Overall, there is just a lack of polish in Mangavania, but thankfully it is rather short and you do get an easy 1000 Gamerscore pocketed for finishing it.

There’s no doubt eFootball 2024 is a flawed game and, if a measly update is all that’s coming each year, it’s hard to see it ever being worthy of your time.

Tools Up! made me feel like I do about building in real life – rubbish, clueless and disappointed.

Failing to ever deliver a properly good platforming experience, and coming complete with far too much clunkiness to allow for decent tactics and strategy, Ghost Sweeper on Xbox One falls far short of what is expected of a game in this time period. Yes it comes with some cutesy visuals, and delightfully delivers what could be expected from a game inspired by those of decades past, but there just isn’t enough of a modern twist to see this become a relevant purchase.

SkateBIRD is a great gimmick. It is super fun to create a bird and the level design is definitely fresh. However, with its increasingly frustrating physics, repetitive challenges and bland graphics, it’s ultimately a poor copy of other better skateboarding games.

Fundamentally, Prison Tycoon: Under New Management suffers with repetitive, monotonous gameplay that makes it difficult to enjoy. As a result, it pales into insignificance when compared to its rivals.

Recycle Bin Battle might draw you in with its crazy concept and important message, but you’ll soon realise that it’s actually a bit rubbish. There’s no point having a homage to Breakout or a match-3 section if neither are executed to a decent standard.

A strong indication of whether I’ve liked a visual novel is whether I am eager to actually see what happened on those different branches. But I had none of that urge with Synergia: A Cyberpunk Thriller Visual Novel.

CyberCorp is just not interesting or particularly fun to play, and in a games market as crowded as the one on Xbox, a game has to have something stand out about it to push through.

If you have ever wanted to be a fishing mannequin, then this is the game for you, but for everyone else, if it’s raining and you are determined to go fishing virtually, Dovetail Games’ Euro Fishing is streets ahead.

There’s no doubt about it, WWE 2K18 is a flawed game. The positives of the Road to Glory mode, the MyPlayer play styles and the always reliable Universe mode, are counter-acted by a boring MyCareer that’s still lacking in so many areas and an online side bereft of any purpose.

Whilst the odd trap may see Steampunch occasionally err on the side of ‘challenging’, this is a platformer that is about as simple as you can get. Slightly imprecise mechanics add to that, but mostly this is a side scrolling platformer that can be completed in less than a hour. And then forgotten about straight after that.

The Psychoduck is a bang average – at best – stealth game, which you might actually want to dodge and hide from.

If you can get past the annoying controls and unwieldy camera, then there is a semi-fun game to be found in Glover (QUByte Classics). The levels are well designed and the bonus stages offer up some good variation, but it will take some patience and effort to get to that point.

I’m sure there are probably some out there who will pick this up and have an enjoyable time with it, but my time with Alien Cruise has been frustrating, maddening, and in the end, not an enjoyable experience. It’s a shame, because the enemy design is superb and the visuals are bright and colourful, but unfortunately, that just isn’t enough.

There are a vast number of improvements needed before the game could be considered worth playing on a regular basis, but with the right creative direction and some key changes to some major aspects of the game could indeed see it become a great title – eventually.

For a first attempt at making a cornhole game, ACL Pro Cornhole has the fundamentals nailed down. Fun, solid gameplay and believable physics help make this a decent first go, but everything else needs tightening up: commentary, game modes, graphics and the price all let the overall package down. If these can be improved in a second game with a few extra additions, ACL Pro Cornhole could usher in new waves of fans to this funny sounding sport.

Blow & Fly is a bog-standard precision platformer that does nothing to distinguish itself from the hundreds of others on the market.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is the wrong question. Are You As Patient as a 5th Grader? is the more appropriate. You will need patience of steel to last eleven rounds with this slimline quizzer.

Castle Walker is 1000 Gamerscore of easy Xbox achievements - with a game attached. That game is the very definition of okay: it’s not bad, but neither is it good, and while it can provide some minutes of amusement, there isn’t enough here to reward long term play.

Veteran players of this series will feel let down by this latest installment, and this is all down to the bare bones approach that the developers have taken by releasing this game with only 12 cars and 10 race tracks.

