Beautiful, weird and unexpectedly complex, there is at times a deep reverence for gaming's most famous brand here, and at other times an overwhelming urge to pull it apart and make fun of it. At the same time though, Kingdom Battle sets itself apart by avoiding the running and jumping that made its main character famous, focusing instead on an impressive strategy shooter design that would have been great on its own but is made even better with the addition of Nintendo's familiar properties.

This smaller-scale adventure looks and plays a lot like last year's excellent blockbuster, but with the personal journey of a pair of new protagonists offering a refreshing change of perspective. Even when the action got a little too familiar, my affection for these two women and their fractious journey together, as well as the beauty of ancient India and its treasures, made for an engrossing experience.

This is a game that will thrill long-time fans and introduce brand new ones to what Sonic is like at its very best. Far from the tone-deaf reinventions and cynical cash-ins of Sonic at its worst, this is a love-filled celebration that also proves there is life in the 25-year-old original concept yet.

Though the game only takes a few hours to play through, the multiple layers of story — which each unlock additional meaning in the others once uncovered — make for a groundbreaking narrative system unlike anything else. But more impressive is the emotional impact of the stories themselves, not just the tale of a crisis aboard a space station and the perils of corporate-controlled AI, but the intertwining stories of six people's lives, loves and losses.

Splatoon 2 has a lot of substance, and every bit of it is literally oozing with style. Keeping everything that made the original game great while expanding on modes, fashion, weapons and features, this is a powerfully addictive family-friendly shooter.

Lacking the various vehicle types, long list of stages and single-player Challenge mode of the older games in the franchise, World Series bets it all on multiplayer and doesn't deliver. There's a kernel of a good idea in transforming Micro Machines into Overwatch-style personalities that each have their own special skills they can use to work together, but if there's a way to jam that complex, strategic online play into the zany, top-down design of 26 years ago, this game isn't it.

For all ESO's recent improvements in general and the smart, nostalgic design of Morrowind in particular, I can't overcome the sense that the world is just less fun and impressive removed from the single-player focus of the main Elder Scrolls games. This is an MMO caught between two very different RPG styles, with the world and its quests begging for solo exploration and heroism but without the depth or focus to back it up.

While so many retro revivals either just give the original game a coat of paint or completely remake it from the ground up, this is a return that feels like a perfect middle ground. On the one hand it does allow for some of the less good parts of the classic design to shine through (especially in the original game), but on the other hand the commitment to accuracy works to preserve a series that remains incredibly influential and often overlooked. Combined with smart touch-ups and a beautiful modern presentation, this is a blast for old Crash pros and newcomers alike.

ARMS is a breath of fresh air for casual fighting game fans, a beautiful, interesting fighter with a killer roster of characters and that trademark Nintendo twist on established genre conventions. But unbalanced control schemes and an emphasis on fun over fairness may make it a hard sell for the hardcore competitive set.

Valentia's old-meets-new approach is an interesting twist on the series, with the juggling between two parties, free exploration sections and simplified combat balancing out the lack of relationship options and the occasional killer difficulty spike. While the next mainline Fire Emblem game will no doubt return to the more fantastical, romantic themes of recent games, Valentia has me hoping Nintendo continues to dig into the series' back catalogue for more modernised versions of unfamiliar classics.

If Farpoint was a standard shooter it wouldn't be all that interesting. The weapon selection is pretty light, it's fairly brief compared to other shooter campaigns and there's nothing unique about the sci-fi setting. But the thoughtful VR design paired with the awesome gunplay provided by the PSVR Aim controller makes it well worth experiencing.

Prey is a mixed bag. Its setting is derivative but pretty, with its emergent storytelling often making for an eerie and atmospheric good time. But shallow enemies punish the player for their curiosity early on and only become annoying bullet sponges later. That, combined with an ultimate failure of the narrative to follow through on the psychological promises of the excellent opening, make for an experience that is, above everything else, conflicted.

Just about everything in Ultra Street Fighter II that isn't 25 years old is divisive at best, and at worst seems outright lazy. None of these features take anything away from the excellence of the core game though. The portability of the Switch and its instant two-player chops means not only can you defeat M. Bison on the train, but you can bring out the machine to settle a grudge match with a friend absolutely anywhere, at any time.

