Metal Gear Solid V is a game-changing triumph. It is comfortably the best stealth game yet made. But that accolade sells the game short. This is the final evolution of a video game director’s singular vision, one first painted in the crude pixels of the 1980s and now fully realised, fully resplendent.

An abundance of rough edges, and a weak story, mean that it doesn’t quite go the distance. Avalanche has tuned the engine of the open-world driving genre, but this is certainly no revolution.

Despite the beautiful detailed environment and the promise of entertaining soap opera-style clips, Rapture is a real test of patience – because it’s just so damn slow.

Angry Birds 2 looks great, from the level backdrops through to the little touches: pigs quivering as you prepare to launch a new bird, and then zooming out of the screen towards you as nearby objects explode.

This feels 80% of the way to a great game, but that missing 20% soon comes to dominate the rest. With a little more fine-tuning who knows how The Swindle may have turned out but, as things stand, it feels a little like being short-changed.

What has made this game special is the extra layer of polish on an idea that was already refined, and the resistance to adding unnecessary extras: in this way, it feels like a Nintendo game. Rocket League is simply a joy to play, win or lose. And with friends? Wow. This is the most fun you’ll ever have behind the wheel of a rocket powered football playing car.

Perhaps those overpriced but desirable toys will turn more people’s attention towards this delightful game.

It’s disappointing that, for licensing reasons, the Augusta National course is missing so you don’t get a chance to play at the Masters. Indeed, there are far fewer courses than the 2013 version of the game (with 12 real-life options against the 20 in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2014), and the roster of players has been culled too, with no LPGA stars at all.

What Lego Jurassic doesn’t do is innovate on the previous Lego games a great deal – nor does it really need to. This is aimed squarely at children – or more specifically at parents who want to share some nostalgia with their kids while making use of the perfect drop-in/drop-out co-operative option.

Players able to look past the flaws will find one of the most pure, visceral action games available on current machines.

You could look over videogame history and pick out antecedents for some of what Her Story does but, even so, I’ve never played anything quite like it.

Arkham Knight triumphs as a richly empowering comic book fantasy that sees its hero fail almost as much as he succeeds, making him the most believable, the most occasionally unlikeable, and ultimately the most heroic he’s ever been.

What this game brings is something that remains startlingly elusive in the modern canon: a co-op experience that genuinely requires you to work together. For a wildly violent first-person shooter, Payday 2 sure does promote a heartwarming spirit of unity.

At its worst, it’s the gaming equivalent of a drunkard shouting abuse from a park bench. At its best … well, the drunkard has leapt up and now he’s wielding a plastic knife. Rage against political correctness if you like, but don’t support this tired game as part of your ideology – there are so many better uses of your spare time.

Splatoon is a breath of fresh air – or more accurately “splodge of fresh ink” – for those who like to shoot stuff, but have grown tired of the endless bloody churn of gritty, realistic shooters. It is the coolest game on the market.

It’s difficult to think of a driving game on console that engages you more fully than Project Cars.

Crypt of the Necrodancer may not be for everyone, but if the idea of a steamy love-in between two seemingly incompatible genres turns you on, you’re gonna love it.

The way in which the developers manage to wrangle the various, divergent threads of your unique journey, with all of its composite choices and outcomes, while entirely concealing the seams is masterly.

Mortal Kombat X is many things. It is mechanically refined and stylistically muddled; it has a sometimes unpleasantly violent, sometimes charmingly hammy commitment to the traditional fighting game template. It has thrust the series forwards and succeeds in delivering nuance while offering a welcoming genre gateway for inexperienced players.

It’s been a long time coming, but Grand Theft Auto V’s PC debut is a triumph...The Rockstar Editor is endlessly entertaining. The online heists are, with friends, some of the most fun you can have in a multiplayer game. The single-player story is an exhilarating series of increasingly absurd missions. And it all takes place in one of the richest, densest, most atmospheric game worlds ever built.

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

Its elegance, precision, humour, and challenge make Bloodborne irresistible. Ultimately, the horror is secondary; wonder is the true transfusion on offer here.

It’s a game you can complete, and when you do, you’ll want to start playing again immediately, perhaps bumping up the difficulty level or increasing the map size. That’s exactly the same kind of replayability spark that Civilization had all those years ago.

Hotline Miami 2 is a messy, aimless sequel and a step back from the original. Many of its levels feel like crafted set-pieces rather than playgrounds for violent expression, and your scope for creativity is stifled as a result.

The main Hunt gametype is an exceptional experience that, although featuring some familiar mechanics, feels unlike anything else in the genre. The matches have huge diversity, and all create some thrilling rhythm from the mix of hunting and chasing and fighting.

Indeed, one of the best things about Sunless Sea, apart from its beautifully crafted elder-horror stories, fantastically drawn artwork and generally creepy atmosphere, is the feeling that the decisions you make within the game are shaping the narrative, and that by playing, you are writing yourself into that story.

A zombie scenario which is entirely plausible and believable and that, in itself, takes Dying Light to a higher plane, reaching toward the role-playing depth of State of Decay and the sheer nastiness of DayZ. Factor in the giant sandbox of a huge city, and the end result is a scarily immersive experience.

It seems likely that the depth and scale of the experience is only going in one direction: to the stars.