There is a lot of potential in a game adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and Ebenezer and the Invisible World makes a valiant effort. But this pudding needed to sing in the copper a little longer.

With dreadful controls, no map of where to go, nor any in-game speedo to see how fast you are going, Fast & Furious Crossroads on Xbox One is a massive let down. Online is messy at best, and while the storyline is a corker, the way that every mission seems to play out the same, just in a different place, makes me sad.

The Samurai Collection (QUByte Classics) probably didn’t need putting together, combining two fairly bad games and not an awful lot of fun.

Unless you’re dying for a scary fix which highlights how much one person can do in terms of development, I would probably steer clear of Whisperwood mental institution and the frustrations found within. You see, you might just end up submitting yourself as a patient.

It seems a plethora of physics-based games have hit the market over the last few years. They have gathered a large audience so it’s only predicted, but now it feels as though the joke has run its course. For the first time, the genre is starting to show its age in Totally Reliable Delivery Service on the Xbox One, with a repetitive and frustrating experience. While there’s some fun and laughs to be had with co-op, and inventive customisation options, the laughs stop there.

Kuroi Tsubasa is a visual novel that has a great demon-hunting concept and no intention of delivering on it. The overall effect of Kuroi Tsubasa was like being trapped in a room with someone aggressively reading their fan fiction. It’s meandering, boring, and desperately needs an editor.

Skatemasta Tcheco on Xbox One is stuck in the past in the best and worst ways, and half the battle of completing a level are its frustrating controls. For a platformer, that is the very last thing that you want. The amount of health pickups is incredibly sparse for a game that barrages you with damage, and the auto-scrolling levels compound the frustration. The best reason to give the game a go is to see the incredible work that was put into creating something that feels like it just arrived via a time machine.

Axis Football 2026 allows you to customise a team and playbooks and comes with a good-looking Franchise mode, at least on the surface. But it seems to forget the proof is in the pudding and it will be judged by some really bad gameplay on the gridiron itself. If American Football had a treacle mode, then Axis Football would have its gameplay speed nailed

Bones of Halloween is as hollow as a carved-out pumpkin. It works (albeit ploddingly), but that’s the best you can say about it. If you want a quickfire 1000 Gamerscore then please, go ahead, but, if you’re at all discerning, then this horde-mode arena shooter should be left out on the step to rot.

Give someone a thousand solutions, and they will pick the easiest one. Offer no reason to work together, and players won’t bother. Catty & Batty: The Spirit Guide is too often a toy and not a game, and the toy is just too ugly and chaotic to fully recommend.

Adrenaline Rampage fails to provide any appreciable adrenaline hit. It isn’t particularly rampage-y either. Unfortunately, Adrenaline Jump-and-shoot-a-bit doesn’t have the same ring.

Aery – Calm Mind 4 is about the twelfth regurgitation too far. The same levels arrive in the same arrangements, and we’re meant to pay for the privilege. When visual issues and game-breaking bugs reduce the playable levels from eleven down to eight, it’s hard to make a case for anyone to pay for it.

A Gummy’s Life is not worthy of being compared to Fall Guys, or even Gang Beasts. It is shallow, stupid and the controls are poor. It’s good that it’s sold as a party game with an online element, but sadly for the Gummy’s, there are others - such as Cake Bash - which are still the kings of the Xbox party scene.

We wondered whether a space-sim could be hammered into the shape of a racer, and Orbital Racer on the Xbox gave us an emphatic answer: no, it can’t. Without physical tracks you’ve got no sense of direction, speed, or points of interest. You get desperate for a chicane, a pit stop, anything to enliven the chugging space tour.

Pipe Dream has the barest whisper of a puzzle-platforming idea, and only gets ten minutes into exploring it. We wondered if we were missing something. Did we take a wrong turn? Did we download a demo and not the game? No, it really is a sliver, a crumb of a game - one that can’t even justify its low £4.19 price tag.

Those looking for a true flight experience are better off heading to your local airfield or waiting for the highly anticipated release of Ace Combat later this year.

Credit is due for the unique and daring storyline, however the way in which it, and the gameplay, come across gives nothing to allow Iron Wings to be remembered in a positive way.

Jeremy Paxman would turn off Planet Quiz: Learn & Discover for being a bit stuffy and boring. Don’t let the snazzy presentation or the Christmas Eve release date confuse you: this is a series of geography exams created by AI, and it’s absolutely as boring as that sounds.

