From the stop-motion, claymation backgrounds that dress some tucked-away areas, to mind-bending stage transitions, and the commanding full orchestral score from composer Kristofer Maddigan, there’s not one aspect of The Delicious Last Course that feels undercooked.

Requiem has had so many clever set-pieces, tense chases, and joyfully gruesome encounters by that point that it’s easy to forgive it simply running out of ideas. Capcom has been on a hot streak for a while now, so it’s no shock that Requiem delivers. But it’s a very pleasant surprise that Resident Evil still feels this vital.

This is the battle royale genre pitilessly trimmed to its wildest moments, where every encounter is a riot of explosive jump-cut hyper-violence. It is not for the faint of heart or slow of trigger-finger.

Like Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, the writing here occasionally sacrifices clarity for floridity, although its ornate descriptions do add detail and texture to the rudimentary pixel art.

But much of Dead Space 2's impressive scariness derives from more mundane devices, such as vents that unexpectedly blast you with steam, and gloriously chilling music, lighting and sound effects.

Dreams nonetheless still offers a set of powerful, enjoyable tools at a low price and hours of fantastic tutorials. Adults may find the presentation a little too charmed by its own whimsy, especially in light of the tension between an art for art’s sake message and a commercial walled garden. Yet it’s likely to encourage many younger players to bring their own dreams to life.

Falls just short of perfection, then, but it is, nevertheless, an amazing game, which will confound those who persist in tarring games with the brush of mindlessness. The future it presents may be worryingly dystopian, but by God, it's fun to explore on the safe environment of your console.

Even if you are not nostalgic for the originals and or interested in skateboarding culture, there is still plenty to enjoy. The levels feel small by modern standards and the systems behind the skating aren’t always well communicated, but the first two games remain deeply engrossing, refined creations. Chasing scores, puzzling your way to seemingly accessible collectibles and drumming up some friendly rivalry with another player is as exciting as it ever was. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 open a portal to a place, time and subculture – and it’s a delight to step through.

If Alan Wake 2 matched its narrative charms with greater depth in play, you’d be looking at a very special game indeed. As it stands, it’s a thrillingly spooky ride that can, at times, feel too much like you’re just pressing forward while weird things happen around you. That said, I very much enjoyed those weird things, and while Alan Wake 2’s combat lacks the developer’s usual pizzaz, it is Remedy’s best narrative adventure yet.

On the one hand Horizon: Zero Dawn is an ambitious technological showpiece for Sony’s new PlayStation Pro platform and a visual benchmark for this console generation. And yet its underlying hunter/gathering gameplay mechanics and zonal map architecture have barely evolved from their obvious origins in the long-established franchises Far Cry and Tomb Raider.

You could pick Wilds up as a newcomer and have a tremendous time playing through the story. You could stop there and it would still be worth the price of admission. But I will be playing it for a LONG time yet.

The Infinity Ward engine is far from cutting edge – the overall look of the game has not moved on enormously since MW2. But the vision, the choreography, the sense of scale and detail – they are awe-inspiring at times.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a game that succeeds in recreating the childhood joy of reading a book and being utterly transported into its pages, only to reach the end and realise it’s not real. It will touch the heart of all but the most soulless of gamers.

This a game without the bloat of the modern blockbuster – no co-op mode to allow two friends to assassinate hand-in-hand; no lip-service multiplayer to distract the development team and divert their budget; no upgradable hub to grow or furnish; no open world to impress and weary. Rather you're given a series of handcrafted missions, each with its own optional twists and turns, each with a start, a middle and an end, the plot written by a designer, the script penned by a scriptwriter and the narrative transcribed by you.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a riveting puzzle game, which uses its eerie visuals and elusive story as an intrinsic element of the experience rather than a mere design affectation. It is a game that asks subtle questions about the nature of creativity and play, and later it takes a breathtakingly meta turn that will thrill those who remember Kojima’s tricks in the Metal Gear Solid series. It is also a meditation on the troubled relationship between art and commerce, and quite frankly, there could not be a more timely concern for a video game to explore.

What Nintendo's designers do with this new spatial freedom ranges from amazing to even more amazing.

Mewgenics is built to fill every moment you’re willing to give it.

