Mel The Cat won’t hurt anyone. It’s an inoffensive title designed for about half an hour of fun, yet sadly it can’t even achieve that, with no second of your half an hour playthrough introducing any resemblance of enjoyment.

£3.99 isn’t much to pay for a game, even a pinball game, but what is included still has to turn out to be fun and Babylon 2055 Pinball is far removed from that.

The controls are awkward and the random deaths for falling down a pit you can’t see are bad enough, but the shots through scenery when you are on your last sliver of health are the final straw. If you are a masochist, you may get some enjoyment out of Escape From Terror City, but for the rest of us, this is one to avoid.

You can’t argue with the price of Touchdown Pinball, but it very much feels like a case of getting what you pay for. There is no multiplayer, there are no bells nor whistles, and even the basics of a pinball game don’t feel right. There is very little to recommend here, aside from some easy Xbox Gamerscore.

Whilst the visuals are nice, some of the writing is okay and the music is palatable, there is little else to like here with The Language of Love on Xbox One. When it isn’t relying on a romance story by numbers, it plays into very creepy tropes and strange dynamics in ways that made me feel rather uncomfortable.

Megalan 11 just isn’t fun. There is no sense of jeopardy, no sense of danger, no sense of impending doom if you don’t escape in the 11 days that the game gives you - there is just the unending grind of trying to get enough scrap to mend a door before a Space Cow melts its way through again.

Indiecalypse on Xbox One tries many things, but for the most part it fails. Throughout my time with it it has regularly required restarts to fix its minigames, its humour is grating and fails to show any depth, and it only really takes a couple of hours or so to finish.

Slide Stars on Xbox misunderstands everything that makes Trials HD great, producing a play-doh homage without any of the speed, trickery or finesse. Then it ushers in some moderately popular internet personalities, but doesn’t do them - or their audience - the service of including any of that personality.

Hayfever on Xbox One has the looks of a solid platformer but is a completely misjudged experience. The control system makes the game borderline unplayable, the sound design wears thin extremely fast, and irritating glitches have the potential to prevent progress. Much like actual hayfever, it’s disorienting, frustrating and downright annoying.

Ah, Love! combines puzzles and brainpower to achieve its narrative. But despite the singular positive of introducing various mechanics, issues such as not using mechanics past their introduction, mediocre level design, and abysmal presentation, all result in a game slightly above the worst of the genre.

You’d be best off avoiding CyberHeroes Arena DX and spending your time with Vampire Survivors instead. This game isn’t fit to even hold that one’s coat.

Tyler: Model 005 is simply a bad game. Good graphics cannot hide the multiple issues: bad voice acting, poor combat and crucially, terrible platforming. In a game where platforming is a major component it is imperative that jumping works, and here it does not at all. In fact, this may well be the worst example I’ve ever seen.

Pushy and Pully in Blockland on the Xbox One is simply one of those games that should be avoided at all costs. Repetitive, fiddly and not sure what sort of game it is, the only thing enjoyable about it is the art style. But even then, all it did was make me long to play those older games again rather than have to sit through any more of this. It’s not really a puzzle game, it’s not really a platformer, it’s just an unfortunately bad game.

We implore you: read the myth of Sisyphus or snuggle up with the works of Camus instead. Heavy Burden is no way to brush up on either. It’s a mashup of some of the things we hate most in games - escort missions, first-person platforming and cruel failure states - with a half-hearted gesture towards philosophy. Praise Zeus that we only had to push this rock up the mountain once.

Greyhill Incident feels like an unfortunate swing and a miss at a hugely underused slice of horror. Using Greys as a threat should make for a rather tense and scary alien abduction experience, but whilst Greyhill Incident is indeed horrific, sadly it is done so in all the wrong ways.

It’s often the case that the best puzzle games have the simplest of concepts. ReactorX on Xbox One casts doubt on that. In fact, I struggle to think of anything that the game does particularly well. It’s a puzzle game - and a short one at that - without any real challenge, it’s got some of the worst controls I have experienced, and the graphics are nothing remarkable. The fact is, unless you’re interested in the quick and easy 1000 Gamerscore on offer, there is no real reason to pick ReactorX up.

Reviewing Nape Retroverse Collection has felt like running in a really crap marathon. We’re exhausted. None of the four games are good by anyone’s standards, but there’s so much shoddiness crammed into one package that we almost appreciate the effort in producing it.

My Little Riding Champion on Xbox One is a pretty terrible offering all-round. Its main draw of being a horse riding champ is over in the blink of an eye, whilst the additional missions are uneventful and boring. The large open-world is so drab and empty that it comes across as merely a cheap way to make missions seem longer by having the ability to send you far away. Even the horse jumping mechanics aren’t up to scratch, with any failing occurring at no fault of your own. Add in the bugs, the awful acting and the shoddy visuals, and there’s not much good to be found here.

