Loading up Truck Driver for the first time gives a real sense of interest and intrigue, this being the first ‘trucking’ game on consoles. But then afterwards, every little thing that the game presents will dampen your spirits, leaving you to drive with no passion through a bare-bones game that needs to visit the nearest petrol station for a refill and tune-up.

Dyna Bomb is a likeable action-platformer built on two of gaming’s great staples: the jetpack and the bomb. But while it’s a reasonably pure arcade experience, it gets undermined consistently with terrible presentation, a refusal to let you loose with your tools, and levels that refuse to change things up in a meaningful way.

There is nothing pro, gymnastic, or simulator about Pro Gymnast Simulator. But, some gamers will live for this kind of stuff.

Aery - The Lost Hero looks better than any Aery before, but it’s also a regurgitation of the same levels, often in a row. We’re not inclined to open the beak and accept it this time.

Void Vikings on Xbox One has some questionable design choices that really hamper the overall experience of the game. There are many 2D space shooters out there – some that have been around even longer than I have – and I would still recommend them over this jumbled up experience.

There are twenty-or-so decent levels of platform-puzzling in One Escape on Xbox, but it’s surrounded by another forty levels of filler. With more ways to get caught, and more options to avoid getting caught, this prison escape might have warranted a purchase. Without them, it can feel more like a sentence than an escape

Blind Men on Xbox One offers a rather interesting concept of playing as a supervillain but is let down by downright creepy writing, spelling mistakes and a bland story. Whilst fans of boy’s love visual novels might find something to like here, there are plenty of better choices out there.

I have to roll out the worst word I can use in the context of a review - Phantom Fury is disappointing. The gunplay is weak, levels are confusing and the lack of a map is criminal. Thankfully, the mini games add a touch of class to an otherwise poor package.

Tamarin on Xbox is a game that does not know what it wants to be, one capable of completely blindsiding player expectations. It’s simply a weird game, perhaps one of the weirdest in the platformer genre. Still, the real disappointment is just how boring and bare the third person shooting action is, with no real sense of rewarding level design or progression.

Taking things for what they are, the whole Caretaker experience on Xbox One isn’t a terrible one, but it isn’t an awfully fun one either. Instead, it's a solid walking and hiding horror game at its most basic level.

Whilst the story can engage during moments, the ending is lacking in anything substantial. SENSEs: Midnight is one for the survival horror diehards, and even then, only the OG diehards.

I’m tempted to say that you should vote with your wallet: Fennec Fox is Hungry shouldn’t be encouraged, with its litany of bugs and control issues. But if you’re determined and you have a Fennec Fox fan in the family, then we won’t hold it against you. The problems may be many but they’re all minor, and it’s easy enough to scamper over them.

Alphadia Genesis on Xbox One is a game of two halves, and I don’t just mean the 2D/3D interface. One the one hand, the story is good, and does have certain echoes in the events that are playing out in the world today – you will want to see it to its conclusion. On the other hand, the grind is very real, and while the first time you use a skill that you’ve earned brings about some novelty, the rest of the time it’s very much just “some RPG”.

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.