One of the best marriages of gameplay, graphics and music ever seen on a portable and a triumphant return to the roots of rhythm action.

A successful relaunch of the Shinobi franchise that doesn’t attempt to do anything startlingly new but instead makes do with being a very well-constructed action adventure.

The overwrought storytelling is not the sort of taste many will want to acquire, but that doesn't stop this being one of the best tactical role-players ever.

Nintendo successfully reinvents Pikmin as a Stardew Valley style cosy game, that’s both much bigger and more approachable than ever before.

An excellent battle system shackled to a dispiritingly dull and long-winded fantasy adventure, that takes an inordinate amount of time to say nothing of value.

Uncharted 4 is one of the best action adventure games ever made but this remaster does so little to improve the experience it doesn’t feel like anything other than a cynical cash grab.

Easily the best downloadable extra so far and the only one to realise that Mass Effect 2's true strength is in character and melodrama, not action.

Making full use of PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller to convey an incredibly deep and satisfying driving model, everything from weather to reflected sound effects have been modelled to perfection – making Gran Turismo 7 easily the world’s most complete driving game.

A surprisingly conservative follow-up to Returnal but the transcendent third person action is so well orchestrated that qualms about the storytelling and lack of innovation seem like only minor concerns in comparison.

It's not clear what the four year wait was in aid of but despite only a few, small, new ideas this is still one of the best Tower Defense games on any format.

You wouldn’t know to look at it though, its graphics looking hilariously ropey by today’s standards, but playing it reveals a game that is still in a class of its own. Without a central story or campaign to anchor you, once you’ve completed the grossly insufficient tutorial you’re left to do practically anything you like in a world that contains well over a decade’s worth of gameplay for newcomers.

An excellent sequel that marries Metroidvania style exploration with a dizzying array of new combat mechanics, to make one of the best roguelike experiences of this or any year.

A welcome homage to JRPG classic Chrono Trigger and one of the best-looking 2D games of recent years, even if it’s not really doing anything new.

Perhaps the closest there’ll ever be to a portable version of Dark Souls, but the unreliable controls make the punishing difficulty harder to bare.

Both games are not only Nintendo at their peak (as good as Odyssey is, we consider both Galaxy games to be superior) but the whole art of video games. The creativity, the craft, and the bond between your simple control inputs and the magic happening on-screen has never been bettered. A decade and a half ago, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 stood as two of the best video games ever made and that is absolutely still the case now.

The best portable real-time strategy game ever made - even if most of the credit belongs to Blizzard not Gameloft.

Pokemon needs evolution not remakes, but it's still hard to resist the most feature rich version yet.

Not just a tech demo, but a cleverly designed time waster that creates an absorbing challenge out of its apparently limited mechanics.

A dream come true for Dragon Ball fans, but also a highly competent fighting game that is a front runner for the best fighter of the generation.

The lack of any meaningful additions is a surprise, but it only underlines what a fantastic game the Game Boy original was, in what is still a classic Zelda title that thoroughly deserves the star treatment.

An excellent conversion of the original iOS hit, and a wonderfully disturbing horror story that innovates in terms of everything from visuals and interface to its macabre narrative.

Less consistent than the previous games, and the Batmobile is a surprisingly unwelcome addition, but even as the worst of the Arkham titles this is still a superior superhero adventure.

One of the best ever examples of how to do DLC right, being both good value for money and introducing several new features to the parent game.

The whole package absolutely shames most other downloadable expansions (including the earlier Red Dead ones) and as silly and shallow as it all is it's just as unmissable as the main game itself.

The best Spider-Man game ever made… but only just, since it fails to move the superhero video game genre forward in any important way.

Still one of the most beautiful video games ever created, not to mention the best Zelda game that never was.

By Nintendo standards this is no classic, but by anyone else's it's a fun and accessible 2D platformer.

The best Pokémon game yet, that expertly combines the best elements of the old games with a mountain of new features and wonderfully odd creatures.