Maximum Games have a solid premise throughout Troll and I, and the game can be made much better with patches, but ultimately Troll and I will be lost to the vast majority of players who are unwilling to see the game for its good points opposed to its potential.

As a tool for the inexperienced driver looking to learn the way of the road in America, taking in real world experiences in a safe environment, Driving Essentials on Xbox One is just about fine; although even then the lack of content is an issue. But for anyone else, it’s a total waste of time. The visuals, the audio, the huge price tag and the problems with the AI and penalty system will fail to ever really draw in any prospective new driver, even if they fully understand that at no point in time is this ever being marketed as a game.

Cyber Pool excels in the table types, but fails with inconsistent gameplay and dodgy hit detection.

There is a great game with a brilliant idea underneath the problems of Headspun; problems that have made the game unworkable.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy- Definitive Edition on Xbox is an overpriced and poorly produced release which does absolutely no favours to the classic games it attempts to celebrate. The experience here is far from definitive, and aside from the sheer laziness in the graphical remastering and performance, it introduces a whole slew of performance issues.

There are some great ideas, and an admirable aesthetic, but when you can pick up better fighters such as SoulCalibur VI, Mortal Kombat X, Tekken 7 and even Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite for far less, it’s hard to really justify the price.

We were surprised about our reaction to 7 Days of Rose. It was like a reflex: a gag at how smarmy and inauthentic it was. As a visual novel, it’s fine - well presented with several endings. But we found the main character to be as unlikable as the relationship is unlikely, and we struggled to play the game as our eyes were continually rolling.

Gene Rain is a disappointment. It is ultimately good looking enough, but shallow, with poor gameplay and frankly laughable dialogue. The acting is poor, the guns lack heft and the cover mechanic is broken so much that you really don’t want to get me started.

Move over House of Wolves, for there’s a new worst Destiny expansion in town, and it goes by the name of Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate.

Put it this way, if a meteor hit the Xbox Store today, no one would miss Roarr! Jurassic Edition.

Ultimately, there just isn’t enough here. 8-Ball Pocket is a lightweight, plainly presented little pool game, which doesn’t have the modes, options or customisation to warrant a purchase. In a world with a bewildering number of pool variants, there’s no real excuse for packaging in a bizarre solo option and a vanilla multiplayer option.

It is tough to recommend Hyposphere: Rebirth on Xbox to anyone other than achievement hunters, and even then it is probably best to still avoid it.

Richy’s Nightmares is, appropriately, a nightmare. We challenge you to master or even enjoy its scrappy jumping. The physics, bugs and laggy leaping make this less a limbo, and more a straight-up platforming hell.

Vera Blanc: Ghost In The Castle on Xbox is a spectral shadow of Vera Blanc: Full Moon. It feels similar, but the story is thinner, less threatening, it doesn’t last as long, and the kitschiness is replaced with misogyny.

I wanted to like Demolish & Build 3 more than I did, and much of that is down to the awful controls. In fact, at times it just feels impossible to use. It’s not helped by a poor tutorial and some aged visuals.

Tears of Avia on Xbox One is the very definition of an underachiever. It feels unfinished in almost every regard, and the combat is functional at best but offers nothing compelling in terms of gameplay variety or depth. There is a tactical turn-based RPG at the core, but nothing about it is designed to reel a player in or make them want to stick around.

Balancelot on Xbox has over 50 levels to play through, but there isn’t anywhere near enough differentiation between them to keep players entertained. The tapestry style and Monty Python cues can only carry Balancelot so far, especially when things such as the cutscenes and water effects are so badly ported over, which has to be said is unusual for a Ratalaika game.

Beyond Enemy Lines 2 touts itself as a hardcore strategic shooter that requires patience and intelligence to make its way through. Whilst that idea is certainly an interesting one, it fails to deliver in almost all regards.

For the potential that Super Soccer Blast on Xbox One brings, it consistently fails to deliver, with bugs, glitches and an overriding rushed feeling provided throughout. Even though the in-game mechanics aren’t the best, it could well have still been an arcade football game worth playing. But it comes with a severe lack of game options, zero online capabilities and enough bugs and glitches bubbling around, ready to explode, to ensure that this is one to avoid.

For free, Defiance 2050 is ok, there is fun if you can overlook the bugs, and the story is a good one, albeit identical to the game I played half a decade ago. However broken shooting mechanics, poor graphics and not enough love put into the detail conspire to rob what fun there is.