Above all, what stands out is the developer’s deep knowledge of and love for the period. The dialogue drips with fascinating historical detail, supported by an extensive glossary of terms. That, combined with a focus on the minutiae of everyday people’s lives, results in a game that provides a wonderfully evocative window into the past. The glacial speed of progress and preponderance of text might be a barrier, but Pentiment is a gift to any player who longs for a historical setting that’s more than a surface texture.

Left Behind does nothing new with The Last of Us' tense and exhilarating gameplay rhythm; you're always either in intense danger, or fearfully anticipating the next moment of intense danger. But it tells a different story, one that's more compact and more affecting for it, and it shows that Naughty Dog has serious emotional range. Rarely have I played anything as powerful.

Humour has always been a defining feature of Ratchet & Clank, right back to its origins on the PlayStation 2, but it doesn’t try too hard. It’s funny in a laid-back, undemanding way, and the story is similarly easy to digest. Rift Apart did not exactly challenge me, but it entertained me immensely. It’s just such a lot of fun, and so gorgeous I still can’t quite believe it. If this is an indication of how the new generation of consoles can infuse familiar-feeling games with new wonder, we’re in for a great few years.

The Ivalice Chronicles is not interested in narrative flexibility; its plot does not bend to the whims of the player like other RPGs. The story’s framing – recounted as a historical account in the distant future – makes this abundantly clear. As such, the game is less about fantasy and fairytales than history itself. Forget easy resolutions: here, events simply produce yet more events; trauma begets trauma. It is one battle after another for Ramza and his comrades.

XCOM 2 is a perfect example of how iteration should work for games: it takes a great original, fixes and streamlines the problems, and doubles-down in unexpected areas. Among its greatest achievements is adding a sense of pace to the overall campaign and the moment-to-moment combat. This is an about-turn from the principles of the original that could have gone wrong but instead is the making of the experience.

Dishonored 2 is both luxurious and consistent in its set dressing. Every virtual item demonstrates its own kind of wondrous craftsmanship: the taut leather, the sunny brass. Each room is a varnished memorial to some hollowed-out forest.

I don’t think I’ve seen half of what Forbidden West has to offer. It bored me sometimes with endless dialogue and exposition, but is equally generous with things to do and places to explore and creatures to unwisely provoke. Unlike many open-world games it is continually offering you something new, and a couple of the tools you acquire later in the game really open the whole place up. It’s got the spirit of a Metroid or Tomb Raider-style puzzle adventure on the scale of an Assassin’s Creed. And once again: by god, it is beautiful. I’ll happily endure ten minutes of being lectured about terraforming, in exchange for marvelling at these sunken caves, forbidding plains and mechanical T-rexes.

The things is, you don’t have to think about anything if you don’t want to; you can just enjoy the adrenaline rush, blasting symbolic victims of player violence (enemies even disappear in a whirl of multicoloured light when shot, a self-reflexive reference to the sheer disposability of non-player characters). But a darker subtext is always there, if you want to look beneath the gleaming surface...In this way, Deathloop gets to have its cake and eat it – over and over again. And it is, to be fair, absolutely delicious.

The Room Two is more than just a worthy sequel, expanding the formula and experimenting with some new ideas - it's a fantastic, scrumptiously crunchy experience in its own right.

Video gamers may wonder why they would play a card game when their medium has moved beyond such limitations; tabletop gamers may bemoan the fact that people are getting excited about the wrong card game. But if you fall awkwardly between those two groups, Hearthstone will keep you hooked for some time.

Perhaps I am asking too much. We don’t pry for depth from Mario as he rescues his princess, or ask what motivates Tom Nook in his real estate empire. Like pretty much all Nintendo’s games, with their long legacies and perfect jumps, this feel good to play, and that should be enough: but I don’t come to a Nintendo title for enough. I left Dread feeling that perhaps the real legacy of 2D Metroid will be the games it inspires, rather than the games themselves.

Flush with flash new tricks, simpler action and a bulging roster of hostile creatures, the latest instalment of the enduring series is an absurd delight.

Those subtle changes and little overhauls make all the difference, and they’re wrapped up in perhaps the most beautiful first-person shooter ever made – one that captures the sludge of the trenches, the cacophony of destruction of a battlefield, and the intensity of desert standoffs and mountainside raids. Dice has taken a risk visiting a time period not seen in major multiplayer shooters before, and Battlefield aces it. This is a lavish package that capitalises on a stagnancy in the genre, offering something new, exciting and, most importantly, solid.

