For the vast majority of the gaming world, this is quite easily the best 3D beat 'em up ever made.

Against the odds, Bloober Team has delivered a remake that both expands Silent Hill 2 in just the right places, and gives careful attention to what it preserves.

Simply a stunning, magical game.

Bold, accessible, deep and rich, Mario Kart 8 is premium video game development. It feels expensive. But this isn't the vacuous lavishness of the Hollywood blockbuster; its excesses and indulgences work towards a common goal - or rather, finish line.

A simple extension of the Galaxy concept, Super Mario Galaxy 2 can't possibly have the same impact. But it does have the same spirit, throwing new ideas at you with gleeful and impulsive abandon, leaving you breathless, scrambling happily to keep up.

It is the most formally inventive Zelda in a long time (admittedly, that's not saying a great deal). But it's the game's carefree attitude, quick tempo and warm heart that do the most to make it feel new...Skyward Sword will surely be the greatest adventure money can buy.

It's as well-designed as Zelda, as involving as Final Fantasy, and as beautiful as anything you've ever seen; it belongs with the best of the Zelda series at the very apex of its genre.

This is, in almost every way that matters, the perfect Street Fighter.

In terms of how it performs on an Apple touchscreen, the answer is: flawlessly.

I think I could play Spelunky forever, and now that it has come home to PC, assuring its permanence, I believe I will.

Tight, inventive gameplay, cascading card synergies, and gentle, witty character-writing ensure that, while Cobalt Core might not slay Slay the Spire, it does indeed slay.

The third of LCB's weird narrative experiences is a reminder of what makes this series so special.

It's overflowing with character and imagination, feeds off and fuels a vibrant community of players and performers, and it only stands to improve as Blizzard introduces new features, an iPad version and expansions. And now it's finally finished! I can't wait to see where it goes next. Job's done.

Psychonauts studio Double Fine returns with a surprising, shapeshifting adventure of captivating wonder and beauty.

The graphics are a match for anything else on the market, and the game doesn't need a supercomputer to run it.

The simple joy of exploration is at the very heart of the appeal of video games. In Fez, it's absolutely unfettered.

The Last of Us is a deeply impressive demonstration of how it can and should be done. It starts out safe but ends brave; it has heart and grit, and it hangs together beautifully. And it's a real video game, too. An elegy for a dying world, The Last of Us is also a beacon of hope for its genre.

The second game from Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM, this text-heavy, dice-driven RPG is an exquisitely constructed take on consumerism, empire, nostalgia and beyond.

Almost everything you do in Liberty City would be good enough to drive its own game, and the best parts would be good enough to outrun the competition, but the reason it works so well is that Rockstar has made a game that requires no patience to play. This, as much as its usual coherency and the best script in the series, is what makes GTA IV the best openworld game yet, and why it will take something miraculous to rob it of game of the year status.

Moody and atmospheric, compelling and addictive, this is first person gaming in grown-up form, and it truly is magnificent.

A legend is brought back to life with Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, in a surprisingly sensitive remake from Konami featuring developers from the original.

Part visual novel, part rhythm game, part interactive animated movie, Goodbye Volcano High taps into the sacred relationship between music and coming-of-age in ways that would be impossible in any other media format.

A fantasy role-playing game of astonishing spectacle. This is the best Dragon Age, and perhaps BioWare, has ever been.

Despelote's creators tell a remarkable, pseudo-autobiographical tale about football, Ecuador, and community - but also one about the act of remembering, and the creative act itself.

Suspicious Developments' latest builds a witty, wonderfully generous adventure around a smart, rewarding, and endlessly imaginative turn-based tactics core.

Compact by the standards of the Galaxy adventures but still loaded with bountiful secrets, beneath the warm familiarity of 3D World lies one of the strangest Mario games in years - or at least one of the most random in its influences and its moment-to-moment indulgences. And that's a very, very good thing.

A sequel that takes the thrilling cold-survival city-building heart of Frostpunk and evolves it in every way, while losing none of what made the series so special to begin with.

It's a short game, and quite a painless one, then, but it feels dense: rich and imaginative and the result of some insatiable curiosity for putting things together in new ways. Even at the end of the adventure, five or six hours in, Cocoon was happy to introduce a new mechanic. By which I mean, of course, it was happy to wordlessly teach it, complicate it, turn it inside out and then twist it into something almost unimaginable. I'm sorry to be vague, but you need to see this for yourself. There are no easy words, but also seeing it, witnessing such clarity and ingenuity, is where the pleasure lies.