Rockstar's skill in creating a believable, functioning world with a distinct, coherent and consistent atmosphere is peerless. The broad-brush vision is masterful.

The truth is, for every hour our blood was pumping like a turbo charged locomotive through our adrenaline scored veins, there were an equal number of hours where we were bored with the unimaginative repetition of formulaic corridor based FPS trawls. [Single-Player review; Multiplayer also rated 90]

The feeling of jubilation once you have Gold awards for every area of every test is immeasurable.

An indispensable game, combining arguably the finest RPG/adventure the 16-bit era ever produced (even compared to the likes of Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy VI) with an expertly realised multiplayer rendition of Zelda.

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.

Sure, there are times in the game when you want to shake Miyamoto and co by the lapels for including elements of the game which remain dogged by old-school convention, but they represent a flea bite on what is just a stunning and relentlessly enjoyable game.

Maybe it's witchcraft. Maybe it's magic. Either way, Supergiant manages to draw down the moon with its Herculean action and epic narrative in Hades 2.

Great new gameplay features can't help the fact that Persona 5 Royal drags on even more than its predecessor.

Portal is perfect. Portal 2 is not. It's something better than that. It's human: hot-blooded, silly, poignant, irreverent, base, ingenious and loving. It's never less than a pure video game, but it's often more, and it will no doubt stand as one of the best entertainments in any medium at the end of this year. It's a masterpiece.

Rockstar's skill in creating a believable, functioning world with a distinct, coherent and consistent atmosphere is peerless. The broad-brush vision is masterful.

World of Goo is breathtakingly fresh while built on the foundations of genre classics. It offers a gentle challenge as you make your way through its seasonal chapters the first time, and then a fiendish one as you try to fathom quite how it's possible to attain the OCD targets.

When it's all done I'm left with that strange feeling of being very well cared for. I've seen a bunch of wild sights. I've messed around with cool gadgets, used the controller in unusual ways, tilting it, yes, but also blowing into it, trying to read the buried hieroglyphs of its rumble, I've ticked boxes, collected things, unlocked things, nodded at references that make me feel old, or sharp-eyed, or generally in the know. But when I close my eyes I see the tumbling fruit, the hundreds and thousands, the gems stacked so high I can kick through them as if I'm wading through autumn leaves. I think, more than anything, of all the glorious bits and pieces.

Modern Warfare 2 balances the spectacle and silliness of its single-player campaign with a deep, enduring multiplayer core, carefully covering its bases for players of all persuasions. But there is no denying it seeks merely to build upon the successes of its forebear while doing very little to expand its scope or redefine them.

Despite eye-catching changes, the heart of this series remains gloriously unaltered. [Recommended]

Perhaps not the deepest of games, revolving as it does around slaughtering demons and finding the appropriate key-substitute to open the next door, but it's certainly one of the most stylish and downright entertaining I've played in recent months.

It's a role-playing game in the most literal sense of the phrase, a game in which you're encouraged to give in to the fantasy, and to see what life is like when it's composed of rooftop brawls and zip-line getaways. Animations, traversal mechanics, takedowns: they're all building towards the same thing. In Arkham City, you become Batman.

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.

This game is one of the greatest things that video games have ever achieved.

Is BioShock the greatest game of all time? I honestly don't know, but it's one of the most interesting and immersive experiences to grace our beloved medium.

It transcends the very genre it once created.

If you want to gorge on a next generation audio-visual feast then Gears of Wars is a king's banquet. But what of the gameplay pudding that Peter Moore so often reminds us that he likes? The proof, he says, is in the eating, and in this case Gears of War sticks to a well-worn recipe.

A staggeringly ambitious game that successfully unites some of the best elements of RPG, adventure and action games and fuses them into a relentlessly immersive and intoxicating whole.

Persona veteran Atlus flexes its expertise with a fresh take on high fantasy. What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in grandeur and heart.

It succeeds not only for being consistently spectacular, but for the way it has been crafted into something that keeps you engaged right to the very end.

BioShock Infinite doesn't blur the lines between your reality and the game's to quite the same extent as its predecessor, but it's a more complete and polished story, and that's the thing you'll remember.

The best game yet in one of the best FPS franchises of the era. Better than either of its predecessors, Halo 3 still can't quite escape the category of flawed masterpiece - but this time around, the flaws are so minor that even the most churlish of reviewers would be hard pressed to mark the game down.

Much like its heroes, God of War: Ragnarök learns to love itself for what it truly is: gargantuan, excessive, and wonderfully absurd. [Eurogamer Recommended]

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