For single players, it's an entertaining and gorgeous-looking dungeon hack but it's a bit short, extremely linear and hardly pushing any boundaries. Playing online (and Blizzard isn't really giving us a choice) makes it a better balanced and more compelling challenge, with all the potential to be the kind of lifestyle substitute that Diablo's legion of hunter-gatherer fans should relish.

Whether or not you choose Fifa 11 over Pro Evolution Soccer is more likely to be a matter of taste and tribal loyalty, but Fifa fans will be even more delighted with this year's offering than they were with Fifa 10.

If you've never played LittleBigPlanet before, then this PS Vita version is the ideal introduction. In fact, it's the ideal introduction to games in general, as it will teach you the basics of how to make them, as well as providing you with a huge dollop of entertainment.

Deadfire is an entertaining adventure that will keep anyone with a soft spot for this genre hooked. It has a confidently told story and the combat and character progression are as fun as the original but easier to understand. It is also a commitment to finish, taking tens (if not hundreds) of hours to complete.

Every design detail serves to propel the player forwards with as little friction as possible, with enough surprises and twists to prevent the formula becoming stale. It’s a real delight to be the Doom Slayer: to put everything else aside and focus on just the problem in front of you. Especially if that problem is a swarm of angry demons.

The Battlefield games are very much designed for the cognoscenti, and those in the know will rush to download Vietnam.

Mouthwashing is a difficult but engrossing experience, a work of surreal horror invoking the cinema of David Lynch and Dario Argento, but also extremely functional as a game, or at least a study of what games are and what they want us to do. That titles like this are still being made and have global distribution is one of the few bright spots in a depressing year for the games business. Book yourself in for a flight as soon as possible, you will and won’t regret it.

While slow in patches when it deviates from its core strengths, or occasionally fiddly in its mini-games, the game is buoyed by its dialogue, warm and charming art style, and Holowka’s soundtrack, which keeps even the occasionally clunky platforming from feeling too tedious.

This game may be beautiful, but it is also deadly.

Hot Pursuit, like the high-end vehicles it fetishises, has been crafted with genuine care, with great insight, with technical brilliance. Gran Turismo 5 will grab the headlines and the purist vote, but it surely won't live like this game does; it will be an austere cathedral to Criterion's joyous modernist structure.

Played alone or in co-op, played in Arcade mode or one of the more specific mission challenges, Nex Machina is a thrilling masterpiece.

Nioh may at first appear to be a clone of the Dark Souls series, but the game confidently strides away from these comparisons, bringing new aspects such as the fast-paced combat, KI Pulse system and the scarcity of ammunition to the proven formula. The fantasy elements have deep, meaningful connections to the history of Japan, and the world feels securely rooted in a fast-paced, flourishing combat system, which more than makes up for the extremely unpredictable, frustrating nature of the boss battles throughout.

New Leaf is a world on a cartridge slightly bigger than a stamp, one full of beautiful, wise and hopelessly optimistic observation of humans as social animals. It is a magical creation.

The early hours feel like the playable equivalent of being sent to military school, and demand saintly patience – but it’s an investment that pays off. Much like in Red Dead Redemption 2 before it, I happily lose hours wandering around this vast simulation, curious to see what wonder and depravity I might stumble on. It’s telling that despite spending more than 115 hours in Bohemia, I have yet to roll credits on the main quest line. If you’re uninspired by the prospect of roaming yet another frictionless open world where everything comes easy, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a breath of fresh air – scented with just a hint of dung.

But if it feels challenging, the fact that Witcher 2 is fiendishly hard from the outset is half its appeal.

Halo 4 is brilliant. If you've never played an entry in this series, this is as good a place to start as any and if you're a fan, rejoice; with 343 Industries Halo is in safe hands.

The update makes elegant use of the PlayStation 5’s controller’s quasi-magical properties. Tilt the controller to guide a note along a musical stave and play a mournful lament on the flute. Wearing the appropriate outfit, haptic buzzes will guide you toward hidden valuables, the force of the pulse quickening the closer you are to the treasure. Despite the intermittent violence, this is a beautiful world to explore, lovingly crafted and compellingly framed.

