With the Wii U struggling sales-wise, and in danger of becoming a footnote of this current generation, a new Mario Kart is exactly the game Nintendo needed, and the fact it's perhaps the best iteration since the original doesn't hurt either.
As with previous instalments, LBP3 can be seen as a game of two halves; the standard platform fare and the online community building. The former is certainly the series' best yet although if that's all you come for you'll probably feel short-changed in gaming time. The latter is as forward-thinking and inventive as ever and fans will relish the new features.
Sure, we may have seen much of what Alien: Isolation has to offer before, but never from this frightening perspective.
Another World feels almost perfect, but twenty years of game innovations have scuffed its veneer.
In aiming for a slightly different market with this Xbox port, Elite: Dangerous could have fallen foul. However, it's testament to how strong its many different facets are that you can play the game like you're Captain Kirk or Captain Solo and have it work either way.
The initial hours are a slog then, but for a game that requires months, maybe even years of play to get the most out of, that graft will be pretty small potatoes in the long run. Had Elite: Dangerous been published along traditional routes, such a steep learning curve would have probably been avoided by an industry that all-too-often likes to play things safe.
Like The Blair Witch Project, Her Story seems likely to foster a wave of imitators, such is its relative technical ease. However, writer Sam Barlow has certainly set the bar high with his reimagining of what a full-motion video game can be. Whatever it ushers in, Her Story is changing perceptions of what a game can be in the here and now. Case closed.
One minute into the game itself will tell you that there's nothing conventional about Year Walk and this grand step up to a loftier platform is entirely befitting a game of this calibre.
Titanfall, depending on which platform you choose, is both a valedictory send-off and a supremely satisfying re-birth.
The Fall is a compelling piece of storytelling in a medium that usually struggles to engage players beyond the surface spectacle. More importantly, it's a very good game in its own right but with both aspects combined it makes for a compelling case to dust off your Wii U pad.
The Wolf Among Us has gone out with the bang the series deserves.
In short, if you haven't played Resident Evil 4 before then play it now, on any format and on any TV display. The ambition and execution will outshine any hardware limitations like few other games.
Criticisms of an industry becoming reliant on dusting off classic titles may hold true overall, but on a case by case basis, Uncharted clearly proves that some games are more deserving than others.
The Witness is at once beautiful, intricate and alluring whilst being obtuse, unsympathetic and draining. It's not for everyone and few will see all it has to offer. It can punish as much as it rewards. Yet there is little else like it in the field of games, or indeed anywhere else, and whilst these small blemishes may prevent The Witness from being an outright classic, it remains a peerless example of videogame form.
As a rogue-like, it is, as we said, also left wanting – but as an overall package it presents a great challenge wrapped up in some pleasing aesthetics, with a classic 'one more game' mantra running through it.
At this midway point, Game of Thrones is showing much promise, enough to invest in a season pass if you're any kind of fan. It's been a steady drip-feed so far but The Sword in the Darkness feels like a dam ready to burst and with three more episodes to come there's plenty of room for it to flow.
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number has much to appreciate yet by comparison, the original game was perhaps a textbook example that, sometimes, less really is more.
Whilst not as immediate or as gripping as episode one, The Lost Lords wins out by keeping its various story threads warm and setting up the precarious pieces for what is looking to be a typically unpredictable story run.
As a technological achievement, it's probably about as cutting-edge as console gaming gets right now, but as a straight ahead gaming experience, Destiny's component parts have been better done elsewhere, not least by Bungie themselves.
True aficionados would do well to leave alone but it's something unlikely to worry the developers here. Child of Light is RPG-lite indeed, but in the burgeoning world of videogame genres, there's plenty of room for that too.