Ever since it first worked out how to assemble pixels so that they resembled something more recognisable than aliens, the games industry has dreamed of creating one thing above all else – a game that is indistinguishable from a film, except that you can control the lead character. With LA Noire, it just might, finally, have found the embodiment of that particular holy grail.

As in Journey, surely now an ordained saint of artistically ambitious and emotionally resonant video games, that cleaved mountain always looms in the distance, beckoning you towards it. You do eventually reach it, in the dead of winter, beaten down, the world dying around you. I’m still thinking about what happened there. Rarely has a game made me feel so much in a few short hours. It will be some time before I feel ready to play it again, but until I do, I will be recommending it to anyone who’ll listen.

Proteus is beautiful, a beautiful thing. And it makes me happy – happy because it is so intrinsically interesting and emotional; happy because we live in an age in which things like this can be made and distributed to everyone with a computer.

The meticulous craft that has gone into its ingenious design is enough to warrant admiration from even those players who have no time for the portly plumber. As for the rest of you – and we're assuming you're Mario fans – you're in for a real treat.

All of it comes together in a finale that ties everything neatly together and, even compared to its predecessors, simply astounds in the sheer audacity of who and what exactly you are facing. If asked, therefore, whether The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (as a complete package) is the best game in the franchise, I can really offer no objections. I rest my case.

I have become obsessed with this game in the last week, with the moments of quiet, uninterrupted, intense concentration it has given me at a time when focusing is difficult. The game has a simple concept, executed very well, with precise controls and finely balanced difficulty, but it is the magical ambience and an urge towards self-mastery that keep drawing me back, hurtling downhill with my heart in my mouth.

It is populated with characters reminiscent of Jhonen Vasquez’s illustrations, combined with a gothic and botanical bestiary that calls Hollow Knight to mind. The writing, though, is sparse and unsettling, not quite void of humour but nor silly in the way one might expect. The overall effect is darkly, fascinatingly cute: mall-goth meets folk horror, and the perfect set dressing for elegant, sharp gameplay. Cult of the Lamb has already amassed over a million sales in the first week of its crusade, for good reason. There’s little doubt that the flock will only continue to grow.

From the stop-motion, claymation backgrounds that dress some tucked-away areas, to mind-bending stage transitions, and the commanding full orchestral score from composer Kristofer Maddigan, there’s not one aspect of The Delicious Last Course that feels undercooked.

Baldur’s Gate 3, like its titular city, is a towering landmark of an RPG. Bustling with life, brimming with scope, and bursting with imagination.

Remaking a universally acclaimed classic was always a fearful responsibility, but like its own sword-wielding heroes, Square Enix has risen to the challenge spectacularly.

There is a layer of kindness interwoven within the cruelty, implying that even the world’s greatest monsters were once human. In an increasingly divided age, this simple message of choosing empathy over hatred feels especially poignant. As monolithic megacorps shutter Bafta-winning studios, a game like Hellblade II deserves to be cherished. Who knows how many more such cerebral epics this risk-averse industry will produce.

The Ivalice Chronicles is not interested in narrative flexibility; its plot does not bend to the whims of the player like other RPGs. The story’s framing – recounted as a historical account in the distant future – makes this abundantly clear. As such, the game is less about fantasy and fairytales than history itself. Forget easy resolutions: here, events simply produce yet more events; trauma begets trauma. It is one battle after another for Ramza and his comrades.

A hugely accomplished reinvention of a franchise that was showing signs of dotage.

Times have changed, and Simogo has expanded beyond Flesser and Gardebäck as their ambition has grown and brought them back to the realm of console games – such as the playable pop album Sayonara Wild Hearts, and their puzzle-mystery magnum opus Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. The brief, heady days of App Store brilliance are over; the world that allowed Simogo to flourish is now extinct. How fortunate it was that Simogo got the chance they did; that they’re still with us, and able to assemble this inspiring little collection we can play in perpetuity. These games, in all their varied playfulness, are full of longing: for a lover, for meaning, for a chance to write your own ending. Play them and dream about a world where it all went differently.

In the future, when the subject of the funniest comedy games of all time crops up, the usual names will be there – Monkey Island, The Stanley Parable, Death Stranding (I’m kidding) – but now surely a new one will join them. Coal Supper has produced perhaps the first great abstract Yorkshire-based cartoon puzzler of the 21st century. Thank goodness.

It’s an absolute joy to play and to experience, stuffed full of content, and – woeful online notwithstanding – comes highly recommended.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a riveting puzzle game, which uses its eerie visuals and elusive story as an intrinsic element of the experience rather than a mere design affectation. It is a game that asks subtle questions about the nature of creativity and play, and later it takes a breathtakingly meta turn that will thrill those who remember Kojima’s tricks in the Metal Gear Solid series. It is also a meditation on the troubled relationship between art and commerce, and quite frankly, there could not be a more timely concern for a video game to explore.

At a time when the big video game companies are focused on building video games designed to function like sport, with seasons and passes and never-ending fixtures designed to dominate your leisure time, what a joy to be presented with a game that is so intricate and contained. This is a perfectly made contraption, with a start, a middle and an end, intended to inspire joy and build culture, and not, mercifully, shareholder value.

For Yu and Perry, it’s been a preposterously ambitious undertaking, multiplying the challenges and timings involved in crafting a single video game by a factor of 50. For us, the result is a gift of wild generosity, a demonstration of how much untapped creative terrain remains in even the crudest-looking video games.

Wanderstop’s cosy and cute exterior belies something much richer and much cleverer than I have seen in quite some time. It is a masterpiece in a cute disguise – offering the player a place worth visiting, staying and paying attention to.

While on-pitch matters between these two old foes are too close to call, Fifa’s breathtaking scope secures yet another silver pot for an already heaving trophy cabinet.

The Metal Gear myth has never before appeared so agile, fresh and youthful, but more than the setting its Platinum's virtuoso coders that shine throughout, the object slicing a marvel of high-speed 3D manipulation. A technical masterpiece, Rising offers a funfair ride approximation of Konami's brooding series, but one with more than enough capacity for the Bayonetta veteran to express their dexterous expertise.

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.

Valve has created a masterpiece in Portal 2. The depth of content, the mind-bending mechanics and fantastic experience are almost certain to satisfy ardent fans of the first game; and to all newcomers to the series, it's as simple as this: prepare to have your mind blown. Over and over again.

This game may be beautiful, but it is also deadly.

The time I have spent in its company has been engrossing, eerie, and unexpectedly thought-provoking. Horror provides a skewed and shadowy lens through which to view our lives and learn new things about ourselves and the world, and it has been expertly utilised here. With love as its focus, Fear the Spotlight will do more than scare you.

Astro Bot is still the wonderful tribute to PlayStation history and hardware design that Astro’s Playroom was, but it has been given room to grow beyond a characterful tech demo and into the best platform game I have played in many years. Actually, it’s one of the best platformers I’ve ever played, – and, as a child of the 90s, I truly have played a tonne of them. PlayStation has been lacking a great homegrown family-friendly game since LittleBigPlanet, and Astro Bot is a worthy inheritor of that series’ playfully humorous legacy.

The genius of GTA V is in the sheer seductive force of its vision. The visuals are astonishing – just astonishing. Surely pushing this ageing hardware to the limits, we get the dense downtown with its soaring skyscrapers and murky, rubbish-strewn back alleys. But then out into the country, we have rolling grasslands and desert stretches, coyotes roaming, the shadows of eagles swooping overhead...The world drags you in. It begs you to explore – and then it rewards you.