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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Batman: Arkham Knight is a game that shows what can happen when a talented development studio is completely invested in a fictional universe and has mastered the technology to bring it to life. We’ve become the Batman before, but never quite like this.

Long before high school physics cast its shadow over my childhood, I used to build complicated plastic models just to douse them in lighter fluid and blow them up with firecrackers. Screamride, clearly, is aimed at me.

Like the stories from which the characters are borrowed, Code Name S.T.E.A.M. truly is the video game equivalent of a page-turner, and I dare anyone not to be sucked in by its charisma.

It’s tough to get excited by video game zombies these days, but by blending a detailed open world, cool parkour moves and a satisfyingly deep system for character and weapon customization, Dying Light has clawed out a novel space in this crowded genre. Long live the undead.

Another rampage through Los Santos in the eyes of your character, rather than looking over his shoulder, is both a surprising and surprisingly impressive feature that adds a lot of value.

It may not be deep, nor entirely original, but it’s ridiculously fun.

In a holiday season rife with games that are riddled by bugs and glitches of all sorts, it’s beyond refreshing to know that I can sit down and repeatedly wail on Mario or pummel Samus into submission to my heart’s content in lag-free glory. Smashing truly never felt so good.

True to its name, Unity is a cohesive collection of the fundamental elements of the Assassin’s Creed experience, and feels like a much-needed reset for a franchise that was starting to become bloated and scattered.

Sunset Overdrive is a welcome response to the gritty, drab and deadly serious shooters that make up the majority of this genre. It sometimes tries way too hard to be funny, but more often than not it’s a riotous riff on things that gaming holds dear, and an intoxicating action saga in its own right. As long as you can survive the woozy cough syrup hangover the morning after.

Do not start playing this game if you have somewhere to be – work, school, surgery, your wedding – in the next several hours.

Even though the story arc is guided, playing through Wasteland 2 engenders a real sense of ownership.

This is a smashing return to form for one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises, endlessly energetic and electrifying.

Really, it’s all a shallow excuse to get players into as many different vehicles as possible, and that’s perfectly fine, because just like the Fast & Furious movies, no one plays Forza games for the engaging plot.

Dare I say, Ultimate Evil Edition feels like it was built for consoles.

It’s tough to recommend for PS3 players who have already played the game, as the $55 price is a bit steep for some enhanced visuals and a bit of added content. But PlayStation 4 owners who haven’t yet experienced The Last of Us absolutely owe it to themselves to pick up this modern classic, and take a journey with Joel and Ellie across the heartbreakingly beautiful ruins of our world.

It’s very clever and exceptionally well-designed, but it’s not a wildly innovative game, and in the years to come I’m not sure it will be as fondly remembered as the games that inspired it.

With its gorgeous visuals and seldom-explored historical setting, Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a beautiful and original game, one that taxes our brains while stirring our emotions.

It’s engaging, enjoyable and offers massive bang for the buck, but has too little to say about our eroding digital privacy and stars an anti-hero who you’re likely to forget as soon as the credits roll.

MachineGames have done a wonderful job capturing the essence of the old-school shooter while avoiding its pitfalls, and presenting it in a way that will attract new audiences. The result is a game that’s as good as you remember its forebears being, even though it facilitates the player in ways that games from a decade ago didn’t. This is Wolfenstein for the new generation, and it’s worthy of the legacy.

While there are certainly some issues holding MLB 14: The Show back from being a classic in the sport game genre, there’s far more good than bad. The attention to detail, the plethora of content and the rock-solid gameplay make up for any problems.

Kirby is a legitimate stalwart in the Nintendo pantheon, and while the series has had a lot of ups and very few downs, I’m willing to go on record and say that Triple Deluxe is one of the best, and can stand alongside any of the Kirby classics.

There’s nothing unexpected about this journey, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

As a technical showpiece, Infamous: Second Son doesn’t disappoint: it’s an absolutely amazing-looking game, and edges out Killzone: Shadow Fall as the PS4’s most visually impressive title to date. But it doesn’t have quite enough substance to balance out its sizzle, like exquisite icing slathered on a cake that turns out to be lacking an ingredient or two.

This sweaty, intertwined combat threesome – Pilots versus Pilots, Pilots versus Titans and Titans versus Titans – gives Titanfall a unique energy and fluidity that I’ve never seen in a shooter before.

What ultimately makes Left Behind special is the same thing that made The Last of Us one of the best games of 2013: characters we can relate to, care about and invest in. It’s well worth the pain of one more goodbye.

Clever, colourful and weirdly comforting – there’s little to dislike about The Lego Movie Videogame, even if it feels assembled from the same bricks as its predecessors. Not everything is awesome, but it comes close enough.

