There are all sorts of decisions to make: should you try and cover up the civilian casualties from a stray airstrike or fess up, lowering support? Will you educate farmers on use of pesticides, or offer passive advice? It sounds dry, but once you’re in the thick of it, using the game’s myriad social and political leavers to lessen the chaos, it’s utterly gripping and offers layers of extra complexity over Plague Inc.’s already highly compelling ruleset.

It has extremely high production values, but the lack of skill needed and the emphasis on waiting for absolutely everything limit its appeal.

As a pick up and play mobile puzzle game this ticks the right boxes: levels are short and satisfying to crack, and its cute graphics are just enough to give you an impression of golf.

It’s very much its own game however, its Czech roots evident in both its art style and slapstick sense of humour, which features a much rowdier demeanour than past games from the studio. CHUCHEL is an irreverent, surreal rollercoaster ride that never lets ideas or cultural references outstay their welcome.

It may be turn-based and lack any sort of time restriction, but it’s also highly competitive, with a distinct stab of angst when another player steals the very line of food and felines you’d nervously been eyeing. Sadly, it’s also riddled with bugs, many of which force you to restart the app, something that with any luck will be addressed in an update.

Yes, you can still be brutalised by higher level players, but most matches don’t feel that way, and real-time strategy fans aren’t exactly spoiled for choice on mobile, making Rivals well worth trying out.

The result isn’t quite the sum of its parts unfortunately, because although each course looks stunning, rounds have an unfortunate tendency to be frustrating, the random factor underpinning victory just slightly too prominently. That’s actually quite a good analogue for real world crazy golf courses, and if you enjoy that element in the digital world this will seem pretty great.

The charmingly dark and brooding graphic style works nicely with the fizzing electromagnetism of each level, but it’s undone by the touchscreen controls. The demanding, pixel-perfect jumps you need to pull off to complete platform sections immediately rendered exasperating by the woolly onscreen joystick and buttons. It’s not in any way a dead loss, but without a physical joypad you should brace yourself for irritation.

Vengeance’s 12 or so hours of entertainment are joyous, and speeding through them with paid upgrades is a fool’s errand. This is still the very pinnacle of the Tower Defense genre and even if you completely ignore its microtransactions, it’s a superb game.

More than just XCOM with talking animals, this inventive strategy game has plenty of new ideas of its own – even it’s a little lacking in replayability.

A no-thrills PlayStation 4 port that has most of what you’d want from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds but in a much uglier, watered down package.

Still one of the most original and entertaining video games there’s ever been, with a surreal sense of humour that permeates every corner of the gameplay and presentation.

Easily the best Smash Bros. ever made, with a fantastic new story campaign and a near infinite range of characters and options for multiplayer.

It’s an improvement on the last game but as a franchise Just Cause is still squandering the majority of its potential with its banal mission design and dull storytelling.

A survival game that isn’t out just to punish its players, but to entertain; with an impressive mix of exploration, crafting, and survival horror.

The cleverly-calibrated control system is the main point of interest here, but this is also an entertaining, if somewhat staid, take on VR Super Monkey Ball.

The video game equivalent of a concept album, and a hugely successful mix of visual, music, and gameplay influences.

A labour of love that few are likely to appreciate – but if for some reason you did want a hand-drawn remake of Toki then this is your lucky year.

The spirit of 90s arcade racing is reborn in a homage to everything from OutRun to Lotus Turbo Challenge, and despite a few bumps in the road it’s all just as much fun as you remember.

The best 2D shooters of the retro era return once again, with a good value package that has plenty for new fans and old.

Even at this early stage (there’s no indication yet when Red Dead Online will officially emerge from beta) there’s plenty to do, with a similar wealth of content to the single-player game. And yet Red Dead Online hasn’t abandoned its essential character: it’s altogether slower and more content to leave you to your own devices than GTA Online. The prospect of living an online life in Rockstar’s vision of the not-quite-as wild-as-it-used-to-be West seems just as alluring as the story mode.

A daring, and largely successful, attempt to show the civilian side of war, that succeeds as an interactive drama even when it occasionally fails as a game.

While it packs in more content than its predecessors, RIDE 3 feels soulless and nonessential if you already own last year’s instalment.

It commits no cardinal sins but this belated return to the world of Darksiders comes across as shallow, frustrating, and disappointingly dull.

Imaginative use of VR to make one of the best new music games of the generation, and which also manages to be the best Star Wars game never made.

A disastrous failure whose technical shortcomings may one day be fixed but whose design failings, and obliviousness to its own potential, suggests a game that is irrevocably broken.

If you’ve already played The Heist you’ll easily be able to imagine how Turf Wars plays out. In fact, if you’ve played any story DLC from the last few years it follows a very familiar path of artificially extending the running time of the parent game with the bare minimum of new features and enemies. But more of the same is exactly what some people want from Marvel’s Spider-Man and it’ll still be interesting to see how things end with the final DLC next month.

One of the best PC to console ports ever, with the strategy great working impressively well on the Switch and opening up the series to a whole new audience.