We can’t wave the red flag fast and hard enough: DPS Idle is not ready to play - not by a long shot. Its progression is broken, and - more heinously - the purchases aren’t working either. It might be worth trying as a demo for ‘what might be’, once fixes have been applied, but it’s otherwise a waste of time. Some people would say that about idle games as a whole but, in this instance, they’d be right.

The big issue is that Foxyrush just isn’t any fun to play. It looks dull, the actual gameplay is dull, and there is no hook, no sense of needing to see the next level, to found anywhere.

Whether looking at the barebones gameplay, level design that repeats itself, or the lack of polish present, Magic Sheep contains all the qualities you'd associate with disappointment.

There just isn’t that much to Mad Streets. You’ve seen everything it has to offer within the space of an hour. Playing with friends and laughing for a bit at the idea of “haha! That character fell down funny!” gets old insanely fast, and it does so even quicker when playing alone. Not to mention that even when you manage to make a hit connect in a way that you actually wanted it to, it’s as satisfying as wiping someone’s face with a rubber chicken.

In the end, Mr. Brocco & Co.’s message of ‘eat your veggies’ gets undermined. Our kids will tell us that broccoli is the least flavoursome of anything we could put on their plate, and Mr. Brocco & Co. proves it by being bland, soggy platforming mush.

It’s clear that Explosive Jake on Xbox One is a game that is stuck in first gear. Rather than building upon its concept, it seems content to stay simple and forgo any sense of development.

At the end of the day, as with the vast majority of gamers, I don’t mind a good puzzler. But it’s got to bring a bit of fun to the table at the same time. Jump, Step, Step struggles in that department.

S. Prysm Destroyer only has a sheepish answer to the question of ‘why should run-and-gunner fans play this game?’. It’s got some quirky PS1 graphics and wasp-woman butts. That wasn’t enough for us, and it’s probably not for you, either. We like a little more substance to our shooters, even at a budget price.

There is nothing inherently bad about making a game really difficult. In fact, some of the best games are defined by their difficulty. With Dead Dust, it doesn’t really work. This is a game that could have benefited from some balancing, allowing the players to work their way up with a few less punishing levels. Instead, you’re dropped straight into it, armed only with a gun and a moveset that is woefully inadequate for the kind of enemies you’ll be facing.

Asphalt Legends Unite is a poor racer that attempts to make you buy your way up the leaderboards.

Poker Club on Xbox does promise long-term updates and new features coming soon, but it has launched with a few too many issues to consider a purchase right away. Patches are incoming for the bugs and glitches, but the whole package needs tightening up in multiple areas in order to make it a bit faster and less laborious in its current guise. It may be best for you to hold on for a bit before going all-in with this one.

I can see the appeal in making One Button Games 5-in-1 vol 2. There’s a challenge in creating these games. You can see how the designers have done back-flips to make them function, incorporating hold-presses of the A button just as much as taps. But as fun as they must have been to make, we are the ones who have to play them. And I rarely found that process to be fun.

Radioactive Dwarfs: Evil From the Sewers is nowhere near as much fun as it purports to be. We were hoping for a Toxic Avenger-style romp through B-movie levels, but it doesn’t have the smarts or the gameplay to pull that off.

With Opus Castle being free, it may be worth a download to grab the Gamerscore on offer, but you won’t enjoy it and probably won’t return for further chapters.

With Ice Cream Surfer, we have a case of great concept, poor execution. Taking on Hitler-Broccoli whilst riding a flying ice cream is a plot that is both barmy and strangely intriguing. And it deserves to be backed up by much better gameplay than what is currently on offer. Its issues with the controls and the characters, as well as a general lack of content, quickly sour things and throw almost any element of replayability out of the window.

While ASCENDANCE – First Horizon achieves some things with its emphasis on relaxation, calming 3D FPS platforming and hidden collectables, all of this is nearly gone to waste when you are unable to experience the entire package because of technical issues which should have been solved before the game’s launch.

If you pitched This is the Zodiac Speaking to us at a Dragon’s Den, we would have given you the money. A true-crime hunt for the real-life serial killer, in partnership with the Investigation Discovery channel: it feels like a no brainer. Unfortunately, like the infamous scene from the Hannibal movie, it feels more like someone else is spooning your brains out. This could have been the gateway to more true crime games on the Xbox One – instead, it’s a gateway to something a little more hellish.

If you’re not on the lookout for a quick top-up to your Gamerscore, I’d recommend giving Whiskey Mafia: Frank's Story a miss. It gets points for its unique setting and interesting premise, but not much else. The fact is, with Whiskey Mafia you’ll be getting a game that consists of a story with clear room for improvement, and a few repetitive minigames.