We’ve hate-played games before, but hate is a strong word in the case of Royal Roads 3. It’s more that we persisted in a state of bored disbelief. Surely something interesting is going to happen. Surely we’re going to end up somewhere less brown, rather than more. It’s almost impressive that no, it makes no attempt to do anything of the sort.

Johnny Rocket on Xbox One is a game that just screams missed potential. It has a unique concept and a bold, beautiful art style, and yet those weren’t built upon to make a well-rounded experience.

If you're after a mindless blast through space and fancy hearing the constant ping of achievements as you go, the low asking price of X-Force Genesis is probably going to be enough to tempt you in. Don't expect anything resembling a decent shoot 'em up experience though.

Anti Gravity Games Studios have included four unique zones, tons of levelling options, a hardcore mode and an actual incentive to perfect levels. Unfortunately the design of most of the game’s systems make that content unenjoyable. Between performance issues, difficulty spikes and a large amount of unfair deaths, it’s tough to enjoy your time here, and much of what fun can be had ends up being more at the expense of Hell Warders rather than because of it.

Ultimately, it’s the controls that doomed Lara Returns to the Castle: when the basic hopping about turned out to be less than enjoyable, there was only one way that things were going to go.

Unfortunately, there are some glaring issues in Crossroads Inn on Xbox that prevent it from being recommended in its current guise; notably that it’s not suited to a controller and is badly optimised. There is a roadmap planned for the rest of this year with new expansions and patches that hopefully fix the issues such as console optimisation and even the missing scenarios. But as it stands, it is best to avoid this one.

As a one-hour stroll goes, One Step After Fall is a painful one. It’s more like walking over LEGO than a relaxing amble.

Heads Up! Phones Down Edition is not a bad game: it’s just an unnecessary one. Slap £33.49 on that unnecessary game and, well, we creep slowly out of the room to play The Jackbox Party Pack games.

With seventy puzzle layouts and no frills, Mahjong - Xbox Series X|S might seem like the ideal purchase for someone who wants a no-nonsense version of the classic game. But when the simplest interactions come with baggage, there’s no reason to pick this over the many other options on the Xbox Store.

There’s nothing wrong with a deeply difficult platformer. But they have to be fair, and the controls have to be well-oiled. Alexio isn’t even close to nailing either, and the result is about as unsatisfying as a precision platformer can get. Don’t be tempted by the cute duck on the marketing: this one is less fair and more fowl.

In many ways My Universe – My Baby on Xbox just feels like a tutorial that never ends and you’ll end up repeating activities far too often; activities which aren’t even that good in the first place. It’ll only last you a few hours maximum, proving there’s not much longevity here either, but the mini-games do occur one after the other to ensure there isn’t any unnecessary downtime.

There is a good game buried deep inside Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders, trying to get out, but the layers of nonsense over the top do a pretty good job of smothering it.

Winter Games 2023 will be a game that you find yourself playing for an hour or so tops, before the repetitive nature and poor presentation start to properly grate.

Bunny Parking takes a classic puzzle from yesteryear and tries to make what is essentially a one-trick pony enjoyable across a whopping amount of levels. Sadly it fails due to a combination of a lack of guidance, repetition, annoying sounds and a real absence of quality in terms of game mechanics. Sure, the actual puzzles are fine in the sense that they will test your problem solving skills and there are some easy achievements to unlock, but everything else surrounding it is a letdown.

We can’t walk away from Sokomonster and pretend we enjoyed our time with it, but aside from building frustrations at the solving of each puzzle, it rarely does anything wrong. We much prefer the pushing of SokoCrab over the sliding of this little monster, but your personal decision may vary.

With all things considered you're probably best off giving Orbals a miss entirely. The gameplay is frustrating when it should have been fun, the precision is off and the lack of consideration given by the game itself is enough to end what could have been a joyous relationship.

Esports Life Tycoon gets off to a flyer on Xbox thanks to a great array of customisation options, ensuring the branding and players are how you want them to be. In fairness, the gameplay is nice and relaxing too, but just becomes repetitive due to the everyday life and matches being so samey. The wheels come off when the crashes, sluggish inputs and awkward menus start to grind on you. And don’t even bother with the buggy Challenges, for they’ll almost instantly disappoint.

With its actual mission and objective based gameplay, Dragon Pinball may just be the best pinball game yet from Super PowerUP Games. But based on what has come before it, that isn’t really a compliment.

