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.

Previous Fallout games always had something to say about the post-apocalypse and the human factors that led to it; here, it’s reduced to shooting mutants and picking up rubbish. Even if, in the future, it mutates into something more stable, it will still feel eerily soulless.

Where many games work to put players in a constant state of distraction, rushing around in an often vain attempt to see everything they offer, Hitman 2 has the confidence to let you stand still, to sample the wine and drink in the atmosphere as you plan your next tiny-yet-devastating move. Indeed, no other action game encourages players to think about how to minimise their violence, and for that alone Hitman 2 stands out among the less mindful killing of its peers.

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.

There can be no doubt that this is a landmark game. It is a new high water-mark for lifelike video game worlds, certainly, but that world is also home to a narrative portrait of the wild west that is unexpectedly sombre and not afraid to take its time.

It might look slight, but there are hours of schemes, conversations and grisly deaths tucked away in this game. Broadening your choice of rulers takes some time, and even the same situations play out differently when Tyrion is in charge rather than Sansa, especially when you’re playing in character. It’s great fun to step into the unenviable position of Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, and a far more enjoyable way to pass the time until the HBO series’ conclusion than combing through the books again for clues.

It may not tear anyone completely away from Overwatch or Fortnite, but it offers a tactically rich alternative for players who want something with more grit, naturalism and sweaty peril. It is perhaps strange, perhaps even guilt-inducing, to take such pleasure from a game that wears its gung-ho military fetishism as a badge of honour, but as it stands this is the most enjoyable Call of Duty game for several years.

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.

This game is a beautiful experience. As driving games go, it’s the best I’ve ever played, not only because of its irresistible scenery, exhilarating driving and perfectly-recreated cars, but because spending time with it puts me in a lasting good mood. It is uncomplicated and thrilling escapism in a shared driving paradise.

Fifa 19 is a true simulation of modern football: brash and bloated yet also slickly professional; sometimes it drives you crazy with its cynicism, others it almost makes you weep with its beauty. And it truly knows how mixed-up and daft it is.

The diversity and creative ingenuity of these little four-dimensional riddles is truly impressive. I was sad to finish the game after four or so hours, but enriched by the journey.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a strange and vaguely disappointing game, but not a bad one.

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.

The most important aspects - how it looks and the feel of play - are top-drawer, but this only makes the surrounding drabness even more disappointing, and ensures that PES will remain the preferred choice of contrarians only.

No other game this year will make you an accomplice in a dastardly raccoon plot to take over a town.

F1 2018 is a very, very good racing game. The authenticity is exceptional, whether you’re twiddling with the ERS system’s electronic boost-delivery as you figure out a way past the car in front, or trying not to get penalised for driving too quickly in a virtual safety car situation. For die-hard Formula One fans, it’s essential, but an abundance of driver aids make it forgiving enough to welcome more casual motor-racing fans, too.

Dead Cells is a deliriously good time whatever console you play it on, but the instant-on, play-anywhere nature of Nintendo Switch is a particularly comfortable fit for a game played in short, frenzied, fatal bursts.

Phantom Doctrine may find an enthusiastic audience with strategy-game masochists. It is complex and open-ended; there are multiple ways to finish missions, and they’re are not always about taking out targets. But it’s also punishing and opaque, poorly explained and hampered by a flummoxing plot. For most of us, it’s a confused and very niche experience.

The ability to explore space with a party of up to three friends makes it feel much less lonely than before. And where it once was difficult to return to a previously visited planet, establishing bases allows you to make some small corner of the universe feel like home.

The Crew 2 has the whiff of a game that might become something wonderful in a year’s time, after numerous patches and additions. But right here, at the beginning, it doesn’t do enough.

Captain Spirit is only clumsy occasionally; as a whole it is affecting, sweet and memorable. It is a free taster of a forthcoming game from the same developer, Life Is Strange 2, but more than just an advert or a demo, it is its own short story about an everyday tragedy.

In spite of a smattering of minor missteps, Evolution is engrossing and clearly created with a deep affection for the source material. Any fan of the films (or the books) who has ever imagined opening a disaster-prone theme park will have a good time with it, despite the repetition.

In introducing cooperative multiplayer, it has opened up an entirely new way to experience the adorable conceit of yarn characters making their way through a gigantic human world – but in freeing up movement and removing some of the friction, it has lost a little of the original’s focus and heart.

After the touching emotional drama of Dontnod’s previous game – the coming-of-age adventure Life Is Strange – Vampyr’s ambitious but awkward chin-stroking is disappointingly inert, while its failure to reconcile its ethical hand-wringing with its gratuitous combat leaves it as conflicted as its undead protagonist.

