In a very crowded genre, Ziggy comes up short, mostly thanks to mechanics and features that we’ve seen many times before.

A lovely art-style and precise platforming isn’t enough to carry this teenage boy through his adventure.

Knight Squad 2 on Xbox looks the part and offers plenty of customisation options. However, thanks to the shallow gameplay the price tag feels too expensive to be fully justified and as a result the fun is short-lived.

So, Beat ’Em Up Archives (QUByte Classics) then. In conclusion, although the games still look good today, the gameplay has aged horribly. As a result it is all more frustrating than fun to play.

Its one redeeming feature is its career, which swaps out the party mode for the tale of Merek, on a quest to become the best labourer in town. It’s through the gentle tug of this story that Merek’s Market might get some customers. But it wasn’t for us: we would have dropped out of the queue long before the end.

Sir Whoopass: Immortal Death’s eggs have been put in the comedy basket, and there isn’t really much to keep anyone engaged beyond that. There are much better (and funnier) games out there to spend your money on.

Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot: The London Case could possibly be recommended at a discounted price, but even then the technical issues may well put a stop to that.

Without a fun world to explore, Moon Raider can’t fall back on its charm or style, as it only has a limited pool of it, and it doesn’t feel good enough to play. Moon Raider has been stripped back too far, and what’s left is a pencil outline of a Metroid game, and that’s not enough.

The world, concept, and exploration elements are fantastic, beautiful and enticing. But in reality, the game itself, and the gameplay as a whole, are a completely different matter. Hard to use inventory systems, and uninteresting battles with what seems like hundreds of robots appearing out of nowhere, do nothing to entice you in further.

With distracting performance issues and limited gameplay content despite there being a few different game modes, Super Dodge Ball is a tough sell given that the far more entertaining Crash ‘n’ the Boys: Street Challenge is available as the superior unconventional sports option.

You may adore the complexities of item management, and feel a puzzling test of the mind will set you up for the day. But aside from masses of Gamerscore, and the odd whir of your brain, Legends Aligned ultimately comes up short, never changing from the tried and tested method it initially delivers.

There’s a reason so many games dabble in alchemy. There’s the foraging for ingredients, the making of bubbling concoctions, and finally seeing what they do. But Alchemist Simulator opts for only the middle stage of this process, and reduces it to the step-by-step following of a cookery manual.

Catmaze has small caches of challenge, charm and depth for you to mine. But it cannot hope to excite you, engage much of your brain, or stick around in the memory. It is aggressively average.

Yes it’s okay for a couple of hours of game time, but unfortunately this is one Space Invaders wannabe which will ultimately be left forgotten.

What we end up with Gift of Parthax on Xbox One is a solid game that exists in this weird ground; never really fun enough to play and focus on specifically, but not frustrating or bad enough to cause irritation.

In the end, all our fears have been realised. Romancelvania’s dating sim half is frivolous fun, but its other half, the Metroidvania, drunkenly crashes the party.

The Legend of the Dragonflame Highschool Collection is another excuse to pad out your Xbox Gamerscore in a quick and easy manner.

With a navigation system that fails to allow for any true enjoyment, tying players to a strict path, buggy visuals, and a co-driver that screams at the first opportunity, it’s hard to say Dakar 18 reminds us of the exhilarating experience we’ll find on TV each year.

A general ennui at the sliding puzzle genre shouldn’t really impact Squares - Brain Game 2’s score, but it doesn’t remove the air of familiarity while playing it. If you’re not bored to tears by this type of game and you have a pound rattling around in your wallet, it’s competent enough that we’d encourage you to give it a go.

The Dragoness: Command of the Flame is that worst of words – disappointing. It fails to really grab hold and even after sinking a silly amount of hours into it, the spark never ignites. Perhaps it doesn’t do anything particularly wrong, but The Dragoness: Command of the Flame also fails to do anything really right. This one is very much middle of the road.

I really wanted to like The Galactic Junkers, and I did at times. However, the clunky controls and glitch ridden gameplay will prevent you from becoming totally absorbed in the far out world.

The fundamentals are fine, the little story of Tommy, his girlfriend and football is alright, but there’s just not enough going on here apart from dialogue skimming and minor point and click puzzling.

On one hand, Hexologic is a gentle and calming puzzle game, and is a great way to unwind on an evening. But then on the other, the menu design, layout and general lack of direction are a complete paradox to the game and will cause more frustration than any of the puzzles will.