Given the premise that focuses on a police officer doing their job, Autobahn Police Simulator 3 should be appealing. The reality is that the mechanics can't keep up with the ambition of what the game wants to do.

There’s clearly a lot of passion and work put into this, and it’s charming and upbeat, with retro influences clear on its sleeves. However, it simply needs so much more polish that I cannot currently recommend a purchase to anyone.

GREEN The Life Algorithm on Xbox One is quite clear it’s about the experience, the look and feel of the game, as opposed to telling an epic tale of good vs evil. There are some basic story elements and a vague sense of mystery, but nothing too gripping. Unfortunately it’s hard to focus on this, as the clunky controls may have you turning from green to red. What results is an average, disjointed experience at best.

I can't sit here and say, with hand on heart, that Gear.Club Unlimited 2 - Ultimate Edition is the worst racing game in the world, for there are some bits which are okay. But it's so far away from a top podium spot that it's pretty much worth dismissing out of hand.

It is a simple and repetitive venture, but one which does fulfill its promise of providing fairly fun and engaging platform levels, of which there are plenty. Unfortunately, this experience comes within a plain world which contains repetitive music and bad sound mixing.

Overall, Away: Journey to the Unexpected is a bit of a mess, and what’s even more disappointing is that the trailers of the game have made it really seem like the feel-good FPS game that the developers have aimed for. But the poorly thought out combat mixed, with a lacklustre gameplay loop make the hours spent, frustrating to say the least. While there are some aspects of the game that are well executed like the art and music, Away is a tough game to recommend.

War Robots: Frontiers does make a decent fist of most of the requirements of the online shooter genre, but fails on perhaps the most important - the actual online bit. The servers are flakier than a croissant factory, and as a result the whole game experience is affected, as it is impossible to rank yourself up when the game thinks that you have never finished a match.

There are plenty of problems found in Bounce Rescue, and these outweigh the positives tenfold, but the biggest by far is that the game lacks the fun element we all need from an indie title. Feelings of frustration and unfairness instead preside over nearly everything that this game delivers. And that’s not good in anyone’s book.

Until the Last Plane takes a concept that should be fun and challenging, but turns it into a recipe for boredom. And that is pretty unforgivable.

Dark Grim Mariupolis on Xbox One feels like it’s been left on the shelf since the ‘80s. It looks and feels, at least initially, like a lost C64 point-and-click classic, but the tape on the cassette has deteriorated, making the game almost unplayable. Dialogue is meandering and surreal, and the puzzles have eroded to become a sequence of unrelated interactions. At least it’s only a couple of hours long, as the surrealist noise soon gets to boiling your brain.

Apartment No 129 is a tricky game to review because, essentially, there are a lot of broken elements, and the control system is mayhem at times. But if you can somehow get around that, there is a reasonably decent, creepy game underneath.

With a cheap price tag and the promise of easy achievements and bags of Gamerscore, Pirate Trails is very much what you would expect from Afil Games and their seeming obsession with cheap games; a below average gaming experience that will be forgotten as that last achievement ping is heard.

Duck Souls+ on Xbox One has fun gameplay, brisk as it may be. There are just so many better platformers with original voices that you should play first.

We’re in a second golden age of FMV adventures, with studios like Wales Interactive and Flavourworks making some absolute crackers. One of the joys of being in a golden age is that you don’t have to put up with substandard alternatives. Truth is most definitely that.

Toadomination mostly left us bemused. It’s a perfectly fine twin-stick shooter and roguelike that feels like it’s been sabotaged. Nothing feels right, from the movement to the guns to the bosses. There are umpteen games like this on the market, and we’re willing to bet that most of them have Toadomination licked.

In all What the Box? is a missed opportunity. It lacks any depth, fun or even a decent set of controls. The modes included do nothing but encourage players to ignore the whole point of what has been built here.

Any game that lets you pull on your Velociraptor suit should, at the very least, be thrilling. Somehow, Raptor Revenge can’t even manage that. It takes one of the coolest animals to have ever lived, files off their claws and makes them a bin collector. That’s where Evolution takes you, I suppose.

Make no mistake, The Last Dead End on Xbox fails at nearly everything it attempts. It’s a shooter that has no effective guns, a horror game that never scares, and a narrative-based game that makes no sense. At a time when Resident Evil is getting its mojo back, it’s hard to find a reason to play something so rough-edged. The title of The Last Dead End becomes predictably appropriate: you’ll spend most of your time looking for a way out.

Munchkin is a beloved card game full of charm, humour, replayability and, most importantly, fun. Munchkin: Quacked Quest on Xbox One on the other hand offers none of that.