Despite its cutesy graphics that hark back to early Game Boy Advance titles, the shallow gameplay of Mina & Michi is rarely nostalgia-inducing. Puzzles are repetitive, enemies lack any invention and Mina is just a bit useless. It is just another game useful for achievement fodder that many will put down as quickly as they pick up once every achievement has been unlocked.

The old glory days of TopSpin offered some of the best tennis we’ve ever had the joy of trying. Many have attempted to emulate its success but none have succeeded. Whilst the original Tennis World Tour had some good points and focused on some nice areas, it fell flat instantly with janky controls and just a general carelessness. Its follow-up, Tennis World Tour 2, attempts to fix this, but fails in many of the same areas.

It’s hard to recommend Ghoulboy. The gameplay isn’t awful, but the amount of bugs I’ve encountered have made it hard to enjoy.

Why Pizza? is a half-and-half pizza; one side that we had to eat with a spoon, the other side a plain old margherita. We’d have rather had a meat feast for this little platformer’s full length.

If times are lean, and you’re looking for a free-to-play karting experience for four local players, then Starlit Kart Racing will serve you, and serve you well. For everyone else, this is too flawed, too penny-pinching to really consider.

Orangeblood on Xbox One is a game I wanted to adore. It looks stylish, feels nostalgic, and I’m in serious need of a great RPG to sink my teeth into. Unfortunately, its mediocre combat, slow-feeling story and cringe-inducing writing leaves me wishing I had spent my time on something with a little more substance.

Play Pukan, Bye-Bye! on your own, and it loses its lustre. It’s a game that makes jokes at your expense, playing to the crowd, but only if there’s an audience to benefit. If you’re hankering for a game to do a ‘Let’s Play’ video of, then Pukan, Bye-Bye! is a surefire winner. For virtually anyone else, you’d be better off giving it a swift Bye-Bye.

Do you have 79p and want a Poundland version of Super Mario Bros? The choice, as they say, is yours.

Without Escape: Console Edition on Xbox One fails to deliver a worthwhile experience for either keen point and clickers or horror enthusiasts. The only people who’d probably be happy to pay a few quid are Achievement hunters, due to the relatively easy 1000 Gamerscore. Everyone else should steer clear.

Amazing Superhero Squad fluffs it. What should have been a deep and strategic hero simulator is instead a shape-matching game with the shallowest of gameplay puddles to splash around in. We thought being Nick Fury for a day would be fun; as it turns out, it’s as mundane and simple as putting on his eyepatch every morning.

While The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is earnest, and Redwall fans will lap up the additions to the lore, it’s also ragged. Stealth, platforming and puzzles are all attempted, and not one feels anything less than patchy. It ends up as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

There is an audience for Lab Crisis. It’s just a shame that the audience will be achievement hunters, who will see this as a significant bounty: 2000G in the space of five minutes.

Garten of Banban 3 isn’t the strongest entry in the series, but by this point if you have played all three, you are probably invested until the end.

Unless you’re a hardcore fan of hidden object puzzle adventures, Demon Hunter: Chronicles from Beyond isn’t worth your consideration. Actually, it’’ll be a hard sell even if you are a fan.

While there are some interesting RPG frills around the edges of Envasion, this is a Space Invaders-like shooter that lacks speed, bombast and variety. Envasion, sadly, is one to evoid.

It might seem like I have had very little positive to say about Brawl Chess - Gambit on Xbox, but that’s because it enables players of all ages to play chess, and that’s about it. There are better options out there for the avid player, which makes this very hard to recommend. Don't let the funky visuals fool you: what's on offer here is a skirmish as opposed to a brawl.

Whether the developers were aiming too high with their comparisons with Pilotwings I can’t say, but the game stands as an example of what happens when you take a good idea and don’t give it enough care and attention. With three mates it is fun, but as a single player experience its ultimately disappointing.

Despite the removals of certain features, it is the lack of any new additions that means PBA Pro Bowling 2023 feels largely the same game as the 2021 edition.

