On one hand, this couple of hours journey through the memories of a bored, broken, female office worker intrigues and delights me in equal measure. I love the way the narrative is told in an experimental and different way from the usual method. I also appreciate the puzzle sections and wide collection of playing styles. But some of the other gameplay choices are terribly broken and dull.

Ultra Pixel Survive is fun in short blasts, and getting a good defence set-up going is pretty satisfying. However, even with the low asking price in mind, you may still feel a little short changed. In fact, if you want to play a survival game featuring building, I’d suggest Minecraft.

After spending a fair bit of time with the many fighting games that have released this year, it’s fair to say Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite is both slacking and lacking in comparison.

Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom on Xbox is an interesting take on a KEMCO game. It’s more of a management sim than a straight-up RPG, with you having to balance your jaunts to dungeons against the needs of the town for blacksmithed goods. There is a depth that is quite pleasing, but the whole premise seems to be to grind - while there’s fun to be had, it is very repetitive.

There’s a long list of things that Days of Doom needed to be a successful roguelite tactics game. It needed to be quicker, more varied, less grindy and give you more options in a given battle.

On one hand, I appreciate the effort in creating a plethora of creatures to defeat, upgrades, heroes and the idea of ascension to try making it further through the worlds. Whilst on the other hand, I deplore the idea of a game bearing such lazy gameplay input of just pressing a button constantly, which in itself becomes obsolete due to DPS.

Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition on Xbox One could have stood out from the many retro style indie RPG efforts, with a beautiful setting, charming characters, and excellent pixel art to complement a genuinely interesting narrative. Unfortunately, the utterly messy map design and cumbersome gameplay hold it back from realising its true potential.

Puzzle games that try something new are pretty rare, so Indigo 7 gets some brownie points. But those points are mostly squandered by too much randomness, duff game modes, a vacuous story and a combo system that files away the fun. There’s a decent multiplayer puzzler tucked away in the corners of Indigo 7: Quest For Love, but this is mostly a failed experiment with only a few interesting findings.

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is certainly a better-looking game than the first one, but it feels like it plays it a bit safe in improving anything else really.

iO proves that you don’t need a great story, you don’t need stunning visuals, you don’t need complex controls and you don’t need a banging soundtrack. You will however need to be a certain type of gamer to enjoy all the stages that iO delivers, but should you be a puzzle fiend and in the market for a clever, albeit slightly frustrating, abstract brain taxer, then you could do worse than check it out.

If you fancy some fast-food Metroidvania action, then Runnyk is surprisingly digestible. If you want depth, innovation, challenge or something that makes you actually think, then you might want to get your kicks elsewhere.

Our problem with Motesolo: No Girlfriend Since Birth is that we have already played the more satisfying - but still similar - Five Dates and Ten Dates. We felt like we had a say on those encounters, and they were with people we actually wanted to spend time with. We’d much rather go on Fifteen Dates than another one with Kimo. Sorry, buddy, it’s pretty glaring why you’ve had no girlfriends since birth.

Warface: Breakout is very much just some shooter, and there are much better games out there that will be more rewarding to play. If you liked Warface, then by all means give it a whirl, but it doesn’t compare to the other current darlings of the FPS genre.

Sudden Strike 5 is about as rough around the edges as you are likely to get. And the controls don’t make things any easier. Yes, the maps are decent, and there is plenty of content to get involved in, but if you want to play a WWII real time strategy game, I’d stick with Sudden Strike 4…

For a brainless hour or so, M.A.D. Cows might be worth your cash. But you deserve better. There are better cuts of beef out there.

There is a lot to like in this small little indie game and Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast has a bit of a charm to it, mostly thanks to its originality. The gameplay doesn’t really increase its value after the first five attempts and you might tire of this pretty damn quickly, but it’s a good one to bring out at a party with a few friends around.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI Chronicles delivers a bit of mindless fun with its action and exciting special moves, but not much else. For all the characters featured and arcs covered, the narrative struggles to recreate the joy of the anime and ultimately lacks charm.

Shift Happens isn’t exactly a bad co-op game, but it does suffer from some rather noticeable irritations and when joining a genre of successfully established titles, there really needs to be more on offer than that included.

Late Shift does well to ensure any choices you make impact on the story, either immediately or later on. It really lives or dies by the success of the live-action part though and in truth, my enjoyment varies dependent on the decision making and the subsequent acting out of the following scenes, with only the lead delivering an almost faultless performance.

In translating Virtual Families Cook Off: Chapter 1 Let’s Go Flippin’ to Xbox, only half the job has been done. The baking and cooking feels great with a controller in the hands, and the microtransactions have wisely been excised from this £8.39 release. But the grind and levels that feed it are all still here.

Kill the Brickman’s attempt to add a roguelike to a brick-breaker is an inventive idea, but not the best execution of it.

Quick Whiskers doesn’t do a lot wrong. It has a fine eye for tense platforming sequences where there isn’t much room for mistakes. But it’s also nothing special, as it fails to generate any charm or ideas beyond a cool cat character and a dash mechanic.

We didn’t have a bad time playing Ballotron Coolbox. While it’s more of the same, it’s an unfussy ‘more of the same’, with levels that can be beaten by giving the cue ball a huge amount of welly and watching the ricochets.

Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef should have been the one I shouted about, telling all to come and play, but instead we have a game that has a ton of potential that it just doesn't fulfil.

Claim the Forest: Shape of Wolves doesn’t have any technical issues and everything functions as intended. But realistically, older gamers will be picking this up for the easy Gamerscore and not because they plan on being blown away by the gameplay.

Come to Roads of Time 2: Odyssey having played none of the other games from 8floor, and you might be in for a small surprise. It’s a much of a muchness, as levels play out almost identically, and we’d challenge anyone to remain interested by level 50.

By choosing to be a battle royale, we can’t help but think that Headbangers Rhythm Royale attached some blinkers. It could have been a Jackbox rival with an audio flavour. Waggling our pigeon was undoubtedly fun (and juvenile), but like the rest of the game, the laughs were short-lived.

You should enjoy the chance to get behind the bar of Bartender Hustle, especially if drink mixing is your bag. What keeps it interesting is the variety of cocktails, the different locations, and the variety of modes on offer from the beginning.