Now that battle royale games have become legion, the new arms race is to find clever ways for a new game to set itself apart from the Fortnites and PUBGs of the world.

I’d like to share a truth with you. And that truth is that even Time – that Great Devourer of early polygonal graphics, that beast which hath smote and sullied many a PSone and PS2 icon, that ravager of (gaming) worlds – is powerless against the might of Katamari Damacy. This joyous game’s deliberately low-poly art style has proven to be not just a great artistic choice in its era, but the key to ensuring it ages with grace.

Gris is a visual masterpiece. It’s a living watercolour illustration that explores the complex themes of loss and grief through a visually arresting world and affecting orchestral score. At first glance, Gris looks to be a fitting bookend to a year that started with Celeste - a game that married an exploration of mental illness with incredible platforming gameplay, but ultimately its basic level design and many minor frustrations make its exceptional qualities feel only skin deep.

What does it take to make a great run-based game? Tight combat, of course. A variety of mix-and-match abilities that interact in interesting ways, certainly. Procedurally generated levels are nice. Progression and other systems that help each new run stay fun for hours and hours are definitely essential. Hades, an isometric beat-em-up from developer Supergiant Games, offers all these things even in its early access launch state, and sets its sights even higher.

Like a home away from home, Ashen feels both startlingly familiar and original. A44’s action-RPG wears its Dark Souls-inspired identity proudly, delivering nearly identical mechanics and progression systems along with a captivating open world and gorgeous art style. Those, combined with charmingly minimalistic two-player co-op, elevate Ashen to more than just a Dark Souls clone.

With the Black Armory, Bungie has opted to dramatically shift its content delivery strategy for Destiny 2, and results are mixed. On the one hand, if you’ve hit the maximum level you’ll have new weapons to chase and a few of the new Forges to explore, which is good enough to keep me busy for a while.

In real life, I don’t like creepy crawly things. I’m terrified of spiders, appalled by roaches, scared stupid of wasps, and refuse to touch any animal that might be deemed “slimy.” My wife kills all the bugs in our house. That fear adds a little gravity and catharsis to fighting the thousands of house-sized monstrosities in EDF 5 – and “thousands” is no hyperbole.

As series director Masahiro Sakurai said himself, it’s a miracle Super Smash Bros. Ultimate exists. Having Mario and Zelda duke it out against Street Fighter’s Ryu and Final Fantasy 7’s Cloud on a battlefield from Metal Gear Solid is a weird, wonderful thing that only the Smash Bros. series can deliver – and Ultimate is undoubtedly Smash Bros. done big and done right.

As the first part of the first batch of post-launch content for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Legacy of the First Blade: Hunted is a short, straightforward dose of just some of what makes Odyssey so good. Though it doesn’t do anything particularly new, Hunted doubles down on the behind-the-scenes shadow-syndicate structure that made picking off the Cult of Kosmos across the Ancient Greek world so enjoyable and introduces a great new villain.

Much like its half-human, half-animal protagonists, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a hybrid. It looks to push the grid-based tactics of games like XCOM 2 and Phantom Doctrine to their next logical step by incorporating stealth and pre-fight planning into the experience. Unlike its counterparts, however, Mutant Year Zero deftly cuts some of the strategy game abstraction by alternating between exploring areas in real-time and the familiar tactical combat that you probably already know and love.