Some fans of Blow’s earlier work seem to have been hoping that the mazes they saw in the trailers are just a veneer for a deeper, mind-blowing experience, but really the world and whatever narrative you can find in it are dressing for an incredibly impressive collection of puzzles. Whether or not you find a deeper meaning at the end, the journey will have been worth it. After all, only those who actually enjoy solving the puzzles will make it that far, and even after 41 hours and 358 solved puzzles I’m eager to go back for more.

Remaking a universally acclaimed classic was always a fearful responsibility, but like its own sword-wielding heroes, Square Enix has risen to the challenge spectacularly.

The improvements do now leave the actual battles in conspicuous need of a visual overhaul (something for the imminent 3DS to tackle, perhaps) but at least fans will have plenty to occupy their time until that happens.

Crypt of the Necrodancer may not be for everyone, but if the idea of a steamy love-in between two seemingly incompatible genres turns you on, you’re gonna love it.

It’s a game in near-perfect balance, a lean and distinctly not mean ode to turn-based tactics that embraces the genre’s creative puzzling while repudiating its worst excesses. Tactical Breach Wizards lets you see the future, raise the dead, and burst through windows on a witch’s broom. Yet amid all that, its most powerful spell is empathy.

It is not the blow-away game of 2016, nor does it seem to have the staying power of Ruby and Sapphire, but it’s enjoyable. Pokémon games are their own beasts, and hopefully Sun and Moon is a show of further changes and things to come for the franchise.

The emotional core of the game remains the interdependency between you and the Pikmin, and the sense of responsibility and gratitude that you feel towards them. Walking through my local park after playing it for a day, I felt that if I crouched down under a tree and remained still, I’d see little lines of them ferrying things around among the ants and beetles. The most memorable games are always the ones that inject a little magic into your every day life.

Final Fantasy XVI is the series at its most spectacular, for good and bad. However, Square Enix has taken a lot of the criticism aimed at previous games into account, and the battles offer more freedom, the characters are fleshed out, and thanks to detailed world-building, you finally get the sense again that there is a world out there that needs saving.

Given that Uncharted 4 is already available on PlayStation 5 as part of a wee free collection of PlayStation classics for all PlayStation Plus subscribers, it’s hard to argue that this is an essential purchase for anyone who’s played these games before. If they passed you by at the time, though, this is the best way to experience two different spins on the same bombastic action game – adventures that remind us why characters such as Nathan Drake (and his spiritual predecessor Lara Croft) suit video games so well.

It’s reassuring that despite ever-greater technical refinement, Gran Turismo’s unique, eccentric character remains intact. It’s present in the grab-bag mission mode, which handily demonstrates that a race between 17 brake horsepower Fiat 500s can be just as gripping as one between cars with 50 times that. It manifests most obviously in the utterly bemusing music rally mode, which has you hitting checkpoints to the strains of 80s pop relic Hooked on Classics. Keeping this distinctive spirit alive in the era of 4K and 60 frames a second, Gran Turismo 7 feels both fresh and comfortingly familiar.

Despite its fantasy-sport emphasis, it has an underlying stamp of authenticity – it still requires you to adhere to the basics of rallying, keeping things smooth, braking early and balancing the throttle to get satisfying four-wheel drifts going.

There’s so much happening during the action that you learn to focus on the centre of the screen, relying on reflexes and peripheral vision to take it all in simultaneously as the scene explodes. Saros asks a lot of you – you’ll strafe until your thumbs hurt – but it taps into something primal, pulling you into a flow state where even a screen full of flaming orbs spat by towering hostile aliens no longer seems that big a deal.

Many good RPGs of late have eschewed melodic soundtracks for a more ambient route, but Sea of Stars is full of great tunes. The battle music in particular is both enlivening and nostalgic, and changes ever so slightly from area to area. This attention to detail is what makes the game such a fabulous way to while away end-of-summer evenings. There are pirates and curses, necromancers and spies; there are moonbeam boomerangs, and stealthy stabbings through green portals in the air. Sea of Stars is no shallow mirror of RPGs past. Its depth and sparkle make it a modern classic in its own right.

Link’s Awakening is a fantastic remake of a game that was fantastic in 1993. Fans must decide for themselves if those two things combine to make it a fantastic game in 2019 – particularly when the glorious Cadence of Hyrule is also on the Switch to scratch the itch you may have for 2D Zelda – and at a third of the price.

The writing is sharp and the action fun, but it is the stunning re-creation of another world that is this game’s crown jewel.

