights, Captain Toad shows us more creativity and style than many new IPs out there.

Distant Worlds: Universe is a corker. But make no mistake: while it’s not as forbidding as some Grand Strategy games, patience and a degree of head-scratching will be required. But it’s worth the effort. It’s enormous, complex and – above all – fun.

Fire Emblem Echoes offers some really neat ideas for how the series could progress onto the Nintendo Switch now. Free roaming dungeons just has to become a thing. But the series has moved on from the kind of narratives that it used to tell, and just like Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS was quickly forgotten within the context of the series, I don’t think people, a decade from now, will still be talking about Fire Emblem Echoes. It’s a game for the here-and-now, made to give the 3DS one of its last hoorahs with a major franchise before all of Nintendo’s developers move fully to the Switch.

Trails Through Daybreak is a new starting point for a new, epic arc (with the second chapter already out in Japan). By the end of it, I was not only invested in the new characters and contribution to the Legend Of Heroes history that was being created through their actions, but I wanted to go back and replay all the rest of the games in this series all over again. More than a single game, The Legend of Heroes is an expansive project, and it’s inspiring every time I get to play one.

Temirana might not be up with my very favourite visual novels, but it is entertaining, with good and warm energy behind it. It’s not the ideal entry point to otome as it doesn’t really have a hook beyond “exactly the kind of game otome fans like to see,” but if you are a convert, you’ll find yourself chuckling along with the way it plays within the genre traditions right throughout.

Helldivers offers plenty of challenges and a great excuse to play with others, and that is when the game is at its best. There is a nice campaign built around the carnage that offers a sense of accomplishment, too, that makes the difficulty worthwhile.

Once you wrap your mind around this added layer of complexity, it makes the Ardennes Assault experience both fun and challenging.

Rune Factory 4 is a delight. It's one of those heartfelt, earnest, and wholesome games that remind you that not everything needs to be dour, competitive, excessively violent, or deep. It's a game in which a blatant clone of Hatsune Miku (or a male character, I guess) grows turnips, bops monsters on the head (and then makes friends with them), and eventually gets married. It's sweet, I love it, and bring on Rune Factory 5.

Sunset Overdrive is just what the Xbox One needed - a distinctive exclusive to set the thing apart from the PlayStation 4. Titanfall was adequate and the Forza games are great for racing fans, but Sunset Overdrive is a glorious breath of fresh air.

This game’s obvious new feature is its HD art, and, more than just being beautiful, the ability of this art to enhance the characters and world makes Shantae: Half-Genie Hero the most impressive take on the whole fantasy Middle East setting since the utterly brilliant Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

Whether it released in 2017 or 1989, Warlock’s Tower would be a timeless classic. It explores rudimentary puzzle elements everyone should be familiar with and, armed with a deep understanding of why they work, introduces a meaningful wrinkle. In a game industry that often relies on deceptively shallow open worlds and filler for the sake of content to market, sometimes we need to take a step back and recognise that one grainy little monochrome screen can hold volumes.

Torchlight II is a cleverly designed game which is decidedly good at what it does – even if it is following a fundamentally flawed design philosophy. Its gameplay is compulsive and honestly a little bit vapid: the incessant grind and push forward is neither intellectually stimulating nor conducive to big, memorable moments. My time through Torchlight II is really just a blur of primary colours and explosions of gibs. If that’s what you need, and you’re able to look past the very deliberate shortcomings, then this will be a game that you will find hard to put down.

Thanks to its laid-back, low-pressure vibe, aesthetic warmth and overall wholesomeness, Guardians of Azuma captures the comfort food quality of the entire Rune Factory series. Meanwhile, thanks to a vastly improved visual engine, accessible interesting combat, and an exceptional setting, it also takes a strong step forward from its predecessors. This is the strongest entry in a beloved series, and made all the more special because, after the original developer of the series closed shop, it looked like the entire series was dead for several years. This is a pretty good statement that there’s still so much more that it can offer yet.

The characters are relatable, the issues are widespread, and the story is riveting. Don't miss out.

I hope the next Ace Attorney game has more structure in its overarching narrative and the developers actually have the cases flow naturally from one to the next. Even with its flaws, Spirit of Justice is good fun, through, and another quality example of a narrative from the ever-growing stable of visual novels we are now getting translated into English.

Dungeon Encounters is deceptive engaging. What seems at first to be a no-frills dungeon crawler, sliced back to its very minimum eventually reveals itself to be quite the clever little project. It provides the very basic foundation needed for a JRPG, and then gets out of the way, letting the player write their own story and fill in the metaphoric (and literal) blanks in their own way. That makes it an oddly cathartic experience.

Fate/Samurai Remnant doesn’t require you to know the Fate series to play, but it will convert you to a fan by the end of it. It’s written well, gives you an interesting world to explore, and has a clean combat system that never wears out its welcome. Given that this does take place in an entirely new chapter for Fate, Type-Moon now has a bunch more characters to spin into mechanise for this money-spinning behemoth and, as much as I hate admitting this to myself, I’d be all in for all of that. Fate/Samurai Remnant has reinvigorated my love for the property all over again.

Platformer purists are going to love Berserk Boy. As a blended homage to just about everything they have ever loved about the genre, the effort that has gone into meticulously recreating the best qualities of the genre is truly impressive. It’s just disappointing that the game, while drawn nicely and supported by an excellent soundtrack, ends up ringing hollow because the developers forgot to give it an identity that extends beyond the franchises that it celebrates.

If Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is really the last big 3DS release, it's one smashing swan song. The game is more straightforward than its predecessor, but this change plays to the strengths of Persona’s multitudinous characters. All up, it’s an exemplary crossover game worth investing hundreds of hours before you even start playing in just to appreciate its nuance.

Catherine is a rare game - it's one that handles sex themes with maturity and nuance, and then folds gameplay elements into the narrative themes that are enhance the core narrative. There's nothing superficial about anything in Catherine, and while I can't compare to the original release on PlayStation 3, I can say that, for anyone who cares about games as an artistic medium, it doesn't get much better than this.

This simply isn't true. The thematic depth and cultural context of the game make for a wonderful, complex, and meaningful narrative, and FFXV is every bit as worthy as a narrative work as Stand By Me, from which it draws so much inspiration. Couple this with the fact that it's a surprisingly traditional Final Fantasy game in the ways that count, and I've got to say I haven’t loved a Final Fantasy game with such raw passion in many years.

Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen is just as solid of an entry from Capcom as it was back upon the PS3 and the Xbox 360. With lots of landscapes to explore, character classes to try out, and help to summon, there’s no shortage of adventuring to be done, and once you're hooked on simply existing in the world, this is one that will last you for many dozens of hours.