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.

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.

Even with abilities that are steadily upgraded as you progress, The Amazing Spider-Man never feels quite as precise as you might wish thanks largely to quicktime instructions that come too thick and fast for the timed responses.

If you’re looking for a sliver of joy in bleak times, Nintendo always delivers.

Stylish and minimalistic, this gentle, quietly demanding game offering escape and satisfaction will entertain for hours.

Impressively executed, infinitely slicker than its predecessors, and reveals the horror interspersed with periods of tedium that characterises modern warfare in a startlingly believable manner. Which will surely earn it cult status in the future.

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.

The Forest Quartet left me feeling hopeful about the future. It’s a story about the resilience of the human spirit, the healing power of music and the profound, unshakeable impact that art can have on the world.

XCOM: Chimera Squad is essentially the Agents of Shield to XCOM 2’s Avengers. It gently plays with the formula, and tells the peripheral stories of a much wider world on a much tighter budget and with much smaller stakes. In other words, it’s XCOM but chilled – and, in these desperate times, that’s just fine.

Strategy game preserves the structure and jokey vibe of the 2004 classic but adds 2021 slickness and scope.

Size Five delivers both classic platforming and point-and-click adventuring in this self-aware and deeply anglocentric caper.