This year was a terrible year for the planet, but a good year for my own personal nostalgia. Spiritual successors, updates and remasters dominated my playtime, but I also pushed my boundaries in terms of the types of games I typically play. I’m counting that as personal growth.

So, without further ado, here are my top 10 games for 2016, in vaguely ascending order.

Today on Highlight Reel we have mopey piano solos, merciful titans, Let It Die boss battles, great Halo 5 shots and much more.

Video: "My only regret is I didn't do more," the Joker cackles, in this terrific scene from newish PS4 game Batman: Arkham VR. The Bat-computer is listing all of the crimes that the Joker has been convicted of. Torture... unlicensed dentistry... arson... even improper labelling of meat products. That bastard.

A wall covered in writing in Batman Arkham Knight that baffled thousands of players for months was a brazen Easter Egg teasing October's Arkham VR. It was hiding nearly in plain site for nine months since it was snuck into Arkham Knight via some DLC in January.

The hero of Batman: Arkham VR is a little clumsy. His hands shake from time to time. He sometimes drops his Batarangs. He doesn't drive his own Batmobile, and he spends a lot of time standing in place as other people move around him.

In another sign that the competition between expensive virtual reality headsets will be waged as a platform war, ads for the PlayStation VR releases tied to the Batman Arkham and Resident Evil series indicate that they will be exclusive to Sony's VR offering for quite some time.