Here we are, the end of the year. Hundreds of games in the bag, with only a mere handful left to be instant stocking stuffers. Who’d have thought we’d end up with this list of gems? Not me! And yet here we sit, ready to look at the best of the best. The cream of the crop, the gold standard for gaming in 2019. We’ve got a number of winners in various genres, plenty of nominees but much like the best Highlander film would say, there can be only one.

Over on reddit, Fallout 76 players are reporting that certain armour effects of the legendary variety are being entirely busted like a silly myth whenever they reload their weapons. It’s not happening to everyone, but there’s enough consistency across the board to make this a worrying issue.

Bad news for fisticuffs fans: EA's magnificent Fight Night Round 4 has one more round in the tank before it shuts down its servers in early 2020.

If there’s a joy in life that has to be experienced, it is the sheer thrill of petrolhead paradise that is Forza Horizon 4. A gripping collection of races over a vast section of merry ol’ England, you don’t even need to be competitive to enjoy, as a simple afternoon drive behind the wheel of an impossibly fast supercar is …

If video games are escapism, then role-playing games are the endpoint of that idea. These are the games that truly do allow us to inhabit the bodies of characters and grow them according to our own whims and desires. Role-playing games also happen to come in a variety of flavours to suit any palette, whether they be meaty mechanical beasts that we can tinker with or more subtle character-driven experiences that task the player with finding a path that suits their specific tastes of engagement. These, are the best RPGs of 2019.

Resident Evil 3 returns to PlayStation 4 on April 3rd, 2020. Experience Jill Valentine’s encounter with the unrelenting Nemesis in this survival-horror classic remade from the ground up.

When you look at a sequel, the recipe for success is easy: More of the good stuff, please. That alone makes for a great foundation to build on, tweak and improve, but what if you’re after more? Those sequels which do go above and beyond aren’t rare in this day and cautious age, but real cream of the crop are the games which push their source media material to new heights not just mechanically but emotionally as well. These, are the best sequels of 2019.

One brave soul on reddit took on the Herculean task to create Spotify playlists for every game in the Guitar Hero series. From the original Guitar Hero through to Warriors of Rock, here's a selection...OF ROCK!