Crown Wars: The Black Prince is a disappointment. It is badly converted to the console, it has a number of annoying glitches, and most crucially of all, it isn’t very much fun to play. When it runs without crashing, then it's fine, but this is far away from the best of all the turn-based strategy games.

Your appreciation of Mahjong Adventure DX on the Xbox will depend on two labels that should have been slapped on the box art: ‘not actually an adventure’ and ‘turns into a memory game halfway through’. In our case, the latter was a dealbreaker: it felt like going for a light stroll but being forced to stop and do push-ups. You come to Mahjong for relaxation, not mental gymnastics.

Thunderflash on Xbox is as derivative and basic as they come; a homage to top-down arcade shooters of yesteryear that provides a fun and functional experience at best, without delivering a sense of compelling challenge or encouraging subsequent replays.

Ultimately, we liked the levels in Light of Life, but hated the controls. It’s not that the controls are inaccurate or slippy; the problem is in the concept. We found that using a bow and arrow to dash backwards through a level is just as unnatural and confusion-inducing as sitting backwards on a train.

We have no doubt that there is a whip-smart puzzle game in BouncyBoi in Puzzle Land, but the muddled presentation never made us feel good about playing it.

Last Beat Enhanced is an old school beat ’em up which tries to create an original experience capable of paying respect to the classics, yet it feels more like a generic offering borrowing ideas.

Should you be a fan of the original game and were hoping for more of the same, then chances are you’ll be disappointed with what is on offer in Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek. Sure, there are some story moments to take note of, but with very little definition to what the developers are trying to achieve, and with each stage marred with confusion as you try to figure out what’s going on, this prequel raises more questions than answers.

If you want easy, over-in-an-hour gaming, head to this buzzy kingdom immediately. But don’t arrive at the gates of Bee Flowers: Royal Garden expecting anything near a test of your puzzling mind.

For achievement hunters, a purchase of Tamiku on Xbox One is a no brainer. Minimal time investment plus maximum points score most certainly equals a win. For the rest of us, those looking for a game that’s fun to play, this is a much harder sell. While it lasts, it’s fun, there’s no two ways about it, but your time with Tamiku is ultimately over way too soon.

Potata: fairy flower on Xbox One has some major issues, and most of these just come down to its design. It has interesting ideas but practically none of them are very original. Its art style is a let-down in contrast to the promotional material and very little thought has been put into the overall consistency of the world. Yes it functions reasonably well as a platformer, but doesn’t offer anything you can’t find better elsewhere.

We lay down on Doctor Cat’s couch and found ourselves dozing off. We didn’t plan to: we were rubbing our paws together at the prospect of a cat/therapy/jigsaw puzzle hybrid. But this is possibly the least interesting version of that combo that anyone could possibly imagine.

It’ll probably appeal to sim fans who love the working grind and aren’t bothered by dodgy visuals, terrible sound effects and a strangely empty world. But that said, you can drive a bulldozer straight through a casino while rocking out. And honestly, do you need next-gen visuals for that?

Dragon Ball: The Breakers already appears to be waning in regards to the player base and that comes as no surprise. The lengthy matchmaking, the poor gameplay mechanics and the damn ugly graphics used for environments are just the tip of the iceberg.

Sift through the scraps of ideas and mechanics in God Damn the Garden and you might find the odd tiny nugget of gold.

Rayland - quick, easy and, for some, nothing but Gamerscore fodder. It is a puzzle game that focuses on getting lasers to point at a goal; something which will have been done better in other games, even where it isn’t the main feature.

Crypt of the Serpent King on the Xbox One was a game that hardly pushed the boundaries of the console. Crypt of the Serpent King Remastered 4K Edition pushes the Xbox Series X|S even less. There is barely any update between versions.

As a throwaway, hour-long distraction for a pre-school player, Cry Babies Magic Tears: The Big Game is surprisingly accessible and true to the TV show. But we’re not so loaded that we’d consider 30-quid particularly ‘throwaway’.

Indoor Kickball provides some brief amusement, but the gimmick soon wears off, all thanks to the underwhelming execution.

There may be people who feel that Psikyo shooters are on the simplistic, easy side. To those people, we recommend the bullet-hell of Strikers 1945 III. For everyone else, we’d like to introduce you to the first two games in the series.

