Arriving eight months late on PC, everything that can be said about Monster Hunter World already has done. Rest assured though, the wait was indeed worth it. Anyone looking for a deep action game they can potentially invest hundreds of hours into need look no further. This is Monster Hunter, back and better than it's ever been before.

In the here and now, Planet Zoo is the best zoo management game around and it’s not even close. It also features far stronger management systems than Frontier has ever achieved before, culminating in a fantastic package for tycoon and animal fans alike. There’s a lot to love here, even if the scope for creativity can’t hope to match Planet Coaster.

All in all, Ghostrunner mixes all the best parkour elements from Mirror’s Edge and introduces it to the chaotically symphonic combat of orchestral violence that is Hotline Miami. Run, die, run, and die again; it’s brutal in all the best ways and will have you aching for a perfect run. Whilst it does have some issues and can feel a little short, your time in Ghostrunner will be wholly enjoyable, and filled with so many ecstatic moments of blissful victory.

In the end, Regalia is a massive game and even those who think that it isn't would agree that it can be expanded to a bigger premise. There is a lot to do and so many possibilities. It has a great narrative and its own way of telling a story of a hero who is unwillingly dragged into the mess his ancestors created.

Batman: The Enemy Within - Episode 1 is brimming with action and it shouldn't be a surprise considering the Caped Crusader has to resort to his knuckles most of the time to teach the Gotham underbelly a lesson. The combat sequences are rather easy to get through, although it may just be me getting a hang of Telltale's games for once. I've played far too many of late. To pull off moves you just need to hit different combinations of keys on the keyboard, but the timings are perhaps just a little too lenient.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a clear example of a game as an art form with a strong message and a complex, layered narrative. It’s true that you’re sort of along for the ride and most of your interactions are through your emotional response to what is depicted rather than through the mechanics of the game, but is that such a bad thing?

Considering its budget pricing, there’s a heck of a lot to love about Trackmania Turbo. As I said earlier it really is an acquired taste, for that masochistic lot that get a kick out of shaving tenths of seconds off theirs and other people’s time, Nadeo’s latest is a winner. It's the sort of thing I find myself frantically throwing in the last few minutes of my lunch break, desperate to catch a quick session or smash a new record.

By rights, a hospital management game should be narcoleptic in nature. Two Point Hospital is a glorified spreadsheet simulator, but it’s a spreadsheet simulator shot through with just the right magic combination of humour and deep management systems that help it shine.

Hardcore fans of turn-based tactics may be slightly put off by Mutant Year Zero’s obvious missteps but that aside, The Bearded Ladies have cooked up a special game here that’s got great potential for the future. Road to Eden isn’t perfect but it’s definitely stood out from the crowd for me in what’s been an excellent year.

Monks and Mystics serves the 'average' Crusader Kings player well, intersecting with all styles of play and interests in a way more similar to Way of Life than, say, Rajas of India. Adding depth to characters throughout the world is always welcome, and while the concrete plotlines themselves might be a little thin, the new dimensions and allegiances that can affect the unscripted procedural stories are always welcome. Great job as usual, Paradox.

Radium is a fairly good physics game which has all the qualities to keep the player occupied for hours on end, striving desperately to clinch the top awards. There's nothing really wrong with it, this neat little game doing exactly what it set out to do. It speaks well of the efforts of an indie developer who has turned out a gem in a minimalist fashion.

If you didn't like Dying Light, you're not going to like The Following but if you're still sitting on the fence or you're interested in smashing some more zombie skulls with all the visually stunning gore that Dying Light: The Following has to offer, then I don't know what you're doing still reading this and not playing it. All in all, the expansion is well worth the price and a really excellent addition to an immensely enjoyable game.

Firaxis have made tremendous strides to provide new mechanics and gameplay options for players who are still unsure what the XCOM series can offer them whilst retaining all the features that fans of Enemy Unknown have grown to love and now expect from the series. XCOM 2 is more than just a fantastic XCOM game, it's a polished and cohesive AAA experience that shines with a level of quality not often felt in these bleak, modern days.

The Sinking City is deeply evocative in its oppressive dourness, and stays true to the investigative backbone of Cthulhu. We are presented an open world of horror and suspense that HP Lovecraft surely would have enjoyed investigating.

