Bramble: The Mountain King is a dark and brooding slice of Nordic folklore that's well worth digging into, despite some notable technical shortcomings. There's an inherent jankiness to the gameplay here that permeates its platforming, boss battles and exploration. However, if you can make peace with these rough edges, you'll find a tale that's still dripping in atmosphere, packed full of wonderful details and a menagerie of foul fairy-tale beasties that draw you in and keep the short campaign well and truly interesting.

Rock Pocket Games have created a memorable puzzle game that is a solid fit for the new Sierra, even if its control scheme might take some time to get used to.

It isn't perfect, but this should provide hours upon hours of gory, blunt object, rabid deer and zombie-filled entertainment.

If you've played pretty much any Supermassive game in the past — from Until Dawn to The Quarry — you'll know what to expect from The Casting of Frank Stone. This Dead by Daylight tie-in doesn't quite match the lofty heights of those two games in particular, but it gets pretty close, delivering an engaging popcorn horror experience along the way. We'd have been well up for a few more hours in this universe, which certainly says something, but ultimately results in The Casting of Frank Stone sitting just below greatness.

Without a doubt, Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink is a good quality product overall, made by a developer that really seems to know what they're doing when it comes to point and click titles.

RoboCop: Rogue City is a very average shooter that becomes more than the sum of its parts through an exacting attention to detail displayed by its developers. There's some excellent world-building here, lovingly crafted recreations of places, people, cars and weapons that'll immediately excite fans and, although it's hardly electrifying, the shooter action undeniably gives you RoboCop in all his slow-moving, smart-assed glory. If you've got a love for the movie, you'll likely have a good time roleplaying here, and it's great to see Peter Weller reprise his role. However, if you've got no stake in the franchise, you may be left wondering what any of the fuss is about as this one deals in wholesale nostalgia.

It's definitely an enjoyable enough way to while away a couple of hours.

While the combat is undoubtedly satisfying and rewarding, the sense of repetition, the last-gen visuals, and the brevity of the adventure feel more matched for a budget price.

Getting to play more old-school Tomb Raider titles with the option of modern controls and modern visuals is another win from Crystal Dynamics, and I've had good fun revisiting these Lara Croft adventures. While The Last Revelation is the only game in here I'd consider a classic, both PS1 era games are still worth playing, especially now that Aspyr has given us the option to run through them with OG visuals at 60FPS. Despite being the newest title in here, The Angel of Darkness has aged the worst, and remains a stark reminder as to why the series moved to a new studio after this release. Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered's adventures might not be essential, but they're worth adding to your library as this era of Lara Croft makes its Xbox debut.

The fact that Dead Island 2 is finally here and enjoyable to play is nothing short of a miracle given the game's 10+ year development cycle. We feared this one may end up being a real mess, but Dambuster has largely delivered on what you'd expect from a sequel to Dead Island - just not much more than that. We'd have loved to see the team expand on things a little more to fully capitalise on the game's absurdity, but a safe sequel will do just fine in this case. Dead Island 2 won't blow you way, but it's shiny and dumb and fun, and definitely worth a play if you're looking for a light hearted zombie romp on Xbox.

Crimes & Punishments is one of the better, if not the best, Sherlock games out there, and if that's not saying much to you, it's also one of the better investigation-style games. The balance and variation of gameplay should be applauded.

Pneuma: Breath of Life didn't completely rock our world, but it did make for a captivating and satisfying afternoon in front of the television.

It probably isn't a game that you'll blast through in a single sitting and it certainly won't be for everybody, but Not A Hero is definitely a good deal of fun.

If you are a long time D&D player or have played any fantasy action brawlers in the past, you’ll likely enjoy this game – either with friends, or even if you go for the more challenging route of playing alone. It certainly doesn't revolutionise the genre, but considering it’s available on Game Pass at launch, there’s no reason not to give it a go. There’s also some free DLC and a paid expansion on the way, giving Dark Alliance a chance to level up in the future.

While its story falls short, Scarlet Nexus is expertly elevated with stunning combat. The consistent evolution, polished control scheme, and powerful feedback make each fight more satisfying than the last. If only the game had managed to incorporate a stronger story, more depth to its character bonds, and more things to do outside of combat, Scarlet Nexus could have been something special. As it stands, it feels like a solid first step for a new IP, and one where a sequel could really steal the show.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania isn't going to win any game of the year awards, but it's undeniably fun. While it's perhaps not the entry that will put the series back into the mainstream, fans of the original will likely have a good time and newcomers will see what the fuss is all about. While there are some questionable design choices, such as a finicky camera and microtransactions that feel out of place, this is an enjoyable adventure with AiAi and his friends.

