1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
What more is there to say? A magical game that proved Nintendo can listen to fan feedback and not be scared to try something a little different. For their first attempt at a truly open-world game, it knocked it out of the park. Interesting to see what they do next with the series.
2. Super Mario Odyssey
Just a joy to play from start to finish (and beyond). Again, fan feedback seemingly played a part in this game with Nintendo taking the series back to its Mario 64/Sunshine roots. A great example of the universal fun of a Mario game is when I took my Switch with me interstate and my 14 year old nephew, who is solely a PS4/Xbone gamer, would not put it down. Now he is begging his parents for a Switch for Christmas.
3. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
This game surprised the hell out of me. I was not at all interested in it initially, but decided to take a punt after positive reports from hands on previews. Wow. Glad I did. Really fun and challenging game with that just one more battle thing going for it. Extremely polished game apart from some minor framerate hiccups. To sum it up in one word: charm.
Bit of a Nintendo flavour to my votes this year as the last 8 months have been dominated by Switch with one great game release following another, the timing of which didnt allow me to check out much else. My poor PC has barely been touched in that time, not helped by not many big new IPs or releases in series I like in that period. Dont own a PS4 or Xbone, so cant assess their contenders.
Great year in gaming overall in my opinion.