This is a perfect weekend game: cheerful, fun, challenging but not too demanding. It successfully recreates the atmosphere and sense of adventure of the 90s 2D action-adventures that inspired it, and occasionally betters them.

Whatever your pleasure, Fifa 21 is off to a strong start. If you’ve played Fifa in the last few years, you’ll have no trouble picking it up and scoring for fun, and if you want to dig deeper, there’s a ton of new stuff to learn and the endless siren call of regular Ultimate Team events to keep you coming back, even in the absence of any massive new features. Football has been hard to enjoy in 2020, but Fifa 21 certainly makes it easier.

F1 24 is really all about how its clever incorporation of real drivers into the career mode throws up an endless number of possibilities – just like the real sport hopefully will for the rest of this season and beyond.

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.

A genuinely likable new lead and intense attention to the mythology of the Star Wars films made this a nostalgic thrill.

The game's tall difficulty belies its accessible aesthetic: make no mistake, this is a far more demanding proposition than its Pikmin cousin. And yet, these are the hallmarks that make Platinum's output some of the most exciting work in contemporary video games: scruffy invention in a playpen that allows for player mastery. In the midst of this riot of ideas and unrefined energy we can perceive some of the Wii U system's idiosyncratic wonder.

Like many of Nintendo’s best-loved franchises, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is imaginative, humorous and highly inventive. It may be nearly two decades old but the series continues to evolve in pleasing ways.

It goes without saying that, yet again, Sports Interactive has released the best football management sim ever. It's just very hard work at times.

A slickly produced, well constructed military shooter filled with thrilling set-pieces and moments of fraught tension. It’s also a good run-and-gun online shooter, which wants to bring something fresh to the way online team-based competition works in this genre but isn’t quite there yet – new maps will inevitably follow.

It’ll be tempting to reach for your phone and start looking for a solution when you get stuck in Tunic, but resist the impulse if you can. Just … be stuck for a while. The resultant wandering and thinking will lead you somewhere unexpected, and before you know it you’ll have found the way forward by yourself. It feels like a luxury to play a game that isn’t constantly prodding you towards the next objective, and that instead allows you the space to daydream.

For button-mashers and hardcore smashers alike.

In its juxtaposition of abstract puzzles with domestic-scale storytelling, Maquette is more familiar, following the tradition of indie games that link high-concept puzzle-solving with romantic introspection. Like the relationship it maps, the game is at its most elegant and pleasing in the early stages, when its challenges are clearly stated and simply solved. Even so, the creative possibilities of this Russian doll world seem to extend beyond this brief, delightful exploration.

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.

Traditional it may be but Divinity 2 Dragon Knight Saga is an excellent RPG that is up there with the very best on the Xbox 360.

It might be made of papercraft, but Origami King has a lot of structural integrity, and unexpected depth. If you don’t fold at the tricky battle mechanics, the reward is an elevated, postmodern delight.

Fable's greatest problem is that it sets such high standards in some areas that the gaps elsewhere seem all the more noticeable.

Those new to Borderlands will find some aspects confusing at first – Borderlands 3 is minimal when it comes to tutorials – but if they persist, they will end up luxuriating in the joyous, tongue-in-cheek, comic book-influenced fun it provides. Sure, it fails to turn the franchise into something new and futuristic in gameplay terms. But why would it, when its original conception was already immaculate?

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.

Death Stranding remains kind of ridiculous: a bloated prog rock album of a game created by a man with a large film collection, an indulgent publisher and a budget few creators could ever dream of. But out of such ostentatious ingredients, astonishing moments can occasionally arise. If you were looking for a PS5 game that informs us that, yes, near-photorealistic visuals can lift a work in more than a surface aesthetic sense, this is it. The image of the dead rising as twisted smoking shadows above the gnarled countryside is something that will live with me for a long time. It all goes to show that sometimes, it really can take a £500 games console and a multimillionaire developer with an Ultravox fixation to make magical things happen.