Revhead is both good and bad, with the scales coming down on the bad side rather firmly. As a mechanic simulator, it works and is fun. But the rest of the game is shockingly bad. I can’t recommend Revhead to anyone who doesn't have actual grease under their fingernails.

Crashy Laps very much does what it says on the tin, chucking you into an old school racer that is intent on crashing. Poor visuals, terrible audio and a 'feel’ that is nothing short of unique fail to help this racer speed away from the grid, let alone be able to compete for podiums.

For little ones, this may be a good entry point into gaming, but for the older gamers, this is nothing more than Gamerscore fodder, and it’s tough to even recommend it for that reason.

Foxyland 2 on Xbox One is not a good challenge, as the majority of the difficult moments are due to off controls, poor hit detection and the 1-hit deaths. The aesthetics are great, but the core gameplay is incredibly frustrating

Bai Qu: Hundreds of Melodies is a dull, melodramatic plod of a game, and it’s a textbook example of how to get visual novels wrong. We’re partial to a visual novel, but they do have habits that we dislike, and Bai Qu does its darnedest to exhibit every single one of those habits.

We expected to have our heartstrings tugged like we were playing a John Lewis advert. By the end of Animal Shelter Simulator, we were yawning in the destitute cats and dogs’ faces.

It’s faulty, flawed and impossibly slow, and we’d rather play twenty Aery games in a row than one Paper Flight. Considering EpiXR Games’ prolific output, we should probably be careful about what we wish for.

There’s not a lot that is specifically bad about Rabio, but there isn’t much good to report either. It’s a forgettable, tolerable half hour which is made worthwhile thanks to the easy Xbox Gamerscore.

If Axis Games can use their Franchise mode as a foundation and build on it moving forward, then we might have something on our hands that could be classed as a valid alternative (but not a competitor) to Madden.

Rainbow High: Runway Rush is a series of fetch quests in a joyless maze. We found ourselves lost in identical crossroads, searching for Studio 2 (it was in class #93, obvs). Our mascara was running and our brain frazzling. We’ve talked to our kids, and apparently that is not what the show is about.

There is a fun game trying to get out of The Walking Zombie 2, but it is drowning under the constant push of microtransactions. The end result just feels like a mess.

If you’ve been lured in by the cat, then you should probably know that Neko Rescue Tale has all the worst aspects of one. It gives you a false sense of security by looking cute, curling up in your lap. But once you start playing with it, the claws come out, as poor level design, collision detection, platforming and - most of all - combat all cause blood to flow.

Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! feels like a missed opportunity to give the world the Asterix game that we have been waiting for. There is no progression, no making the heroes stronger, and at the end, no real desire to see the game through to a conclusion. It’s the same characters and the same action, for level after level, with a different backdrop. Sadly this makes for a dull game.

Book Quest is a promising game that is ruined by some odd design choices. The action RPG side is pretty good, with things to find by exploring, and while the lack of required fighting makes a playthrough easy, it is pretty good fun. The other sections though are much more shoddy and add little.

While we wouldn’t traditionally pick on a game’s length, thirty minutes is shorter than most demos, and a ‘demo’ is precisely what Kauil’s Treasure on the Xbox feels like to play. Half an hour doesn’t leave much room for the gameplay to shine through, and what’s here is ramshackle, familiar and buggy. There’s certainly some fun to be found by the end of this adventure, but it’s not enough to make the expedition worth it. Dare we say that Kauil’s Treasure is more Crystal Skull than Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Nirvana: Pilot Yume is a game which fails to deliver in both of its main aspects.

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail is a laborious experience that drains any potential fun out of proceedings with the monotonous travelling, the repetitive and often pointless conversations, and some turn-based combat that’s way behind the times.

Deep Space has some interesting ideas and if it had been given the time and budget to flesh out, I imagine it could have been a much better game. Instead what we get is a very repetitive and unfair experience that very quickly becomes tiresome.

It has colour, it has style, but Moto Roader MC also has some of the most erratic, bumper-car racing that you’re likely to experience.

May’s Mysteries: The Secret of Dragonville puts every single egg in that puzzle basket and ultimately fails to deliver. The story is fine, the amount of mini-games is commendable and there’s joy to be had from certain types, but the positives are outweighed by the negatives. The cutscenes let it down, many mini-games lead to frustration, and the margin for error is unforgivable. And that’s before taking into account the fact that you can’t even trust the save system.