Hextreme Void comes across as a self-inflicted dare: to make a game with the least amount of player involvement possible. Hextreme Void is the result, and while it manages to complete the dare, we were a bit nonplussed about why it bothered. So, we scooped up our balls and headed off to play BALL x PIT.

Deckline may be a competent take on Durak, but it had potential and squandered it. It’s not a mortal wound for anyone hoping to play Deckline, but it’s quite the flesh wound.

Words of Wisdom uses the word ‘Wisdom’ pretty loosely. It’s a game that feels like it’s been batch-imported into Google Translate, which is a problem when the resulting riddles are key to completing the levels. Words of Wonkiness would have covered it better.

Popotinho’s Adventures is a distinctly average platformer which pulls on a meagre amount of tired and tested ideas from the genre, resulting in a surprisingly lengthy but otherwise disappointing experience.

Decay of Logos on Xbox One has charm and meets all the basic action/adventure RPG criteria, but offers little else. Unfortunately its ambition is let down by an average execution. The Legend of Zelda, this ain’t.

The Fast Journey didn’t feel like a complete game. It felt like a stepping stone for a dev who will probably go onto better things in the future. For now, you can consider this as the barest scrap of a game, and move on (fast).

Sands of Aura feels like a game of unfulfilled potential. Some of the ideas scattered throughout are interesting and travelling across the desert creates eye-catching imagery, but a game's first and most important job is to be fun. In that regard, Sands of Aura is unsuccessful.

Herodes didn’t stick. We felt like we were being regularly flushed out of its system. The difficulty was one thing, but the erratic pacing and identikit enemy waves were too much.

If you are desperate for a reason to bring you and your family back to Fast & Furious Spy Racers Rise of SH1FT3R, then Arctic Challenge might - just - be enough. If you want something new and substantial for your £4.99, you might want to trigger the nitro and drift past.

Drill Deal – Oil Tycoon comes with the tools to make it a success, but it’s plagued by issues and repetition.

Bakery Simulator is the bread bun of the baking world - bland and uninteresting, but some people might still like it. Throw in the horrendous driving section, as well as the bugs, and it’s difficult to look past the negatives.

Flat Kingdom: Paper’s Cut Edition overburdens itself with different mechanics, and the simple, effective platforming ends up being sunk by its ambition.

Wiloo never tries to execute an idea that hasn’t already been done in other games of the genre and, more importantly, it doesn’t try to expand on any of the tropes that it does take. If you mix that with the odd level design, simple enemies and plain aesthetics, all you have by the end is a cheap way to get a 1000 gamerscore.

On one hand, it is an absolute joy to finally have Harvest Moon on the Xbox. But, Harvest Moon: Mad Dash on Xbox One isn’t the version that many fans will have been hoping for. Whilst it isn’t without its charm, it doesn’t represent Harvest Moon in the right way: Mad Dash is designed to be played in short, sharp bursts, whereas the real thing can easily suck days and weeks away.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that if Wizordum halved its runtime, adding interactive environments that complemented the various weapons and spells, there could’ve been something special here. But as it stands Wizordum provides little more than what a 90’s shooter could, thirty odd years ago.

Montezuma's Revenge - The 40th Anniversary Edition is a curious nostalgia trip back in time that will do little other than please those who enjoyed the original. Even then, you should probably “Never go back”.

Sadly and even though the idea presented by Dead Age shows plenty of potential for an exciting gameplay experience, the overall execution leaves a lot to be desired.

The initial premise is inherently intriguing, but the blandness and repetition of the gameplay ensures that it soon becomes an entirely forgettable experience.

The Crown of Wu feels like a game that could have done with a little bit more love, a bit more polishing - only then may it have had enough to overcome any drawbacks. As it is, The Crown of Wu isn’t good enough to hold a candle to either Monkey or that Xbox 360 classic, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

It’s fun while it lasts, but apart from some interesting achievements to find and unlock, once you’ve done so the urge to play again evaporates like the morning dew in a blast furnace. It’s a fun diversion, but sadly it doesn’t last long enough.

Between the lacklustre story, the frustrating controls and the non-existent character development, Damsel is just not fun to play.

