Beneath the warm familiarity of 3D World lies one of the strangest Mario games in years - and that's wonderful news.
Wholesome, harmonious and completely unwilling to settle, this is one of the most generous games in years.
Worlds sit within worlds in this properly magical puzzle adventure.
A crew searches a watery world for a missing friend in this evocative game of exploration and conversation.
An endless cascade of ideas in a game that takes Mario to some wonderfully strange places.
The third of LCB's weird narrative experiences is a reminder of what makes this series so special.
Part of the team behind Sang-Froid are back with a spiritual sequel powered by some truly dazzling thinking.
Explore a bright vision of subterranean nature in this astonishingly rich Metroidvania.
Ultimate Evil feels like a good place to stand back and see what Diablo 3 actually looks like now, with the auction house dead and the first expansion bedded in. There has been time, hopefully, for players to set aside the game they wanted Diablo 3 to be and understand the game that it is.
New 'n' Tasty! is angry because it holds a cartoon mirror up to the injustices of the modern world: to every clothes factory that falls down or blows up because corners were cut in the race to make 99p T-shirts, and to every water supply privatised in the name of hamburgers or fizzy drinks. Graphics lose their luster. Design tricks become predictable and then forgettable. Injustice, it turns out, rarely goes out of fashion.
That those challenges are housed in a weird trans-dimensional coastal getaway where you can kick a physics-enabled beach ball about or lie in a hammock is just one of many unusual things to enjoy about Transistor. Enjoy the artful approach to science-fiction, enjoy the hoops Supergiant's jumped through to position you in the right place to engage with its combat, and you can even enjoy the very fact that the game often struggles to get its deeper messages across. After all, if the developer had something straightforward to say, it might not have had to make a game in the first place.
Luftrausers is a breathless arcade delight - video game dogfighting has rarely been better.
Hectic local multiplayer madness ensues in this punkish flurry of colour and violence.
Compared to the dull, empty-eyed stoicism of so many triple-A games, it's still a welcome blast of idiot humour, too.
It's a colourful, heartfelt and well-judged spin on one of the most reliably engrossing genres knocking around.
The roguelike gets an inventive jolt of genetics in this gloriously witty dungeon crawler.
Resogun really is that rare kind of arcade game that feels like an entirely different beast when played on the toughest setting. It's also the closest the PS4 launch line-up gets to offering a genuine next-gen thrill. Granted, Housemarque's not offering the shock of the new, perhaps - all of the developer's best ideas are actually reassuringly elderly - but it's working with energy, enthusiasm, precision and love. Oh, and voxels. Look at them scatter!
If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could voice the suspicion that a great many baseball caps were turned backwards in the echoing board room where this project was greenlit, but with the campaign done and the city freshly filled with challenges, I don't really feel like being uncharitable. Beneath the glorious tech, and once the writing relaxes a little, Sunset Overdrive's wonderfully lurid and heartfelt - a bit like playing an old 4AD album sleeve. If you get that reference, you'll probably get this, too.
Kuru Kuru Kuruin meets gleefully silly FMV in this wonderfully tactile arcade game.
Civilization has always had something to say about this stuff (and civilisation has always had something to say about this stuff) but Beyond Earth goes further than ever, suggesting that even if we do eventually live on Pluto, the distractions will have joined us there, and will probably have multiplied. When we get into space, the real danger - and the real wonder - will be the fact that we have brought ourselves along.