As a faction, however, the Wood Elves are a worthy addition to Total War: Warhammer’s burgeoning list of fantastical armies. Distinct and terribly tricky, they make the game feel new again, while forcing half-arsed commanders like myself to up our game.

This is an incredible game. I started it with no expectations at all (as I mentioned before, I can’t even remember why I’d flagged the game to look at), and have come away from it as one of my favourite games of 2016.

You’ll have a good time with Dead Rising 4. But you won’t feel as though you earned it.

These aren’t the worst of the Pinball FX2 tables by any means, and prolonged time with DOOM might even show it to be one of the best, but as a bundle of three, they’re…frustrating is the word I’m looking for. Frustrating because the idea of taking a big RPG and making a pinball table that carries over some of its qualities in mechanics as well as art and sound is brilliant. I suspect they’d need to escape the confines of a single table and such a basic ruleset to succeed though – an entire pinball game based around Fallout, with separate tables for factions and areas? Now, that might work.

Slick, beautiful, gently challenging and supremely well designed, it’s a stunning piece of work.

There is no deep understanding here, you won’t have your mind changed, and it certainly doesn’t have any of the emotional impact of Papers Please. But within its own barmy universe, it works! It’s a good chunk of fun, and easily survives at least a second play to see how much you can mess with people’s lives.

For all of its creative solutions and ideals, Watch Dogs 2 can’t help but see California as an open carry state, and while I’ve enjoyed portions of it enormously, it doesn’t go far enough in stamping its own identity on what is, eventually, another city of crime, cars and firearms.

Atmospheric and impossible to rush, Shadow Tactics is a fabulous game – a game I think I prefer to both Commandos 2 and Desperados. I can see myself replaying it regularly.

Given the lack of a Sim City 2000-style ‘apocalypse now’ button, the scenarios are also a fine way to simply enjoy/scream at the disasters. The dam one, particularly, is a goofy-horrible treat. A meteor slams into the water, which promptly mushrooms over the dam and totally swamps the city beneath it. It’s proper disaster movie stuff: cars screeching to a halt to avoid a rising tide, the waters sweeping people away, the lights slowly dying.

Is it currently fun? Undeniably. It’s gross, silly, and more than a little thrilling, and while the matchmaking system is a bit rubbish, there are always plenty of active servers to choose from manually, ensuring that you won’t have to spend much time looking for a game. But for that single mode to remain fresh, a frequent injection of new stuff is going to be necessary.

Like Cities: Skylines, Planet Coaster gives new life to the management genre, and even if the launch version does little to improve what I’ve played during the beta, this would still be essential for anyone who dreams of packing in their old job and running a theme park.

There’s a lot wrong with The Martian VR Experience [official site], and it’s almost scandalous that they’re charging for it at all, let alone asking sixteen quid, but the bit where you get to drive a rover across an Unreal 4-rendered Mars with I Will Survive blaring is very hard to argue with. The bit where you cack-handedly chuck some potatoes in a bin, less so.

Despite my complaints, this is more than a triumphant return – it’s an improvement on the original in almost every way, and as close to a masterpiece as anything I’ve played this year. If it had a plot as powerful as its setting, any doubts I have that it might be remembered as a masterpiece would vanish.

If you enjoy low-key wind-down sims like Train Simulator and American Truck Simulator I’d be surprised if you didn’t also enjoy City Car Driving.

If it didn’t look so similar to the completely splendid (if also marred by dull combat) Pillars Of Eternity, if those expectations weren’t weighing on it, perhaps there’d be even more leniency. But as it is, this is a decent enough RPG that feels like its wearing clothes that don’t quite fit.

Is it a must-have VR title? No. But there are precious few of those. It is a pretty decent VR title though, with a strong conceit and pleasant scenery. That makes it notable enough. To be honest, what it really needs is support for sticking your arms out at your side and flapping around like Big Bird, but perhaps the later Vive version and/or Oculus Touch support might let us live out our Michael Keaton mid-life crisis fantasies.

After a few campaigns, it’s left me a little cold.

An incredible amount of hard work and money has gone into it, creating explosive spectacles and heavy gunfights. But that doesn’t stop it from being a hollow chassis, a tin man of a game – shiny, impressive, with absolutely no heart. [Campaign review only]

The most annoying flaw I’ve encountered in a week of play is an immovable combat window pop-up that make attacks in corner areas like Voronezh fiddly. Very occasionally, movement limitations rub me up the wrong way (arguably there should be a simple way of swapping units in adjacent areas, and reinforcing a contested area without triggering a battle) but minor blemishes like these won’t stop me playing one of 2016’s most absorbing and affordable battle sims.

It’s a much better game than last year’s edition though, the time in between having been spent on significant and healthy rewrites of AI processes at both the tactical and strategic levels. That it is the most visually appealing game in the series, in terms of both clarity off the pitch and improvements on the pitch, is a bonus.

This isn’t the expansion or the patch to convince those who weren’t already convinced by what Stellaris has to offer, but it brings plenty of alterations and additions for those already on board. More than that, it’s an indication that the studio have ideas as to how the universe can become more lively, without making it more cluttered at the same time, and that makes the future of Stellaris very exciting indeed.

If rushed through as a six-map story-led affair you’re perhaps going to feel a little short-changed, both in terms of length and in terms of dramatic satisfaction. I very strongly recommend playing it the way I did: it’s been so refreshing. Make each level the focus of a string of weeknights, exploring every corner and taking out every target, rather than ditch it the second you’ve played it once.

What a treat. And a surprisingly deep one, with compelling moments you’ll want to talk about. It’s a pleasure to control, it has impeccable difficulty balancing to keep you moving forward while always feeling like you’re being skillful, and all in the prettiest of pretty pixel graphics. Triumphant.

In multiplayer, Titans feel like an actual godsend at times, screaming down from the heavens as they do like avenging angels. They’re improved since the first game, as is everything else, more flexible and yet more focused at the same time.

I like the game at CE’s heart, but interacting with it is simply unpleasant.

Where previous Soulsborne DLCs took dark deep-dives into their worlds, embellishing the lore and offering some of the greatest boss encounters, Ariandel feels a bit tangential and tired by those (extremely high) standards.

And while it’s not as impactful as Rusty Lake Hotel, or my favourite Cube Escape, Seasons, there’s an absolute ton going on here for a crazy tiny £2.

It is, quite simply, a thing of wonder, and a late contender for my personal game of the year.