The museum itself is pretty rudimentary: a dark hall, with signposted identical locks pointing the way towards Nordhagen’s recreations of lock-picking mini-games. It looks and sounds basic, but the amount of effort, knowledge and understanding of the topic (and of game design and history more generally) that has gone into this mini museum is abundantly evident, from both the exhibits and the text that accompanies them. Like listening to someone talk about the PhD research they’re doing on a niche topic, it might sound boring at the outset, but by the end of an hour, you’ll come away with something you definitely didn’t know before.

This endearing adventure feels like a fever-dream Flash game you discovered in the 00s and could never find again.

The soundtrack is one of the best of the year, and it’s incredibly stylish. But the sheer gory, numerical compulsion at its core gets more terrifying the more you consider how much sway this manic impulse toward numb, exploitative accumulation holds in our own world. Dystopias like this used to feel creepily prescient. Now, they just feel terrifyingly honest.

There are none of the dials and tickers that usually clutter the screen in sci-fi games and films: your HUD is empty save for the occasional text prompt to inform you of your distance to the monolith, or the raindrops that smear across the screen. The uninterrupted views and undulating rhythms invite a near meditative state, the thrill of which deepens as your skill at manoeuvring the craft increases. A joyous, otherworldly ride.

This unquestionably beautiful game about saving a planet from an encroaching black hole boldly goes where few have remained awake.

You could argue that Master Chief is the necessary foil to Halo’s inherent silliness, the gravelly undertone that ties all the pratfalls together. All the same, he and his inability to get over Cortana have long since lost their charm. The series has tried to move away from him before – in that regard, Halo 3: ODST remains its finest hour. It needs to carry on trying.

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.

My hope is that we’ll look back at this launch and laugh, remembering that a great game began on such a shoogly peg. For now, the best fun is found in the sideshows. On the main stage of its chaotic 128-player showdowns, it stumbles.

These versions of Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Vice City (2002) and San Andreas (2004) are in no way definitive. Seeing them like this is more than a disappointment. It is infuriating.

Selecting a dinosaur zooms the camera in from the top-down, god’s-eye-view to track it as it plods around its enclosure, grazing, drinking from a watering hole or occasionally battling a member of the pack for dominance. Each dinosaur comes with a multimillion year history including detailed accounts of what it ate and where it lived. Even though you’re sat in your living room, Frontier Developments’ magic is in transporting us – through lifelike animations, through snuffling grunts, through the soppy look in a stegosaurus’s eyes – to where we all wanted to be in 1993: standing in a real Jurassic Park, watching these impossibly majestic creatures.

This is a small game, but its meaning and intent are large. Like any domestic drama, it tells us as much about our own lives, tastes and experiences as it does about the characters we are bonding with. One thing is certain: learning about the relationships this protagonist has with her possessions, her lovers and her family, and how they affect her, is one of the most profound and touching experiences I’ve ever had playing a video game.

Both longtime RTS fans and Age of Empires vets will find things to love here, a comfy if well-worn tactician’s armchair to slip into, spiffed up, and with a few shining surprises stuffed down the sides. But it all comes at such a premium, and with campaigns geared so heavily as tutorials for the multiplayer, it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone not already invested.

Call of Duty: Vanguard is the video game equivalent of an old war film that you’ve seen many times before, but still enjoy watching with a feeling of nostalgic comfort that armed conflict perhaps should not provide. It won’t set the world alight, but gives you the opportunity to blow a lot of it up – which is, after all, what we want from this series.

This is a barren world, but rendered exquisitely, drawing careful inspiration from French cartoonist Jean “Moebius” Giraud in its blend of space and intricacy. Exploring its crannies delivers a slow-burn joy. Developed by a small team from north London (Shedworks, because the two founders began work in a garden shed), Sable is an unusual expression of the so-called “open world” – the dominant video game genre today. Most lead you in certain directions, ensuring you approach landmarks from the best angles, matching every plot beat with a suitable musical flourish. Here, by contrast, you are totally free to explore wherever, whenever, however you wish. There are whispered points of interest, but there is no wearying to-do list, and as such your journey and destination are uniquely, wonderfully personal.

You could spend months in Forza Horizon 5 on a coast-to-coast trip, or dip in for a few days to see the sights and admire the sunsets. The vast array of fun on offer means that whatever you do, wherever you end up, you’ll have a very good time.

Simplistic, repetitive interactions drag on an otherwise engaging story based on the Marvel franchise.

This feels like a far more honest take on what Far Cry is to most people: a joyful, chaotic toybox. There’s room for improvement – the questionable Latin American representation, for a start – but there’s no doubt this is something of an awakening for the series, exploring ideas I’m excited to see refined in iterations to come. In particular, doing away with the cumbersome pretence of political salvation leaves you free to pick and choose your own adventure, whether that’s toppling Castillo or just being crowned Gran Primo champion. Like Yara, Far Cry 6 is brimming with potential – you just have to step up and shape it.

Perhaps I am asking too much. We don’t pry for depth from Mario as he rescues his princess, or ask what motivates Tom Nook in his real estate empire. Like pretty much all Nintendo’s games, with their long legacies and perfect jumps, this feel good to play, and that should be enough: but I don’t come to a Nintendo title for enough. I left Dread feeling that perhaps the real legacy of 2D Metroid will be the games it inspires, rather than the games themselves.

Despite a messy start, this spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead becomes more challenging and characterful the longer you spend with it.

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

The Artful Escape is, Galvatron has said, a 17-year-old’s conception of what it is to play in a rock band: musical transcendence meets universal adoration beneath the hot lights. But behind the shimmer, this is a touching tale of how to break free of the creative expectations of others. There is little traditional challenge here, but as a left-field power fantasy, few video games are so immediately stylish or so gratifying.

Fifa 22 is absolutely unmistakably a Fifa game – it has the sophistication and polish we’ve come to expect, with all the player likenesses, authentic stadia and recognisable commentators we see every year. But right at the core of it is a match engine that feels more surefooted than ever, at a time when the game’s more tactically complex rival Pro Evolution Soccer has been relegated to a free-to-play existence with all the compromises that will inevitably entail. If you can live with the loot-box trickery of Ultimate Team, this is a gigantic, rewarding simulation that offers a ton of variety and scope, and many, many moments of exquisite goalmouth drama.

Death Stranding remains kind of ridiculous: a bloated prog rock album of a game created by a man with a large film collection, an indulgent publisher and a budget few creators could ever dream of. But out of such ostentatious ingredients, astonishing moments can occasionally arise. If you were looking for a PS5 game that informs us that, yes, near-photorealistic visuals can lift a work in more than a surface aesthetic sense, this is it. The image of the dead rising as twisted smoking shadows above the gnarled countryside is something that will live with me for a long time. It all goes to show that sometimes, it really can take a £500 games console and a multimillionaire developer with an Ultravox fixation to make magical things happen.

The things is, you don’t have to think about anything if you don’t want to; you can just enjoy the adrenaline rush, blasting symbolic victims of player violence (enemies even disappear in a whirl of multicoloured light when shot, a self-reflexive reference to the sheer disposability of non-player characters). But a darker subtext is always there, if you want to look beneath the gleaming surface...In this way, Deathloop gets to have its cake and eat it – over and over again. And it is, to be fair, absolutely delicious.

Interactive possibilities make this dorky tale about a small-town psychic musician strangely absorbing.

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.

Uncover a grim conspiracy and sweet-talk snooty bears in this genre-hopping indie game.

This peaceful circuit is perfect for the kind of person who tries to observe traffic laws when playing Grand Theft Auto.