Valiant Hearts the Great War - PS4This is quite literally one of the best games ever made. Seriously, holy shit! I couldn't put this game down until I finished it. It's brilliant! I'll even go so far as to call it a masterpiece. The story, the graphics, the sound, the gameplay, everything about this game is pretty much perfect.
To call it just a puzzle game seems like a disservice, because while that makes up the core of the gameplay, Valiant Hearts mixes things up so frequently throughout the game in fantastic ways. There's boss fights, action, stealth, rythm based mini-games, and it all comes together so seamlessly. Puzzles are the bulk of the gameplay though, and they are all well thought out. The game even has a hint system if you get stuck, but you shouldn't need it
Even the collectibles are well done. A list is provided in each stage showing the exact order in which you should be finding the collectibles, which makes hunting down the ones you're missing much easier. And each of them reveals some interesting trivia regarding World War I, which is what the game's fictional story revolves around. This is the kind of game you could have people play in a classroom, as it's actually educational.
Valiant Hearts is a very clever game, with some of the most creative uses of audio and visuals I've seen in a game (wait until you see the taxi sequences) and it's very accessible to just about any gamer, male, female, young or old. In fact, while they are vastly different games, I'd compare this to Valkyria Chronicles as that is another game that does a great job taking a real life war and creating a fictional story from it, though VC uses World War II more as an inspiration for its fictional setting while Valiant Hearts directly references real life events from World War I as part of its story. Both games do a really good job of examining the topic of war from every angle, though much as I enjoy VC's story, Valiant Hearts tells a more powerful tale.
EDIT: On an unrelated note, I saw Donkey Kong Country Returns being discussed in this thread. Count me among its haters, and as stated already, it's mostly due to its high difficulty which is not in keeping with the spirit of the originals.