Like all great detective stories, Gunpoint isn't quick to give up its secrets. And like all great games, its elements build up into a system as alluring as it is surprising. You're left wanting more; which is a small criticism, but much higher praise.

Perhaps those overpriced but desirable toys will turn more people’s attention towards this delightful game.

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.

Serious puzzlers will plough through the levels in a matter of hours (although there's some family-pleasing, inter-generational mileage in the two player option) but, for the price, it's hard to grumble. It's also hard to grumble about any game that can leave such a big, goofy smile on your face.

First time out, it scored four out of five, mostly for originality. This time round it scores the same purely for gameplay. That's definitely a (pin-striped ostrich) step forward.

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.

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.

There are a lot of players who'll miss the structure, the atmosphere and unique quirks of the original. But Digital Extremes deserves credit for delivering an action-packed shooter that balances its mixture of gunplay and superpowers far better than its predecessor ever did – even if those powers will inevitably conspire to turn the game's protagonist into a monster and wreck his entire life.

If The Crush House had simply been a smart and funny photography and cinematography game, I would have been satisfied and pleased – but it offers the player far more than that. Underneath the snappy text and playful design, it has a weird heart, too. It’s worth noting that the review build still had moments of glitchiness – however the strength of the idea and execution far outweighs any of the technical struggles. This in itself is remarkable: The Crush House is so much fun that even the slightly broken parts didn’t make me want to turn it off. It’s a fantastic way to spend the last few chill nights of summer – and the seasons coming up, too.

The Japanese RPG may have suffered heavy blows at the hands of Western RPGs such as Skyrim and Fable, but The Last Story does much to demonstrate there's still life and innovation in the form. That this game should come from one of the genre's progenitors is testament to a creative spark that still fires even after all these years.

It's a blissful, beautiful thing to play.

Dragon Age 2 has its flaws, but none of them are big enough to obscure the vast, absorbing whole of the game. This Hawke the slayer is definitely not rubbish.

As home fitness products go, it's certainly one of the best. It's absorbing, interesting and fun in parts, and if you're the sort of person who gets a kick out of medals, points and progress reports then you'll certainly enjoy the framework it offers. But if you're looking for a fun Kinect game with a getting-fit side-effect, or a comprehensive exercise routine with serious results, Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 is not quite there.

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

Calling it a simulation doesn't quite feel right, but this captures the look and action of a football match better than anything else I've played.

Resident Evil 3 doesn’t quite hit the heights achieved by last year’s reworking of Resident Evil 2 – it fails to gloss over the shortcomings of its forebear. But it is still a well thought-out and nicely executed modern refresh of a survival horror classic – and welcome slab of (almost) escapism to enliven our current house-bound lives.

One's enjoyment of Dead Space 3 depends on how much one is prepared to surrender to Visceral's new vision for their horror IP. If you're after a rollicking action title that provides countless opportunities to blast away at slavering monsters, Dead Space 3 could well be one of the most exciting titles you play all year. But if you're one of the Dead Space faithful who was seduced by this series' ability to deliver a survival horror experience shot through with moments of white-knuckled terror, be warned: Dead Space 3 has left that terrain and doesn't look set to return to it any time soon.

Infinite Wealth takes a few curious steps backward, but it gets so much right and once again dedicates itself to goofiness with such aplomb that it’s impossible not to get swept up in it – a true vacation from the darkness and drama of yakuza life.

The game's difference-maker is entirely on the pitch – that new movement system. In multiplayer especially, where the absence of an all-knowing AI sees imperfect humans make repeated mistakes, it leads to slightly clumsier, boggier, slower matches. All the same, the change is only incremental, and doesn't ruin the game by any means.

It’s not cheap, and will undoubtedly result in ongoing spending as more content is released, but there is a lot of play value here for fans of the films as well as the younger audience.

While wildly ornate, Autonauts is in equal parts playful, welcoming and charming. It is comparable to the cute farming sim Stardew Valley, yet it is very much its own game. And in the taste it gives you of thinking like a creative coder, it is in its own quiet way empowering and exciting.

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.