Beautifully strange and gleefully morose, What Remains of Edith Finch is a singularly amazing work of video game magical realism. Though brief and lacking any gameplay challenge, this is an incredibly special game by virtue of its narrative and creativity alone.

This is certainly a Puyo Puyo game at heart — with chatty cartoon characters and fast-paced competitive fun prioritised over high scores and analytical block-dropping — but Tetris fans shouldn't be too quick to dismiss it. After years of attempts to freshen up Alexey Pajitnov's formula, with incredibly mixed results, this game delivers the most fun puzzle experience to bear the Tetris name in a very long time.

This is a practically perfect iteration of a game that was already stellar the first time around. The satisfying rhythm of powersliding, gliding and boosting is more or less the same as it always was but the new content and tweaks paired with the connectivity and versatility of the Switch console means the deluxe version is streets ahead.

Many games have presented a "go anywhere, do anything" structure, but few have been filled with places, challenges and mysteries as intriguing and charming as Breath of the Wild. The massive land of Hyrule, from beautiful grassy plains and craggy mountains to marshy swamps and long-forgotten ruins, is rife with wildlife, monsters, villages and all manner of suspicious landmarks that tug constantly at your curiosity, and demand to be investigated.

Horizon is a special game, one which puts forth a very confident spin on action-RPG conventions and on the idea of a post-apocalyptic survival tale, but also one that will engross you in its mystery and poke at common humanistic ideas from an angle we don't see a whole lot. That said, it certainly doesn't hurt that it's amazing to look at and has heaps of cool robots to blow up, and its actual game mechanics are just as engaging as the story it tells.

Creative Assembly has deftly crafted an excellent RTS that sits somewhere between the worlds of consoles and PC, but it's clear that both worlds have to stretch a little to accommodate.

From the swampy bayou location to the more intimate brand of horror on display, RE7 is the result of some unexpectedly excellent creative decisions for a series that has long suffered from identity crisis. It's a polished, confident horror game, and I can't wait to see more.

This sequel repeats just about every mistake the original made, but in spite of that I fell in love with its sprawling world, goofy characters and thrilling aerial acrobatics all over again.

To say that I had fun playing Beholder isn't really accurate. The game world is characterised by oppression, decisions with no good choices, objectives that just aren't obtainable without taking huge risks, and the ever-present need for creating detailed, precise paperwork. It's exhausting and sad. But if the goal of the game's developer was to provide a depressingly captivating moral accountability simulator where hardly anybody ever wins, it's a massive success.

One of the most enjoyable romps through Gotham in years.

Half-Genie Hero is a masterclass in small-scale game design, packing hours of gorgeous, hilarious, brilliantly-crafted jumping and hair-whipping into just a handful of stages. The series has changed a lot in the past 15 years but this latest entry, which seems designed as a soft reboot to attract new fans on new platforms, has only strengthened my belief that it's one of the best and most under-appreciated there is.

In practice the hacking works intuitively and — assuming you suspend your disbelief that you can use the same network to steer a car or explode a sewerage pipe from a phone — it's a huge amount of fun.

Pokemon games are in a unique spot. They have to change significantly from game to game in order to keep casual fans engaged, have to stand on their own enough to entice new players in and also have to maintain a certain degree of continuity so that dedicated players' collections of monsters work in the new game and will continue to work beyond. Sun and Moon are the first games in several generations that I've honestly felt have nailed them all, and should provide hundreds of hours of entertainment for fans new and old.

Pokemon games are in a unique spot. They have to change significantly from game to game in order to keep casual fans engaged, have to stand on their own enough to entice new players in and also have to maintain a certain degree of continuity so that dedicated players' collections of monsters work in the new game and will continue to work beyond. Sun and Moon are the first games in several generations that I've honestly felt have nailed them all, and should provide hundreds of hours of entertainment for fans new and old.

Whether or not you feel the mechanical issues will be enough to ruin this sweet, impeccably realised, emotive game is up to you. For me, they're annoying but ephemeral. There were a hundred games released this year that are more fluid and fun to play minute-to-minute, and dozens that perform with a silky smooth frame rate, yet I'll remember this adventure with Trico long after I've forgotten those.