Kill It With Fire on Xbox is brilliant. It’s original, preposterous, but more importantly an absolute hoot. It does what few games have the power to, which is put a smile on your face and fill your heart with joy. The only snag is that you’ll never look at a house spider in the same way again.

Taxi Chaos is not Crazy Taxi, not even close, but it is competent and functional enough to scratch an itch until SEGA’s arcade classic receives a modern 4K remaster treatment.

Mail Mole on Xbox does the job of offering a ‘00s-era platformer - nothing more, nothing less. There’s no innovation here, not even capitalising on the fact that you’re a mole, and you may well groan at the landslide of cliches. But as we came to the end of Mail Mole, we kind of dug it. Aside from the odd control molehill, Mail Mole is a smooth ride and it may well scratch an itch that you forgot you had.

I have been delightfully surprised at how accessible and addictive Heavy Metal Machines on Xbox is; it has been a thrill to have something like this at a quiet period in gaming. The game has real potential and enough legs to see it grow and blossom into a success.

Rodent Warriors on Xbox is a fun game; one that is perfect for a quick blast. Picking up the controller, blasting through a level and then resetting the character is a perfect short term option. If you don't have much time, then getting the game to play itself will allow you to get up to the much-needed higher levels and gear, but how that mechanic will sit is a very personal one.

If you were brought to Under the Jolly Roger on Xbox with the promise of swashbuckling, action, and a hope that it would be ‘Black Flag: The Ship Bits’, then turn sail: this isn’t the game you’re looking for. This is a pirate sim with the emphasis on ‘sim’, and all the resource management, tedious downtime and charmlessness that can come with the genre.

Much like those which have come before it, Aery - A Journey Beyond Time on Xbox is enjoyable. It's a simple piece of gameplay with an intriguing premise that delivers a relaxing experience even when chronicling the fall of humankind.

GraviFire on Xbox is very much your standard block pusher puzzle game, but the unique gravity aspect does literally subvert things for the better. It does a brilliant job gradually bringing you up to speed with how the mechanics work, before throwing curveballs at you in the very tricky later levels. It’s a shame then that there isn’t a bit more to it, but for the price it is tough to expect much more.

theHunter: Call of the Wild 2021 Edition on Xbox is a game that I have really enjoyed. The slow pace and deliberate way you have to approach the hunts are a welcome change of pace from the frenetic games that frequent the marketplace, the vistas are beautiful, and the approach to your prey needs to be bang on if you are to stand a chance of seeing anything other than a retreating derriere.

Retrace: Memories of Death on Xbox takes the basic structure of Happy Death Day and makes it into a video game, giving you the chance to save everyone from horrific deaths. But what could have been a web of strategic choices instead turns out to be a few single threads, and the promise fades a little.

Horned Knight is a strange one. It’s a game that suffers from an extreme lack of variety, story and replayability. It’s a game that becomes repetitive rather quickly. It’s a game that does nothing to set itself apart from the hundreds of games of a similar nature that already exist on the market. And yet at the same time, it’s fundamentally solid from a pure gameplay perspective, with smooth, responsive controls and naturally difficult platforming sections that really test a player’s skill.

It does virtually nothing new, and revels in all the eye-rolling cliches that you may be used to. But in the exploration, hidden object puzzling and minigames, it has all the hits: there’s not a duffer on here, and - for a lot of hidden object fans who are crying out for precisely that - Demon Hunter is something of a revelation.

Even though Monster Jam Steel Titans 2 on Xbox looks to seriously build on what its predecessor delivered, there are a few elements which hold it back from really providing the goods. The camera is god awful, the picky track limits system is a pain, and there are only so many times you can go flying through the air pulling off stunts before the whole thing gets boring. The open world has some serious promise, especially with the multitude of secrets that are hidden within, but a bit more shiny wax needs to be applied for this monster truck to start to gleam.

The single solution puzzles make it all too easy to get frustrated when spending a large amount of time trying to clear a level. Combined with the damsel that one would rather leave in distress and the horribly annoying bug that continued to remove all challenge from the game, Dungeons & Bombs on Xbox is an unoriginal idea that goes off with a “meh” rather than a “bang”.

