When we think of Nintendo we picture serene and cosy cartoon adventures filled with cute creatures and lovable Italian stereotypes. But while there is plenty of Mario on the Switch, the console offers a diverse range of delights for newcomers and longtime gaming veterans. Here are the 15 essentials. The cosy life sim returned with new characters, chill activities, and endless knick-knacks with which to decorate your own virtual paradise. Create a dream island and then invite friends over for tea.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC A game about the importance of cooking and the immigrant experience, in which we see vignettes of the daily life of a family who have emigrated from India to Canada. The mother uses food to keep herself and her son connected to their homeland and as a distance grows, perhaps inevitably, between parent and child, we see the consequences. The Tamil language, film, music and cuisine are depicted here with affection, lending emotional weight to the story. PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC As a traveller in foreign lands, with no knowledge of the local languages, you must piece clues together from context, making this part puzzle game and part adventure game. The beautiful, minimalist art is reminiscent of Monument Valley and the contrasting colour palette creates a sense of otherworldliness.

At this stage in the pandemic, you may have started to question the amount of time you're spending playing video games. Publishers have reported huge increases in the numbers of players on titles such as Call of Duty Warzone and Fifa 21, while Animal Crossing, launched in the first weeks of last year's lockdown, has sold more than 30m copies, mostly on its seductive promise to bring friends together for tea parties on cute little islands. Perhaps now, however, you want to spend some time away from games – but without abandoning them. Or maybe you want to find out why Assassin's Creed Valhalla has such an unassailable grip on your attention. Either way, here are 20 books that tell us more about games, or are likely to be interesting to people who play them a lot.

Video game fans finally got their first look at the PlayStation 5. Sony revealed the long-anticipated video game console on Thursday through an online livestream. The new console will be available in two forms: a standard model with Blu-ray disc drive and a digital model without the disc drive. Sony said pricing would be announced at a later time. Of course, a console is nothing without a strong library of games, especially at launch. Some titles will land this holiday, while others are in the works for next year and beyond.

In our early 20s, we could spend whole days immersed in epic role-playing video games, sacrificing months to the demands of the latest Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest adventure. But, in our 30s and 40s, we're lucky to catch 10 minutes of Fortnite here and there. However, now that many of us are finding we have time on our hands, it could be the opportunity we need to attempt some of the more chronologically demanding narrative video game masterpieces of the last decade. Here are 15 that should see you through the next six months – and beyond. Ubisoft's tale of vengeance-seeking mercenaries battling through the chaos of the Peloponnesian war gives us a vast reproduction of ancient Greece, almost Homeric in its depth and detail.

In a lot of ways Breath of the Wild is a standard Zelda title. It's an action role-playing adventure, following Link as he sets out to kill the evil sorcerer Ganon before this mythic monster can escape an enchanted castle and destroy Hyrule. You battle monsters, level up, collect new weapons and items, slowly gain the strength needed for the final showdown. But Breath of the Wild is much more than that. Featuring a full-physics system that lets you experiment with a host of interlocking elements, the game teaches you to be creative, attacking enemies and overcoming scenic obstacles in interesting ways.

Video games have always been funny. From the lumbering kidnap animation in Donkey Kong to the witty wordplay of the Uncharted series, developers have used every tool at their disposal to make us giggle while we shoot, jump, explore and accelerate. Sometimes the humour comes from the script, sometimes the mechanics, and sometimes it's just the emergent joy of competing against friends. Whichever, we all remember games that have had us doubled over our controllers, helpless with laughter. Here then, are the funniest games we've ever played.

Every new year brings with it the promise of astonishing video games, but what does 2017 have in store? Will this be a vintage year? From returning legends to innovative new projects, there's an impressive amount of fascinating stuff on the way – and we've tried to cram in everything, including big budget sequels, unexpected offshoots and tiny independent projects. If we've somehow overlooked your highlight of the coming year, let us know in the comments section! Described as a magical realist adventure, 29 is set within a single flat (actually owned by the game's development team), and follows the lives of its inhabitants as they prepare to move out and move on with their lives.

I don't remember a time we didn't have video games in the house. I grew up in Gregory, Michigan, a small town in the middle of nowhere; a town that literally borders Hell. I wish I was kidding. My dad was a second shift supervisor at a General Motors plant in Detroit. He always wanted to have the latest expensive things; we owned an early home PC and he'd bring home these floppy discs filled with games – they would trade them around at his office.

The concluding instalment in From Software's acclaimed action role-playing series provides all the impassable enemies, labyrinthine locations and gothic cruelty we expect from director Hidetaka Miyazaki. What we said: The Dark Souls series is beloved of designers, who see its singular, idiosyncratic approach, and seemingly uncompromised vision as an example of everything they hope to achieve. Chris Bourassa and Tyler Sigman's unrelentingly doom-laden exploration game follows a group of treasure hunters as they wander monster-infested tunnels, going slowly mad in the process. What we said: Darkest Dungeon is something fresh in one of gaming's most overdone genres, and the stress system is a winner – a particular delight being how a long-lived character will accumulate various mental scars. Gambling against death is at the heart of the game, because every time something glitters, the truly crazy decision would be to walk away. Returning to the glory days of the famed Colin McRae Rally series, Codemasters provides a thrilling and highly authentic off-road driving sim, jammed with exciting vehicles and snaking international circuits.