If you want to visit Lordran and enjoy a straight-up bash-the-baddies quest, then you’ll find no better collection of bosses than this. If a new kind of adventure appeals, however, one in which quick fingers matter less than brains and human cunning, there’s still nothing like Dark Souls. After seven years its mystery has diminished, but it’s still among the best of the best.

Detroit: Become Human is a spectacularly crafted game that bends and branches out around the player’s choices in an astonishing and unparalleled way. Although hampered by tired central plots and some predictable, occasionally hokey storytelling, the result is a technical feat in video game development and a meticulously detailed cinematic achievement.

State of Decay 2 is brainless, ramshackle fun. Most of its action resembles Benny Hill more closely than The Walking Dead. It doesn’t really deliver what it promises, and in many obvious ways, it’s a mess. Yet lots of messy games are fun, and this is too – especially on those forays when you slaughter zombies by the dozen and rock up home loaded with loot. In scattered moments, there are glimpses of the game State of Decay 2 could have been. Sadly, they are the only times it pulls at your heartstrings.

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.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is a dull game with a great concept, made borderline unplayable by its hyper-aggressive monetisation.

It is rare to play a game so accomplished in everything it sets out to do. God of War is a standard-setter both technologically and narratively. It is a game that, until recently, would have been impossible.

It is no wonder Sea of Thieves has drawn comparisons with No Man’s Sky – at its best, when it’s firing on all cylinders and you let yourself sink into its peculiar vision, it is majestic. The glint of the sun on the choppy waters, the friend who always gets lost in the caves, saving a hold full of chickens from drowning, standing on an island after a battle and watching your ship sink beneath the foam. These moments are the treasure. But are they enough? The problem is not only that there’s too little to do; it’s that you want so much more.

There are great individual moments in Far Cry 5. The gunplay is excellent, its unpredictable world generates daring stories of accidental heroism, and when it leans into the whole red-blooded American patriotism schtick, it’s genuinely funny. It doesn’t always fit together as well as it should, sometimes forcing the player to work around the game rather than with it – but the wildly vacillating tone is the bigger issue. It’s at once disorienting and noncommittal. Paradoxically, this is an extreme satire of modern America that says pretty much nothing about it.

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.

Its gorgeously lush visuals are quite simply among the best ever seen in a game, offering an object lesson in how stylisation has the power to trump photorealism even in the 4K age. Some players will lack the time or patience to put in the effort that any heavyweight role-playing game demands – this is a 50-hour adventure at least – but it puts forward an irresistible case for your attention. As video games are once again weathering ignorance-fuelled attacks that paint them as universally gun-centric, violent and nihilistic, Ni no Kuni is a timely counterpoint.

The Yakuza games have always balanced brutality with tear-jerking sentimentality: it’s a curious mix, but they commit so wholeheartedly to both that they somehow pull it off. It’s no surprise when the final act launches a full-blooded assault on your heartstrings. Yakuza 6 may not be subtle, but few players will be left dry-eyed as the curtain on this tale is finally drawn.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, at least for anyone who played its brilliant but cruel predecessor FTL: Faster Than Light, is how overwhelmingly fair Into the Breach is. There are no random events that unexpectedly handicap you. Instead, every situation is winnable from the outset (though poor first-turn decisions will change that), and you are shown the consequences of any action before you commit to it.

This short collection of small moments manages to cover a wide range of powerfully relatable emotional highs and lows, beautifully capturing what it’s like to fall in love for the first time.

It’s plausibly a commentary on the nature of an ecosystem, but the emotional reward doesn’t compensate a player for the amount of busywork.

It wants us to take its medieval world seriously, but also wants it to be a playground, and it constantly struggles to balance these two sides of its personality. If you can embrace its quirks, it’s easy enough to lose yourself in its luscious and dynamic medieval landscape, but you’re unlikely to emerge with much insight into the historical period that it so faithfully depicts.

The first big project from a team of Spanish developers working out of an attic in Seville, Crossing Souls is a passionately made ode to an era, even if it occasionally feels underwhelming. From the plucky 2D characters to the synthesised background music to the dated-looking cartoon cutscenes, it captures the 80s perfectly. There is nothing original about this game, but that is why I enjoyed it.

What was – and is – most impactful about Shadow of the Colossus is its sense of scale: the immensity not only of its dramatic ruins and the sad, beautiful colossi, but of the task at hand, and its themes of death, faith, longing and the destructive selfishness of grief.