Radon Blast on Xbox presents a novel take on the classic brick breaker game, almost adding an element of survival. But even this doesn’t stop the game from becoming tiresome after only a short time. There is a lack of features, music and almost everything else; so much so that even the £4.19 price tag is asking a bit too much unless you are a true achievement hunter.

The result is a derivative, barely functional copycat that doesn’t deign to tutorialise itself. When every tenth game is inspired by Balatro, JokerJack needed to be so, so much more than whatever this is.

I’m no stranger to games that ask a player to grind repetitive tasks, and I’m also no stranger to games that don’t really have a clear goal to be working toward. Where most of those games succeed though is in having interesting characters, visuals or gameplay. Regions of Ruin on the other hand, much like a sandwich without strawberry jam, is an uninteresting and bland experience.

There's some cheap and easy Xbox Gamerscore on offer if you must boost your numbers, but otherwise Zombie Derby is a game that'll be over in an evening, swiftly removed from the hard-drive thereafter.

Wizard Of Legend 2 starts strong but fails to deliver a compelling reason to continue playing once stagnation sets in. Unfortunately, that sets in sooner rather than later and mires the whole experience.

Someone clearly believes in Yuko and the Akuma Menace. That someone isn’t us, though. The only thing that gave us enjoyment while playing Yuko and the Akuma Menace was working out what the designers were trying to achieve.

Sure, The Rabbit Crazy Adventure is functional, and we managed to cross the finish line, but that’s no measure of a good game. It’s about as crazy as those people who say ‘you have to be crazy to work here’.

We’re not angry, we’re just disappointed. But we’ll let Puzzle By Nikoli W off: they’ve nailed so many puzzle games in the past that we’ll forgive them one stinker. Because that’s what Puzzle By Nikoli W Numberlink ultimately is: an unsatisfying meander into trial-and-error that leaves a bad smell in the nostrils.

It may come in on the cheap side which is always a positive, but if you’re after a meaningful zombie experience, this is definitely one you can afford to leave behind.

Gastro Force is quite obviously a DOOM clone, but after playing it, you will probably find yourself better off with the originals if you want that retro hit. If the addition of a Y-axis is the best it can do, then that is a clear sign of how poor the rest of the game is.

Resident Evil: Resistance on the Xbox One is a game that has released too early. Lag, matchmaking issues, unbalanced gameplay, a lack of content: all the major multiplayer issues are here. When it does work, there is fun to be had as a Survivor – despite being at a disadvantage – or when chasing down Survivors as a player-controlled zombie. But there is a lot more that needs to be done here, and quickly too, before the timer runs out on this multiplayer game.

In a world where Jim Henson created lovable creations such as The Muppets and the cast seen in The Dark Crystal, it’s disappointing that their property has been wasted on a hollow combat-heavy video game.

If you want to throw a bike around some time trial tracks for a little bit, by all means crack on, but if you try to do anything else in MX vs ATV Legends, you're going to be met with a host of issues.

Remoteness is in need of some patching and only then may it well be interesting enough to look at it. The gameplay is all over the place, the asthma mechanic not needed, yet there could well be an intriguing game hiding away underneath it all.

Accident falls short, stumbling at the opportunity to deliver a fulfilling experience. Following a helpful tutorial, it struggles to find a balance between being stupidly easy and oddly difficult, with the latter mainly due to iffy game mechanics. The investigation portion does pose decent logical problems to solve, but the morbid aftermath is a massive downer.

Spartan Fist feels stylized and does have interesting ideas, but it could well benefit from more polish – it has a plethora of annoying glitches and offers very little content, even at its price point.

There is a good game, a compelling game even, fighting to get out of War Mongrels, but it is buried under a pile of duff controls and absurd difficulty.

Thunder Paw on Xbox One looks like a game from the mid-90s. Unfortunately, it plays like one too. At its core, it’s a run and gun platformer that doesn’t succeed at either. The platforming is too simple to be fun and the combat is horrible. When it isn’t mind-numbingly easy, it’s ridiculously frustrating.

Even cozy games need variety, pay-offs or moments of interest. Legends Aligned: Land of Order has none of those things. As a cozy game, it’s too one-note to instill feelings of comfort.

Life of Fly 2 is like an incredibly slow bus journey through a bland neighborhood. To make it worse, a stranger sits next to you and spouts waffle that they think is insightful. It’s mercifully short at an hour, and Gamerscore pours out of it, but your time is worth so much more than this.