The puzzles, while never exactly difficult, are for the most part clever and satisfying. But just as Vella finds a way to confront the maiden-eating monster, and just as Shay starts to unravel the truth behind his space-faring daycare, and just as we start to see how these two wildly different worlds might be connected… boom, the first act comes to an abrupt end.

Rivals is an arcade racer through and through. Despite the near-photorealistic graphics, action is as over-the-top and arcade-y as it comes. You’ll deploy awesome Bond-like gadgets to give yourself an edge, put your car into perfect drifts simply by tapping a button, go faster than any sane person would go and make a laughingstock of the laws of physics.

If I want serious adult drama, I’ll watch The Walking Dead. But for sheer, unadulterated fun, Dead Rising 3 has my thumbs, eyes, brain and heart. Or, as a zombie would call it, a well-balanced breakfast.

The seafaring aspect of Black Flag is where much of the fun lies, but things feel a little too familiar every time Kenway sets foot on land. Climb buildings, collect items, infiltrate fortresses, assassinate targets. If you've grown weary of this formula, you'll count the minutes until you're back out at sea, plundering ships, harpooning sharks and diving for sunken treasure.

As the most successful and dramatic HD upgrade ever, and of one of the better adventure games of all time, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD seems like a no-brainer if you own a Wii U and have any love for Zelda games.

It’s really good. Just not, ironically enough, all that original...What ultimately keeps Arkham Origins from being as exceptional as its predecessor is the weight of the franchise itself. Origins has the disadvantage of being a prequel to a game that’s nearly impossible to top, by a new studio that understandably doesn’t want to drop the ball.

Much like Quantic Dream’s gritty 2010 PlayStation 3 title Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls fuses traditional film-based storytelling techniques with video game elements to create a new way of getting players emotionally invested in its characters and story. It doesn’t always work – and sometimes it feels a bit cheesy or ridiculous – but when that connection does happen, it’s something quite amazing.

Its problems range from finicky little things like twitchy helicopter flying controls to much larger issues, such as unsettling bits of cruelty that don’t always register as satire, or the still-unsolved challenge of maintaining any sense of plot urgency in a game where players are free to abandon the storyline and spend hours skyjacking blimps, tooling around in a submarine or taking in-game smartphone selfies and posting them online.

Whether you have an intimate knowledge of the series like I do, or you’re part of a new generation of fans perplexed by which Tales title to begin with, you’d be doing yourself a great disservice if you didn’t pick this one up.

Rayman Legends is a sprawling masterpiece of a platforming game that’s just plain better than any recent Mario game, the gold standard for 2D platformers on Nintendo consoles.

Dream Team follows the same basic formula found in the past three games in the series, but molds all of the different mechanics together into a title that just gets better with every passing hour.

With a deluge of big-budget, high-profile games on the horizon, it might be easy to overlook a quiet, unusual game like Papers, Please. But don't do that, comrade. The consequences would be dire.

By setting most of the game inside a virtual Steelport, developer Volition had free rein to come up with new and ridiculous gameplay mechanics, and the addition of superpowers lends Saints Row IV a distinct Crackdown vibe. Who needs to jack a car when you can run faster than anything on wheels?

Sure, this ‘puzzle’ may sound really basic, but it exists to help familiarize you with the game’s mechanics, and rest assured, complexity and challenge soon go up several notches.

It often works, but there are points in the game where taking the stealthy route is so difficult or tedious that success feels like a punishment rather than a reward, as well as moments when players are forced to put the guns away and rely on trial and error to suss out the proper path through an environment, no matter how itchy their trigger fingers may be...Still, Blacklist is a polished, confident and frequently thrilling shot in the arm for a franchise that was in danger of being left behind with gamers’ shifting tastes.

And that’s where New Leaf really sinks its fuzzy claws into you: it offers the constant carrot of a bigger house, a new town project, a fresh gameplay mechanic or simply a cooler collectible that you didn’t even know existed before that day.

State of Decay is so much more than the sum of its parts: it’s a fun, challenging game of survival that will demand more of you than just twitch reflexes. It’s another feather in the Xbox Live Arcade’s cap, and an essential purchase for gamers looking for a fresh take on a familiar theme.

Despite the occasional jarring juxtaposition between its story and its gameplay, The Last of Us is a landmark piece of interactive entertainment, proving that even action games can tell mature, thoughtful tales, with characters who don’t feel like an assortment of tropes and clichés.

Let’s call it a game of great breadth, if not depth.

