To enjoy that game, you have to forgive incomplete or poorly implemented features, and make your peace with the evil AI. They’re small problems, in the scheme of things, and they don’t spoil a great drive. But they’re just enough to deny Project CARS what could have been a clean pole position.

To review it is to appraise the enormity of the human spirit of exploration, to rate the drive that spurred us to flop up out of the ocean and then up a tree and then back down again and then over some mountains and through some deserts and then off up into the heavens...I love space and Kerbal Space Program.

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.

It’s been a shame to watch all of Perils of Man’s promise go to waste. It got its hooks in me, made me eager to jump down the rabbit hole, but it just led to disappointment.

It is, perhaps, not a very good adventure game, but – and this is despite the first act – it’s a compelling bit of interactive fiction.

For those coming fresh to the experience, you’re about to play one of the best games ever made. It’s still very much the Grand Theft Auto you’ve known and loved since the series transitioned to 3D open worlds in GTA3, but it has been enhanced and improved to dizzying heights.

StarDrive 2 would be an impressive 4X game. But its annoying tone, eccentric AI and the shallowness of the empire management casts a shadow over it. If we weren’t in the middle of an unexpected flood of 4X games, then its take on space conflict alone would make it worth playing, but at the moment there are just too many alternatives.

Personally, I found it a chore, becoming so caught up in my frustration that it became difficult to enjoy the detailed pixel artwork, take in the soundtrack, or even find satisfaction in finally killing a boss. However, I think there are players who will love this game.

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.

Obsidian had a daunting task before them: to make a spiritual successor to a series of games that are inextricably tangled up in nostalgia, over a decade after the height of those games’ popularity. This is not the Baldur’s Gate of 2015, it’s Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, the best parts of the lot of them wrapped up in something new and brilliant.

Visceral have created a perfectly good functioning Battlefield game in Hardline. It shoots as good as the best of them, the car-chases are fun, and the small tweaks made to the core formula are very welcome. But a little refinement does not mask that this is a very similar game to what we bought in 2013; despite the strong efforts to make a variety of new game modes, you can’t shake the feeling of playing classic Battlefield.

If you normally struggle with the multiple complexities of a 4x strategy game, Starships is a great introduction to the genre.

Cities: Skylines is absolutely the best city-builder I’ve played since SimCity 4. From macro to micro, from the sprawling transport networks and city-wide policies to the fine-tuned districts and street-level detail, it impresses.

It’s just not as enjoyable. The first game felt like a focused blast of adrenaline. Hotline Miami 2’s always stopping and starting, its new characters feel rough and buggy, and the new reliance on guns restricts how you can approach combat.

It is, across the board, an improvement on Rome II, despite some issues that have been carried over.

While its stark simplicity might feel cold or even cruel at first, Mode 7 have in fact boiled the Synapse formula down to something perhaps more beautiful, burning away its impurities to leave hard diamond.

There’s not a huge amount of content in Evolve compared to many unlock-led games, but by keeping things tight the game always stays focused on what’s important: the thrill of the hunt. The almost absence of variety in the map design may well hack down Evolve’s lasting appeal, but what’s here in the main game is perfect for many great hours.

The management aspects are shallow, and made entirely redundant by how easy it is to reach Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth. And there’s a serious dearth of good reasons for veteran Cities players to return. They’ve seen it all before.

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

Grow Home is utterly lovely. It’s welcoming and sweet, and its simplicity is as elegant as BUD is adorably clumsy. Little experimental treats like this are worth a dozen Far Creeds and Assassin’s Crys.

I can cheerfully recommend it to people who may never have encountered the game before. But if you’re a Heroes of Might and Magic fan, who never needed high-definition anything to enjoy these games, then the chances are that GOG already had you covered, and there’s not much for you here.

Despite taking cues from other open world games, ones nobody could ever accuse of being fresh, Techland has molded these borrowed parts into something that is occasionally formidable. Dying Light never quite shakes off the spectre of these other games, but it doesn’t play it as safe, presenting a world that is infinitely more deadly and fraught with tension.

After quite a bit of meandering, Life is Strange offers revelations, along with dialogue that isn’t trying to ape how a teenager might sound. Or maybe the awkwardness is just drowned out by Chloe and Max’s sincerity. And, in the tradition of all good TV pilots - it owes as much to TV and cinema as it does to other games - there’s a cliffhanger that’s going to force me to come back.

It’s the most purely fun, accessible RTS I’ve played in years.

It’s loaded with some of the best adventure game one liners; a gripping, winding plot that only slips up three quarters of the way through the game, and then improves drastically afterward; and a vibrant, bizarre world that, for all its weirdness, is extremely easy to get attached to. It’s just not a very impressive remaster.

The more focused campaign, and a protagonist that is much more than a cardboard cut out have elevated the sequel considerably.

Elite: Dangerous is a beautiful arcade experience, plugged into an empty galaxy, one so big and bold that it might trick you into thinking there’s more to see and do than there really is. You’ll probably love it anyway.

A bit skinny for a wargame. I can’t deny that I’ve missed getting stressed about logistics or big picture strategy, and it certainly hasn’t set my heart aflutter in the way that I hoped a Warhammer wargame would. But there aren’t very many wargames that are this easy to dip into, either. It’s got a focus and simplicity that’s often lacking elsewhere, and it could be indispensable for anyone looking to dip their toes into the genre.