The Windows timewaster comes to Xbox Live Arcade, but the only real addition is a hole in your wallet.

A joyless slog of barely interactive entertainment and a muddled portrayal of mental illness… that just so happens to have the best graphics ever on a video game console.

It looks good, moves fast, and you can pull off satisfying drifts going once you get used to the racers’ handling, but the touchscreen controls are easy to miss in the heat of battle, and there’s never quite enough going on to make it compelling.

Another poorly constructed portable spin-off that brings us no closer to a real Battlefront III.

Not a very satisfying or enjoyable video game to play, but still a fascinating one to experience – with some beautifully stark imagery and ideas.

There’s a fair number of new features and missions here but none justify the price, and the experience will pass from your memory almost as soon as it’s over.

Its explosive thunder has already been stolen (twice) leaving this unfortunately-timed platformer to arrive late for its own party.

There's lots of space for a more serious, realistic rally game but this doesn't fit the bill – with a distinct lack of excitement and innovation.

What once was a dumb-but-fun alternative to GTA is reduced to a broken technical mess on the PC.

There’s effort and ambition here but nothing can overcome the limitations of a touchscreen or the doomed efforts to replicate the first person console experience.

An unusual open world samurai adventure, with plenty of authenticity but little spit and polish.

An interesting attempt at a Professor Layton clone, but one that has neither the charm nor the variety of its more scholarly inspiration.

Dragon Quest continues to be the most successful partner for Dynasty Warriors, but the pace of improvement remains painfully slow.

The closest you're ever likely to get to a new Wonder Boy, but this won't please fans new or old.

If Resident Evil wants to be an action game then so be it, but it needs to be a good one – not this linear, patronisingly simplistic time waster.

A horribly generic Japanese role-player that has no glaring flaws but fails to offer a single interesting new idea or character of its own.

A polished and charmingly drawn action role-player, whose straightforward battles, simple puzzles, and elementary but prolific dialogue will appeal to children more than it will seasoned players.

It has a polished interface, and the sound effects as you move board elements are first rate, but the puzzles are monotonously similar throughout, meaning you’re working with the same set of problems at level 80 as you were in the tutorial.

One of the strangest remakes of all time, given the amount of effort and care that’s been put into such obscure adventure games that, in all honesty, don’t deserve the attention.

Another retro platformer that doesn’t deserve such lavish new presentation, where everything has been improved apart from the gameplay.

There’s moments of greatness, and genuine terror, in this loving homage to everyone’s favourite double-hearted alien, but time and again it’s dragged down by dull puzzles and drab storytelling.

Extreme video game nostalgia enters the world of VR but the novelty can’t excuse the sub-par gameplay and repetitive humour.

A genuinely amusing zombie shooting sequel, that’s let down by clunky controls, too many bugs, and too little variety in its challenge.

Mr. Shifty could’ve have worked perfectly as a spiritual sequel to Hotline Miami; especially given how poorly served it was by its own sequel. But while Mr. Shifty is serviceable and occasionally enjoyable, it’s hard to recommend even at is fairly modest asking price. But while it will be quickly forgotten, it has reminded us just how good the original Hotline Miami was… and how much we’d like a proper sequel.

A charmingly narrated VR puzzle game, with some interesting mechanics, but it’s let down by mechanical difficulties and occasionally insufficient signposting.

Super Meat Boy in 3D seems to be an inherently flawed concept and while this does its best to make navigating the third dimension feasible, the end result feels frustratingly imprecise.

An interactive movie that tries to tell a relevant tale of near-future Britain but is marred by characters that lack credibility and a story free from dramatic tension.

Plenty of smart ideas and some very attractive presentation, but none of the core gameplay elements work as well as they should and the game ends up sadly forgettable.

A mild improvement on the season one debut, but while the first episode offers some shock value it still lacks depth in both storytelling and gameplay.

The intent is clearly there but a shortened development cycle prevents this from expanding on the solid foundations laid by War For Cyberton.

The fact that it's free-to-play is almost the only point of interest in this derivative shooter - and even that is far less appealing once you get into the details.

The works of both Dante Alighieri and David Jaffe are defiled in this shallow and puerile actioner.

Some of the best emulation work ever undertaken, it’s just a pity it’s been wasted on such a miserable collection of decidedly non-classic games.

