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What is it that's kept me coming back to the three minute match-ups of Splatoon all year long? Maybe it's in the little details that can make Nintendo games such a joy - the satisfying splosh as you dive into ink, like the wholesome plonk of a hefty pebble being dropped into a pond - or how its scraps are a viscous riot as giddy and giggly as a food fight.

In performance terms, there's a big gap between the mid-range and high-end graphics cards on the market. GTX 970 is a substantial leap over its GTX 960 stablemate, while the Radeon R9 390 is also far more capable than the R9 380. There's room in the market for an 'inbetweener' - a keenly priced newcomer that can sit comfortably at the £200/$230 area in the market. AMD has got there first with the R9 380X and it's a fascinating product.

Sony had its Great Gatsby moment at this year's E3 - and not the whole 'boats against the current' part. With the likes of Shenmue, Final Fantasy 7 and The Last Guardian, Shawn Layden played the role of Jay, throwing shirt after beautiful shirt high into the sky. Kickstarters! Remakes! Cat-birds! Dazzling!

My two favourite games of this year are very different - almost opposed - but have one important thing in common. The Witcher 3 is huge, opulent, authored, with simple gameplay working in the service of rich storylines and a bustling world. Invisible, Inc. is compact, efficient, procedurally generated, with a basic plot framing stories that emerge naturally from an exquisitely engineered ruleset. Both games, though, impress with their coherence: their total dedication to selling their fantasy and to avoiding the smallest detail that might break their spell. Strut like a sexy, magic monster hunter; commit daring heists with a team of neo-noir cyber-spies. Who wouldn't want to?

2015 was always going to be a trying year for Nintendo, a transition period that would see it winding down its faltering home console and ageing handheld while it geared up its preparations for a new generation of hardware quietly in the background. With the untimely passing in July of Satoru Iwata, a man who had shaped Nintendo's outlook and embodied its playful spirit, 2015 will likely go down as one of the toughest years in the company's 126-year history.

Rocket League is a fun video game to describe to your pals. It's sort of like football, you'll tell them, but instead of the more traditional humanoid players that you might be expecting, with their fleshy limbs and bodies, here we'll be playing the beautiful game with cars. Rocket-fuelled cars. Also, the ball is massive and you can do wicked front flips. Most people are going to want to give that a go, which is useful, because this may well be the best party game of the year. You'll want to get others involved.

Nvidia, Apple and Amazon share a common vision for a new type of media streaming set-top box that lives in the lounge, providing a state-of-the-art media interface - and powering a new range of mainstream-friendly games. The Cupertino super-power has already shared its plans for its new 2015 revision of the Apple TV, while Amazon has upped the ante with a 4K-capable revision of its Fire TV. Beating both of them to the market is Nvidia with its new Shield Android TV micro-console, by far and away the most technologically advanced device of the bunch.

I first played Cibele at the Moscone Convention Centre's foyer at the Game Developer's Conference earlier this year. The game's writer and designer, Nina Freeman, passed her laptop and a pair of headphones to me as we sat cross-legged on the squeaky floor, while thousands of other game makers hurried off to the next seminar on 'user research Destiny' or, 'monetising children'. Playing video games while their creators look on is always a little awkward. It's difficult to shake the feeling that they're wincing behind you at your ineptitude - almost every designer is, after all, an expert in their own work. You assume they're always fighting the urge to wrest the controller to show you how it should be done. With Cibele, the source of my awkwardness was a little different.

Win my heart and I will forgive you: it's so simple. I don't mind the niggling bits if I love something overall - I can even write them off as charming quirks of character. But abuse my heart and upend my smile and the flaws, well, they become sprouts in my Christmas pudding: disgusting.

While it didn't quite come out of nowhere, nobody could have predicted just how huge Undertale would become this year. At the time of writing, 19,394 positive reviews to 321. Half a million sales, by SteamSpy estimation. Beating Ocarina of Time in GameFAQs' Best Games Ever list. Making people give a crap about GameFAQs' Best Games Ever list. It's quite the thing.

All I knew about Her Story when I started playing was that it involved a woman being interviewed on camera by the police. That's it. And I urge anyone who hasn't played the game to not only do so, but to do so similarly blind. Stitching together each thread created a sense of accomplishment that lodged the memory of this game powerfully in my mind. I made pages of notes; I thought I had to. I believed I was putting together a case, a collection of videos, to submit to court; me, some hotshot detective finding things where others had failed - as if any one would choose me for the job. But it meant I concentrated intensely, gave Her Story my whole attention, and tried my hardest to figure it all out.

