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• Batman: The Telltale Series (also on: 360, PS3, XB1, PC, mobile)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Probably the most fully realized iteration yet of Telltale's one-studio subgenre of visual novels (The Wolf Among Us is also a close competitor for that title). Better than the Christopher Nolan movies.

• Bloodborne

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (also on: PC, XB1)
  • 2501: Doesn’t fix what ain’t broken, but truly is one of the most gorgeous remastering jobs out there (as it damn well better be, considering what Activision’s charged for it) and makes the original CoD4 almost impossible to go back to. I’d even go so far as to say that this aesthetic and technical enhancement is what finally cements MW1‘s status as one of the best FPS campaigns of all time.

• Doom (a.k.a. Doom 4) (also on: Switch, XB1, PC)

• Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (also on: PS3, Vita, PC)

• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Confession time: despite being a big fan of both Final Fantasy and Yasumi Matsuno, I could never get into XII back on the PS2. The story didn't grab me (it's trying to have the political intrigue and historical scope of Tactics and Vagrant Story with the whimsy and adventure of IX and Tactics Advance and it doesn't quite sit comfortably at either end of the scale) and the game design quirks were maybe too quirky: the world, myself, and perhaps most critically the PS2 weren't quite ready for this game. My point in all of this being that the PS4 remaster, between a host of design tweaks and the benefit of a decade's hindsight, is considerably more approachable than the vanilla Final Fantasy XII. The International Zodiac Job System enhancements make the License Board far more coherent and tactical. There's a fast-forward button that should honestly just be mandatory for every RPG ever. The re-recorded soundtrack renders Hitoshi Sakimoto's compositions in the orchestral grandeur they always strove to represent. And so many of XII's once-shocking ideas have, in some form, become integrated into the JRPG mainstram that it feels more of its time now than it did in 2006.

• Final Fantasy XV (also on: XB1, PC)

• Grand Theft Auto V (also on: 360, PC, PS3, XB1)

• Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN (also on: PC, XB1)

• The Last Guardian
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: I don't even know what to fucking make of this game. It's got a few moments of classic Ueda brilliance (primarily in the last ~20% of this dozen-hour experience) buried underneath looming trash heaps of ill-conceived level design, monotonous video-gamey environments, poor controls and a barely-functioning game engine. It's so well-intentioned yet the bulk of the experience falls so painfully flat. For (sometimes) better and (often) worse, it's Ueda's purest homage yet to his beloved Another World.

• The Last of Us Remastered

• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (also on: PC, PS3, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: In retrospect, the one level you get here is probably better than anything that actually made it into Phantom Pain.

• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (also on: PC, PS3, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: The worst best (or best worst?) game of the decade.

• Overwatch (also on: XB1, PC)

• Persona 5 (also on: PS3)

• Republique (also on: PC, mobile)

• Resident Evil 2 (also on: XBONE, PC)
  • 2501: I never played the original (fuck tank controls) but this remake is very very good. The “modernized” mechanics play like a greatest hits reel of all the best ideas from classic RE games (subweapons and large-scale progress-based environment changes from REmake, lite inventory management and weapon upgrades and precision aiming from RE4). Smart use of procedural difficulty and low-key RNG mechanics to lessen predictability and heighten tension. (Play it on Hardcore mode; you’ll suffer but you’ll thank me.) Modern AAA games not by FromSoft rarely feel so meticulous in their level design and demandingly tactical in their approach (watch yourself poring over maps to plot your route through danger zones, then try not to lose your head as you recalibrate your strategy on the fly). Only big criticism is that Leon doesn’t get quite enough stupid one-liners.

• Titanfall 2 (also on: PC, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: It's like Call of Duty meets Zone of the Enders with a little bit of Mirror's Edge. Whoa. I'm hearing a lot of heavy superlatives directed at the campaign and while I don't think it beats out the first two Modern Warfares, it is definitely Good. I like that the game periodically lets you exchange snarky banter with your giant killer robot.
  • Felix: I am better at, and more engaged by, the multi in this than any other FPS since Quake 2. I'd have a hard time articulating what it does so well but it's certainly one of the best big-budget surprises I've had in a very long time. Plus, as everyone says, the campaign is basically perfect (if fundamentally mid-aughts and unambitious in its scope) too.

• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Better than Uncharted 3 but not-better than Uncharted 2. It's cool that there are actual large areas now instead of just fancy-dressed corridors. I wish there were fewer sequences where you're not really doing anything interesting because the game is busy conveying the narrative, because as crackly-crispy as the dialogue is and as many interesting new ways as Naughty Dog comes up with to take advantage of the medium, the actual plot and storytelling would still barely pass muster as a straight-to-video National Treasure sequel.

• Videoball (also on: Windows)

• Wolfenstein: The New Order (also on: 360, PC, PS3, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Pretty much the last franchise and developer from which you'd expect actually good writing but that's (the artists formerly known as) Starbreeze for you. Basically the Inglorious Basterds of video games (and I don't even like Tarantino). In its winking pulpy excess it handles the topic of Nazism more responsibly than the vast majority of portrayals in popular media because it graphically depicts the full, unsanitized repulsiveness of both their actual beliefs and the atrocities committed under their regime, all via wacky grimdark alternate-history revenge fantasy. The mechanics are serviceable but they're not the main attraction. In conclusion, this game has a missable cutscene where you do peyote with an alternate-universe version of Jimi Hendrix in a secret resistance bunker underneath a statue of Hitler. Also you kill Nazis on the moon.

• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (also on: PC, XB1)

• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (also on: PC, Switch, XB1)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: The way this evolves the story and themes from The New Order is really clever and pretty bold (for a video game). The mechanical design has also been refined into something that, on harder difficulties, feels less like an old-school FPS and more like the closest thing AAA studio gaming has come to a true Hotline Miami-level tactical murder simulator. Which is really cool, if you have the stomach for it.