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.