So what do we have with Virtuous Western? Well, it's nothing more than a nice idea, with average execution. It has some brilliant ways of dispatching enemies and solving puzzles, and the easy achievements are a nice addition. But plonking a puzzle game in the Wild West ultimately falls short here, because the game simply lacks any sense of challenge.

Underworld Ascendant on Xbox One could have been a pretty decent game, but everything from the repetitive mission design (go here, fetch/kill that) to the numerous ideas that don’t pan out as they should, sees it sadly fall short of great by quite a margin.

Neon Souls is a run of the mill platformer that fails to stand out from the crowd. Poor controls and unimpressive visuals make it a less appealing option to those after some old school fun.

It is tough to know who to pitch Fluffy Cubed to. Puzzle fanatics and sokoban fans will find this a rather lacklustre attempt, whilst those who prefer a more relaxing gaming experience may be put off by the fact it is a puzzle game. Similarly, feline fans may be taken aback by this cubed moggy.

Glam’s Incredible Run: Escape from Dukha is a fundamentally flawed game which offers something for the platforming sadists out there, but not enough to recommend it to everyone else.

Wings of Bluestar is pretty much what we expected - a short shooting game with easy achievements thrown in for good measure. For achievement hunters, this is an easy sell, but for anyone looking for a game to invest time in, Wings of Bluestar is going to disappoint.

Summing up Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires is tricky. While the fighting action is as spectacular as it ever was, and still remains fun, the management side of things just seems to slow everything down. It feels like a slog and you’ll want for nothing but the next battle. Basically the battles are good, but the rest of Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires is poor.

Dragon Takers is quite a large game, with a lot of things to do, as with all good RPGs. But I can’t help feel that the story is elongated unnecessarily – there seems to be a bit too much filler content.

We doff a cap to Space Escape for taking the endless runner into a new direction, which is more than we’d expect for a lowly 79p. But with such a good idea in the bag, it’s disappointing to find that developers Pixieland have done the bare minimum with it

PAW Patrol: Grand Prix - Race in Barkingburg is the most threadbare of DLC, yet it's supplementing one of Outright Games’ best titles. The mismatch hurts, and we can’t help but feel that Mayor Humdinger and the Catastrophe Crew have run away with the rest of the package.

Games under a tenner can often be forgiven for being short when the story is top notch and the gameplay is innovative, but that’s not DreamBreak.

As a snapshot of a frostpunk future, Dull Grey on the Xbox is evocative, if ineffective. At fifteen minutes long, it’s too short to be anything but a sketch, it offers only one meaningful choice over its runtime, and it struggles to say anything that sheds light on its world or ours. Far from dull, then, but grey in the sense that no clear picture emerges.

So it must be said, Skylar & Plux: Adventure on Clover Island is more than a disappointment. The main heroes are likeable enough guys, and the world you get to journey through is a decent one with plenty of collectible opportunities. The problem is, there are too many glitches, stutters, pauses and loading screens for the duo to ever become really loved.

Pac-Man Museum+ is not the compilation that Pac-Man deserves, but in all honesty, that doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.

Ravensword: Shadowlands on Xbox probably wishes it was 2013 again, but a lot of things have changed since those times, and this isn’t able to stack up to more modern interpretations.

SokoCrab is about as simple a Sokoban puzzler as you are going to get - and it’s equally as gifting as a Gamerscore provider. With nothing to test the mind, this is one of those games in which you’ll need to consider why you game.

Creepy Road is a game filled to the brim with promise. It presents a cool, stylish world with a really vibrant art style, but is ultimately let down by glitchy game mechanics.

It must be said that I didn’t really hate my time playing Prehistoric Dude, but I just didn’t really enjoy it either. There's some challenge to overcome and I always like getting 100 percent achievement completion, but there isn’t anything that sets Prehistoric Dude apart from any other platformer. It’s not a bad game, just exceedingly average.

Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier comes up short in almost every area, except in the motion capture side of proceedings and the great looking characters. It fails to draw you in to its 2-3 hour length, whether that’s due to the lacklustre ‘gameplay’, the drab story, having very little influence on how it plays out, or simply because of the issues plaguing the technical side of the game.

Blackberry Honey is a lot of things, and many of them are contradictory. It’s a Victorian-era visual novel that is uninteractive, sleazy, grim, hopeful, dumb and clever.

It is simplistic and more than a little tedious but, for its price point, it’s hard to expect any more from it. If you need something cheap to kill the time and want to get frustrated at an RPG, maybe Nexoria will satisfy you.