Raining Blobs suitably entertains in short bursts due to the Arcade mode and the mildly addictive Puzzle mode. It’s a shame that the other modes are unfairly difficult, the visuals aren’t good at all, and the idea of having loads of players on a single TV at once just doesn’t work.

DC League of Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace might not be the game you expect. A diluted Star Fox, it’s too repetitious in its enemies and levels for an adult, and too buggy, difficult and clumsy to control for a pre-teen.

HoneyLand is a budget game that leaves a bitter taste due to a series of illogical puzzles. While the initial concept is easy to grasp, every attempt to make matters more complex ultimately introduces flaws.

The shooting is accurate and feels good, and it’s possible to reach a state where you’re chaining headshots and being crushed beneath a pile of Achievements. But, lest we forget, Gangsta Paradise has virtually zero ideas and variety, and it somehow manages to make its two hours feel thin.

Animal Doctor on the Xbox is less about being a vet than it is helping one, and you’ll be fetching antibiotics from pharmacies more than you’ll be nursing sick puppies. It’s realistic rather than cute, educational rather than fun, and that’s not necessarily what your little doctors ordered. But if there’s still interest, even after those caveats, then Animal Doctor might actually work out.

A game called ‘Droid Trivia’ could and should be capitalising on its theme, but robots are nothing more than dressing. The game modes barely differ from each other, and the questions are dry and delivered slowly, as if Droid Trivia’s batteries are slowly running out.

If you’re looking to jump in as a fan of the brawler scene, there are many other options out there that already do the job much better. Unfortunately, with little to keep players interested and overly simplistic options dominating the more complex potential of the game, Override: Mech City Brawl is one fight we’ve already forgotten about.

The Epyx Collection: Handheld on Xbox is no different to other compilations; you’ll probably find something new to enjoy regardless of the overall quality.

Gungrave G.O.R.E is clunky and basic - two words that no hack and slash shooter this side of the Xbox 360 should be associated with.

If you have a deep love for Psikyo shooters, or carry some nostalgia for the Starfox era of 3D gaming, then there is some rough, unrefined enjoyment to be had in Zero Gunner 2. Just with plenty of asterisks.

Like a cat with a ball of wool, you will toy with Cat Slide Tiles for a few minutes and then toss it away for something better.

Braveland Trilogy on Xbox One attempts a great deal of things but many of them fall flat. Whilst the gameplay is tolerable, the art style, music, lack of originality and absence of variation make all three games a slog to make your way through. There is a decent amount of content in Braveland Trilogy, but not much is worth playing after the first hour or so

Butterfly 2 brings almost nothing new to the table, providing more of the same platforming action as the first game. However, a lack of appetite to improve and evolve the game is disappointing, and makes it hard to recommend.

Silenced: The House rushes through a story of revenge involving a whole load of scumbag teens but fails to captivate with its below par writing quality.

It’s easy to imagine a version of Run Sausage Run! with all the trimmings, with a much greater depth of flavour. But this is just a plain chipolata, no bun, and we wish a little bit more care was taken in preparing it.

Glyphs of Gitzan is a cheap, but not so cheerful, block-sliding puzzle game that’s lacking in multiple areas.

While we found Sissa’s Path soothing in its own laid-back manner, we also found that the path it offered didn’t really go anywhere. Sissa could have done with showing more claws.

The gameplay itself is fun and it’s a great throwback to NBA Jam, allowing you to have some fun for a few hours either with friends or online to dominate the playgrounds and become number 1. However, the grind needed to get any good players just isn’t worth the work.

Just put down the ball and walk away from Handball 21; unless you’re super curious, then possibly grab it at a sale price.

From the grind of a seemingly pointless Story, and the one off hits of an even more pointless Exhibition Game, you won’t find much to keep anyone other than the most ardent of hockey fans from going back - and even then it’s never going to have much of an appeal over the NHL games that are out there. By all means give it a shot with a mate or two, but the repetition will soon win over the day.

NeonLore can be summarised as an open-world RPG with everything stripped out except the background NPCs. It’s about as interesting as it sounds.