If you’re looking for a challenge of any form, then Under Leaves is not for you. It’s also not particularly long or deep, so don’t expect anything that will last you for more than an evening. But if you want the gaming equivalent of a foot spa, or a hidden object game that a family could play together (or independently) without much issue, then Under Leaves will charm the socks off you. It’s a children’s book come alive, and we don’t get many of those on Xbox shelves.

Endurance: Space Action on Xbox is a decent sci-fi adventure, wrapped in mystery and told over a substantial single player campaign. However, partly due to its length, few will feel compelled to see it through to its conclusion.

Akuto: Showdown on Xbox is simple and fun to play, but feels as if it has fallen short of its full potential, mostly due to an absence of online play.

PUSS! on Xbox is absolutely worth picking up and trying. If you have the patience to get through its often brutal levels, you will find a surreal, rewarding experience that is simply unlike anything else. This is a game that will make you scream in both anger and delight, but it's also a game that comes with some of the most satisfying gameplay I’ve experienced in a long while.

If you are looking for a challenge, there are certainly worse games out there, but Firework fails to shine bright and should only really be considered by the masochists.

Void Gore on Xbox will slap you in the face with its intense difficulty, but persistence, consistency and utilising the powers and upgrades available makes this retro title a dream to spend ten minutes or ten hours with. What it lacks in beauty, it makes up for with its retro vibes, charm and the ability to suck you in, making you frustrated but providing you with sheer enjoyment at the same time.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest revels in storytelling and character-building, presenting you with choices to make, adding consequences to those choices, and then growing your character based on those consequences. It could have done with a bit more bite and certainly more Garou-bloodletting, but the tale it tells will leave you over the (full) moon.

In all, Curse of the Dead Gods on Xbox is a game that is easy to recommend to anyone looking for a challenge. It is is always hard, always difficult, and has not a shred of mercy built into it. In fact, you need to be on top of your game in order to make it to the bosses, never mind to take them down. But should you fail, you can always put your finger on why you did so. The gameplay is complemented well by the overall design; the enemies are great, the Temple looks amazing and the mechanics of the corruption and the light is very well-realised. While it won’t be to everyone’s taste, if a challenge is something you seek, Curse of the Dead Gods will provide it.

There’s no doubting that there is a short and ramshackle Breath of the Wild at the centre of Effie on the Xbox. Its rough, indie edges can be incredibly charming, and surfing the open world on the back of a magical shield is a gift that keeps on giving. But the rough edges are too sharp, too frequently.

If you have loved the previous two games in the Active Neurons series then you can’t put a foot wrong With Active Neurons 3 - Wonders Of The World on Xbox. It may feel a bit like a piece of DLC rather than a new imagining of the series, but that's fine for the cheap price and offer of a host of extra levels.

Whilst there could be some work done with the combat and control system, The Wild Eight performs well enough in all other aspects and presents you with more than enough gameplay to keep you entertained for hours.

Whether you want to play #SinucaAttack on Xbox for achievements or for something a bit different, there is a bit of fun to be had. Levels do start to get a bit repetitive but then it will throw a new feature at you that will act as a difficulty spike and a way to keep things fresh. The controls cannot be excused though - there is just no legislating for them.

That’s the heart of what UltraGoodness 2 on Xbox gets so wrong. It forgets what’s great about twin-stick shooting: the frenzy, the pyrotechnics, the stacking power-ups, and how godlike it can make you feel. There’s nothing better than swerving to avoid an enemy as you nail a missile into their broadside. If you are a shooter that is encouraging players to stop, slow down and tentatively tiptoe through your game, then something is wrong. UltraTepid it is then.

It’s the constant back-and-forth between great ideas and not-so-great ideas, technical shortcomings and imaginative solutions to those shortcomings, that define The StoryTale on Xbox. For every step back, it takes one forward. But The StoryTale doesn’t let that stop its attempts to innovate: even with a 50% hit-rate on its ideas, it keeps trying them out, and that should be celebrated.