UPDATE 26/12/15 11.35pm: Steam's store is back online after a Christmas Day error exposed countless users' personal details.

With Trine 3, developer Frozenbyte has delivered an impressive title filled with vivid, intricate environments and a variety of accomplished effects work and lighting. The combined use of depth of field, dynamic lighting, and volumetric effects add atmosphere to the game's varied locations, while the move to a true three-dimensional playfield feels like a natural progression to the puzzle-based gameplay seen in previous titles. The use of a full 3D space doesn't always work well, but from a visual perspective we're looking at a significant leap over Trine 2, despite the utilisation of the ageing DirectX 9 API. Of course Frozenbyte has made plenty of optimisations over previous Trine titles, and as a result we see Microsoft's ageing API still putting out a gorgeous release.

Given that I have already bored my friends, colleagues and loved ones to tears talking about Vermintide, it feels strange to be writing about it as one of the unsung gems of 2015. I have talked about this game a lot - to the point, frankly, where I feel I owe several people an apology.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate makes me feel like a kid again - and sometimes, being a kid can be a real pain. Every school day you're overloaded with a flurry of information that you find yourself only half paying attention to, monetary income is sparse, and time always moves just a little too slow as you await the next exciting life change. But then you get to fight dinosaurs in a video game.

UPDATE 23/12/2015 12.45am: Tap My Katamari has been confirmed as a 2D clicker-style spin-off for iOS and Android devices.

I found Subterfuge to be a strange and sometimes uncomfortable game to play with friends. We've already talked about that a little, but perhaps we didn't talk enough about why it was able to have such an impact in the first place. Subterfuge is, more than anything else, a game of mutual deception, in which a group of players must work together whilst deftly avoiding the awkward truth that only one of them can emerge victorious.

There's a shot in the war movie The Thin Red Line that I can't stop thinking about: soldiers scattered over a distant hill, crouched in the grass, waiting. What happens? Nothing. Or rather, nothing you can type into a shooting script and then stick on the screen. But at the same time, everything happens: the mood shifts, the calm breaks. And all because the light has changed: a cloud moving across the sky, a darkening, a transition.

UPDATE 23/12/2015 8.32pm: Good news, everyone! The Banner Saga will be coming to Vita after all.

Natural Selection 2 developer Unknown Worlds' underwater exploration game Subnautica is in development for Xbox One.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End has been pushed back until 29th April in the UK, developer Naughty Dog has announced.

The PlayStation Vita version of Volume will finally launch on 6th January, developer Mike Bithell has announced (or, if you live in North American, 5th January).

Confession time: I really love playing solitaire. I don't love it the way I love other games. I don't admire the cleverness of its design, I'm not particularly entertained by its mechanics. I love it with a deep, psychological need, an almost philosophical yearning. Of course I love clearing the cards when chance allows, enjoying the Pavlovian kick of tidying up at the core of so much gaming - but I also, in a perverse way, love it when chance allows me no such thing. It feels true. I need to be smart to win, but my loss might have been written in the cards from the start, which makes a win all the sweeter.

UK retailer GAME's profit forecast has been slashed after it admitted failing to match the level of pre-Christmas sales recorded last year.

Earlier this year Wonder Boy creator Ryuichi Nishizawa announced that he was working with Flying Hamster developer Game Atelier USA on a spiritual successor to his vintage Sega series called Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. Now there's a new trailer showing just how Monster Boy is shaping up.

Valve has launched the Steam winter sale 2015, which features discounts on thousands of games. 10,005 to be exact.

This year, we're counting down our 10 favourite games of the year in daily articles. We'll reveal our game of the year on 1st January 2016. The top ten was decided by a vote among Eurogamer staff and contributors, and we didn't even fiddle the results!

Square Enix is offering another Humble Bundle wherein players can receive the first episode of Life is Strange, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Last Remnant and the first three oldschool Tomb Raider games for $1. (That's roughly £0.67.)

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, the festive holiday puzzle game by designer Alan Hazelden (Sokobond, These Robotic Hearts of Mine) and artist Benjamin Davis (Sushi Snake) is out now on iOS and Android.

Last year Battlefield 4 fanatic Jackfrags discovered a secret hidden megalodon hidden in DICE's multiplayer shooter, and now the dedicated sleuth has cracked what must surely be Battlefield 4's most cryptic Easter egg.