Like a cat with a ball of wool, you will toy with Cat Slide Tiles for a few minutes and then toss it away for something better.

With little to show for your efforts, Godlike Burger misses the chance to delight the palate. It’s unlikely you’ll want to go back for seconds.

Under the deck, Tortuga - A Pirate’s Tale looks to be a challenging simulation title, but the real challenge is figuring out what to do; it currently feels very inaccessible for console players.

Stick with Robotry and you will get a lot out of it. But there is no shame in admitting defeat either; it can be an obscenely hard game in places.

Hunt Ducks 4 is a racket, a grift. The developers have carefully peeled the label off of Hunt Ducks II’s bottle and then sold it again as Hunt Ducks 4 instead. We gave Hunt Ducks II a miserly 1 out of 5 the first time round, and we’re duty bound to do the same again. That Duck Hunt dog is turning in its grave.

A game for all the ages, there’s a ton of content included so take out your wand, put on your most magical of hats, and go and enjoy the thrills of Hogwarts Legacy.

Yes, there could have been a big revamp of GoldenEye 007’s mechanics. Yes, the graphics could have been remade and, yes online could have been included. But does any of this take away from the fact we now have one of the most iconic shooters of all time playable on Xbox Series X|S? Not one jot. GoldenEye 007 is perfect.

Fashion Police Squad is a fun and humorous take on the FPS genre. It comes with fast fluid gameplay that feeds off some DOOM roots, but manages to still do its own original thing, working loads of great ideas and concepts.

Trash Sailors is a fundamentally flawed experience which isn’t totally sunk but will have you questioning when you can get back on dry land.

Monster Hunter Rise isn’t quite Monster Hunter: World. And that’s partly because Rise doesn’t offer too much in the way of new things, and what is here suffers graphically in comparison.

Strip some of the excess fat off of Shapeshooter, cutting it down from an awkward polyhedron to something more elegant and powerful, and there would be a good game here. But it’s overburdened, and we found ourselves dreading playing at its slow, ambling speed for too long.

One half of LoBlocks is more enjoyable than we anticipated. The other half is far, far worse. Where does that leave us? If you can hold a hand over one eye as you pick from the game menu, then there’s a devious little puzzler to be had in its Classic Mode. Just don’t look at the other half, the Arcade Mode, which is a half-formed little growth that could probably do with being sliced off.

When RE:CALL is confident in its central conceit, it’s a bloody brilliant narrative adventure, and the writing here is among the very best. Let’s choose to keep the first levels as core memories. We’ll conveniently forget the rest.

All in all, Persona 4 Golden is an absolute triumph; very much golden. It isn’t quite as good as Persona 5 Royal, but the difference is like a hair's breadth. There’s a great story, tons of content to get involved in and some superb combat and exploration opportunities.

Deep Space Anomaly feels unfinished; like the developers cobbled some ideas together and shovelled it out of the door as fast as possible.

We Were Here Forever is the biggest game of the series so far, and it’s pretty good without reaching the upper echelons of its genre. Sure, the story isn’t going to put you on tenterhooks, but the ingenuity of the puzzling more than makes up for its shortcomings in that department.

CyberHive is pretty calming on the whole, and following the narrative or keeping your crew lean, mean and hungry is fairly interesting. CyberHive will be able to deliver much more fun than you may expect.

With different levels every time you play, and procedural generation in place, your runs in Warpips should never feel the same; and that means the longevity is there.

There should be no hesitation in recommending Persona 3 Portable to any fans of the RPG genre.

Chasing Static certainly looks the part with its survival horror throwbacks mixed with more modern fixtures, but as well as the game is designed, it cannot shy away from the fact there could have been just a little bit more.

Shoulders of Giants is something of a grind, both in terms of gameplay and structure. Still, at its core there is fun to be had and hopefully potential to evolve in the near future.

Backfirewall_ is a wonderful game; one that is highly original and full of creativity. It's a delight to play through, capable of making you laugh and gasp in equal measure.

While we found Sissa’s Path soothing in its own laid-back manner, we also found that the path it offered didn’t really go anywhere. Sissa could have done with showing more claws.

Playing GRIS for the first time, in its Xbox Series X|S format, has been an early 2023 highlight. Its reputation preceded it, so it was never going to surprise us. But we didn’t expect to connect with it as much as we did. What a meticulously crafted platformer it is, and what a fantastic example of Xbox Series X|S prowess it is too. Clear the room of distractions and play it in one go if you can.

If you have a deep love for Psikyo shooters, or carry some nostalgia for the Starfox era of 3D gaming, then there is some rough, unrefined enjoyment to be had in Zero Gunner 2. Just with plenty of asterisks.

GUNBARICH is a success. It’s a blemish-free port of a game that spliced brick-breakers with shoot ’em-ups, and got away with it.

How does a game like Retro Tank Arcade manage to find itself on a Microsoft Store, rubbing shoulders with Dead Space? Perhaps the developers have blackmail material on Phil Spencer. It’s the only solution we can come up with for why this utterly broken, dismal tank game is available for sale.

We have to implore you not to buy Joy Ball Adventure. It’s unfinishable, bugged to the point of impassibility on Level 14. What little we played was good, particularly for that low price, but you can experience an actual, working version of it by buying Kid Ball Adventure instead. It has the novelty of actually being playable.