The diversity and creative ingenuity of these little four-dimensional riddles is truly impressive. I was sad to finish the game after four or so hours, but enriched by the journey.

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

This game shows tremendous love for all things Spider-Man, and the ending packs a punch he would be proud of. But Insomniac relies too much on its hero to elevate the world built around him, with the result that the game wears thin some time before its powerful conclusion.

The most important aspects - how it looks and the feel of play - are top-drawer, but this only makes the surrounding drabness even more disappointing, and ensures that PES will remain the preferred choice of contrarians only.

No other game this year will make you an accomplice in a dastardly raccoon plot to take over a town.

F1 2018 is a very, very good racing game. The authenticity is exceptional, whether you’re twiddling with the ERS system’s electronic boost-delivery as you figure out a way past the car in front, or trying not to get penalised for driving too quickly in a virtual safety car situation. For die-hard Formula One fans, it’s essential, but an abundance of driver aids make it forgiving enough to welcome more casual motor-racing fans, too.

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.

Phantom Doctrine may find an enthusiastic audience with strategy-game masochists. It is complex and open-ended; there are multiple ways to finish missions, and they’re are not always about taking out targets. But it’s also punishing and opaque, poorly explained and hampered by a flummoxing plot. For most of us, it’s a confused and very niche experience.

The ability to explore space with a party of up to three friends makes it feel much less lonely than before. And where it once was difficult to return to a previously visited planet, establishing bases allows you to make some small corner of the universe feel like home.

The Crew 2 has the whiff of a game that might become something wonderful in a year’s time, after numerous patches and additions. But right here, at the beginning, it doesn’t do enough.

Captain Spirit is only clumsy occasionally; as a whole it is affecting, sweet and memorable. It is a free taster of a forthcoming game from the same developer, Life Is Strange 2, but more than just an advert or a demo, it is its own short story about an everyday tragedy.

In spite of a smattering of minor missteps, Evolution is engrossing and clearly created with a deep affection for the source material. Any fan of the films (or the books) who has ever imagined opening a disaster-prone theme park will have a good time with it, despite the repetition.

In introducing cooperative multiplayer, it has opened up an entirely new way to experience the adorable conceit of yarn characters making their way through a gigantic human world – but in freeing up movement and removing some of the friction, it has lost a little of the original’s focus and heart.

After the touching emotional drama of Dontnod’s previous game – the coming-of-age adventure Life Is Strange – Vampyr’s ambitious but awkward chin-stroking is disappointingly inert, while its failure to reconcile its ethical hand-wringing with its gratuitous combat leaves it as conflicted as its undead protagonist.

If you want to visit Lordran and enjoy a straight-up bash-the-baddies quest, then you’ll find no better collection of bosses than this. If a new kind of adventure appeals, however, one in which quick fingers matter less than brains and human cunning, there’s still nothing like Dark Souls. After seven years its mystery has diminished, but it’s still among the best of the best.

Detroit: Become Human is a spectacularly crafted game that bends and branches out around the player’s choices in an astonishing and unparalleled way. Although hampered by tired central plots and some predictable, occasionally hokey storytelling, the result is a technical feat in video game development and a meticulously detailed cinematic achievement.

State of Decay 2 is brainless, ramshackle fun. Most of its action resembles Benny Hill more closely than The Walking Dead. It doesn’t really deliver what it promises, and in many obvious ways, it’s a mess. Yet lots of messy games are fun, and this is too – especially on those forays when you slaughter zombies by the dozen and rock up home loaded with loot. In scattered moments, there are glimpses of the game State of Decay 2 could have been. Sadly, they are the only times it pulls at your heartstrings.

Deadfire is an entertaining adventure that will keep anyone with a soft spot for this genre hooked. It has a confidently told story and the combat and character progression are as fun as the original but easier to understand. It is also a commitment to finish, taking tens (if not hundreds) of hours to complete.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is a dull game with a great concept, made borderline unplayable by its hyper-aggressive monetisation.

It is rare to play a game so accomplished in everything it sets out to do. God of War is a standard-setter both technologically and narratively. It is a game that, until recently, would have been impossible.

It is no wonder Sea of Thieves has drawn comparisons with No Man’s Sky – at its best, when it’s firing on all cylinders and you let yourself sink into its peculiar vision, it is majestic. The glint of the sun on the choppy waters, the friend who always gets lost in the caves, saving a hold full of chickens from drowning, standing on an island after a battle and watching your ship sink beneath the foam. These moments are the treasure. But are they enough? The problem is not only that there’s too little to do; it’s that you want so much more.

There are great individual moments in Far Cry 5. The gunplay is excellent, its unpredictable world generates daring stories of accidental heroism, and when it leans into the whole red-blooded American patriotism schtick, it’s genuinely funny. It doesn’t always fit together as well as it should, sometimes forcing the player to work around the game rather than with it – but the wildly vacillating tone is the bigger issue. It’s at once disorienting and noncommittal. Paradoxically, this is an extreme satire of modern America that says pretty much nothing about it.

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.

Its gorgeously lush visuals are quite simply among the best ever seen in a game, offering an object lesson in how stylisation has the power to trump photorealism even in the 4K age. Some players will lack the time or patience to put in the effort that any heavyweight role-playing game demands – this is a 50-hour adventure at least – but it puts forward an irresistible case for your attention. As video games are once again weathering ignorance-fuelled attacks that paint them as universally gun-centric, violent and nihilistic, Ni no Kuni is a timely counterpoint.

The Yakuza games have always balanced brutality with tear-jerking sentimentality: it’s a curious mix, but they commit so wholeheartedly to both that they somehow pull it off. It’s no surprise when the final act launches a full-blooded assault on your heartstrings. Yakuza 6 may not be subtle, but few players will be left dry-eyed as the curtain on this tale is finally drawn.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, at least for anyone who played its brilliant but cruel predecessor FTL: Faster Than Light, is how overwhelmingly fair Into the Breach is. There are no random events that unexpectedly handicap you. Instead, every situation is winnable from the outset (though poor first-turn decisions will change that), and you are shown the consequences of any action before you commit to it.

This short collection of small moments manages to cover a wide range of powerfully relatable emotional highs and lows, beautifully capturing what it’s like to fall in love for the first time.

It’s plausibly a commentary on the nature of an ecosystem, but the emotional reward doesn’t compensate a player for the amount of busywork.