This seems unlikely to be a game that can be played hard for 12 months. But it’s also a far more polished and properly executed tie-in than films are typically given. Battlefront does a particular thing very well - it is not so much shallow as strategically popularist. Skill and tactics play their part, but it’s one subservient to the John Williams-scored rush of finding yourself in these battles, in these surroundings.

Despite its less impressive iterations over the years, the Need for Speed name has delivered some truly excellent games - from Underground’s street racing to Shift’s wannabe-simulation, all the way to Hot Pursuit’s absurd action. But rather than build upon this rich diverse history of fun, Ghost Games has sucked the fun out of a game that should epitomise the outlandishness of going really bloody fast. When you could be playing Driveclub, or Forza Horizon 2, or Project Cars, or even the beautiful and superiorly quick Forza Motorsport 6, offering a racer without speed? That’s suicide.

If you’ve been waiting for Fallout 4, it will simultaneously meet your expectations and exceed them in others. Who would have thought a Fallout game would convince us of Bethesda’s storytelling and shooter credentials? In a year full of brilliant open-world games like The Witcher 3, it manages to stand apart from the crowd and deliver something that feels fresh, despite its familiar foundations.

These breaks in linear action are wonderfully judged, allowing you to take a breath, find hidden treasure and help tribespeople by hunting down some wild boar or disrupting Trinity communication towers. There’s perhaps nothing here that you won’t have seen in open-world games, but these alluring pockets of freedom breaking out from a cinematic thrill-ride is a clever change of pace.

No, it’s not the best Call of Duty ever made, but the sheer volume of content on display largely makes up for its weaknesses in specific areas. A worthwhile story would have added enormous value to the overall package, but its absence doesn’t undermine what is another solid release.

Tales of Zestiria is a profound disappointment, and does not deserve the time investment that huge games of this length require.

Halo 5's campaign will not be the groundbreaking adventure that sends players flocking to the Xbox One, but Warzone's sprawling battles twinned with the precision of Arena just might tempt competitive shooter fans to take the plunge. Work to be done for both 343 and the Xbox One, then, but this is a formidable start.

Hearts of Stone succeeds in stringing together several intriguing stories, excellent characters and standout moments in quick succession, and very little of it feels like a retread of quests that main protagonist Geralt has already undertaken.

The commitment to its ideas makes Live a confident, bold and stylish game.

Syndicate is a massive shame. Ubisoft’s yearly development cycle is really beginning to leave its mark on the series. Assassin’s Creed has been good. It is a series that can be great, but unfortunately Syndicate is a misstep. For a series concerned with making its players historical tourists, it is ironic that it is so stuck in the past.

Harmonix remains the master of mapping note charts to the music.

As a huge series fan, I had high hopes for Maiden of Black Water. I certainly didn’t expect to find my attention drifting because the game became boring. For all its flaws in the past, the Project Zero series has never been simply dull. And yet that’s exactly what Maiden of Black Water is.

This is a generous, technically excellent and genuinely fascinating omnibus.

The football here is unpredictable and undefinable. Matches take on their own personality, depending on who is playing, both on the pitch and behind the controller. You are given enough control and room for expression that you don’t need to conform to best practice. Instead you need to play to your and your team’s strengths, negating the opponent’s and managing the tempo of a game.

If you’re a veteran player, after a jolting transition this is the best the game has ever been. If you’re new - this is the best thing available to play on console. Let’s pretend it’s always been this good.

FIFA 16, as a whole, feels like a new foundation for the series. It takes a little readjustment and not everything is quite in place yet, the lack of tactical difference and the clear scripting are stark in comparison to PES 2016's on-field excellence, but its action feels fresher and built for further improvement. And the work off the pitch remains exceptional.

It may not have the established brands that its rivals can lean on, but SuperChargers is good enough not to need them.

It’s not cheap, but there is a huge amount of value here for families.

Despite the volume of content and the sharp precision and attention to detail levelled at everything from visuals to audio, Forza 6 can oftentimes feel like the standard bearer of a bygone age. On the one hand it's a mechanical wonder, but on the other it's firmly rooted in ideologies and design tropes of the past.

It effortlessly switches from tense stealth to tactical but speedy combat, managing to put most games in both genres to shame in the process.

It contains obvious missteps and a clear reliance on repeating objectives at a time when the open world genre has taken leaps forward, but for all its repetition, it never became boring. For all its barren desolation, I was never without things to do, find or see to continue my satisfying path of progression.

On the face of it, an improved core game and a flexible but flawed sandbox mode might not be enough to give Disney the edge over its rivals. On the other hand: Star Wars.

There are still problems when it comes to balancing realism with spectacle, but Madden NFL 16 manages to get the mix mostly right. Certainly, when compared to previous releases, there's a far greater sense that what you're playing tallies with what you see on Sundays.

Super Mario Maker’s chaotic smorgasbord is part of its appeal. Wild, unbridled and even inspiring, Super Mario Maker achieves the envious feat of making both Play and Creation a joy. And all it had to do was remove the barrier between the two.

The horror movie the game reminds me most of is Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods. Not from a narrative sense, you understand, but in the way it lampoons the genre, while never losing sight of what bloody good fun it can be.

Perhaps MGSV’s best quality is how in pulling gameplay to the foreground and letting much of the exposition remain optional, it opens it up to be enjoyed by people who have in the past been put off by its weirdness, serving as both the perfect entry point and a satisfying conclusion. MGSV takes the best of a great series and creates a series’ best in the process.

It's all highly unsettling, and the most important things about the game -- its mood of fumbling desperation, its clapped-out London settings, its focus on exhaustion and disempowerment -- remain startlingly unchanged after the transition in platform and the stripping of the Wii U's clever propwork.

The cliffhanger The Dark Room finishes on opens a whole new can of worms, so to speak, while the more surreal questions remain unaddressed (what’s with the whales on the beach? The crazy weather? The nefarious Prescott family?). Finales can make or break a series and Life is Strange is precariously balanced.