If you thought Ed & Edda: Grand Prix - Racing Champions would be the next big racing game, your idyllic bubble will burst upon playing.

Thunder Kid II: Null Mission is plain lazy. Its gimmick is still not enough to build a game around, because that’s already been tried once before and hasn’t worked. As a result this one is null and void.

In tycoon terms, Baking Time is a bit of a dud. By some margin it’s the worst of the genre that we’ve played; a monotonous trudge through bakery after bakery. It’s even got the temerity to make you do it for dozens of hours.

That’s the heart of what UltraGoodness 2 on Xbox gets so wrong. It forgets what’s great about twin-stick shooting: the frenzy, the pyrotechnics, the stacking power-ups, and how godlike it can make you feel. There’s nothing better than swerving to avoid an enemy as you nail a missile into their broadside. If you are a shooter that is encouraging players to stop, slow down and tentatively tiptoe through your game, then something is wrong. UltraTepid it is then.

We can’t help comparing the £4.19 Fruit Adventure with the 79p shovelware we often get on the Xbox Store. There really is nothing in it: in the equivalent of a blindfolded taste test, we would have told you that they’re one and the same.

Unfortunately, Ganbare! Super Strikers on Xbox One is it’s own worst enemy. I admire the development team’s ambition to create something new but unfortunately it doesn’t strike any of the right chords.

There's only really one cohort of gamers Caterpillar is aimed at - those looking to give their Xbox Gamerscore figures a quick boost.

There is a small amount of fun to be had here with Tech Glitch on Xbox One, but the display and visual issue just kills the game. My Atari 2600 on a CRT came with clearer graphics, and on today’s hardware, what is provided by Tech Glitch simply isn't good enough.

If you are the sort of person who enjoys banging their head on a desk for hours, you may get a little bit of enjoyment from El Gancho. For the rest of us, the slightly shoddy look, poor mechanics and dodgy controls consign this to the “Must not play” pile of games from history.

You’ll be glad when Windborn: Journey to the South is over, fully understanding why EpiXR have decided to separate this from the otherwise decent Aery series. With visual pop-in that is off the scale, whether you can complete a stage without hassle and annoyance very much feels like it is in the hands of the avian gods. And no amount of zen-like promise will ever overcome that.

Monochrome Order on Xbox One makes a decent fist of being an interesting RPG, but then shoots itself in the foot by making it harder to play unless you buy extra things.

The world has enough zombie shooters, and - like the zombies themselves - there’s probably nothing we can do to stop the swarm. But we can attempt to ignore them, and that’s exactly what you should do with Earth Marines.

As a puzzle game, Danger!Energy lives up to the name but fails to leave a lasting impression. Then again if the lure of an easy 1000 GS is up your street, this may be the game for you.

Habroxia on Xbox is an average game which is reasonably priced. It winds up being a pedestrian affair which, whilst offering some thrills in its couple of hours of gameplay, never quite manages to live up to those which inspired it.

You end up wondering who Solitaire 3D on the Xbox is made for. If there’s such a thing, there’s a ‘game archivist’ in a university or museum who’s rubbing their hands at the prospect of preserving 100 different Solitaire variants. For the rest of us, you have a monumentally over-priced compendium of games you won’t play, with controls that aren’t optimised, and with features that often don’t work.

Pure Mini Golf is far from a competitor in the world of virtual crazy golf. Mostly it’s a reminder that aesthetics alone cannot compensate for flawed gameplay.

It fails in regards to the gameplay thanks to a complete lack of variety in hits, and a robotic and linear feel to each match, but the visuals are fun and there are a ton of customisation opportunities.

Electronics Puzzle Lab hopes to inspire players into taking an interest in electronics. After playing it, the opposite may be more likely.

Truck Driver: The American Dream needs a few patches to get up to speed. This American dream is far from being fully realised.

Hellbreachers on Xbox could have been a good game, at least should a little more care have been lavished on the controls and the general difficulty balancing. But even though there are numerous bosses to defeat, after you have reached the third the game is out of ideas, and that means the desire to keep playing evaporates like the morning dew.

The Legend of Icaro is just about okay - no more than that - and it doesn’t take long for that okay hook to let you go. That okay is about the sum of it in terms of the combat and music, but the traversal lets it down.

It’s unfortunate then that their license has been relinquished to such a bland and uninspired creation in Asterix & Obelix XXL 3: The Crystal Menhir on Xbox One, especially when previous entries have been quirky, imaginative titles.