Poor controls and shoddy graphics will take away any last drop of praise you have for Winx Club: Alfea Butterflix Adventures. It is literally all about the achievements for this game – one that is easily set to be one of the worst of 2018.

Behind Closed Doors feels like a rushed first draft. A great deal of it needs tightening up, redrafting, and playtesting for it to feel worth the playtime.

I cannot remember a time that I played a game that made me angry just by looking at it. There may be some potential behind the idea - War Theatre definitely has a place that it wanted to go. Sadly, we will never know what that was since the game is marred by a tiresome excuse for gameplay and hideous visuals.

You could viably use Ground War: Tank Battle as a form of torture. Whisper “120 levels of tank-battling action” in our ear and we’ll spasm to the floor, the trauma of multiple hours with it still fresh in our memory.

Mechapunk doesn’t feel like a game so much as a performance art piece – one that proves that capitalism is as two-dimensional as the things we aspire to enjoy, maybe? There’s plenty of space to conjure up a metaphor that excuses this mess – “what room!” indeed.

Drunken Fist is built on a very thin foundation, executed in poor taste, and poorly created in general. It's very much what I imagine a drunken brawl to be like. Slow, painful and not particularly enjoyed by anyone.

Robot Squad Simulator X on Xbox One is not a game I can recommend to anyone. It seems a shame that a potentially good idea, with genuinely tense gameplay to be recreated, has been squandered like this. The driving of the robots is awful, the arm mechanics really suck, and the rest of the game is simply shoddy and badly designed.

Teratopia on Xbox is a gross, poorly optimized, poorly designed, and disastrous product. I regularly have more fun with the mazes on the back of cereal boxes. Maybe if there were some kind of actual direction, it could have been a fun little 3D something. Instead, Teratopia is yet another example of a weird name being tied to a horrendous game.

Nothing in An Evil Existence feels like it fits together; there is no flow to the gameplay, it’s janky and broken, the load times are incredibly long, the graphical glitches are prevalent, and there are constant frame drops. It's shocking that something like this has even made it through to the Xbox Store. It may seem like I am being harsh, however when you include the high asking price, you're essentially paying for two hours of punishment and boredom.

We’re in danger of making Strike Force 2 - Terrorist Hunt on Xbox sound so bad that you might want to buy it. There’s some truth in that, but the laughs are all in the first level. The rest of Strike Force’s routine is re-tellings of the same joke, and for £15 you could get more from buying a whoopee cushion and burning the remaining tenner. Undoubtedly, there are people who have completed the COD campaign and are looking around for the next shot of military head-shottage, but you need Strike Force 2 like a hole in your own.

Another Dawn on Xbox is a very strange game; one that could have been a decent survival-based first-person shooter but fast turns into a mess due to bad mechanics and awful gameplay - it goes wrong from the first minute and you’ll need a whole host of willpower to even attempt to carry on past that moment.

Ah, Love! Season 2 takes everything it has from its previous entry, and that leaves it scrambling for any reason to exist.

If poorly conceived rush jobs are your bread and butter then Police Chase on Xbox One has you covered, but everyone else should steer well clear of this defective and shoddy trash fire.

In the past few months, we’ve experienced a traffic jam of top-down racers. And right at the back, way behind the rest of them, is Retro Pixel Racers. It offers no excuses: it flicks the bird as it passes, with no multiplayer, no game modes, no track variation and a top-speed just north of a shopping trolley.

Deadliest Catch: The Game is dull, hard to operate and looks awful. Most importantly, the way that the controls operate manage to suck what little fun going crabbing has out of the game. The result is a mess that you would do well to avoid.

On PC, Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom could well be a fine game, but it just doesn’t work on the Xbox, and that is a big problem.

Hunt Ducks 4 is a racket, a grift. The developers have carefully peeled the label off of Hunt Ducks II’s bottle and then sold it again as Hunt Ducks 4 instead. We gave Hunt Ducks II a miserly 1 out of 5 the first time round, and we’re duty bound to do the same again. That Duck Hunt dog is turning in its grave.

We have to implore you not to buy Joy Ball Adventure. It’s unfinishable, bugged to the point of impassibility on Level 14. What little we played was good, particularly for that low price, but you can experience an actual, working version of it by buying Kid Ball Adventure instead. It has the novelty of actually being playable.

Hunt Ducks II is Duck Hunt. It’s Duck Hunt to the point of a cease-and-desist.

Albacete Warrior is a comedic achievement. But not because it manages to join the elite club of games that are genuinely funny. Albacete Warrior is, without any doubt, the least funny comedy game we have ever played.