That feeling’s at the heart of everything, in fact. Beneath the smoke and spent cartridges, I Am Your Beast is playground warfare retooled as a sport. In this forest, on this battlefield, you get to perform acts of gruesome excellence. And if you can’t get it right first time, you’re always just a restart away from perfection.

A good puzzle game shares qualities with a good poem: precision, elegance, a growing feeling of resonance that climaxes, finally, in the quiet euphoria of a revelation. Originality, too, of course, as neither poem nor puzzle game can blossom in the shadows of imitation. Finity, a taut and cascadingly inventive puzzle game by Sebastian Gosztyla, has all of this and more.

Online, Killzone 3 isn't going to cause mass outbreaks of tumbleweed on CoD and Battlefield servers but, once again, it improves on Killzones 1 and 2.

Yakuza 4's production values are through the roof, its plot is gripping and quirky, it's often very funny indeed, and it would undoubtedly sell in millions if it was published by Rockstar rather than Sega.

And while it doesn't have the universal appeal of its more mainstream counterparts, the potential of its online feature means it could well become a huge sleeper success.

While you’ll become overly familiar with the limited number of levels, the arrangement of enemies and power-ups is always different. No two fights feel the same. Like the brilliant Tetris Effect, Superhot deftly sidesteps monotony and instead becomes hypnotic, inducing the zen-like trance state of the archetypal action hero when deep in the throes of violence. Ultimately it doesn’t matter who you’re fighting or why. What matters is the fight itself, the spectacle and the flow. Superhot’s self-directed choreography emerges triumphant; stylish, dynamic and gripping.

When everything is in place, this might turn out to be the best first-person shooter around. It’s frustrating that we’ll have to wait until at least March 2019 for that to happen.

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.

In the end a faithful MotoGP sim will probably have limited appeal to those not already interested in the sport, but those who do give it a try should find plenty here to keep them entertained.

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.

Youngblood is adolescent in all the right ways, anarchic and ferocious on the surface with thoughtful design running underneath. Characters Jess and Soph are loud, goofy and annoying, but that’s exactly as they should be. Some of the writing is a little iffy, and you won’t find much in the way of nuanced storytelling, but to be honest it isn’t required. This a game about two young women blasting racists into goo – for me, that equals a bloody good time.

Drop Duchy is an extremely clever experiment in game design by combination, and with each new feature you wonder how on earth the team managed to balance all the spinning plates. There’s a reason why the rogue-like and deck-builder genres are so wildly popular: they’re compulsive, challenging and systemically fascinating, and each one adds its own little foibles to the collective rulebook. In the case of Drop Duchy, the foibles are worth the price of entry alone.

Somewhere out there is a bigger, more vivid version of Metal: Hellsinger that could truly rock it with the FPS greats. Yet while Hellsinger’s art isn’t good enough to grace the black cotton T-shirts of an avid metal fan, its music certainly wouldn’t feel out of place in their record collection – and the way Hellsinger weaves this soundtrack into an infernal action experience makes it a thoroughly enjoyable twist on shooter convention.

Snake Eater is a melodramatic delight, offering a brilliant introduction to – or excuse to revisit – one of gaming’s most gloriously idiosyncratic masterpieces.

Video games, at their best, allow us to inhabit the lives of people who are different from us, or to assume the roles of protagonists in stories we have the power to shape, or fiddle with recreations of the systems that underpin civilisations. But they can also be a very silly little joke, shared among friends, which for 15 minutes or so make everyone love each other a tiny bit more.

On the bike, though, Trials Rising is close to flawless, a demanding, absorbing and occasionally rage-inducing game that will serve you up an exciting challenge for as long as you can take it.

Dragon's Dogma has everything that RPG-heads crave – you can lose yourself in tinkering around, collecting items, finding arcane quests and seeking random enemies for days. It's reassuringly complex, and astonishingly well-executed given that this is Capcom's first attempt at such a game.

It’s what you’d expect from the people who made Gone Home, but that’s no bad thing.

