I already know that this will be my most-played game on the Switch over the longer term. Once you start playing Civilization, it has the most incredible ability to make you lose all sense of time, and desire to play anything else.

Volume’s score is great and the composer, David Housden, has done a fantastic job. The audio direction and design really impressed me with the memorable voice acting and sound effects throughout. It is always great to have a composer create a soundtrack so good, that it is actually interesting to listen to even outside the game.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a game that really struggles to find the new voice that Resident Evil so needs as a franchise. It’s incredibly well designed and executed, and you’re not going to find a game that does VR better than this one. But it’s a confused game, sending out all kinds of mixed messages that suggest the development team - and especially the writers - have a better idea of what makes for horrific imagery than they do of horror as a storytelling genre. As a real fan of horror, and someone who has studied it for years, this is what doesn’t sit so well with me.

The action is fluid and the open world begs the player to experiment and explore. It's a sure fire sign that the people behind this new direction for Lara Croft really do know what they are doing, and the franchise is in good hands moving forwards.

Forza's combination of speed, presentation values, excellent handling and flexibility in letting players approach the game in a variety of ways makes it really hard to put the controller down.

More than anything else, though, I badly wanted more from SteamWorld Heist, and that’s a reflection of the quality that’s already in there. I wanted more storytelling, I wanted more missions, and more variety in them. What’s there is genuinely entertaining – the kind of game that you will sit at for hours because it does a remarkable job in building the “just one more turn” compulsion. But there’s just not enough of it.

Final Fantasy XIV has genuinely developed into the best MMO on the market as far as I'm concerned, with its brilliant post-game content and now, with the additional Heavensward content, the best is just getting better. This game is a compelling argument for the continued validity of the subscription model for MMOs.

For my first experience with the Luigi's Mansion series, I had such a good time. Boiled down it's a fairly simple riff on GhostBusters, but Luigi's Mansion has been produced with such a sense of humour and eye for detail that it has a personality and uniquely Nintendo quality all of its own. Halloween always brings the deluge of seasonably-themed games, and so many of them aim for a true kind of horror. Nintendo tops the pack this year with something that revels in the silliness of the season, and it does so with panache.

This was always a great game, but the improved visuals and social features, as well as the additional content that Square Enix continues to add into the game, is enough for me to happily say that Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has become my favourite MMO.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is going to be the most ambitious game that you play for quite some time. It’s truly spectacular for its scope and the many multifaceted dynamics that ensure that nothing about it, at any point, becomes routine or rote. It’s also frustrating, archaic, and a mess in so many other ways, but the developers left nothing on the table in making this, and it’s hard not to admire such brazen creativity.

With Armored Core VI, FromSoftware has demonstrated, yet again, that it has few peers when it comes to intelligent and thought-provoking action. You’ll need to be faster on the draw and quicker with the reactions to survive this game’s bullet ballet-like approach, but you’ll also need to be smart and precise, and there’s elegance to complement with the visceral sound of metal rending. Sadly, that’s all FromSoftware has delivered this time around, and for a company that has mastered the ability to give truly memorable context to its worlds, characters, and battles, the shallow hollowness of this experience is truly disappointing.

Dragon Quest XI is, from end to end, an iconic example of everything that Dragon Quest has stood for since way back in the 80's. It's charming and has a colourful energy that makes it very hard to put down. It's also a proof of just what can be achieved with a highly traditional JRPG when paired with the production values that only a developer/ publisher of the size of Square Enix could achieve.

Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ is an ambitious, daring otome adventure that takes full advantage of the visual novel format. The lengthy narrative obviously won’t appease anyone frightened of novels, but for fans of the genre, it’s teeming with style and one of 2015’s essential reads.

I do admire Returnal. From aesthetics and atmosphere, through to its structure, this is a game that is confident, and even brave in the “blockbuster” space that it will be playing in. You can see that the team at Housemarque had a creative vision and were prepared to lose players over it, in return for delivering a purity of that vision. And as a result, this is the first original PlayStation 5 title that I’ve found compelling, given that Demon’s Souls was a remake. When I look at why I find it compelling, it’s for the effectiveness of the horror and the slick vision for action games that it offers. Scratch beneath that surface and the game doesn’t say much to justify its existence, and it is going to be far too challenging for a lot of players, but within its fairly narrow scope, for the audience that it was made for, Returnal is going to be a vividly entertaining ride.

