The '90s have nothing on this. Torment: Tides of Numenera might have been fuelled by nostalgia but outstrips its contemporary peers in reactivity, writing and invention.

AreaNet's best expansion yet is brimming with all the detail and character that makes Guild Wars 2 so special, and its approachability to solo players means nobody has to miss out this time around.

It is a game crafted by those with an irrepressible love, and possibly hunger, for words and tales.

Wolfenstein is a masterpiece of its genre. It does good shooting men. But it's more than that, it's an effortlessly melancholy adventure that doesn't drown in its own bombast. It's like finding out that a superstar footballer is a poet, or finding your dog pressing flowers. It's a game with hidden depths that you're invited to explore, but ones that never overshadow the thing it's best at...Which is shooting all the men so that all their blood comes out.

Its story doesn't quite stick the landing, but this is a beautiful game - not just in its look, sound, and feel, or even in its real and relatable characters, but in its message and its delivery.

Gameplay is solid from the start and gains depth, transforming you into a Jedi badass. Respawn has also nailed the Star Wars universe, for better (sights, sounds, and cinematic flair) and worse (cringey dialogue and vacuous plot).

Unlike every other Alien game to date, the alien in Alien: Isolation is an unpredictable enemy. It's off-rails, unscripted and behaves pretty much however it pleases. Like a mad Tamagotchi, the alien is powered by some clever AI routines that allow it to hunt and kill using a bunch of different senses.

Taking lessons learned from previous games, trimming out anything less effective, and scoring home runs with its fresh additions, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is the new gold standard for the series and an absolute treat for RPG and action game fans.

Unrivalled parkour mechanics and tough-as-nails combat more than make up for a bland cyberpunk setting.

Built on the foundations of several fantastic games, and those qualities remain – but you already own them. F1 22 simply doesn’t offer enough for a full-price purchase.

An online horror shooter packing some suitably devilish details, but slow pacing and cruel penalties don’t give you much reason to return.

An exceedingly complex, infinitely rewarding space strategy game. It’s made me more excited about the genre than any other game of its kind since Galactic Civilizations II.

Ghostrunner 2 improves upon everything that made its predecessor great. Framed by a stunning, neon-bathed city with a soundtrack that’s to die for, One More Level’s latest is a high-octane parkour adventure that you really don’t want to miss.

By opening it up and providing countless meaningful choices and random events, Relic has put the war in the players’ hands. It’s not a directed journey through a bunch of scenarios where winning is all that matters; it’s a persistent struggle where failure is always nipping at the Americans’ heels, where an entire company can be lost in battle, making the war seem even more desperate. It’s exhausting, and the best game in the Company of Heroes series.

Any doubts I had during the first episode have been washed away. This is Telltale’s storytelling ability at its very best. Filled with emotionally resonant dialogue, painful scenes and a cast that’s quickly matured, A House Divided makes it seem possible for The Walking Dead Season Two to eclipse its celebrated predecessor.

A powerfully distilled story told in a time and place that haunts you with its beauty, its mystery, and restraint. Firewatch takes the time to turn its setting into a character, and it's one of the most three-dimensional videogame characters you'll encounter in 2016.

Marathon is a feast for the senses - vibrant sci-fi visuals and world building, amazing sound design, and a brilliant combat experience are the main things elevating it above its extraction shooter competitors. Its endgame map, Cryo Archive, also creates the same intimidating yet jaw-dropping atmosphere of some of Bungie’s finest Destiny raids. However, issues such as clunky inventory management and dull faction quests hold it back from true greatness right now.

Mouse P.I. For Hire takes every noir trope and turns it into something new. A monochrome shooter with a delicious mystery at its core, the varied locales and wonderful voice cast make this one of the best games I've played all year.

That’s the thing about Beyond Earth: I feel like for every considered, clever addition to Civ’s formula, there’s always a near miss. War is fun, but the AI is not. Aliens are novel, but humans are dreary. I enjoyed playing it, I’m still playing, but it just hasn’t gripped me like previous games. I want it to be better, more interesting, than it is.

But Vietnam ‘65 is really closer to great board game design than traditional PC wargame design. It’s a single scenario that operates according to very special rules. But it holds up under repeated play.

Forget the campaign - multiplayer is where it’s at. Impeccably balanced, ludicrously varied, and damn near perfect.

Turns out it’s possible to be a turn-based Warhammer 40k game and still retain user-friendliness and pace. Who knew.

Wasteland 2 is huge. It’s not just the massive map, but the number of stories and the myriad ways they can play out. Though some moments left me disappointed, I always left the game eager to return. Inventive solutions to tricky standoffs, my failure to save a life, a silly line of text spotted in the corner of my eye - those are the things that stuck with me every time I pressed “quit”.

A vibrant snapshot of the Victorian era that’s bustling with character, but doesn’t explore the intriguing, seismic politics of the period.

While not every multiplayer addition is as good as it could be, Modern Warfare’s campaign sets a new gold standard for the series that will be hard for sequels to match.

By building on the original’s foundations with more impactful decision-making and gameplay refinements, The Outer Worlds 2 feels like the Obsidian game that Fallout: New Vegas fans have craved for over a decade.

I’m hooked in the same way I was with the last game, and not because it’s stayed the same, but because it’s managed to strike that balance between the comfortingly familiar and the refreshingly new.

Frontier delivers a richly detailed and visually glorious zoo creation sim for genre fans, newbies, and animal lovers alike, bloated only a little by a few clumsy interfacing points.