It may be cheap, and you may be tempted to drop the cash on the back of some publisher acclaim and previous Hidden Cats addiction, but you’ll be best off skipping Purrfect Rescue and hoping that the other series continues to lead the genre.

If you are looking for a hard, side-scrolling slash ‘em up then you’ll probably be best off with Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection. If you must mix that with a cyberpunk flavour, then Whisper Trip is okay for a short blast, but extended play will show more than a few weaknesses.

75 years is a hell of an achievement, but Snoopy & The Great Mystery Club is not the way to celebrate it. It may claim to be a detective game (and the prospect of playing one excited us), but it’s more like an Errand Simulator.

If you are a fan of the main missions in Saints Row, you will likely have fun with what is found in The Heist & The Hazardous. The final heist mission in particular follows the same vein of the more major missions in the base game and is fun.

Kattish is good for achievements and paw for gameplay. It’s just not poor in the way we expected. The opening levels make it seem painfully generic, but when the gravity gameplay kicks in, it becomes painfully fiddly. Kattish trades one itchy furball for another.

The condition NHL 24 is in right now makes it feel like a beta test for a full release that is some months off. It’s extremely disappointing.

If you’re after a bit of arcade score chasing, Gunkid 99 may be right up your alley. Sadly, though, the more you play, the more you may well struggle to care about the fate of the Gunkid.

We’re not getting the last five hours of our lives back. It’s not that Gnomes Garden 7: Christmas Story is terrible: far from it. In fact, if you’re on the hunt for a relaxed take on city-building, then we might even suggest you play it. Our problem is that we’ve reached our saturation point with the Gnomes Garden games, and this release changes so little from previous iterations that it puts FIFA to shame.

If you’re looking for a game that will allow you to have a bit of a laugh with a few mates prior to getting busy on the decent stuff, then by all means stick a couple of dollars each into the kitty, and look forward to the 20 minutes of so of fun you’re going to get.

Devoid of the cult humour that it has made its own over the years, SOUTH PARK: SNOW DAY! feels like a generic multiplayer game with the thinnest South Park skin layered over it.

It’s a game that achievement hunters should purchase without a single thought, but if you are looking for some decent modern day space invading that will keep you going for some time, then Super Destronaut DX will leave you wanting.

If you were brought to Under the Jolly Roger on Xbox with the promise of swashbuckling, action, and a hope that it would be ‘Black Flag: The Ship Bits’, then turn sail: this isn’t the game you’re looking for. This is a pirate sim with the emphasis on ‘sim’, and all the resource management, tedious downtime and charmlessness that can come with the genre.

Covenant of Solitude is a decent game, with interesting team mechanics, that is ultimately hamstrung by the control system.

As much as Death or Treat wants to fall on the treat side of the equation, we felt tricked. We were completely sold on its charismatic art style, and were prepped for roguelike joys. But the levels are too much of a slog, the enemies artlessly created and - fatally - the combat is limp.

When you’ve got triceratopses, raptors, zombies, archers, elemental beings and more in the same world, you know there’s decent variety. The Campaign could be great, but it suffers at the hands of an unforgiving difficulty and a wide-range of bugs that can ruin the experience entirely. Unless it receives a major patch, I’m afraid that Warparty on Xbox One is a party you don’t want an invite to.

As a casual fan of RWBY, I had high hopes for a game that would translate everything great about the show onto console. RWBY: Grimm Eclipse proves to be better with a full team, enabling all of the unique weaponry to shine, but is incredibly pointless should you want a solo experience.

Rogue Explorer is a game I really did want to like. I liked the inclusion of the crafting system and I think it could’ve been developed into a really fun rogue-like, or at the very least a basic platformer. But the amount of quality control issues have just kept piling up.

Goons: Legends & Mayhem is plagued by many issues, but the fact that its weakest element happens to be the central theme of the entire game is a fundamental problem, making this very difficult to recommend.

TORINTO isn’t terrible, but it tickles the top of it. It’s too starved of enemy types, and doesn’t let you have fun with the few that are there. It’s a run and gunner that does the best with the scraps that it’s got, but ideally it wouldn’t have been working with scraps in the first place.