There are things to like about Just Ignore Them on Xbox One. Its first act is brilliant. The puzzles are challenging, but not to the point of frustration. The achievements are easy. But ultimately, there are just too many issues for me to recommend it.

Back in 1995 doesn’t feel like something worth experiencing as a video game in 2019. At best, it is something which simply exists to satisfy a modern gamer’s curiosity, as even those who grew up with classic survival horror games don’t honestly miss playing these archaic games once the rose-tinted lenses are off.

There’s a terrifying story at the heart of Hermitage: Strange Case Files. You see it in flashes, much like the hallucinating victims of the case see it. But to get there, you have to wade through an excruciatingly leaden visual novel. It’s long, it’s ponderous, and it’s miserable. You may feel an urge to stick around to see if the pay-off is worth it, but we’ve done the hard work for you: nope, it’s not worth it.

Football Manager 26 Console is incredibly disappointing right now. I have a strong feeling that in six months’ time, after a load of patches and optimisation updates, this might be a different beast altogether, as framerate issues and bugs are pushed to one side. But we can only review what is in front of us, and the sad reality is that Football Manager 26 Console, at times, borders on the unplayable.

I can imagine people looking at the price and number of wordsearches and hovering over the ‘Buy’ button. But Word Quest Pirates isn’t worth it. It’s a Groundhog Day of the same puzzles, the same words, and the same layouts. If you manage to reach the end of all 210 puzzles then you’re a better pirate than I.

The gameplay loop found in Idle Wizard is pretty dull, but if you are desperate for some Gamerscore, have at it. Otherwise, I’d leave this one well alone.

Petite Adventure is like a driving instructor, tutting and stamping on the brakes whenever you want to get going. It’s impossible to find the fun with all that going on.

We struggle to come up with many reasons to pick up Renzo Racer. While it controls reasonably well, it’s the bare bones of a karting game, stripped of charm and sprinkled with infuriations. Then someone slaps a £19.99 price tag on it.

SokoBunny’s drawbacks counteract the positive aspects so I can’t in good faith recommend a purchase, unless you’re planning on playing it in co-op. Even then though, it’s still a stretch to suggest buying it.

Bee Flowers: Save the Garden is an amalgamation of letdowns, missed potential and repetitive gameplay and level design.

Tour de France 2019 could well have done with a bit more development time, instead of being pushed out in the current state just in order to meet the demands of the first stage of the 2019 Tour.

Ship Graveyard Simulator tries to bring the excitement of breaking ocean-bound vessels to your sofa. However, it ends up feeling like something best left buried at sea.

Shukuchi Ninja isn’t anywhere near as good as the games it’s closest to - namely Party Golf and Angry Birds. Instead, it’s everything that a ninja isn’t. It’s clumsy, awkward, and more likely to hurt you than the enemies you’re aiming for.

The Endless Summer Surfing Challenge tries to capture the thrills, but it fails. It’s not very exciting, a bit buggy, and you get tired of it very quickly.

Chemically Bonded found our weak spot and jammed fingernails into it for three hours. We don’t imagine that it will be this painful for everyone: you might have a greater resistance to what we found to be aimless descriptions, rambling plotting and terrible voice-acting. But reviews are opinions, and our opinion is that you could randomly pick pretty much any other visual novel and feel less tortured than we were in Chemically Bonded.

Crashbots is let down by some awful design and gameplay choices. The camera needs to be better. The energy system needs to be rethought. The controls are sluggish and need improvement. The physics need to be made more consistent. The technical issues need to be ironed out.

Stellar Docks fails to deliver anything close to challenging with its Sokoban setup. Having forty levels is more of a hindrance than a positive when the same mechanic is heavily relied upon for the duration.

Omen of Sorrow on Xbox is a pretend fighting game at best. It may try to look the part, but it is barely coherent or logical in execution. Fighting fans can give this one a miss without a second thought.

Blaze and the Monster Machines: Axle City Racers almost takes longer to type out than it does to play. If you’re a parent, and are considering this for your Blaze fans, beware: you’d get more enjoyment from a large cardboard box.

QUByte Classics - Jim Power: The Lost Dimension Collection by PIKO is a collection to miss, then, and we hope QUByte’s noble intention to preserve older classics finds some worthier targets.

Temple Dash: Jungle Adventure may have been spruced, but it still stinks.

Pyramid Quest has to take the fall. It’s a beige little 2D platformer that would have just-about done a job thanks to its well designed levels. But someone neglected to tighten up the control bolts and then made the fatal decision to add in fall damage.

Don’t bother yourself with Deformers; it’s too pricey, sparsely populated, and not really fun to play anyway.