Resident Evil 3 is a short, heavily scripted and somewhat scrappy follow up to last year's sublime Resi 2 remake. The series' trademark slow-burn tension and gentle puzzling are replaced here by all-out action that feels far too safe and linear – for the most part, a series of tightly confined corridors bookended by sloppy boss battles and chase sequences which tend to wrestle control away from the player in an effort to add unnecessary cinematic flair. There are a handful of highlights; graphically, it's the best the series has ever looked and both Jill and Carlos are decent re-imaginings of the original characters but, overall, this one struggles to reach anywhere near the heights of its predecessor. Combat feels disappointing for the most part, the Nemesis is underutilised and the whole thing is over far too quickly, with very little in the way of replay value.

Open Roads, in theory, should be another Gone Home-style success story. However, what we've actually got here feels strangely by the numbers, surprisingly short and very light on actual drama, mystery or thrills that genuinely compel. At around two hours long you won't need a lot of compelling to see it through, mind you, but overall this just feels like retreading the same sort of ground with much less of an effect. There's superb acting and it all looks great, but the narrative just isn't doing it for us this time, sadly.

Redfall sees Arkane experiment with melding genres, to mixed results. There's plenty of flashes of the style and narrative flair we've come to expect from this incredible studio as you explore the town and face off with its undead inhabitants. However, the mixing of FPS action and story beats with open world exploration and a relatively relaxed pace leads to a balancing act that may leave hardcore shooter aficionados and Arkane super fans alike wanting more. If you come at it looking for a chilled out bit of vampire hunting there's still plenty to enjoy here, but some irksome AI issues and a lack of clarity over what it really wants to be leave it feeling a little lost in a limbo of its own making.

It's great fun in short bursts though and fans of the genre will enjoy the challenges offered by some of the more intense game modes.

Rugby League Live 3 contains a multitude of impressive features that you'd usually really only expect from the 2ks and EAs of this world and that's to the developer's credit.

The Thing: Remastered, as expected from Nightdive, nails all of the technical aspects of a superb remaster. It gets full points from us on this front. However, the game itself is very much a tale of what could have been, had the devs stuck to the eerie exploration and atmospheric fear/trust system of the first couple of hours. Get past these opening hours, though, and overwhelmingly poor action sequences become more and more commonplace, resulting in a game that's just not much fun to play once it settles into its depressingly bland action rhythm.

Treyarch and its development partners have done their best to cobble something together with Black Ops 7, but you just can't get around the rushed nature of this back-to-back Black Ops release. The game's campaign is almost an insult to Call of Duty single player offerings of the past, and while the core of multiplayer is solid, technical issues are dragging that experience down on Xbox at launch as well. Zombies is the highlight for me and I can see myself dipping back into this mode a fair bit - in fact, it's probably the only bit of Black Ops 7 that feels truly finished on day one. It's probably worth checking back on multiplayer down the line when the issues I've mentioned inevitably get ironed out, but campaign can't be saved - and overall, Black Ops 7 just feels undercooked after the care and attention that was put into last year's release.

Starship Troopers: Extermination is a pulpy, schlocky and suitably violent take on the Starship Troopers universe that gives you big beefy guns and a ton of exploding alien bugs to get busy decimating in online warfare. There are some big old hordes to take down, thanks to some impressive tech on display, and everything looks and feels properly great when you're in the thick of the acid-spewing action. However, there are way too many technical bugs just now, this doesn't feel like a game that just left a prolonged early access, and so for now it's a janky-but-fun experience that, with a couple of patches and content drops, could become a great one.

Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 presents Kojima's genius in a package that could, and should, have been so much more. There's a bunch of stellar games to dig into here, you're guaranteed a great time once you're actually playing this iconic series, but this is a franchise that deserved more. Where's the TLC? Where's the resolution bumps, refined controls, visual upgrades and so on? Konami has managed to add a few nice extras, and there's a good showing in terms of how many titles are packed in here, but the overall performance and presentation, given the power and potential at the dev's disposal, leaves much to be desired.

Whether you can get over these glaring flaws or not is going to probably be the main thing that affects your opinion. We fought through the overall unpolished finish of the product, and we were glad that we did so, but this really isn't how anyone can reasonably have expected the game to have turned out.

It does manage to pack a lot of surprises into a short game with its interesting mix of powers but excellence is prevented as it gets bogged down in not allowing its own mechanics to properly flourish.

If you can look past the issues that we've raised in the review, can get past the somewhat steep £28 asking price and like space exploration, Starpoint Gemini 2 might be right up your space lane. It probably isn't going to drag many non-fans in, though.