In relaunching a much-loved and much-missed Star Wars genre, Fallen Order does exactly what it set out to. It reaches the bar, but then stops, with a set of characters and adventures that are not particularly intriguing or fresh, but certainly feel like they come from that very particularly galaxy, far, far away.

For our money, this is the best rhythm-action game money can buy – it would be a travesty if it failed to find an audience this time around.

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.

We Met in May is done in an hour, but like Freeman’s other explorations of self-conscious longing and ardour, it lingers in the mind.

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.

It might be too short and a bit clunky, but Blendo Games’ newest effort finds joy in the weird and wonderful retro-future world of 1980s coding.

The result feels like being trapped in a Alejandro Jodorowsky movie – sinister, strange but beautiful and compelling. Everywhere you look there is some unsettling image, from skeletons lying on riverbanks, to bizarre children sitting alone in bus shelters and ferry canteens. The puzzles are shrewd and challenging, and the blocky discordant visuals make the whole environment feel like some sort of uncanny valley of the mind. If you’re looking for a very different sort of challenge, in a decidedly unnaturalistic open world, Grunn delivers much, much more than the sedate rural idyll it initially promises.

Arc Raiders isn’t just fun to play. It’s a straight-up shot of serotonin.

This is Tobe Hooper’s putrid amoral universe in film perfectly replicated as an interactive terror ride.

That Dragon, Cancer shows how video games can create empathy, both through the simple method of allowing the player to experience unfamiliar situations – and by twisting what is real and not-real within them. It’s cut through with human resilience and humour but ultimately defined by a determination to leave a mark on a little boy’s behalf – something to show he was here, and real, and mattered. An unforgettable experience.

Accomplished as GT6 is, the team will need to revisit some fundamentals if future iterations are able to stand wheel arch to wheel arch with the Forzas of the world. Indeed, the prospect of how the developer may be willing to evolve the franchise for PS4 is a riveting one. But knowing Polyphony Digital, that's a few years down the road yet.

Yarny’s journey might have its ups and downs, but it’s brief and beautiful. It is a mostly wordless message of love.

GR:FS is so nearly a landmark game. It's busting with great gadgets, challenging and unusual to play and committed to a true co-op spirit that most rivals have long since abandoned. If only it looked a little better, had a few more maps and U-Play made it easier to find a quick online match-up with your mates. Even so, it's a worthy alternative to any FPS and puts the Ghost Recon franchise right back at the cutting edge.

The graphics are occasionally stunning – with long draw distances rendering outdoor and space locations particularly effective and, so far, relatively lag and glitch free – an achievement in itself for most MMOs.

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.

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.

It manages a pretty impressive balancing act: non-gamers obsessed with Tron will love its ambience and authenticity, and may even discover they like games more than they thought. Yet it contains enough clever ideas, and is well-enough structured, to keep hardcore gamers interested, particularly given that it takes place in that seductive Tron universe.

The primal glee that comes from being cast, for a moment, as the Ur-hunter in a world of cringing prey barely diminishes during the course of the game, and it’s deeply pleasing to master the kind of dripping echoic domain which, in most film and fiction, must be merely survived.

This comeback is exactly what was needed: pared down, cheap and distilled to its irresistible essence.

If you've played a GTA game before, you'll know precisely what to expect gameplay-wise from Saints Row The Third, and that in itself is a major recommendation in a GTA-free year.

Thirsty Suitors may be a very different take on a south Asian immigrant story, but it’s made with so much style and fun you can’t help but love it.

The doors of Sherlock’s decrepit, abandoned family manor unlock for him as he remembers more, slowly piecing together what happened to his mother. You can populate this place with paintings, furniture and possessions, filling out its character and history, a decent metaphor for your progress through the story and the game. This is a lively world, with wonderful smaller mysteries and an overarching story that brings you closer to its famous main character and his personal history. While there are some technical issues, and the game understandably lacks the glossy polish of bigger-budget titles, this is nonetheless something that I’ve been wanting for a long time: a properly open-world interactive detective story.

It seems likely that the depth and scale of the experience is only going in one direction: to the stars.

Marvel Snap is the perfect smartphone game: easy to get into, visually attractive, and simple to play in bite-size chunks, but it also offers masses of strategic depth.

If you're uninitiated in the ways of Agent 47, this may be a little bit of a wobbly entry into the series, but it's certainly worth it of you're a huge fan of the franchise.

It's not perfect – the storyline is a bit perfunctory, its free-form style can be illusory when it forces you to perform certain missions and it gets a bit repetitious in the latter stages. But it's a joyous sandbox in which you can drive like a lunatic, in exotic machinery that you might never even clap your eyes on in real life, without hurting anyone.

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.

With so much emphasis on art and audio, there was always a risk of style over substance. But the almost hypnotic blend of rhythmic tapping and gliding create a compelling flow state experience – at least that’s when you manage to master it.