Like your knowledge of the game’s beautiful and rich ecosystem, this knowledge accumulates naturally over time, and a game that seems intimidating at first quickly becomes one of the more rewarding gaming experiences of recent years. There is no feeling quite like taking down a dragon with nothing but a sword, your wits and sheer nerve.

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.

Such rough edges, and there are many more, suggest that while CoD: WWII may look the part, this is actually a game rushed to hit release – there are at least two areas in HQ with placeholder vendors saying ‘coming soon’.

New sidekick Cappy could have been just another annoying sidekick, but its inclusion only adds to the playfulness of Nintendo Switch’s first Mario adventure.

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.

This is a rare example of racing fun for the masses and the maestros, one that’s expertly engineered and polished to a level that would make a Concours d’Elegance winner envious. It may make some controversial design choices, but in terms of the on-track experience, it’s the FM series’ most engaging drive yet.

There’s no question that EA’s behemoth delivers bang for its megabucks.

Smashing two dimensions together should be the stuff of ambitious prog-rock albums, but Infinite seems determined to steer towards the middle of the road.

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.

Everything you hated about the first three years of the game has been refined, removed, or reappraised, and the game that was left was one that makes sense from toe to tip.

Sonic Mania is what Sonic fans, both lapsed and unwavering since the Mega Drive days, have crying out for all these years. It is a celebration of Sonic history. It is the greatest possible gift to the video game ilegend after spending so many years in the abyss; so great, in fact, that it took someone other than Sonic Team to give it to him.

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.

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

Splatoon 2 gets so much right that it’s easy to ignore the occasional baffling ways in which Nintendo has failed to score into an open goal.

Like Friday the 13th (and to some extent the similarly asymmetrical Evolve) there is a great concept here, but the balance and finesse are lacking – especially when you’re not playing with friends. Hopefully there will be patches and updates, bringing the console version more in line with its PC originator, which has been improved greatly since launch. Dead by Daylight needs and deserves a more nuanced, crafted and considered structure. It needs to be more Wes Craven and less Rob Zombie.

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

Arms is a good starter fighting game, both for players and for Nintendo. Hopefully future updates will give the inevitable franchise a bit more bounce.

The single player campaign remains immensely enjoyable but it’s a shame it can’t sustain early success. Refined controls and a focus on more crafted stealth missions, rather than turning everything up to 11, would have meant fewer rage-quits and a higher score.

It’s a simple statement that’s both endearing and heartbreaking. It hints at the thousand real-life moments of grief and joy that served as inspiration for this game. That emotional weight shines through, making Rime a thoroughly rewarding experience.

When set against the non-VR first-person shooters, a genre in which only those games that have benefitted persistent, focused iteration and a king’s ransom of investment can now compete, Farpoint seems embryonic and amateurish. Its thrills are short-lived, but the lessons that can be drawn from its struggles in trying to transpose the genre into VR will surely echo for a long time to come.

Nearly everything good about Prey is pulled from a game released in the decade before it. Well, four other games to be exact...The new Prey takes the highlights of these games, but merely allows them to coexist in a single habitat, never doing anything new with the foundational building blocks it has borrowed.

Thanks to the Rumble HD in the JoyCon, you get a sense of that physical feedback you would once have got naturally from those mechanical arcade machines; you feel your seed rolling from one side of the screen to the other. And while the tension of TumbleSeed makes it a surprisingly great spectator game, this just feels right in portable mode, with that precarious, procedurally generated mountain in the palms of your hands.

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.

While some players will spend hours perfecting time trials and improving their standing online, that’s not really what these games are for. Mario Kart is a vehicle for fun with all your friends and family, no matter their individual skill, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best, most versatile version of that yet.

What the game loses by not having had a Rare/Nintendo-sized QA department to smooth its rough edges it compensates for with a princely pile of ideas, and a lovely control scheme that only improves with elaboration.

At its core this is a spectacular work of contemporary young adult fiction, one with a strong moral core, angled yet never didactic, expansive yet always focused.

Everything takes this strange comfort of the procedurally generated personal to a universal scale, and it is good. It’s really good. Everything is a game that knows what its core strengths are, and it does not shy away from them: everything persists, and everything is connected.

The scale of Mass Effect: Andromeda means there’s a lot of stuff, and thus a lot of bad or mediocre stuff.

The real fun of Snipperclips is in those first 45 puzzles, played with a friend over many short sessions or – as we did – in one afternoon. Once you’ve solved them, of course, there’s little reason to go back and play them again, but at £18 on a console with a currently limited catalogue, for anyone who owns a Switch this highly sociable game is a must-buy.

The very loose framing that allows Lego Worlds and its players to be free from stifling game design conventions has equally made the experience sometimes ungainly and directionless, leaving its protagonists stranded in a world that is as full of confusion as it is ideas and potential.