Super Destronaut: Land Wars feels like a love letter to the game it so inspires to be, but loses everything that made it well-loved in translation. The concept is solid, but fails to ever reach the heights to create an addictive gameplay loop.

Minos Dungeon is unlikely to offend you, at times even able to provide some enjoyable gameplay, yet a few sokoban sins, paired with the knowledge that each ounce of fun is lifted from a predecessor, leaves this one bordering on just average.

Manipulating jigsaw pieces with a game controller in hand has always been a problem for game designers, and Alice in Wonderland - A Jigsaw Puzzle Tale not only fumbles that issue, but adds in a few of its own.

It’s not hard to imagine a game that fulfils the promise of a Legend of Zelda game set in a Studio Ghibli world, because it occasionally shines through Baldo: The Guardian Owls. But Naps Team needed an experienced hand to get more than ‘shines through’. They’ve locked so much good stuff behind terrible design decisions and a steep difficulty that your patience will run out well before the fifty hours it takes to complete Baldo, which is a crime against some fantastic art and music.

Trulon: The Shadow Engine certainly looks ready to send gamers on an adventure, especially in creating a world full of fantastical beings, but that’s where the goodness ends in truth. The turn-based card combat system grows tired in no time at all – despite a decent array of enemies – whilst the difficulty spoils and subsequently halts progression through to the end.

Space Station Sprint is lacking polish and feels like something in early access. There’s a number of bugs here and the simple gameplay can leave you feeling bored after an hour or two of playing. With missions being essentially the same throughout, there’s no real sense of accomplishment. It’ll tide you over for a bit, but don’t go in expecting anything more than that.

Escape 2088 feels like it was created by that Jigsaw guy from the Saw series. And it’s not even the most arduous escape room in the OnSkull series. Painful to control, unhelpful in the extreme, and stacked with puzzles that make only the loosest sense, this feels like the most punishing boot camp for escape room fans.

Cube Raiders on Xbox is a choc-a-block package, with more levels and modes than you’ll possibly need. As sokoban-style crate-pushers go, it’s well-designed too, with a punt at originality by incorporating dice. But it needed way more oomph and variety to break the feelings of repetition. Hundreds of levels won’t mean much when you roll out well before the end.

Claybook holds a strong foundation for a positive gaming experience, but at present it still resembles more of the game preview feel than that of a fully complete experience.

Argonauts Agency 1: Golden Fleece sold us on a bright new future for the 8floor series. Things looked golden indeed. Argonauts Agency 2: Pandora’s Box swallows that all up and reveals that the future might be darker, full of old bugs and the same repeated experiences.

You have to salute the ambition of The Dark Side of the Moon: An Interactive FMV Thriller. It’s a conspiracy thriller that goes to the moon and back, delivering world-ending stakes with a budget that probably only stretched to a box of Yorkshire Tea. But for all its adorable ricketyness and hammy acting, the sticky-backed plastic does eventually come apart.

There are just about enough modes to keep things interesting in Richman 11 but it isn’t brimming with content, even after ten other versions of it. But hey, at least you don’t need to pass GO! before gathering up property.

My Little Prince - A Jigsaw Puzzle Tale struggles and sputters as soon as the puzzles get beyond two-hundred-plus pieces. While the tools on offer are great, completing a large puzzle remains a fiddly experience to sort, choose and place jigsaw pieces. One day gaming will get big jigsaws right, but today is not that day.

Lucha Align makes that critical mistake. It’s a shape-sorting game that adds the shapes, throws in some sorting, but then neglects to include stakes, rules or anything else of value.

Fans of Running Fable will be let down, party-game players will find it too stripped back, and families will be embroiled in arguments. Genuinely, we haven’t a clue who Running Fable Petite Party is made for. It turns out that in a race between hare and tortoise, no-one wins.

The Grinch: Christmas Adventures isn’t up to snuff. When it picks up the original Dr Seuss story and uses it for inspiration, The Grinch: Christmas Adventures is capable of the odd surprise. But those moments are exceedingly rare, and we found ourselves inexplicably stealing presents from gingerbread people and beating up nutcrackers in levels that repeated themselves until we were lulled into a grumpy stupor.