Slap the Rocks feels like a case of squandered potential. Thirty levels should have been more than enough to experiment with some interesting mechanics and offer up some truly challenging puzzles. Instead, we have a game that is overly repetitive, overly simplistic and much too short.

This game isn’t nice to look at, or to hear in the background, and the gameplay is inherently flawed. In fact, The Adventures of 00 Dilly isn’t recommended for anyone to play.

If you want a game that you can play at the same time that you file your taxes, it can get the job done. But then, so can many other games that are much more engaging and fun. The bland, repetitive gameplay, uninspired design and notification disease that my Xbox One now has just aren’t worth it.

We feel impossibly mean for twisting the knife into Gabriel’s Worlds The Adventure. But considered objectively, this is a hopeless little platformer, barely finished and lacking content to justify the price. Sure, you can gird your loins with 2000G of achievements for thirty minutes of work, but any discerning gamer will leave Gabriel’s Worlds The Adventure well, well alone.

The only way I could recommend this game to you is if you’re looking for a particularly un-aesthetic type of suffering. But if you’re keen for that then ring me up. I’ll paint myself magenta, scream at you and repeatedly kick you in the shins. It might not be as painful, but it will be free.

Whether you point fingers at the hectic visuals, foolish mode design choices or terrible gameplay mechanics, absolutely nothing entices you to play one more game, let alone the many it’ll take to unlock more tables. Throw in the annoying backing track and poor voice-overs, and no good can come from playing this game – unless you’re glutton for punishment that is.

I can’t recommend Street Outlaws: The List to anybody; certainly not to anyone who’s ever played a racing game before.

Red Death on Xbox One is a chore to play. I would say that the ugly visuals and mediocre gameplay bring down the experience, but that would mean there was something enjoyable to be brought down.

Speed 3: Grand Prix on Xbox promises an exciting concept that it simply fails to provide. The main Tournament mode doesn’t offer much longevity, the actual gameplay is a messy affair – although not in the way it’s intended – and it lacks any sort of fun factor.

If this really is a sim, one that tries to portray how dull and dreadful an airport firefighter’s life is, then the developers have achieved their goal. But I’m not sure that was the intention.

Demolish & Build Classic is absolutely rubbish. It is annoying, frustrating from beginning to end, looks like a game from the very early days of consoles, and is unable to provide any form of fun in exchange for your hard earned money. When you include the glitches, this is one to avoid at all costs.

Doug Hates His Job on Xbox One has an interesting setup for what could have been a gamer’s dream game. Instead, it ends up being an experience far more dreary and painful than a day job. With its dry and whimsical writing, it probably could have been a fun adventure game on its own, but sadly the advertised eight gameplay styles collectively amount to something that barely feels like a video game.

Boom Blaster on Xbox left a bad taste in the mouth. In fact, the only blasting I wanted to do by the end of it, was blasting this game off my hard-drive. Don’t bother picking this one up, because it’s frankly unplayable. There are far too many issues to overlook and it’s an all-round horrible experience.

There are people who will be suckered into Doodle Escape: Room Escape Game, like a moth to a 79p flame. We get it: they can barely feel the money leaving their bank account. But we worry about them: we worry about their wellbeing, should they play it, because it achieves a level of frustration that causes physical pain. It’s gaming tinnitus.

Unless you are a rabid Blade Runner, you’ll want to steer clear of Blade Runner Enhanced Edition.

It may sound like I’ve not particularly cared for Boss Rush: Mythology. But there is a very good reason for that - it is rubbish. The controls are awful, the graphics are woeful and there just isn’t any fun to be had here

Say ‘Shadoworld: The Impossible Escape Game’ to us, and an involuntary facial tic will spasm across our face. This is not a game to play if you value your time or sanity.

Unless Monster Ramp Racing drops its strange determination to only use two buttons - an accelerate and brake - it’s going to remain virtually unplayable.

Visually it looks bad, the controls are shonky, and rarely can any fun be had. A lack of tutorials, confusing menus, and errors popping up all over the place sees Heliborne spiralling to earth, totally out of control. If you are a fan of helicopter games, after playing this, you won’t be.

eFootball 2022 is a disaster, plain and simple, and there has been very little added to Season 1 or 2 that can alleviate that.

Moonfall Ultimate is a prime example of how not to make a game. The nice looking graphics are drowned in a tide of clunky combat, poor animation and a generally unpolished feel. I cannot recommend this game to anyone, unless you were to buy it for your worst enemy. Even then, that may still come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment.

If you've been living under a rock for the last 20 years and have never seen a driving game, you may get a bit of fun out of Street Racer Underground on Xbox One. If you have played anything after, say, Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 on the Amiga, you won't.

