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.