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.

Much like the physics glitches that will clog up YouTube channels for months to come, such quirks are inevitable hazards of open world gaming. A more pressing concern is whether the lack of human spontaneity can sustain the marathon commitment and repetition needed to complete the game’s herculean campaign. With friends in tow, Wildlands could well prove to be The Wall of its genre; but much like a Roger Waters solo album, it loses some of the sparkle on its own.

Robo Recall is an almost perfect VR arcade experience. The only downside is that the cost of entry for Oculus Rift and Touch – even with a new lower price of £598 – is still too high for many, when you include the cost of the PC needed to run it. But that’s not the game’s fault.

As it stands, 1-2 Switch is a really fun couple of hours that may well end up being the star attraction at one or two friends or family get-togethers. However, it will then find itself at the dusty end of your games collection. Nintendo says it wants to offer value to Switch purchasers, yet we can’t help but feel it’s not just the cow getting milked in this scenario.

A game that marries the best bits of the franchise’s long history with the best bits of the rest of the gaming world, and produces something even greater than the sum of its parts.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is more than a nostalgic homage to Planescape: Torment – its own innovations will mark the genre as much as its spiritual predecessor did.

You will enjoy For Honor more if you can form a clan with friends and support each other properly, but even for casual swordsmen and swordswomen it has much to offer. Yes, the real-money system is galling, but it’s a reality of the modern industry that we’re probably going to have to live with, and everything that you can buy with cash can eventually be earned through doing what the game wants you to do; learning to control and administer the resource of violence against ever more testing enemies.

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.

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.

This is a game that can sit proudly in the Halo canon and also call itself a true, albeit hybrid, RTS. It’s instinctive to play, exciting to watch and packs in some genuinely new ideas that deserve exploring. And if you still can’t get past the inevitable compromises and unfamiliar UI, there’s always the PC version.

It really is testament to the gruesome enjoyability of those hyper gory killcams that, even after four games, the sniping continues to be satisfying enough to warrant a look in. Sniper Elite 4 doesn’t miss its target, then, but it plays things safe enough to guarantee the kill without any undue risks.

Hitman is unquestionably the finest game in the series. It might be one of the best stealth games ever made.

A masterclass: breezily new, yet quintessentially in character with its illustrious forbearers.

Kat is never more fun than when she’s hurtling horizontally across the sky for no reason other than to feel the wind against her face. At its best, Gravity Rush 2 recreates the sense of reckless abandon that came when riding a bike as a child, the feeling of limitless potential combined with the intoxicating thrill of knowing that the tarmac could come up to meet you at any moment.

Cindy’s design is laughable, but she draws attention to a broader problem with the game: its overwhelming maleness.

Here is an exquisite gem, the brightest in Ueda’s enviable clutch.

The detail in Watch Dogs 2’s world, the colour in its characters and the sheer fun you can have mucking around with its mechanics make for a great, albeit not all-time great, open-world adventure.

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.

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.

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.

Whatever legacy players leave on the world of Terratus, Tyranny will leave a lasting legacy on RPGs. This is a game that truly takes on the whole concept of evil and does it justice.

Infinite Warfare could have been much more than a passable single-player movie attached to a super fast, super confident multiplayer infrastructure. As such, and with those moments of tantalising potential in mind, it feels like a wasted opportunity.

While its contemporaries focus on new ways with which to shock and excite on screen, Respawn makes the simple act of playing feel superlative. Its multiplayer is bigger and better, with the necessary depth and momentum to take it beyond these first few months after release, while its short but exciting single-player mode has the craft of some of the best campaigns of the last decade.

For those who love the series and have dedicated hundreds of hours to it, purchasing the game is an unavoidable ritual. It’s more of what you want, with a lick of paint and up-to-date player stats...But for everyone else, it may be better to sit this one out, or wait for some sort of mid-season overhaul.

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.

It tells its story well, with smart writing and some superb characterisation that elevate its simple revenge plot. Ultimately, however, it never capitalises on its open world potential, instead succumbing to an almost constant lull of tediously unimaginative repetition that makes for a boring and dated open-world shooter.

Gears of War 4 may adhere to a seemingly old-fashioned template but, in practice, it feels anything but archaic. Its single-player campaign is much more varied and engaging than those of its predecessors and the online mode is exhilarating, catering for all shades of gamers, from the less adept to those with pro-gamer aspirations. The horde thoroughly deserves its 3.0 designation upgrade and as a whole, the fourth iteration gives the Gears of War template the rejuvenating shot in the arm it sorely needed.