Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece.

Starblood Arena easily stands alongside the best competitive games, fostering a competitiveness and desire to improve as much as Rocket League or Overwatch do.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a refinement rather than a remaster, but one that corrects the few flaws of its predecessor. It would be nice if there was just a bit more new content to help justify the full price release, or if you didn't have to unlock kart mods all over again, but for the foreseeable future, this is the definitive – and best – Mario Kart experience.

Quibbles aside, Farpoint is a delight. It doesn't hold the player's hand as so many of this first generation of VR games do, guiding them through scripted encounters. Instead, it offers authentic, often challenging gameplay that is enhanced by VR rather than using it as a gimmick. It isn't afraid to let you fail either, forcing you to improve – and with four co-op missions to battle through with a friend, there's somewhere to put the skills you'll learn in the single player campaign to use, too.

Does RiME live up to fevered expectations, to its own influential forebears? Perhaps, and at its most effective, Tequila Works’ dreamy, abstract exploration combines the best elements of the subgenre's finest. Where the game truly shines is in touching choreographed stretches, moving moments wherein visuals, emotional direction, and transcendent music align in shockingly powerful ways. Contemplative, illusory, achingly forlorn and triumphantly buoyant, RiME will most certainly give you pause — a boy, an island, and one of life’s prevailing mysteries.

This is the pinnacle of the Tekken series – a joy to play, with a wealth of content, that's as challenging and precise for aficionados as it is inviting and engaging for neophytes. A masterpiece of the fighting genre.

It's still sad that Psygnosis/Studio Liverpool is no more, but if Omega Collection proves a test-run for the new developers to handle a brand new, original WipEout, then the franchise looks to be in good hands.

ARMS succeeds both as a surprisingly complex and detailed fighting game, and one of the best examples of motion controlled gaming we've seen. Another unexpected hit for the Nintendo Switch's burgeoning library of must-have games.

The game, like its predecessor, only truly comes alive when played with and against others, and thanks to Salmon Run it now offers something for everyone. It may not quite deliver enough of a progression to feel like a true sequel, but it is the definitive Splatoon experience, and deserves a place in every Switch owner's library.

Pyre is painted with the same deft brushstrokes of originality and fancy that Bastion and Transistor were, but reaches far greater heights than either.

Sonic Mania's focus on the old-school merits of Sonic the Hedgehog might be slightly alienating for non-purists, or for younger players to whom Sonic is a talking 3D cartoon character (but the upcoming Sonic Forces seems to be better targeted at the latter group), but real, material gripes are hard to find. Mania offers one of the most accessible yet deepest Sonic games in years, with hours of replayability thanks to its unlockables and challenge modes. The Blue Blur is well and truly back.

Survival Arena alone isn't reason enough to pick up The Lost Legacy - especially since it's been made available to Uncharted 4 owners via update - but it, and the depth of the multiplayer as a whole, round out a solid standalone package. A great story with interesting characters and solid online play to extend the overall experience, this Uncharted is a little treasure in its own right.