Arkham Knight triumphs as a richly empowering comic book fantasy that sees its hero fail almost as much as he succeeds, making him the most believable, the most occasionally unlikeable, and ultimately the most heroic he’s ever been.

I have never seen – or played – anything like it. It’s not a game that everyone will love, but I do think it’s one that everyone should play.

The game may look like Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, but its philosophy is unforgiving, with painfully limited ammo and a foe that can only be taken down with a headshot.

This game shows tremendous love for all things Spider-Man, and the ending packs a punch he would be proud of. But Insomniac relies too much on its hero to elevate the world built around him, with the result that the game wears thin some time before its powerful conclusion.

All-in-all, fans of battling, wonder-trading, and scratching their Pokémon behind the ear will still find things to love in the game, and for many, the changes in Sun and Moon are a refreshing reinvention of a classic formula. It may be initially jarring to veterans, but it is an attractive option for those who have been away from the series for a time to return.

Forza 6 feels like a worthy apology for the misjudgements it made with Forza 5. With competition from the likes of Driveclub and Project Cars, the franchise isn’t quite the benchmark it once was, but it’s damn good to see Turn 10 back on track with such impressive flair.

But DKCR is a colourful, creative romp with one of Nintendo's oldest creations, and with all the hidden levels, bosses and treats thrown in, you'll still be playing it after Christmas.

Treyarch's game is exhilarating and beautifully orchestrated, but it feels like a full-stop, it needs to be a full-stop, because toward the end of the campaign, bombardment fatigue begins to set in.

I’ve rarely played anything that is so unashamedly itself. Each hour is different, each character distinct and memorable, each new psychic playground full of surprises. There are a few things here that belong back in 2005, such as an obsession with collectibles and a redundant tree of upgrades that only confuses the array of psychic powers. But this is a standout title that reminds us why 3D platformers were once gaming’s most popular genre.

With its ever-louder demands for precise jumps and absolute control fluidity, Rayman Origins won't be for everyone. It is tough – have we mentioned that? – and it will frustrate some gamers more than it compels them to continue.

The improvements do now leave the actual battles in conspicuous need of a visual overhaul (something for the imminent 3DS to tackle, perhaps) but at least fans will have plenty to occupy their time until that happens.

The result of the old team getting together again is a tale that retreads old paths but also clearly wants to be more than just an ode to a bygone era of video games. When Threepwood goes to an oracle, Voodoo Lady, for advice, she summarises the paradox this game faces: “You must walk the path, yet you have already walked the path.” Return to Monkey Island pulls off the trick of looking backwards and forwards at the same time, reminding us that the point-and-click adventure will never really die: it’s a zombie pirate that won’t stay in the ground for long.

Diablo 3 on console is a joy. What some thought a quintessential PC game feels at home in its new format, particularly where stripped of its forebear's annoyances. It may not push the boundaries, but as an old-school action RPG it is unparalleled.

As in Journey, surely now an ordained saint of artistically ambitious and emotionally resonant video games, that cleaved mountain always looms in the distance, beckoning you towards it. You do eventually reach it, in the dead of winter, beaten down, the world dying around you. I’m still thinking about what happened there. Rarely has a game made me feel so much in a few short hours. It will be some time before I feel ready to play it again, but until I do, I will be recommending it to anyone who’ll listen.

An enthralling, at times near-classic adventure.

Sunless Skies doesn’t paint an entirely convincing picture of interplanetary travel. Your locomotive, for instance, sails between points on a flat surface, giving it the feel of seafaring with a cosmic paint job. But better to compromise there than in style, imagination and atmosphere. Sunless Skies has that in spades.

Perhaps it’s a little safe in the way it goes about things, anxious not to lose that Spelunky magic by disrupting the familiar flow. But that spell hasn’t worn off after 10 years. With its dastardly remixes of existing themes and a bunch of brilliant new additions, this will certainly replace Spelunky HD as the definitive cave-diving Derek Yu roguelike. I wouldn’t change a thing – though some of my former turkey friends may have different feedback.

This is a world that, robot assassins aside, is pleasurable to exist within and to explore, made all the sweeter by virtue of its unexpected arrival.

You could argue that Master Chief is the necessary foil to Halo’s inherent silliness, the gravelly undertone that ties all the pratfalls together. All the same, he and his inability to get over Cortana have long since lost their charm. The series has tried to move away from him before – in that regard, Halo 3: ODST remains its finest hour. It needs to carry on trying.