Everreach: Project Eden on Xbox One just doesn’t feel finished. It needs more work on the shooting mechanics, the AI systems and the bike sections. The concept, mission structure and ideas are all good but the game as a whole fails to feel as polished as it should be.

Less a strategy game and more a three-hour long tutorial, Mittelborg: City of Mages on Xbox manages to remove pretty much anything that would lead to interest or a satisfying choice. If it was brave enough to hand the reins to the player, it might have gone somewhere interesting, but - as it stands - this is a lightweight board game with most of the pieces removed.

While the Pokemon structure gives Duck Life Adventure on Xbox some joy and depth, the rest betrays its roots as a mobile game. You’ll be tapping the A button repeatedly in countless casual minigames, all in the name of grinding up levels. Before long, realisation will dawn that you could be doing something, anything else, rather than succumb to its yawning emptiness. Unless you’re a Duck Life fan, it’s best to duck this one.

Rift Keeper on Xbox One is entertaining for a short period of time, however due to dodgy controls and simple visuals it provides little incentive to carry on playing.

Getting Keel the Barbarian to the end of Roar of Revenge is as dynamic and exciting as pushing a boulder up a hill. Unless you have a deep, craving love for old-school hack-and-slash platformers, you are best leaving this anachronism in its box.

From the premise alone, Ayre and the Crystal Comet raised interest levels, but from there, things go wrong. The lack of combat and action is a worry, and that means this very much comes in line with the likes of the Aery and Life of Fly series of games. But that’s not helped by the fact that Ayre and the Crystal Comet can occasionally verge into the unplayable; buggy and putting you off completion.

Like anything Ratalaika Games put out these days, the achievements are some of the easiest going; so easy that I was done in about half an hour. So if you’re on the lookout for some easy Gamerscore, pick this one up. If you aren’t, I’d recommend avoiding it.

There’s an alternate dimension where Temple of Horror is the sounding of a horn: EpiXR Games can do more than just flight simulations, and they’re coming for other genres! But we’re pretty far from that dimension. Temple of Horror is such a limp horror game that its legs are falling off.

I’m afraid that Redout: Space Assault on Xbox just isn’t worth it. The game couldn’t be less interesting to play, because it isn’t interested in having you play it. Its story, if one could call it that, is a mindless distraction, and everything feels pointless.

How it manages it, we don’t know, but Royal Roads 2 emerges - comfortably - as the worst of the ‘Gnomes Garden’ city builders. It looks at its companion games and their lazy storytelling, buggy progression, unremarkable worlds and formulaic gameplay and says ‘hold my drink’.

Cyber Tank Nano is only appropriate for those willing to endure a perpetual state of confusion from the rage inducing solutions, made all the more disappointing due to the few things this title does do right, and in turn, what it could have been.

Mega Party: A Tootuff Adventure on Xbox One is very much just okay...at best. It doesn't do anything particularly well, it looks ropy and the controls are poor, but weighing against that is the inclusion of a lot of content to unlock, and the possibility of four player battles in a series of childish mini games.

Super Blackjack Battle II TE is a love letter to arcade beat ‘em ups in terms of its style and sound. That’s about as far as it goes though, with little in terms of excitement, no longevity and just boring old Blackjack to keep you company. Worst of all, the A.I. ruins any chance of finding fun or a challenge, thanks mostly to its pure stupidity and lack of understanding. It’s like playing against my Nan after a Sherry or five.

Saomi serves up a moderately challenging platformer that will sharpen your reflexes. But even for the modest price tag, Saomi is missing something fundamental. It just doesn’t inspire interest or feelings of surprise.

Memory Link sticks in the memory for the wrong reasons. Stiff controls and non-existent guidance means that you’ll spend most of the time lost in a playground which isn’t all that fun to play within in the first place. Sure, it’s free with its achievements, but it needs to do far more than that to impress.

Under the deck, Tortuga - A Pirate’s Tale looks to be a challenging simulation title, but the real challenge is figuring out what to do; it currently feels very inaccessible for console players.

Not the disaster we predicted from the truly terrible trailer, Warrior Boy on the Xbox is nonetheless a barebones action-adventure, where the combat is weak enough that you’ll ignore it, but sidestepping it leaves you with nothing more than a giant treasure hunt.

There’s decent gameplay attached to it all, sure, but the drab visual presentation, the lack of variety or different levels, the archaic difficulty spikes; it all adds up to a game that needs more polish or a rework.