A hugely disappointing sequel that seems to misunderstand what made the original gameplay great and is tediously self-indulgent when it comes to its story and violence.

An unappealing mix of role-playing clichés and purposefully limited gameplay options that has little to do with Final Fantasy, past or future.

It may look like Zombies but it certainly doesn't play like it, in a portable conversion that copies all the features but delivers none of the fun.

You can’t fault its ambition, but this is too little game stretched across too much open world map, with repetitive enemy encounters and tedious storytelling.

A muddled and underwhelming Dark Souls clone that has a few unique ideas but fails to back them up with compelling combat or exploration.

More frustrating because of the things it gets right than the blindingly obviously problems with bugs, a dull career mode, and a strange new loot box system.

The story set-up is good and there are some interesting new gameplay features, but almost all of them are squandered by sloppy design and inconsequential action.

The most peculiar HD remaster so far, that offers no obvious reason for its existence or why the original was though worthy of resurrection.

Backwards-looking and unnecessary tie-in/remake which leaves the Prince needing yet another reboot.

The original SNES classic deserves better than this overpriced and undercooked remake, which fails to recreate the original’s ‘90s charm.

Dragon Quest is arguably the most successful partner so for Dynasty Warriors, but the potential of the franchise, and this particular crossover, is still only barely hinted at.

A poor swansong for Pandemic, with a few novel ideas spoilt by a host of badly copied gameplay mechanics.

Having Patrick Stewart as your narrator is quite the selling point, but he seems oddly wasted here, in this otherwise fairly low budget, portal-filled puzzler. Before you get too excited this is really nothing like Valve’s classic and a much more slow-paced, story-based affair.

Some very minor improvements to the Dynasty Warriors formula but this is just as vapid and repetitive as it was back in the PlayStation 2 era, only now with relatively modern graphics.

A peculiarly underdeveloped riff on Jet Set Radio that never manages to find anything interesting to do with any of its many gameplay mechanics and story ideas.

With a couple of hours’ worth of occasionally irritating head-scratching, there’s a slight sense of having played the intro to a much larger game. Whether you’d want a full-length version of Discolored is another matter entirely.

Almost everyone does it better than this bland, unambitious shooter that manages to squander all of the developer's usual talents.

A well intentioned attempt to mix Ecco The Dolphin with a more urgent environmental message but the end result Iacks any real excitement or variety.

A failed attempt to expand the coin-op, with a fog of unnecessary extras keeping you from the good stuff.

A wearingly competent Soulslike that seems to have no interest in inventing anything of its own and which is nowhere near as refined as FromSoftware’s best games.

It’s sad to see another potentially great game ruined by commercial considerations, but compared with its predecessors this is a far less engaging grind.

A no-brainer for fans of the series, but although superior to its predecessor this is still too repetitive and shallow to convince newcomers.

The original was hardly viewed as a classic even at the time and while a lot of work has gone into this remaster it can’t hide the game’s intrinsic shallowness and repetition.

A highly authentic movie adaptation but a sadly predictable, and repetitive, video game, that does far too little to justify the continued trend of turning 80s horror film into asymmetric multiplayer games.

Another sub-par remaster of Super Monkey Ball that ruins the precision and elegance of the originals and replaces it with janky, unpredictable controls and shoddy presentation.

An interesting attempt to cross Dark Souls with a roguelike, but it’s not a very well mixed cocktail and the ingredients really needed to be chosen with more care.

Beautiful to look at but the story and gameplay prove far less fascinating than the real world model-making skills of the developer.

A fun mix of influences and career paths, but the game doesn’t make being a mercenary or magician entertaining enough – let alone a tailor or woodcutter.

It’s certainly not the worst Gauntlet revamp there’s ever been, but there’s too little substance or variety to satisfy either new fans or old.

The anime films may be critically acclaimed but their video game counterpart is nowhere near as interesting – although there is a couple of hours of mindless fun to be had.

A relatively entertaining new mode and a mostly empty new island result in one of the most overpriced releases Nintendo has ever produced.

A lo-fi 8-bit style twin-stick bullet hell shooter whose exhilaratingly weird music and catalogue of surreal weaponry is undermined by technical problems and a reliance on luck.

It looks great but LucasArts' arthouse styled platform puzzler simply isn't much fun to play.