Fallout 4, then, is a paradox, delivering in many of the areas that matter most but undermined throughout by poor combat, technical problems, and what feels like a lack of focus. So here we go again. It’s not war, but Bethesda that never changes.

After a couple of frustrating hours trying to play with other people, it was a relief to return to the solitude of solo mode: just you and the mountain. Here, the only competition is yourself, and the only company is nature. A sense of calm descends. Everything is how it should be. Until you fall foul of a rock, again.

Teenage boys will absolutely hate it. But when viewed as a platform game for kids, it's pretty impressive. Kirby first emerged in 1992; only now has his existence been justified.

All of it comes together in a finale that ties everything neatly together and, even compared to its predecessors, simply astounds in the sheer audacity of who and what exactly you are facing. If asked, therefore, whether The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (as a complete package) is the best game in the franchise, I can really offer no objections. I rest my case.

Football Manager 13 is the most in-depth, detailed and complex football management simulator ever made. But I must admit, I've bitten my tongue as I've written about most of these new features. The last thing I personally wanted was a new set of variables to worry about as I play the game, and for even more hours to have to be invested just to get through a season.

Overboard! allows us to imagine what would have happened had Agatha Christie seen Groundhog Day and written a whole new type of mystery novel as a result. Its mobile format also works in its favour – as a Switch or smartphone game, it feels like carrying a little detective paperback around with you, except here you are the lead character, author and reader. As an experiment in fast, story-based game development it is – unlike most of my own mariticidal plots and alibis – a quite scintillating success.

Come for the gorgeous bygone ragtime jazz, Porkrind’s shop and an evil carrot; stay for the thrill of defeating a boss you’ve spent hours attempting. It’s painful, but you won’t find many games with such a moreish, satisfying sting.

But despite the rewarding interplay between various stats and buffs, and the laudable sensation that, even very early on, you have access to the sort of freedom in character and combat customisation that’s typically locked away for hours in similar games, Diablo 4 feels … toylike. Strip away the hellish screams and scarily convincing Halloween costumes, and what’s left is the video game equivalent of hyper-palatable junk food, albeit with myriad colourful warnings on the packaging.

Fantasy tabletop warfare meets historical strategy simulation in a game that should be inaccessible but ends up exciting.

Angry Birds Star Wars is the best Angry Birds game yet, and the best Star Wars spin-off in a long time. It's going to be big, and deservedly so.

Titanfall is a sort of masterpiece, so confident in itself and its identity, yet so reverent in its art direction to the science fiction visions of artists such as Shōji Kawamori, Kunio Okawara, Syd Mead and Chris Foss. You will play for hours, get tired, think you're done, and switch it off, but then it nags at you – you're only a few hundred XP from levelling up – a new weapon awaits, a new type of scope for that assault rifle, a new Burn Card perhaps, and you go back.

Lara's exquisite animation allows her to move through the world with unmatched grace, and the heavy emphasis on combat is more palatable thanks to its ease of interaction, Lara naturally crouching behind cover and switching between her bow, pistol, rifle and shotgun with rare quickness and ease.

For players of the original, this should get a steady nostalgia drip going. But coming to this series fresh makes for an overlong, dated and tedious experience.

You could look over videogame history and pick out antecedents for some of what Her Story does but, even so, I’ve never played anything quite like it.

It really is an impressively welcoming game, this, generous and detailed and unfailingly fun, different but with the same spirit. It feels like the culmination of something, a synthesis of different philosophies of fun that still nonetheless comes together. The Switch 2 itself does feel like a swish upgrade rather than an all-new console, so it’s a relief that its headline game shows that Nintendo still has a talent for reinvention.

For RTS fans starved of major releases, PC fans increasingly abandoned for exclusive IPs and, of course, Starcraft fans in their millions, HotS is a massive slice of expertly crafted, beautifully balanced and totally tactical gameplay...Just don't make us wait so long for the final chapter, please!

Where many western games yearn to be seen as the height of sophistication, craving the critical kudos of an HBO drama, Bayonetta 3 stands defiant in its absurdity. Like its predecessors, this is destined to go down as a cult classic – a dizzying dance of demon-dicing delight. Its crude, whiplash-inducing narrative means it certainly won’t be for everyone, but the best things in life rarely are.