The Xbox One desperately needs a first-party title to bolster its rankings and contend with the likes of Bloodborne or upcoming space-exploration sim No Man's Sky on PS4 - and although Ori & The Blind Forest isn't as landmark an achievement as something like Rayman: Legends, its gorgeous animation, unbelievably touching story and Studio Ghibli-esque character designs make it one hell of a hidden gem regardless. Basically, if you like your platformers to force you into a state where you're staring bleary-eyed at the screen, ensuring every button press is pixel-perfect to avoid plunging to another inevitable death and restart, Ori is for you. The cutesy visuals and overly kiddified approach to its marketing have belied a really viscous learning curve that comes in after a few opening levels, and it's how you deal with this that'll determine just how much Ori endears itself to you - as the overall production everywhere else is as refined and polished as they come. The abilities you'll unlock range from fancier jumps to specific enemy-felling powers - but it's in refining your core movement and genuinely learning the feel and weight of Ori's movement that makes the whole thing soar way up into the clouds alongside the likes of Super Meat Boy and Shovel Knight. It's a sparse genre right now, but this is leading the fray on Platformer of the Year by a mile.