Another impressive open world environment is wasted on dull, joyless gameplay and repetitive missions, making Syndicate as banal and artless as Assassin’s Creed has ever been.

Despite its non-essential relationship with the medium, it’s a pleasant enough experience and a lot more polished than many VR-only titles, somewhere between arcade and puzzle action, although you’d be hard pressed to get too excited about it.

A disappointing start to what should be a potential rich concept, with an overfamiliar storyline and bland presentation.

Gaming's most prolific, but least pioneering, series ruins its best spin-off with an overdose of deja vu.

It makes the stealth more interesting and there’s a successful tonal shift from the main game, but free or not this expansion fails to improve on any of Unity’s major problems.

The most cinematic entry in the series so far but no matter how good the visuals or acting are, the story is clichéd and predictable, and the gameplay feels like barely an afterthought.

Even though it offers cross-platform play finding those teammates can be a tricky, but once you’re up and running both sides are at least equally hamstrung by the control set-up.

It would be one thing if this was just NBA 2K20 with some minor changes but this rips the heart out of last year’s game solely to appeal to competitive online players, with many much-loved features stripped back or not included at all.

There’s the core of an interesting game here, but it feels like an idea that’s been only partially fleshed out.

Whoever this shoddily made platformer is meant to please it won’t be those that like Sonic Mania, or any of the better 3D Sonic games.

An unbearably bland arena-based shooter that only manages to make the Quake-style action seem more old-fashioned and irrelevant than ever.

One of the least-demanded Nintendo sequels of recent years has relatively high production values but it’s still a dull, repetitive mix of tower defence and overly-simplistic action.

A mediocre homage to Contra and a terrible adaption of Terminator 2, which has nothing interesting to say about the concept of adapting movies into 2D video games.

It's a great idea, and filled with some top grade Suda51 weirdness, but Kinect is nowhere near accurate enough to make even such a simple game work properly.

For those that don't remember the original this retro remake will likely prove a little too old school.

A peculiar multimedia bundle that features a near worthless HD update, a paid-for demo and a terrible CGI movie. Fighting game fans can do a lot better.

The cinematic approach makes sense on paper but it means Telltale Games aren't able to play to their strengths and the end result seems doomed to extinction.

A barely-interactive movie that follows a mother and daughter road trip that is disappointingly short on both drama and meaningful choices.

It doesn't do anything new, it doesn't fix any old problems and it's not very substantial. There are a lot of better ways to spend £6.80 on Xbox Live.

Even if you enjoy Roguelikes this must be the worst special edition ever, with almost no new features.

While the interface works, the game feels half-baked, with no instructions and bare bones interactions. It’s not terrible but in its current state feels unfinished, which for a game whose name riffs on the expression, ‘work in progress’ is perhaps quite fitting.

It’s a genuinely revolting vision of the future, of a games industry that treats its players as enemies to be bullied and manipulated – not customers to be entertained and attended to. If SimCity really was a city we’d realise we weren’t welcome and move out immediately.

The visuals are incredible, but for a game obsessed with storytelling at all costs the dopey plot and underwritten characters in no way make up for the lack of gameplay.

Red Dead Redemption is a great single player game, but this only emphasises the mediocre multiplayer.

As match-three puzzlers go this is well above average, but the cynical microtransactions make it a horrible slog to actually play.

It always sounded like a bad idea, but although Zelda has inspired one of the best Dynasty Warriors games to date the end result is still well below average by any other standard.

It has very high production values and its colourful, cartoony visuals have a matching zany sense of humour. Unfortunately, despite splashing some cash on the user interface, the combat is primitive and rapidly becomes boring; the chance encounters on each planet repeat ad nauseam and its whacky comedy is nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is.

The switch to turn-based strategy works perfectly but only fans will tolerate the endless cut scenes.

Spiritual or not this is a poor sequel to the Panzer Dragoon games, and its tame and repetitive action will certainly not win the series any new fans.

A more grounded approach and a fresh coat of paint fail to address the series’ inherent flaws, as the cheesy charm of fighting giant insects is lost in the process.

It certainly looks and sounds the part but this downloadable game is just as shallow as most retail tie-ins.

The least interesting use of the Until Dawn formula so far, with a tedious tale of 17th century witchcraft that fails to either scare or entertain.