Dusk

I don't have much experience with the canonical 1990s shooters this is based on – your Dooms and Quakes – but it feels like this takes what made those games special and perfects it. You move quickly, the guns are loud, and the level design is stellar. The creators were taking ideas from Half-Life and Deus Ex as well as more cartoony keycard-based shooters, and one of the joys of the game is uncovering secrets that give you little power-ups. Exploration and attention is rewarded, and can give you a leg-up in encounters.

Dusk never gets tiring – it's always bringing something new to the table. In Episode 2 you start to see levels reconfigure. By Episode 3 you can swich the direction of gravity. Only in the last two missions was I ready for it to be over – there's a big combat arena where you face every enemy in the game in waves, and then two quite challenging boss fights. I dialled the difficulty down to get through it, and still had fun blasting away.