Amsterdam-based studio Guerilla Games, best known for PlayStation’s grim but visually impressive Killzone franchise, spent more than six years on Horizon Zero Dawn, and it shows: in the beauty of the game’s visuals, the depth of its backstory and the tightness of its design. Hopefully this isn’t the last we’ll see of this high-tech savage land. (Horizon Forbidden West, maybe? Please?)

Despite its problems, The Last Guardian is an incredible piece of imaginative world-building. As a game, it mostly succeeds. As something we’ve been anticipating for nine years… well, that might be too tall an obstacle for even a giant flying dog to get over.

In any other year, we’d probably be more in awe of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. But in 2016’s heavily contested battleground, its just one powerful combatant among many.

Titanfall 2 rises to the challenge of building something worthwhile on its predecessor’s foundation, and it’s fresh, fun and full of surprises. Happy endings aren’t always common in boy-and-his-’bot stories, but here’s hoping these mechanical marvels will stick around for a good, long time.

I’m impressed by how well The Coalition has remained faithful to the core of Gears of War while putting their own mark on the series. A memorable single-player experience blended with a robust suite of co-op and competitive multiplayer options, Gears of War 4 is a surprisingly great return to a franchise I thought I could live without...Genre-defining? Not quite. Maybe that will come with Gears 5. Or Gears 6. That’s the thing about a Fenix – they always rise again.

While I’m not sure any game will replace my nostalgic, rose-coloured memories of the original Deus Ex, Mankind Divided is a small but satisfying step forward for the franchise, offering tons of player freedom in a dark, dangerous and intricately detailed future.

My only hope is that the developers at Silicon Studios haven’t reached their own end layer with this series. They’ve essentially perfected the Bravely formula, and I look forward to how they might change things up in the future.

It’s a game with a bigger world – and a bigger heart – than any other Uncharted, full of love for the games that have come before it and the fans who have been on board since 2009’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune introduced us to Nate, Elena, Sully and friends.

Jack’s time-based superpowers are a ton of fun to use in combat, but environmental puzzles and platforming sequences, such as a cargo ship caught in a looping time stutter after plowing into a bridge, feel like they’ve been shoehorned in simply to give players something to do between firefights.

This clever time-warping feature transforms the game from a twitchy shooter into a series of strategic, almost puzzle-like set pieces.

I may have done a lot of nitpicking, but Birthright is still undeniably a solid Fire Emblem entry.

Although storyline is a little thin – Crane is in search of the leader of a mysterious cult which seems immune to the zombie virus – there’s enough variety in this new rural locale to make the game feel entirely fresh.

Despite the exotic setting, there’s still a pervasive sense of familiarity about Primal. Liberating outposts, saving allies from enemy attacks, swinging on grappling hooks, going on hallucinogenic drug trips, hunting specific critters to unlock upgrades, gathering plants to make ability-boosting concoctions... Hell, Far Cry 4 had us riding elephants and commanding a tiger to shred enemies, so even those experiences aren’t entirely fresh here. Sometimes Primal feels like a brilliant 10-hour Far Cry spinoff that got stretched out into a 25-hour, full-priced game.

While it’s far from the typical video game adventure, That Dragon, Cancer is a reminder that games can be so much more than just wish-fulfillment power fantasies. It’s an important and unforgettable experience, full of pain, love and grace.

The game is a slow burn, and you have to work hard for virtually everything you earn, but the payoff is almost always worth it. This is one of the most uncompromising games to come out in years, but it’s reason alone for “hardcore” RPG fans to consider getting a Wii U if they haven’t already.

Just Cause 3 doesn’t hold too many surprises, particularly if you’re familiar with the previous titles in the series. But it offers an almost unlimited number of ways to create your own flavour of mayhem, and is a source of constant “did you just SEE that?” moments. If the next Michael Bay movie features a dude hanging upside from a helicopter while blowing up a bridge with a missile launcher, you’ll know where it came from.

Despite its widely-spaced checkpoints and ad deluge, Pyro Jump Rescue is an engaging little action game that's guaranteed to make you say "Aw, one more time" when you screw up.

I think die-hard Halo fans will love Halo 5: Guardians, as it’s a game made almost exclusively with them in mind. The rest of us might find ourselves a little lost, a bit let down and wistful for an old horizon that once reached for the heavens.

Yoshi’s Woolly World doesn’t do much that we haven’t seen before in Nintendo’s long history of these sorts of games, and its exceptional cuteness factor helps overcome some of its slightly derivative design. But in a season so focused on doing vicious harm in virtual worlds, its lovely to take a whimsical stroll with this delightful dinosaur daredevil.

While Disney Infinity 3.0 doesn’t try to mimic the visual realism of the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront or the sly, knowing humour of the Lego Star Wars titles, Rise Against the Empire is a well-crafted, kid-friendly salute to the classic Star Wars trilogy. My old Luke, Leia and Darth Vader action figures are long gone, but now I have new ones lining my desk. For, you know, research purposes.

One of the biggest criticisms levelled against Destiny from day one was its lack of a coherent storyline. The Taken King addresses that in a big way, with a dramatic opening cinematic, an easily understood narrative (very bad alien is assembling very large slave army to take over the solar system) and lots of lovely little character moments.

Until Dawn goes off the rails a bit in its final third act, when it trades creepy psychological horror for something more tangible but also more ridiculous. But it’s a weirdly compelling story that does a great job of making you, the player, feel invested in how the tale unfolds and how many of these kids make it out alive. It’s like an adults-only Scooby-Doo mystery with blood, swearing and sphincter-clenching scares.

Fury Road was a big, expensive, risky film that paid off because of the irrepressible will and talent of its director, George Miller. In video game form, Mad Max lacks that same kind of originality and danger. It’s familiar and formulaic, competent but rarely exceptional. This Max could have used a little more madness.

A new face and name certainly brings a sense of freshness to Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, but the novelty isn’t enough to make up for the lack of content. While there’s a decent game of golf here, it won’t be occupying the top of the leaderboard any time soon.

I’ve never played anything quite like Guild of Dungeoneering, and while its lo-fi look took some time to win me over, it’s become my go-to game for quick, bite-sized gaming that still satisfies an overall sense of achievement.

I’m convinced you don’t have to be the world’s biggest fan of the series to enjoy Lego Jurassic World, though it certainly helps. I’d actually bet that people who have dismissed the second and third films as nothing more than cash grabs will gain a new-found appreciation for the movies after playing the Lego-themed campaigns.

It's a throwback to the good old days of gaming, when fun mattered more than anything.

Massive Chalice’s personality and ingenuity ultimately win out over its shortcomings, and it’s certainly worth a try for strategy fans who don’t want anything too ponderous or serious. But its cup does not, as they say, runneth over.