Bow ties. Fancy champagne. Bow ties. What makes the BAFTAs neat, is that the even actually recognises the importance of video games and regularly elevates them to the same level of attention that film and television happens to enjoy, with their own dedicated awards show. This year, the nominations for the best in gaming makes for one heck of a stacked field, albeit one that isn’t exactly surprising.

Google has been investing an ungodly amount of cash into gaming, and it looks like a reveal is finally on the way for the next phase of Project Stream.

It’s that time of the year where the great big Triple-A publishers release their financials for the quarter, talking about how much money they made in one breath, while firing close to ten percent of their workforce with the next. It’s Ubisoft’s turn at bat with an earnings report, but I’m happy to say that while the company has also had an increase in earnings, it hasn’t sent anybody to the unemployment line.

For whatever reason, Assassin’s Creed III has been remastered. It was a divisive game for many, and I was one of the people who really didn’t like it very much when compared to its predecessors, and doubly so when compared the game that came after, Black Flag. Assassin’s creed III just tried to do too much, I think, becoming a hodgepodge of tangentially-related ideas that didn’t quite coalesce into a great game.

In the Legacy of the First Blade DLC episode Shadow Heritage, even if players opted for same sex relationships or to not have relationships at all, they were forced into a heterosexual romance. That's changing.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is one of my favourite games from last year, and I spent dozens of hours role playing as my own idealised, ass-kicking version of Kassandra. The game was always sold as being about player choice, with even the character’s gender being an option; a first for an Assassin’s Creed game. For the most part, the game let players play whoever they liked, letting them forge hetero and homosexual relationships with abandon. The game’s latest DLC however, forced players into a cisnormative relationship for the sake of procreation – and many players weren’t happy about it

We’ve seen the best of various genres this week. We explored the games that made racing feel alive, we delved into worlds with stunning art design and listened closely to those video games that managed to produce audio adventures. Which game is truly the best though? In 2018, there was no shortage of competitors, as the tail end of this console generation resulted in the cream truly rising to the top of a delicious brew of well designed games which captured our interest and our attention.

Video games are more than their just their visuals, but there are times where a certain game can deliver a 4K haymaker that’ll knock you out of your shoes. With the gap between virtual and reality visuals becoming narrower every single day, here’s a look at the games which made that graphical gap even smaller in 2018.