Even on the hardest of the three difficulty settings, Terra Nil is more forgiving than expected. Everything from its simple interface to an easily understood tutorial and a fantastically beautiful in-game guidebook makes environmental restoration go smoothly. The music and sound effects are very relaxing, and after every successfully restored map, there is a moment where you can just appreciate your handiwork. While a bit more friction wouldn’t have hurt, and the variation from map to map is modest, by keeping it simple, developer Free Lives spreads a clear message: saving the planet could be so easy if we wanted it to be. All that’s missing is a toxin scrubber.

Is this the Pro Evo to convince Fifa fans to switch? No. Is it an improvement on the last couple of years' PES incarnations? Yes. Will I be loving it and hating it and still playing it until PES 2014 comes out? Absolutely.

Battlefield 3 was supposed to bring down CoD, and without a campaign – which seems to be DICE's approximation of a CoD experience – this wouldn't have been possible. This is unfortunate, because the instances in which DICE seem to have tried to beat their rivals at their own game have resulted in Battlefield 3's weakest content.

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.

The very purity of purpose which makes the game such a fine arcade killbox also renders it unengaging on any level that isn't soggy and littered with stray organs. So while as a destruction simulator Prototype 2 scores very highly, there's a chance that, just like those toddlers in the dirt, you'll get bored after a short while and wander away.

Just as the fictional maker of the archive fell under the spell of these records and materials, I too was seduced.

Visually, Sonic Generations is impeccable: bright, colourful and universally appealing. At last, after well over a decade, Sonic has been given a starring vehicle that doesn't make a mockery of his glorious heritage, but instead celebrates it.

You could spend months in Forza Horizon 5 on a coast-to-coast trip, or dip in for a few days to see the sights and admire the sunsets. The vast array of fun on offer means that whatever you do, wherever you end up, you’ll have a very good time.

If this review feels chaotic, then that’s a fair reflection of the game. It is mad, fun, fantastical chaos and I honestly love it. Before I started writing this, I had left my Arisen and her endearingly incompetent pawn in an ancient battleground patrolled by a dragon. We blasted it with a couple of ballista bolts, and then it flew over and crushed the ballista with a claw, at which point I realised we were somewhat outgunned here and ran for some castle ruins to hide from the creature. This seemed like a good idea until skeletal warriors rose from the ground, and I realised the castle is extremely haunted. I don’t know how we’ll get out of this situation. But I do know it will be an adventure.

Though The Lost Legacy boasts beautiful new environments to explore and for Chloe to take collectible photos of on her smartphone, the journey through them feels very familiar. The only thing that’s truly fresh about this game is the protagonists, but they’re a promising pair, and those who don’t mind a formulaic sequel should take the chance to get to know them. They’ve certainly proved that we don’t need Drake.

This can be a fiddly game, and certainly isn’t one for people who dislike mining or organising elaborate storage systems, but after a couple of years in Early Access this is now a refined and elegant experience, gently paced, where there is always something interesting to pursue through beautiful spaces. Voluntary isolation in the deep cold might not sound like solace after a winter of lockdowns, but Subnautica: Below Zero is cosy and moreish. Dive in, and you may be surprised how deep you end up going.

Advanced Warfare is the best that Call of Duty has been for years, a successful negotiation of that troublesome creative and commercial tension.

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.

Lego City Undercover is a joyous thing, filled with life and fun. It took me right back to my first go on the original Lego Star Wars – that pleasure of finding a favourite creative toy rendered so beautifully, faithfully and humorously into video game existence.

For those who think they don’t know enough about the war, 11-11: Memories Retold paints a picture of the time. Aardman Animations, development partner DigixArt and publisher Bandai Namco have harnessed the power of video games to create a fitting accompaniment to the centenary of Armistice Day.

Death of the Outsider successfully sees out one of its most intriguing lead characters and one of its most powerful villains in a worthwhile adventure. Across six or so hours, this standalone indulgence doesn’t add much truly new, instead relying on tweaks of its existing formula . But it delivers strong missions and an excuse to continue skulking around this fabulous and hugely atmospheric world.

