Device 6 is a short game, polished off in a couple of hours, but its effects will linger. Its narrative is sharp and engrossing and its style, while drawing on influences as disparate as Lost and Kafka, is quite unlike anything else.

That FM continues to build an enormous, cogent world out of a crazy, crazy sport continues to be a marvel. The romanticism of being able to mould a club to your own desires is the fuel of its appeal. And now, with its focus on the people that fill these clubs, this year it is its heart that impresses most.

It’s a coming of age story, essentially, with the saccharine beginnings of a jolly jaunt giving way to harsher challenges along the way.

But here is X & Y, finally dragging me in with added accessibility and a visual flourish. If Pokemon’s greatest pleasure is the joy of discovery, then I’ve finally discovered it. And hooray for that.

Provided families can restraint their children’s desire to collect them all, Skylanders Swap Force not only offers a huge amount of toy and video-game, but does so at a reasonable price.

It’s a mess. But a fascinating mess.

True, its slower pace may mean it’s more fun to play as Pirlo than Messi these days, but if PES has lost a little of its former flamboyance, it’s a more robust, complete game as a result.

The fact a project of this thundering size gets finished at all – let alone once every 12 months – is of course a minor miracle of hard work and management, but it can only be lauded for greatness if that's what it's reaching for. FIFA 14 seems content with better rather than best.

Grand Theft Auto V is the pinnacle of open-world video game design and a colossal feat of technical engineering. It takes a template laid down by its predecessors and expands upon it, improving on and streamlining some of its rougher aspects. It doesn’t break out of that template and can be brash, nasty and nihilistic. But for all its more unsavoury aspects, this is a game built with skilled mechanical expertise and creative artistry.

Once hits its stride, Saints Row IV is a pleasure to try and keep up with. Its relentless insanity will occasionally tire, but its in these moments you can appreciate the smarter elements. Despite everything, this is a more mature game than its predecessors.

It’s a superior game to Conviction, but it won’t be held in the regard as the original Splinter Cell or Chaos Theory. It’s spread too thin and too focussed on trying to cater to everybody than exploiting what it’s best at.

It’s a game everyone should be thrilled exists in a vibrant and daring independent scene, tapping a reservoir of fascinating themes and content that mainstream games dare not touch.

The delivery may need a little work, but Gone Home’s story is one that’s well worth being a part of. It’s dense, rich, striking and moving; few games this year will leave quite such a mark, and despite a few missteps, it could well prove a watershed moment for interactive storytelling.

To embrace Disney Infinity is to buy-in to the whole package: collecting the physical toys, building in the Toy Box, enjoying the Play Sets. Without interest in all its components, its appeal is diminished.

It’s a terrific journey, culminating in a moment that weds narrative and mechanics to captivating effect. It is something of a shame that Brothers doesn’t entirely capitalise on its central gameplay idea, but it never truly fumbles it either.

True, it’s flawed, occasionally messy, and could do with being a little more accommodating to beginners. It also happens to be one of the boldest and most original visions on any system this year, and surely cements Hideki Kamiya’s place among the great game creators of his generation.

Admiration and respect is due for how N-Fusion has compressed Deus Ex into its iOS form. But as a general rule, straight replicas of traditional console and PC games on touch devices is folly. Despite the developer’s best efforts, the devices have neither the grunt nor control palette to stand up to the task, resulting in a fiddly and pared-back experience.

By turns exciting, disturbing and maniacally enjoyable, Hotline Miami is a true pleasure. Whether it’s a guity one or not is on your conscience.

Denser, deeper and more intricate than its predecessors, it’s a sequel that understands refinement isn’t simply a case of adding more, even if it’s arguably as generous and complete a package as we’ve seen from Nintendo in a while. Yes, it’s a game about multitasking, forward planning and time management, but it’s also a game where you command sentient carrots to headbutt a crawfish to death. Ah, the joy of simple pleasures.

Company of Heroes 2 cruises when it should be sprinting, and when you couple that with the fumbling of the tone and setting it becomes a very difficult game to recommend.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that The Last of Us is immune from blockbuster video game excess --the total number of kills at the final stats page will still run into the many hundreds-- but it’s one of the few games to try and make some kind of sense of it without compromising its quality of action...In that, and so many other things, The Last of Us is a triumph.

Every time you open your 3DS to play New Leaf, you know you’re almost certain to experience something new or surprising. And how many games can you say that about?

Watching my kids play through Diggs Nightcrawler it was interesting to see how strong a connection they had to both the genre and the play style. Certainly, playing a game with a book feels a very different way to spend time that sat staring at their handhelds.

Last Light is the rare shooter that lingers with you once you’re done with it.

It's definitely worth a try thanks to the great exploration and fluid combat systems, just make sure you have plenty of patience on hand.

Everything added is a disappointment, and everything retained only succeeds as much as it did before. It’s not often that a sequel completely fails to build on the successes of the game that came before it, but Riptide achieves that defeat with a cynical lack of ambition.

I ended up hooked, playing it for hours, and I'm almost certainly not done. I also made a video of myself performing brain surgery in a moving ambulance, which I can't link to in a Telegraph review because I have a mouth like a sailor.

That rare kind of game that treats you with respect, once you’ve earnt it. It’s a strange feeling to be left floundering without any attempt to help you up, but it’s stranger still to then discover that you’re perfectly capable of helping yourself up, and discovering how capable you really are. Starseed Pilgrim is quietly affirming, and eminently rewarding. It’s genuinely beautiful, from the inside and out.