Ultimate Chicken Horse provides a canvas for you and your friends to create carnage on. Despite the lack of a structured unlock or progression system, this is a great game to pick up and enjoy in time for the festive break. It’s easy to play and as challenging as you and your nearest and dearest’s level of creativity and cunning.

It’s Quiz Time is a very impressive and deep quiz game, arguably the best quiz game available on Xbox One, but it doesn’t come without issues.

The visuals are bright and have a nice style to them, the gameplay loop is fun and when things are going your way, it can give you a real adrenaline boost. A slow basic firing rate and some cheap lost lives can lead to frustration, especially in the later levels, but overall Boiling Bolt is a fun throwback to simpler times that is equally as challenging as it is annoying.

The soundtrack is annoying and the gameplay does become less fun and more irritating in the later stages of play. With that being said this does indeed provide the best Boom Ball experience to date, and packs enough content to keep you going for hours on end. It’s fun in small doses, it’s well designed, and the visuals are creative and colorful. If you have a Kinect connected, this is worth the investment.

It’s lazy, it’s uninteresting, and it’s utterly underwhelming.

Lengthy loading times to the side, Hammerwatch is the pinnacle of couch co-op fun. The addition of timed exclusive console content, along with the promise of online play and new mods, makes Hammerwatch an absolute steal when you take the generous price tag into account. The game looks great and plays great, which is further bolstered when you bring your friends into the fold.

Defunct offers a well rounded adventure that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a game that doesn’t try to stand out, but instead rest on its laurels of relaying that old-school Sonic-like gameplay. The story is forgettable and the functionality of play can take some getting used to, but if you bear with it, Defunct wont disappoint.

Do not be fooled into believing that Outbreak: The New Nightmare brings back old-school survival horror. It may well house many of the elements, but the truth of the matter is that this game is merely a poor imitation of a 20 year old game that’s much better. It lacks optimization, personality, and comes with a heap of technical problems and poor design choices.

Dustoff Heli Rescue 2 is a fun arcade experience that packs a great deal of replay value. With some questionable and slightly frustrating design choices put to the side, the game delivers on its promise to keep you engaged and entertained from beginning to end.

Drift Zone offers up deep customization and a diverse selection of tracks and missions. It’s unfortunate, however, that this rests upon an experience that just isn’t as innovative and exciting as it should be. It doesn’t help matters that the game looks both dated and bland throughout the entirety of play. Drifting should be fun and rewarding, but Drift Zone fails to truly nail those targets.

DYE may well offer up a great deal of content, but this means very little when the journey from start to finish is far more irritating than it is entertaining. This is a game that solely relies on accuracy, but when the protagonist offers very little precision to lean on, it inadvertently destroys the appeal that DYE tries to relay.

Dandara is an endearing adventure that offers up excellent level design and unique gameplay. It’s a shame, however, that the movement system within often hinders the overall experience due to clunky controls. Dandara certainly stands out on the merit of its concept, but the execution isn’t quite as commendable. Having said that, if you can overlook these flaws, it’s a journey worth taking.

Little Triangle certainly delivers a challenging and endearing platformer, but small flaws pull the game just shy of greatness. The gameplay structure and visual presentation is top notch, however, the occasional framerate drops and the somewhat imprecise controls, slightly hinder the overall experience. With that to the side, there’s still no denying that Little Triangle is an adventure that’s worth your time and attention.

Guilt Battle Arena is a game that’s overpriced and under-delivers. Granted, there’s a good blend of different modes on offer and the visuals are fun and colorful, but that means very little when each mode becomes repetitive and boring before long. The fact of the matter is, is that you can get much better elsewhere for the same price or less.

Tiles would have been a standard puzzle game, at best, had it not have been for the lack of innovation and depth. It will no doubt please a few fans of the genre, but if you like your puzzle games to challenge you and captivate you, stick with Tetris.

Defenders Quest is a solid RPG/Tower Defense hybrid that offers up hours of content, spread across a dark and compelling story. The visuals and the sound are the weakest points here, but to judge this merely on how it looks would be doing it a disservice. It’s accessible, it’s refreshing, and above all else, it’s well developed.

Abo Khashem is a broken pile of nonsense. The game is riddled with bugs, so much so that the developer has implemented a tool to free you from them at any given time. When you’re not wrestling with bugs, you’ll be enduring horrendous screen tearing and framerate drops. It’s an ambitious game that’s utterly let down by poor design choices and shoddy development.

North may indeed offer up some unique design choices, but the overarching plot is messy and underwhelming. Gameplay requires minimal effort, and even the puzzle aspects remain far too simplistic throughout. That being said, the game’s heart is in the right place, it’s just a shame that its structure is far removed.

One Eyed Kutkh is short and sweet. It’s not a particularly challenging game, but it should please just about anyone that doesn’t expect too much from it. The gameplay remains simplistic throughout, making this a very accessible and easy to understand experience. Ultimately, the target audience is clearly focused at the younger gamer.

High score enthusiasts will find some enjoyment in bettering their scores, but anyone else will likely get fairly bored after just an hour or so. Simple and to the point, it feels more like an early app store game. Something to pass a few minutes while waiting for a train, rather than something to sit in front of the telly to play.

VALA offers up heaps of action-packed twin-stick shooting madness, with a great deal of content to work toward and unlock. However, the lack of interesting locations, repetitive enemy variations, and the tedious random weaponry system, ultimately holds it back. Better gameplay structure and less grinding would have done VALA some justice.

The Count Lucanor wonderfully blends together survival and puzzle gameplay, ultimately producing an experience that’s tense and enticing. The tedious controls and the frequent framerate issues hold it back to some degree, but even with these problems, The Count Lucanor is a worthy investment.

Western Press is far too repetitive and far too short for its own good. The game does indeed dish up some unique locations and interesting characters, but the gameplay loop remains the same throughout the entirety of play, rapidly becoming dull and boring as a result. Marginally fun in short bursts, but this has no hope whatsoever in the long run.

Alteric, despite its very generous price tag, fails to standout in an already overcrowded genre. The visuals are bland, the core gameplay loop becomes tedious, and the lack of evolving mechanics ultimately drags this experience down. Indeed, it may play well, but in the face of its competition, Alteric just doesn’t tick the boxes it needs to.

Deep Ones is dull, uninteresting, annoying and poorly designed. Make no mistake about it, this is a game that will test your patience much more than it will your skill. The price tag may well be generous, but even then you’re practically paying to be constantly frustrated.

Metropolis Lux Obscura’s noir-esque story is passable and there’s no denying that its art design is decent. However, this is far from what one would describe as a compelling experience overall. It’s buggy and unrefined, ultimately dishing up a game that’s consumed by its poor development and lack of imagination.

The steep price tag and the inclusion of microtransactions will certainly raise eyebrows, especially for a game that’s as repetitive and as bland as this. There’s heaps of content to get through and no shortage of interesting characters and upgrades to unlock, but due to the lack of evolving functionality, the game fails to maintain its initial allure.

Bombslinger provides a challenging, detailed, diverse and well developed experience. There’s no denying that its unique spin on the formula provides it with a compelling edge, though with that being said, this game does become repetitive, tedious and frustrating before too long. Still, it’s well worth a visit if you’re looking for something to fill the void before Super Bomberman R arrives.