It’s one of those ‘good game buried in here somewhere’ experiences. Tonally it’s all over the place, and its design may as well be from the dark ages at this point. But there’s an alternate universe in which the likeable, upgradeable Agents and gratifying gear-gating are instead married to interesting, varied missions and an atmospheric open-world. That is what it would have taken for Agents of Mayhem to shine, and the most bizarre thing about its actual execution is how deliberately Volition seem to have shot for mediocrity. This doesn’t feel like a game hampered by ineptitude, but instead by a misunderstanding - or plain indecision - as to who it’s actually intended for.

There’s a firm foundation for a great competitive shooter here, but the rest of the house needs to be built on it sooner rather than later. LawBreakers needs ultra-skilled players to come in and show the rest of us what’s possible, but they need a competitive format to entice them in. Until that happens it’s a dizzying and consistently exciting shooter, but one whose long-term appeal isn’t yet locked in.

I enjoyed almost every minute I spent with Tokyo 42. Few games feel so immediately and consistently inviting - there are no penalties for pissing about in this urban utopia. You don’t even have to feel bad about killing civilians, as they’ll simply flicker back to life once you’ve ended your shooting spree. It’s a remarkable shooter, a solid stealth-‘em-up, and a terrible racing game.

The Long Journey Home does a superb job of making you feel like a stranger in a strange place. The aliens you encounter are all established and regard you with mild curiosity rather than alarm. You’re properly up against it and that can be very gripping. After six hours, however, it’s just draining, and because every objective is a mini-game, there’s almost no respite from the moment-to-moment struggle.

Just as Endless Legend and Civilization V are now far superior to how they started, so can Endless Space 2 be. It’s odd to talk of foundations in something so markedly floaty and space-based, so perhaps it’s better to think of this as an outpost, plonked down on a planet waiting to be colonised. It’s a fertile planet, sure, but one that’s yet to be fully exploited.

The Surge is a superb game on its own terms, compelling in every nook and cranny, lopped-off limb, and newfound shortcut. Underpinning it all is a surprisingly engaging, multifaceted narrative, and a set of combat mechanics that offer a little something for every type of player, but that punish all comers with equal aplomb.

The sad reality is Strafe exasperates as much as it exhilarates. For every fleet footed show of sharp shooting it conspires to blast itself in the food with devious tactics and a steady slew of quite ‘fuuuuu!’ moments to players brave enough to endure the onslaught. There’s a really solid, often graceful FPS in here, one beefed up with generous side content – the 10 room horde mode-esque Murderzone and online speedruns break up the crushing campaign. Yet ultimately, you can’t quite outflank Strafe’s unfair, overwhelming slaughter.

An expansion that makes arguably the best game in the series, even if it was a tad conservative, better and more exciting. But the real coup is how it makes every turn feel important. There’s always a new deal to be made, more citizens to groom, burgeoning worlds to fine-tune and enemies to spy on. Crusade’s tireless pursuit to make the moment-to-moment management as engaging as a galactic war is the real headline feature.

Indeed, Prey is the best performing triple-A game I’ve played for many months. It’s incredibly rare to be able to boot up a game at maximum settings and get consistent reports of 90+ fps when using mid-tier hardware, but here we are. No matter how many benchmarks I ran, the reports came back clear and consistent: on a GTX 1060, an average of over 100 fps is easy to attain. [Tech Review]

Red Barrels should be commended for trying a different approach to their sequel, but unfortunately it’s just not the instant horror classic the first game was.

This is the most conventional RTS in an historically unconventional series. While this fact alone may divide players, its quality of presentation and polished mechanics mean that, as it inevitably expands with more content, Dawn of War III may yet become the champion of a genre that remains stubbornly resistant to evolution.

The luster wears off as the game wears on; and boy does it wear in those latter stages as the level design peters out and the global Pagie population diminishes. For several hours, Yooka-Laylee gave me the kind of thrills that I’d long been looking to rediscover, but that initial warm blast of nostalgia quickly fades, revealing this to be a mirage of the 3D platforming golden years, rather than their long-desired comeback.

If you look at it as a reboot, a starting point for the series, there’s lots of promise in that future. The first Mass Effect had countless problems, far more than here, but that will always be remembered as a classic, despite leaving similar threads hanging. Ultimately, this is a story about laying the foundations of a civilization, and it feels like BioWare were doing the same for the future of the franchise. In that way, these RPG developers have become Pathfinders themselves.

Proof that bad writing can ruin anything, Ghost Recon Wildlands feels like the death knell for a particular style of open-world game. Occasionally great moments, like the co-op play and the Sync Shot, are sadly drowned out.

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.

A bombastic but simplified RTS with great set-pieces and interesting new ideas in Blitz mode, but a lack of depth that'll shorten its longevity with PC players.

Ubisoft have done a solid job with For Honor, then, forging it from worthy materials and engraving it with a few details that place it above other games from similar scale publishers. There may be the odd occasion when it feels like it’ll buckle, but in the end its blade always seems to strike true. [Tech review: Pass]

A scrappy, unpolished stealth shooter that nevertheless snipes at the heartstrings through its slapstick thirst for gory kills and open-ended maps.

A triumph in both mechanics and delivery, Hitman turns its controversial episodic release model into a true strength that's suited to IO's vast and nuanced sandboxes.

After the fifth and sixth games, the Resident Evil series was in dire need of a re-think. That’s exactly what Capcom have done, and they’ve done so in a way that’s braver, bolder, and more assured than I could ever have dreamed. They’ve refreshed the series for modern times, incorporating new techniques to ensure the horror is both sickening and chilling, while re-focusing the core structure around the things that made these games so great to begin with. The result is something that will almost certainly go down as a Resident Evil classic; a title that will be spoken about with reverence in the future, and an excellent turning point for the series as a whole. In those respects, Resident Evil 7 is the new Resident Evil 4.

An endearingly daft sequel that ditches the original's dour action for a brand of subversive play that squeezes the most out of some cracking gadgets and a brilliant map.

Planet Coaster isn’t Rollercoaster Tycoon, nor is it Theme Park. This may put off those looking for a simpler, more nostalgic take on the genre, but it’s nonetheless the most creative, technically intricate theme park sim to date.

Inconsistent performance aside, Dishonored 2 is a marvel. It’s a magnet for positive adjectives, setting a new and extremely lofty bar for future stealth games.

It'll take a few balance patches and expansions before it achieves absolute perfection, but the list of wholesale changes Civ VI brings to the storied formula makes for an instantly sumptuous strategy treat.

An initially intriguing game that quickly reveals itself to be a slight and unimaginative shooter. An opportunity missed, and a let-down on a technical level to boot.

From giving PC players split-screen, to flawless frame-rates on mid-high-end rigs (Radeon R9 390X GPU, i7-4790k CPU, 16GB DDR3 RAM here) and bug-free performance, to a multiplayer mode that doesn't split its community with an insidious season pass, Gears of War 4 4 is progressive not only for its series, but for the entire industry.

Perfectly distilling the Horizon formula, Playground Games have produced a racer that's varied, exciting and gorgeous to look at - and arguably the best of the generation.

Rivals puts a spin on its predecessor’s formula, but doesn’t really improve on it. For the yet to be initiated, the original is simply bolder, represents a more unique take on the 4X genre, and is thus the one to pick up. The ability to choose how to take on the Sorcerer King, directly or indirectly, is still a welcome addition though. Indeed, I wish it could be added to the original game as a mode or optional victory path. With that not happening, the standalone is the only way to get that extra choice and experience the apocalyptic war from a different perspective.