Jurassic Pinball offers up a depressingly bland pinball table with almost no redeeming features. Aside from the fact that the delays and dodgy physics are such that your turns will be over very quickly.

I have a theory. Anyone with eyes and opposable thumbs would have told EpiXR Games that Wolf Pack – Howling Spirits wasn’t ready for release. It’s a miracle that it even passed certification.

If you’re a fan of Mozart, don’t sully your opinion of him by playing the mess of a game that is Mozart Requiem.

Gallic Wars: Battle Simulator is a game that takes an interesting idea and smothers it under a pile of bad controls, dubious design decisions and poor gameplay. If you like Asterix, or strategy games, I can’t recommend this game to you.

Happi Basudei is phenomenally atrocious, a water-cooler joke between developers that somehow wound up on the Xbox Store, miraculously dodging anything that might resemble quality control.

Simply put, it feels like a hunting game made by somebody who has never gone hunting.

Sometimes a game will arrive that reinvents the genre, providing a new spin on the classic tropes. Petoons Party on Xbox One is not that game. It takes everything that worked for genre classics such as Mario Party and throws them out. While it functions on a basic level, nothing involved is particularly fun, interesting or warranting of a replay.

Unfortunately, I cannot produce a single reason why anyone should pick up Retro Tanks on Xbox One. Its uninteresting gameplay, irritating bugs and headache-inducing visuals make it an absolute mess. Perhaps you and some friends can laugh at each other while playing the game in the background, but it is much more likely that you would all quickly grow bored.

Gold Rush: The Game has all of the tools – literally – to make for a deep gold mining simulator, yet fails to succeed in any way. The controls are awful to get to grips with on console, the sheer volume of aspects to learn is overwhelming, and the lengthy tutorial still leaves you with unanswered questions that the in-game help guides simply do not explain well.

With slow dialogue, repetitive and stressful combat encounters in which enemies glitch out of the map and push you into lava far more than you deserve, and a game length which is rather insulting for the price, I can only be honest and tell you to stay away from Claws of Furry.

Deep Space Anomaly feels unfinished; like the developers cobbled some ideas together and shovelled it out of the door as fast as possible.

Hot Stakes Casino – American Roulette does absolutely nothing that other roulette games in bigger titles already do. The only additions are the minigames, that are very luck-based, and the character artwork, that just aren’t very good.

Midnight School Walk is refund-worthy. We can’t underline it enough: this is a visual novel that should be avoided at all costs. Everyone involved can do better.

At the start of Alfonzo’s Arctic Adventure, it’s not quite clear where Bob, the ‘damsel in distress’, went. We can imagine him walking away sheepishly, looking back at the puzzle-platformer he was leaving behind and sighing, sadly. That’s because this arctic adventure is a dismal, weary one, and Bob’s only option was to never think about it again.

Air Bounce – The Jump ‘n’ Run Challenge on Xbox should be avoided at all costs. An already challenging platformer is made unnecessarily difficult with the X and Y axis being far too sensitive, and then made a complete joke with inconsistencies in almost every department.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mini Hockey Battle. It takes all the accumulated years of history, rules and charm of ice hockey, and consolidates it into a game of piggy-in-the-middle. Wayne Gretzky, you did it all wrong.

Beautiful Sakura: Surfing Club is perhaps the most cynical, half-hearted attempt at weedling £10 out of someone’s pockets, and no amount of baby-oil and AI-generated creepy-fingers can justify its existence. If this is the future of gaming then stop the bus, because we’re getting off.

Aabs Animals is less a game and more a transaction. It’s a shifty guy in a dark alley selling 1000G for £7.99. “Just look at a cat mate”, he says, as he pockets the cash and runs giggling over the horizon.

With more polished combat, a better world and story threads, a few more original ideas, and fewer sloppy inconsistencies, The Bounty Huntress could at least be a passable little game. As it is, though, it barely feels finished.

How does a game like Retro Tank Arcade manage to find itself on a Microsoft Store, rubbing shoulders with Dead Space? Perhaps the developers have blackmail material on Phil Spencer. It’s the only solution we can come up with for why this utterly broken, dismal tank game is available for sale.

After playing Beyond Enemy Lines - Remastered Edition on the Xbox for more hours than it deserves, we feel shell-shocked. If it worked, which it doesn’t, it would still be magnitudes of awful thanks to a misunderstanding of what a stealth game is. It could at least have the courtesy of being forgiving when it’s bombarding you with bugs and bad decisions, but no - it keeps kicking you while you’re down and then tosses you to the start to experience it all again.

Cazzarion: Demon Hunting looks bad, is poorly designed and is no fun to play. It’s about as close to “nil points” as you could imagine, but technically it runs (more like limps, but still) on Xbox Series X so I have to give it at least half a mark.