This Wolfenstein has been broadly politicized and has been the no-doubt eager focus for political stunts and controversy. Which is odd, really, seeing as how at its heart it’s one of the most clear-cut examples of an FPS that we’ve seen in a while. No tricky resource management stuff, no new sub-systems to learn, just straightforward running and gunning, with a side-order of throat-slashing. And leg-removing. And eyeball-popping. And forehead-hatchet-burying. And exploding with diesel-filled grenades. And evaporating with laser guns. Typical, uncomplicated Wolfenstein stuff!

By and large, Battle: Fleet Gothic Armada is a great game, and another one of the nice surprises that can occasionally emerge from Games Workshop's plan for world domination.

From the modular ship constructor system and the impressive (if automatic) fleet battles, to the ethical tensions between interstellar neighbours reminiscent of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, to the endless moddability that'll allow, no doubt, classic sci-fi reskins (the likes of Dune spring to mind), I can't wait for Stellaris to be the game it is so obviously going to be. For now, though, it's still struggling with escape velocity on its mission to the stars.

From an outsider looking in this is a heck of a good sports game. Full featured with heaps to do and gorgeous to look at. I can only imagine how fantastic NBA 2K17 is for true fans of the sport, but even for a newbie like me it's an entertaining and comprehensive package that contains heaps to do.

Overall, if you play American Truck Simulator quite a lot then the Oregon DLC is absolutely worth buying. It's also a bit cheaper than the Euro Truck Simulator DLCs so it makes it worth purchasing, especially since the ETS and ATS DLCs are often on sale on Steam.

Combat can often devolve into a straight-line slugfest at times, and at other times terrain can make avenues of approach somewhat unclear and adjacencies a little hard to pinpoint. But for the vast majority of the time, the feeling of leading a desperate crew of die-hard sellswords is captured better in Battle Brothers than in pretty much any other game I've played. A surprise hit.

Pathfinder Kingmaker on PC is incredibly fun and rightfully nominated in our Global Game Awards 2018 for Best RPG. Today Owlcat have already made Pathfinder Kingmaker into a beautiful looking, rich CRPG, that delivers a great place to adventure, an interesting land to rule and the tools to carve out a realm that you can call home.

Overall the game is the same as F1 2019 with some tracks redesigned and with the My Team mode added. It should give people a couple seasons to go through instead of career mode, which is still available for those who want to do both. We may not be too far away from having an F1 motorsport manager game or even an add on if this keeps going, maybe for those more interested in managing rather then racing.

This game actually forced me to pick up Season 1 and get to know The Walking Dead series again. Rest assured, A New Frontier is a brilliant game and continues the never-ending Walker drama, certainly providing enough intrigue to keep me avidly looking out for episode three.

It may not be a western classic like the old spaghetti westerns, but Desperados 3 stands tall as a great western tale not of redemption, but of brilliant tactical strategy. There’s nothing more rewarding than pulling off the perfect synergy of puzzle-violence (after loading up a quicksave 2, 3, or 18 times), and the amount of challenges to complete after missions is just begging to be replayed for the most passionate of perfectionists. Now if you’ll excuse me Pilgrim, I got a horse to catch.

Quern is a must-have game for puzzle enthusiasts. At 25$ this is one game that has a very good dollar per hour of game play ratio. It could also be a great gift for non-gamers who have an interest in puzzles as it's simple to understand the play mechanics and it should run fine on any system.

Despite all of this griping, and all of these complaints, Tropico 6 is still sort of fun. Partly it's just watching the numbers going up. When the freighter arrives in port and your first shipment of electronics goes to market, netting you enough money to build a new stadium, it's like a little pat on the head that can be weirdly addictive. There are certainly some bugs that probably shouldn't exist on the fourth (fifth? sixth?) iteration of essentially the same game, but the special sauce that has allowed them to actually get away with making six Tropico games is still there.

All in all, it has to be said that Northgard is an extremely promising premise. It has a good storyline with challenging campaigns. While there are some minor hiccups here and there, overall, it's an awesome addition to the RTS genre.

Assassins Creed Valhalla is a lot of fun and easy to sink dozens of hours into. It is the best entry in the more recent trilogy and genuinely elevates the gameplay mechanics. Content could be considered somewhat bloated still, but it is diverse enough and the setting and story is solid most of the way through.