If its publisher Ubisoft continues to support it, Skull and Bones will attract a committed player base of sea-combat enthusiasts who enjoy tinkering with their ships’ builds and facing off against each other, or teaming up to take on the intimidating fleets, cargo heists and sea monsters that lurk tens of hours in. If you are after a game that feels like a pirate adventure, though, you’re still better off with Black Flag.

Like the best punk records, No More Heroes 3 is a grower. Its messy and unpolished gameplay can be completely offputting, but a scrappy, anarchic joy courses through it. For those with a love for gaming’s weirder side and nostalgia for a time where most games were endearingly unpolished, this will suit nicely. For many modern gamers, though, reaching the best sections will require more patience than it’s worth.

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

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’.

This is a well-made Avatar game. If you’re fond of the James Cameron films, then you’re in for a real treat, while even Avatar apostates will probably find something to enjoy amid Pandora’s dense undergrowth. But there are better examples of this form, and if you’re not all-in on the Na’vi way of life, you’ll be gritting your teeth through their tedious stories.

In Blood Dragon the risk-taking, while welcome, is arguably in the wrong place. After 60 minutes' play, the joke wears away to near invisibility, and all that's left are the familiar systems that underpin the game. These remain enjoyable and, after the slow start, most players will be compelled to push through to the end. But there's an undeniable thinness here, the sense of a mild joke that's been eked out for too long, that can't fully wrap around the heft of the underlying game onto which it's been grafted.

Reigns offers a pretty, innovative and charming diversion, then, but don’t let yourself care too deeply about what actually happens, or the charm will give way to frustration fast.

An absorbing thriller with a splash of They Live and The Goonies, this spooky multiplayer game has you investigating paranormal goings-on in suburbia.

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.

When you’re flat-out sprinting, Catalyst feels wonderful. When standing still, in the Grid Nodes, it’s great too. It’s only in that mid-region, either gaining or losing momentum, that you end up clumsy and infuriated.

SOCOM: Special Forces is, by some distance, the best SOCOM game yet, although it still lacks polish in comparison with the likes of Call of Duty and Crysis 2.

Days Gone is a derivative but enjoyable action-adventure with a beautiful environment, using AI and physics to create exciting moments of procedural entertainment. But its familiar tale of mankind struggling to re-create society after the end of the world and its romantic through-line are haphazardly structured and under-written, and the characters are too busy calling each other sons of bitches and assholes to say or do anything moving, original or profound. This is a game of fun and fury – it’s thrilling at times, but it signifies nothing.

It all adds up to a feeling of becoming enmeshed, slowly but surely, in a little community – one that you become familiar with and part of, even if the moment-to-moment interactions can feel a little shallow. Marvelous also seem to have finally nailed the technical performance for their remakes, too, especially on the Switch, with fast load times and little to no slowdown even with loads of animals on screen. It’s not going to be a game for everyone, but if you can meet A Wonderful Life on its terms, you’ll find a lot to love in its slow-paced, small-town gait.

This remains an odd mix of sporting events that adds little to the franchise or the party game genre that Nintendo created and still dominates.

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

If you have young children and want to share with them the thrill of driving across a wild, fantastical landscape, crashing into stuff and getting constant positive feedback, this would be a smart investment. It is a game with a lot of heart, made by developers who clearly understand how to make kids smile while they play.

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

It's nice to see such a rich franchise reinvented, but lets hope for more ambition and invention in the episodes that follow.

This Definitive Edition might have been wiser to double down on the original, slightly hokey script and performances, rather than strive for something more sophisticated in the rewrite.

Singstar Dance feels like a logical next-step for the series then and will likely get a few parties going this Christmas.

The Almost Gone draws you in with a sinister family mystery, but its aesthetic beauty and strange, succinct puzzles end up carrying it.

Hogwarts Legacy starts to feel like countless open-world games of the past decade once you’ve been playing it for more than 15 hours. However, you get to ride a Hippogriff. It’s those magical moments and the setting that rescue it from mediocrity, but only if the Wizarding World still has you under its spell.

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.

In a motion control game it is simple; control is paramount. When Kinect 2.0 behaves, Rare’s creation can be plenty of fun, especially in a social setting. But its lack of consistency breeds a sense of distrust in players, and with that the fun fades. It seems that flawless hands-free motion control applicable to a variety of living room environments continues to remain just out of our reach.

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.

Writer Alan Wake searches for his missing wife while tackling a malevolent force disguised as darkness in this clunky but atmospheric reboot.

The Crew offers these moments of emergent gameplay for those willing to go find them but, tragically, doesn’t have them naturally stitched into its design upholstery. As such, the potential is too often unpicked by the game’s frustrating shortcomings.

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.