Resistance 3 is fast, furious and entertaining throughout but lacks the uniqueness that would boost it to the very top of the FPS ladder.

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.

Starfield, as with Bethesda’s previous work, requires its player to submit to the spell that is being cast. The rewards for those who can overlook the often awkward delivery of dialogue, bodies that glitch through scenery, the confusion of menus and the flimsy feel of combat are considerable. Because that feeling of electric possibility – when the horn section swells as you touch down on a new planet, stride into the nearest settlement, then pick up whatever threads of story interest you – never wanes.

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.

Sony has sold millions of its PlayStation VR headsets and until now it’s been tough to recommend one experience as a killer app. Soulful, technically proficient and at times almost tearfully beautiful, No Man’s Sky Beyond is as close as we’ll get.

Final chapter in intriguing narrative adventure series brings back favourite characters, but fails to go out with a bang.

Though its narrative could use more teeth, as a sensory experience GRIS is hard to beat and the most striking looking game of 2018.

It’s difficult to think of a driving game on console that engages you more fully than Project Cars.

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.

Once you’re in, you will – unlike many of my own early inmates – find it very difficult to escape.

Mortal Kombat X is many things. It is mechanically refined and stylistically muddled; it has a sometimes unpleasantly violent, sometimes charmingly hammy commitment to the traditional fighting game template. It has thrust the series forwards and succeeds in delivering nuance while offering a welcoming genre gateway for inexperienced players.

And bravo to Nintendo for keeping this franchise on the standard DS rather than – for the time being, at least – adding that third dimension.

Madden 16 is an authentic, challenging simulation that explores key facets of the sport in new ways and adds much to the experience in the process.

Pleasantly distinctive and great fun to play, making decent use of the Vita's attributes without ever giving you the impression that they have been shoehorned in.

As I sat late into the night, clicking through strange websites, discovering secret pages and file-sharing boards, reading about online fallouts between made-up strangers, I was reminded so strongly of my teenage late nights on the weird internet that I felt temporarily unmoored. It is an extraordinary feat of scene-setting, and totally unlike anything I’ve ever played before.

Stacking is right up there with the likes of Braid and Limbo as an absolute must-download.

While Arceus may be a sight that leads to sore eyes, this ambitious reboot sets Pokémon on an exciting new trajectory, finally recapturing a lost sense of adventure. What made those initial Pokémon games special was the way that they embodied a childlike spirit of discovery. The problem was that its creators struck gold on the first attempt – and spent decades repeating the same trick. Now, 26 years after I caught my very first Pokémon, the franchise is new again, and that gleeful sense of excitement is back.

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

Mortal Kombat 1 is also home to an esoteric, slightly underbaked “Invasions” mode, which injects a dash of RPG-ish grinding – complete with random encounters and variating elemental damage types – to its bread-and-butter brawling mechanics. I found this to be less compelling than either the campaign or the standard multiplayer ladder, but it’s good to see that NetherRealm is, at the very least, considering how they might reinvent the wheel in the future. After all, this is supposed to be a total reimagining of Mortal Kombat oeuvre; a new beginning for all of our twisted, bloodsoaked combatants. I’m happy to have them back in my life, but it’s a shame they didn’t learn a few more tricks during their time away.

There were many moments of beauty and terror during my ascent that left me quietly awestruck. That awe, in the end, was proportional to the hardship.

The Plucky Squire is a moon-shot of a concept, and as the hours go by, it becomes clear that it’s trying to say something truly interesting about the importance of storytelling and the power of narrative. I would recommend seasoned players approach the first few hours with patience, as it takes a hot minute to find its pace. As the game evolves it becomes highly rewarding, even if the controls are a little finicky at times. The Plucky Squire is heartening, funny and impressive to behold: not flawless, but still a treasure of a title.

This hack-and-slasher clings to its Soulsborne heritage too tightly, but does creative things that no other Soulslike until now has managed to pull off.

It’s kind of brave of Firaxis not to just give us XCOM with an asset swap. Midnight Suns is its own thing, combining strategy and soap opera in a nod toward Japanese battle tactics games and the underlying frivolity of the Marvel universe. One thing Firaxis certainly hasn’t done is dumb down turn-based strategy for incoming comic book fans. This is a hugely challenging game, with dozens of hours of play and a narrative that wants to say interesting things about family, identity and sacrifice. Sometimes, it even manages it.

And while the previous Skylander titles no doubt drew plenty of inspiration from these legendary releases (the series has its roots in the old Spyro the Dragon adventure platformers after all), it is Swap Force that really re-captures the magic.

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.

The gaming experience that Tropical Freeze provides may be rich, enjoyable, challenging and frequently hilarious, but it isn't anything conspicuously new.

On the multiplayer servers, players can jump into lighthearted casual races or far more intense open events, where the global community of players bring their own cars – and their own tuning – to the track. But personally, most of my time with Forza Motorsport has been spent all by myself, taking the same left turn over and over again, until I’ve memorised every nuance of the angle. Turn 10 has brought out the obsessive in me. I mean that as a compliment.

Melody of Moominvalley is simple and unchallenging, and also disappointingly short – you can see almost everything within a day’s play. And yet it’s all put together with such care that it’s difficult to begrudge these shortcomings. The licence is everything: spending a short time in a faithfully evoked version of Tove Jansson’s strange and memorable world is worth the entrance fee.