Smart Moves 2 serves up a near identical experience to the first game, so if you enjoyed that, then you’ll be happy with what’s on offer here. Conversely, if you didn’t then there’s nothing from the sequel to tempt you in, at all.

On one hand, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! delivers an unbelievably surprising, chilling and suspenseful story. On the other hand, it will be a slog for those who don’t enjoy sifting through dialogue for 3-4 hours. Regardless, this is a story every seasoned gamer should at least try to experience.

Despite its cutesy graphics that hark back to early Game Boy Advance titles, the shallow gameplay of Mina & Michi is rarely nostalgia-inducing. Puzzles are repetitive, enemies lack any invention and Mina is just a bit useless. It is just another game useful for achievement fodder that many will put down as quickly as they pick up once every achievement has been unlocked.

BeeFense BeeMastered is a sturdy, simple tower defense that manages to offer tense moments. But that sturdiness is unremarkable, and you can get by with tower defense strategies from any number of other games. If it was more remarkable, more fun to play, then its biggest flaw - a boring back-and-forthing between the turrets - wouldn’t have stung so much.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is no doubt among the best Xbox platform exclusives of 2021, and a staggering showcase for your console of choice. It manages to translate an ambitious PC epic almost seamlessly into a console experience, where the play mechanics and control scheme are mapped perfectly onto the Xbox controller.

ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights does almost everything right, with varied level design, a multitude of enemies, a good progression system, and a beautiful soundtrack.

The journey, atmosphere, and concept of Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition are all fantastic, as is the setting and the visuals. It’s a shame that the platforming elements are at times frustrating in regards the accuracy and weight of the fox, and some of the animations don’t work as planned, but this is still a very unique and endearing experience.

For all the visual upgrades, The Persistence Enhanced is still found delivering the same roguelike experience, and that will be the defining point as to whether it attracts players, or puts them off.

F1 2021 is probably the most in-depth, customisable and amendable F1 racer to date, so much so that there’s little that any fan of the sport could ever really want more of. Yes, it would have been nice to see Codemasters go deeper with their Braking Point story, yet it's extremely tricky to find anything too critical of what they've produced with F1 2021. After honing their skills with some glorious F1 racing experiences over the years, once again the latest edition manages to be the finest yet and should be the go-to racer for any fanatics of the sport.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX on Xbox is a fun and charming reintroduction to one of gaming’s oft-forgotten but still influential platforming icons. The game is tough to be sure, and is very old school and dated in some of its design conventions, but the quality-of-life improvements and the visual facelift help modernise this classic platformer.

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.

There is nothing daring or complicated about Mythic Ocean. It’s not substantial, being one-and-done in a couple of hours, without a convincing reason to play again. But it has something to say about the difficulties of friendship, and it achieves a meditative state that allows you to unwind as you navigate beautiful environments.

With the majority of sports on offer in Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 – The Official Video Game proving to be fun and easily accessible, it makes this latest Olympic Games game an easy recommendation for those looking for a party game to be enjoyed with friends. It might not quite have the charm of the Mario and Sonic Olympic Games variants, but it still manages to borrow a lot of what makes those games fun by toning down a bit of the emphasis on sports simulation.

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.

If Sun Wukong VS Robot was longer and structured a bit more like a traditional metroidvania where the upgrades were tied to progression, it could well be a great little game. As it is, it’s a good challenge and does manage to kill a couple hours, and so if you grew up playing old Game Boy or NES games, then Sun Wukong VS Robot might be a nice nostalgia trip.

With a little more care put into the tutorial and explanation side of Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf, the card based gameplay could well have been a lot of fun, but that fun is nipped in the bud sadly.

Infinitrap: Rehamstered is a frantic little adventure game that almost makes dying fun. However, the Xbox release is a fairly meagre offering which falls short of its potential.

Loopindex may not win any awards, or get Phil Spencer to pull out his chequebook and buy up the studio, but it might also be what you need right now. It’s a concise, perfectly able puzzler, and it gets even better in two-player. For the low, low price, that’s an absolute steal.

TY the Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue HD may not hold a candle to a Ratchet, Crash or Spyro, but this is a little ripper that’s worth a Captain Cook.

With a short Challenge Mode, a very brief Arcade offering, and less than an hour of gametime required for everything to be done and dusted, there’s little that Super Destronaut DX-2 is able to muster up. If you enjoyed the swiftness of the original game, and fancy picking up some cheap and easy Xbox Gamerscore, you’ll want to get shooting here. But otherwise, this is a Ratalaika Games title that will fast be forgotten.

If you're a fan of Monty Python and the type of animation and humour that has come from it, you are going to love The Procession to Calvary. It's a game which is great fun with a bonkers mad story, weird multiple endings, and some brilliant use of art and animation.

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance doesn't ever feel like it is doing anything particularly new and the whole setting, concept, and world just seems a bit tired at times. But that said you’ll have some decent fun here, particularly with the story, the hack and slash gameplay, and solid mechanics. If you find yourself playing alone, it might get a bit stale, but with friends behind you, you’ll have a great time.

Unfortunately, despite an intriguing proposition, The Strange Story of Brian Fisher: Chapter 1 fails to meet its ambitions at almost every turn. What results is a lacklustre experience for which I cannot recommend saving your pennies for.

Griftlands is the turducken of card games. It’s a deck-builder stuffed with a second deck-builder, inside a faction-management game, inside a single-player narrative game. It’s ridiculously overstuffed and impenetrable, but you’ve got to admire the craft on display. Taken as individual games, there’s some fantastic ideas in Griftlands, but as a single offering, they don’t quite work.

An uninspired wave-survival shooter with bland enemy and level design, significant balancing issues and a real lack of replayability - you’ll only need to play through it about four times and you’ll have seen just about everything Bitmaster really has to offer. It’s a shame because Bitmaster actually controls really well and the RNG gameplay could have been the foundation for something fun and replayable.

If you are a gamer of a certain age then you’ll discover that Galaxy Champions TV is very much the spiritual successor to the classic Smash TV. It’s fast, it’s furious and it’s damn hard, yet it’s perfect for a quick blast when you have a few minutes to spare. Perhaps it could provide a little more in terms of game length, but then there’s the Nightmare difficulty to complete for those looking for it.

Let's Cook Together borrows heavily from Overcooked! and overall it offers a less complex, more simplistic experience that’s suitable for gamers of all ages. It’s still a lot of fun to play though, because put simply, what it does, it does well.

If you enjoy an ARPG, spending time with Scarlet Nexus is a no-brainer - the story and action is strong enough to suck you in and keep you playing. With time travel, psychic powers and huge monsters to kick in the teeth, it’s one hell of a roller coaster ride from start to finish. The slight let-downs of the side quests aside, this is a more than assured entry into the genre, that wholeheartedly deserves a whirl.