Checkers For Kids isn’t for everyone, and there’s a chance it suits no-one. With a lack of tutorials for new starters, and a lack of difficulty settings to test experienced hands, it’s focused so narrowly that you wonder if there’s anyone who will stay with it for thirty minutes. If you’re willing to do the heavy-lifting, teaching your child how to play and layering on the entertainment yourself, then Checkers For Kids might do a job. For most children, though, it will feel like a chore.

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism is better than previous games in the franchise, but that isn’t a particularly high hurdle to clear. As strategy games go, there are better options out there, but this does work and is able to offer up a bit of a challenge.

The levels are great, the characters are quirky but sadly there isn’t enough content to compete against the big guns of the genre.

Flower Shop: Summer in Fairbrook isn’t one of Ratalaika’s finest visual novels. It tries to marry a farming sim to a dating sim, and leaves both sides half-grown.

SWORD ART ONLINE Last Recollection fails to deliver a memorable climax to the series. Despite bringing in a raft of characters and throwing in a load of skills from the off, it just doesn’t do enough to keep you hooked. There’s too much blandness throughout, it doesn’t entice you with things to work towards, and the gameplay is incredibly monotonous.

With more control over the little tin car, Total Arcade Racing might have achieved its purpose: to be a party game of choice for up to eight players. But it’s an unwieldy, slippery beast. You can train yourself to enjoy it, anticipating the turns and conserving your boost, but when you want a game that eight rivals can pick up and enjoy in seconds, it doesn’t fit the bill.

There is so much ambition to be found in Protocol on the Xbox. At times, it’s on a path to becoming a hybrid of Prey and Portal, both in the way it feels to play, and its ability to generate left-field ideas. Unfortunately, the ideas never fail to be executed poorly. Thanks largely to its controls, you will be, by turns, infuriated, bored, confused and offended. For a game that starts by feeling like a commentary on the lack of control in video games, it’s when you’re handed control that Protocol is at its worst.

Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra Remix is not one of the better fighting games out there, and with a price tag of £24.99, it’s hard to even recommend it as a little cheap fun. All in all, you’ll be best off looking elsewhere.

Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four is a case of Emperor’s New Cards. It’s one of the finest looking card games out there, but it’s hiding a frustrating, buggy experience and a battle system that leans too heavily on a good first turn. It’s not a complete disaster (or cardaclysm) but these are all avoidable problems that hunt Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four down, like one of its Cursed Beings.

Cleopatra Fortune S-Tribute plays very well and is a lot of fun. It is a shame about the Mystery Mode though as it is - as the name suggests - a completely impenetrable mystery which leaves us with pretty much half a game; a bit of translation would have made this a much more palatable proposition.

The puzzles themselves are clever, the music is great, the old school challenge is refreshing and the world-building entertaining. It’s just tied up in a package that doesn’t work particularly well on the Xbox One. If you want to play this, I’d recommend waiting for a price drop. I would also consider playing on the PC, as the keyboard and mouse might be a better fit.

Fishing: Barents Sea Complete Edition on Xbox One is an ambitious game that does provide some fun should you wish to go about harvesting the sea. But ultimately it is crippled by a dreadful travel mechanic.

The controls are superb, and enemies explode pleasantly. If things were a bit more streamlined and a bit of polish was used here or there, then XenoRaptor could be a great little time killer. However, the shallow gameplay, painful visuals, the insane amount of time it takes to accomplish anything and the abominable splitscreen mode make it very difficult to recommend to even the most enthusiastic fans of the genre.

We Are The Dwarves has so much potential that I can’t help but feel disappointed at the way the game has turned out. Good story, great background and awesome character design are sadly not enough to overcome frustrating, slow gameplay with minimal exposition of the abilities and what they can do, insta death mechanics and any real lack of desire to carry on after the 50th death in a row from enemies off screen.

Within the Blade has a lot of promise. Sneaking through levels, dispatching enemies silently and then fighting big bosses sounds like ninja game heaven. At least on paper. It’s when that idea is translated into an actual game that the issues seem to have crept in and spoiled the party.

It’s not often that we finish a visual novel and immediately start jotting down some better endings. But that’s the effect Weeping Willow had on us. It’s a mystery box with a soggy twig inside.

I’m absolutely a fan of Little Legs’ ambition. It tries to reinvent the Snake.io wheel, and that’s a sizable aim for a budget title. But it turns out that some things are core to this kind of experience: other players, a reason to keep playing, and a sense of threat. Without them, Little Legs begins to eat its own tail.