It’s a deep, complex, stylish game that blows every other fighter out of the water, but made surprisingly accessible through things like the Stylish control scheme and a Combo/Mission modes that serve to teach useful, practical combos and strategies. It’s still got its RPG-like M.O.M mode that lets you level up and customise your character, it’s still got an eccentric but oddly moving story, and it’s still got the sort of kickass soundtrack that only Daisuke Ishiwatari can come up with.

Assault Android Cactus' greatest weakness is that it defines itself as an "arcade dual stick shooter" in such a traditional fashion that it's limited by that. The game's greatest strength is that it is so slick, smooth, and energetic that its limitations don't matter in the slightest. This is one cracking game.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't highlight that this game wants you to keep investing in it; the dreaded loot boxes and other monetisation models are present in the game, and are proving to be quite controversial. In fairness, the game does almost get to the point where, like in mobile free-to-play games, you'll feel an urge to spend real money just to speed progress up a little. That said, while that kind of grinding isn't really acceptable for a premium-priced game, the loot boxes are just on the side of "optional enough that you can still have a blast without investing in them.

I haven't been so deeply affected by a game as I have Sumire in a very, very long time. This is an artful experience with a valuable core message; don't take anything for granted. Sumire has a literal day to achieve what she needs to. Metaphorically we all only have one "day" on this planet, and we shouldn't waste it. You may be driven to tears playing Sumire, but that's not a message you'll soon forget. Not with the powerful way this game presents it.

It's a surprisingly decent narrative, mind you. BlazBlue has all the typical tropes of youth action anime, with its focus on moving up and down power rankings something overly familiar to anyone who's watched even a few anime titles in the past. But, again, BlazBlue does it convincingly enough that you feel like you're getting a full anime season as part of the game's entry price. Throw in the quality competitive seen, umpteen different alternative gameplay modes, and the sheer size of the roster, all available from the outset, and BlazBlue is going to be hard to put down for a long period of time.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D doesn't really belong on the Nintendo 3DS. In fact, Nintendo would have been better off going the other way and doing a "HD" version for the Wii U in the lead up to the next Monolith Software release on that console. But, that aside, this is a classic game, and having that experience on the go is not a bad bonus reason to purchase the New Nintendo 3DS.

There’s this inescapable rhetoric that latches onto the mere whisper of the name “Sonic the hedgehog”, claiming the blue blur hasn’t had a great game in decades. While I disagree, Sonic Mania is a liberating experience that needs no asterisks to qualify it. Sonic sequels have so often been rushed or subjected to gimmicks that compromise what works, but Mania finally stops to acknowledge past successes, adds logical improvements, and enhances it all tenfold with personality. It even proves that Sonic can be more nuanced than the cursed phrase “gotta go fast” implies.

It was a great game back when it was new. It’s a great game still. Strong narratives don’t age, and this one has a strong story to tell. Throw in quality port work that gives the art direction the detail and clarity that it really deserves, and Twilight Princess is a classic that has scrubbed up well enough to be a worthy Wii U title in its own right.

While simple in presentation, the grand scope of Trails of Cold Steel’s narrative is really what drives this game, and it does so with remarkable intelligence and confidence. You’ll need a good block of time to actually play through this one, but for people that do make the commitment to it, the rewards are more than enough.

Monster Hunter Generations might not be a true sequel due to its similarities to Monster Hunter 4 and the many call backs to earlier games in the series. That being said, Generations does make some excellent design choices as it highlights everything that has made the series great, added some new mechanics to help keep things fresh and provides the biggest and best Monster Hunter experience yet.

The world, puzzles, narrative and music are all served to the player in small helpings, never overwhelming and allowing you to soak in and become one with the world. By the end of the game, it has challenged your mind in multiple ways.

While there is not a ton of content, there is more than enough to keep a racer busy and the quality of said content is spectacular.

A highly-polished title that shows that the ageing 3DS somehow still has legs in it. Aside from the Pokémon Sun and Moon sequels, Samus Returns could very well be one of the last big 3DS titles, but with games like this, I’m just not ready to let go of my 3DS just yet.

Dragon Quest VIII isn’t the perfect port in coming to the 3DS. It is, however, very close to the perfect classical JRPG.