Then I scanned the mental checklist of requirements for a 5 out of 5 score: high quality game without serious flaw? Check. One of the very best games available for the 3DS? Check. Does it use 3D to the game’s benefit? In general yes and at times, hell yes. Can a player turn off the 3D and still get a complete experience? Yup. Do I stay awake too late, miss busses, and burn food in the toaster oven because I’m so absorbed by it, and can’t put it down? Yes, yes and yes.

Possibly the best thing about Gunslinger, though, is how little it costs. At just $15, it’s one of the best bang-for-the-buck games I’ve seen so far this year, and has a slickness and confidence that belies its budget price.

It’s rare to see a compelling hack-and-slash dungeon crawler work as well as Pandora’s Tower, but this game needs to wear its accomplishments proudly. You very well may never go back to your Wii after this transition between console generations.

It’s bizarre and funny and quite unlike anything that’s been done before by a major video game studio. And for the most part, it works.

But aside from the solid and deep fighting game mechanics, my biggest kick came simply from taking control of these familiar heroes and villains and seeing how their unique and iconic abilities had been translated into game form.

As with food, video games are all about the freshness of the ingredients and the care taken in preparation and presentation. And when everything is just right, the result can be something like Guacamelee!

Don’t be deceived by the simplistic 2D presentation – Terraria is one of the deepest games currently available on PSN or Xbox Live Arcade.

Luigi may be a little bit clumsy, and sucking up a ghost with a glorified vacuum may not be quite as satisfying as unloading a clip of bullets into an expletive-screaming terrorist, but the newest adventure starring Nintendo’s second-most-popular brother is still a heck of a lot of fun. It’s even head-and-shoulders above Mario’s latest handheld title, New Super Mario Bros. 2.

It’s the kind of game you’ll immediately want to replay again from the beginning, not just to experiment with new vigors and weapons and tactics, or to find the backstory-expanding Voxophones and Kinetoscopes you missed on the first run-through, but to see the little bits of foreshadowing, the subtle design choices, the dropped hints that build up to the game’s brain-bending denouement.

The eighth instalment of The Show series pulls no squeeze plays on quality and realism when it comes to the game of baseball.

For all its larger than life swagger and cartoonish bravado, it’s actually kind of refreshing to see Gears of War take a less-is-more approach with this game. Size certainly matters, but what you do with what you’ve got counts even more.

Lego City Undercover nails the best aspects of open world games in its own way, and with the inclusion of Lego building mechanics, it feels enough like its own thing rather than a sanitized version of an existing thing.

Unlike the previous downloadable content, though, Citadel seems designed very much as a send-off for the Mass Effect crew, a final chapter that shoots mainly for the heart with some collateral damage to the funnybone.

The technology works consistently well, assuming you’re sitting on the floor in a reasonably well-lit room. But just as importantly, Book of Spells has clearly been crafted with the Potter fan in mind, featuring incantations, settings and characters taken straight from the books.

Ultimately, Hitman: Absolution marks a faithful, gorgeous and only occasionally maddening return for a series that’s been gone far too long. It may have trouble finding fans among twitchy gamers with short attention spans, but guns and brains should never be mutually exclusive. And those kids can get off my damn lawn.

By virtue of how it stokes more parts of my brain than any game of the past decade, I’m inclined to consider XCOM: Enemy Unknown one of the most important titles of this generation. This game will test your disaster-management skills, levy you with suffocatingly difficult choices on how to spend your resources and cause you to grow so fond of your chess pieces that each skirmish takes on the flavour of a Whedonesque drama.

Almost everything about Far Cry 3 speaks to the game’s skilled, confident and tightly interwoven design, and players are free to seek their specific flavour of gratification and victory as Jason becomes the most dangerous animal on the island.

In addition to the excellent musical score from Jackson’s trilogy playing while you smash stone as Gimli or conjure blocks as Gandalf, LEGO LOTR is the first of the LEGO games to use the voices and acting from the films.

Still, for every demon slain, more beauty is restored to the land, as gorgeously rendered-flowers and wildlife spring up from the scenes of battle. And the wildlife that roams Nippon not to be feared, but rather fed, in sickeningly cute cutscenes.

Beyond the near-perfect controls and satisfying combat, Ninja Theory has clearly sweated the game's atmosphere and visuals.

Yet it’s Little Inferno’s weird, dark, off-kilter tone that makes it so refreshing and intriguing. You’ll come for the pyromania puzzles, but you’ll want to see what happens when the smoke finally clears.

Wrath of the White Witch combines the innocence of an anime feature film with a well-known “get up and try again” attitude. The game is light-handed with its morals, and not overly melodramatic in its story. It exists as a perfect balance between two drastically different forms of storytelling: a film and role-playing game.