As a complete package, Fifa 15 still rules the roost. But where it matters – on the pitch – PES 2015 is far superior.

Like the real sport, it’s about perseverance and repetition: when the combos started to flow again for me after a few hours, it felt so freeing. I still don’t think there’s a better skating game out there than old-school Tony Hawk’s, even after all this time – and there’s certainly no better time capsule of this pivotal moment in the history of the sport.

The game presents a formidable challenge, and most players should begin at the easiest difficulty level, where the laser bullets fall like a shower rather than hail, and you have a modest stock of lives that replenish between each of the game’s seven lingering stages. It is, at times, repetitious, and Cygni’s novel systems will no doubt prove divisive among the genre’s dedicated and often conservative followers. But for those who approach with an open mind and dextrous fingers, it remains a thrilling vision.

Gearbox knows by now how to keep the narrative work light, and leave room for you and your friends to create the fun. The game has a real knack for making you feel like the quarterback of the fight – even if that means a team of four quarterbacks in one coop game, each firing off abilities and spells with wanton abandon. It’ll be hard to go back to the rather more straight-faced Borderlands universe after this jamboree of unicorn queens, goblin miner revolts and lute solos.

Inquisition gets under your skull like red lyrium.

Darkest Dungeon is something fresh in one of gaming’s most overdone genres, and the stress system is a winner – a particular delight being how a long-lived character will accumulate various mental scars.

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.

Filled with lovely details, perfectly constructed and often genuinely funny, Game Builder Garage is another excellent Nintendo creative tool, which quietly teaches you why its games are so good. It’s a totally closed experience, so you only have access to the materials it provides, but that makes it safe for families, and forces you to be imaginative in how you employ (and break) the rules. You won’t learn how to code in C from playing this game, but you will begin to understand how games are designed and how the logic of a game program works. If these are things you want to know about, there is no better teacher than Nintendo.

It’s a brisk, enjoyable package, ideal for a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon when you want to put your feet up and, every now and again, raise a smile.

Sweet and occasionally salty, Bugsnax is certainly one of the PS5’s most interesting launch titles. If you look at it as a checklist game where you need to catch creatures in order to win, it wobbles: it gets repetitive, some parts are harder than they need to be and it won’t help much if you get stuck. But the sheer range of creatures on offer, and the villagers’ hidden depth, filled my time in Snaxburg with joy. It’s funny, thoughtful, inventive and warm.

Destiny, isn’t just set in space, it an allegory of space. It is beautiful and fascinating, but oh so cold and immense, and the past engulfs everything.

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.

Throw in some surprisingly nuanced storytelling, some boss battles that can only reasonably be described as mega, and what Namco have produced here is something of a masterpiece of the beat-'em-up genre. Splatterhouse is a vulgar, noisy, shallow, juvenile, gruesome gem of a game that never forgets to be fun, even when going out of its way to be as appalling as possible.

Brink deserves to be ranked among the finest co-op games available. As a multiplayer experience, it is exquisite. But as mentioned earlier, it falters if played solo. While all the modes can be played in single-player, the bots that act as a stand-ins for other players are a poor replacement.

The new additions to Fifa 20 elevate it above “standard annual update” fare.

Revelations remains as resolutely rock hard to play as ever, with an emphasis on slow forward motion that makes the 3DS's spongy analogue pad feel all the more frustrating.

When the hype settles, the new GoldenEye will probably not be as epoch-defining as the original. However, its pick-up-and-party multiplayer, and audacious and satisfying single-player mean that Goldeneye 007 on the Wii may wear the name with pride.

Friends of Mineral Town remains an engaging, warm and homey experience.

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.

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.

Burnout Paradise isn’t just an interesting piece of history. It feels modern, generous and thrilling, and makes you want to hit the boost button on a Hawker Solo, turn up Avril Lavigne on the in-car radio and plunge through the city all night.

Players able to look past the flaws will find one of the most pure, visceral action games available on current machines.

A bright, shining gem of a game.