E3 this year was a beast of a show. We have stacks of content to drop to you over the next little while, but this year we wanted to jump out of the gates with something a bit new -- a TOP 10.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... but it's sort of not that kind of top 10. This year's show was full of some of the most promising multi-directional games and, well, we wanted to create a definitive list of the rarest of the rare -- a list of games in "rare air". With each other.

So here's Part 1 of our three-part series, counting down from 10 to 1 with an absolute order of best to, well, 10th best.

Spoiler alert: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is beaten in this list by Call of Cthulhu. Wanna know why? Here's a snippet:

“Number 10!?!” you say, angrily? Well weighing everything up, the reason was simply that this is the same game we’ve been given over a number of years. It’s faster, has the largest roster of playable characters (slightly rebalanced as a result of the faster pace), and is portable given it’s on Nintendo Switch -- all massive positives. And you also need to realise that this list is the 10 VERY BEST, so being the opening game in our countdown is not even remotely a negative...

... Call of Cthulhu is in “Rare Air” because it’s doing something pretty rare. It pips Smash above because this is something new -- “Investigation RPG”, which can be likened back to Point & Click Adventure and Pen & Paper games, but the truth here is this is much, much deeper than ‘borrowed’ mechanics. And each time I see the game, the team reveals a little more that just adds to the overall separation of those disparate design principles. Principles that aren’t specifically ‘driving’ design, rather they’re inspiring it..."

Click here for part 1 of our "Rare Air Top 10 Best of E3".