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Not all mechanical choices work – whoever decided that the waypoint icons on a predominantly yellow map should be white and, er, a slightly darker yellow, needs a stern talking to – and some irritating glitches persist, but the good here way outweighs the bad, and it’s been some time since we’ve been able to say that so readily – so happily – about an Assassin’s Creed game. Enjoy exploring Bayek’s world – we certainly did.

Call Of Duty: WWII doesn’t surprise in any way – the campaign not being daring and falling back on FPS tropes we’d had enough of the last time COD was in World War II doesn’t surprise. Multiplayer offering a mix of solid highs and bewildering lows doesn’t surprise. Loot boxes littering your headquarters don’t surprise.

And so really the score that this game is getting should be pretty obvious. We don’t give out tens lightly, but we have to ask, what more could we have wanted from this game? What could it have offered that would have made it better? The answer is not much. Playing Super Mario Odyssey is to experience pure joy. We couldn’t wish for anything more than that from this series or from Nintendo.

Cuphead is wonderful. It has occasional sticking points – the final run of boss battles can, for example, be a little rough around the edges, especially as they abandon the otherwise scintillating rhythm and pattern design that holds the rest of the game up so impeccably. But any complaints we could leverage at Cuphead are markedly small, especially when weighted against what it has been able to achieve. It’s challenging, beautiful and unique.

Whether Chloe and friends get another shot after this excellent leading debut or Naughty Dog deigns to throw more characters into the spotlight is kind of irrelevant at this point, though – this is proof positive that it’s possible to retire a PlayStation icon while having their legacy live on.

And on occasion some of the effects – film grain, hallucinations, transitions between world states – can feel a little cheap, as if they’re hiding cracks beneath. But Hellblade is so well executed in so many ways, so committed to its mission and has integrated concept and design so well that we found it easy to look past these things to enjoy it immensely.

Bungie’s roadmap for the game’s first weeks and months shows new seasonal events and activities coming every few weeks, so we’re confident that the game will have legs just like its predecessor – a steady flow of new content should keep even the most ardent fans busy, so let’s hope that’s what is in store. The studio built great things on weaker foundations with the previous game, so it’s going to be exciting to see just how tall a Tower it can build when it’s working off an even stronger base from day one.

Absolver has a bit of an identity crisis too. When it’s focused on the RPG side of things, it’s a bit basic, with some really grind-y aspects to character advancement. Upping statistics might grant you more damage, but that’s a much less useful thing to have than the knowledge of an opponent’s combo strings, or a read on their tendencies.

Just as in the immersive sims that Arkane is so dutifully paying homage to here with Prey, it’s a game that feels like it has been designed to let the player fight back against the developer and find their own way through. Talos I is a broad, but claustrophobically combined, space that showcases a real, genuine sense of creativity from the team. It captures the vibe and greatness of System Shock‘s own haunted station, or perhaps even Deus Ex’s incredible cyberpunk-infused cityscape.

Animation still feels stiff and robotic and zoning might well be too strong as it is now but in most other respects, Injustice 2 is a clear success. Even with the host of other great fighters released this year, we can still see ourselves coming back for a few loot boxes or multiplayer sessions for the foreseeable future, especially considering how much more DLC characters will add with their new loot. Another cracking fighter from a studio still on the up.