Quite how I feel about Missile Command Delta is messy, because there are neat ideas here, mostly to be found within in the actual missile-commanding part of the game. The rest becomes more than a little tedious and while I admire the approach of doing something a little different, I can’t help but feel the whole package feels burdened by the narrative additions, and sadly those parts are not a lot of fun to play through. Unless you’re a massive lapsed Missile Command/Atari fan, I’d maybe let another cadet take your place.

STAR WARS Bounty Hunter is a competent port of a mediocre title. Aspyr has done its best to make the game look and run as well as it can while modernizing the controls. At $20 it will come down to how nostalgic you’re feeling for one of gaming’s biggest franchises’ more mediocre entries.

Dragon Blaze is a nice-looking, decently fun 23-year-old arcade port. It’s overpriced and the achievements are a real p.i.t.a. to get. If you have a co-op partner and a vertical monitor though there are worse ways to spend your money.

Bounty Star: The Morose Tale of Graveyard Clem is a game full of good ideas and poor execution. I loved the setting and enjoyed the story thanks to some great voice acting and music. The gameplay loop was a letdown, though. Full of repetitive tasks and unsatisfying combat. This one is tough to recommend, even if it is Day One in Game Pass

Ultimately I don’t think Double Dragon Revival is going to bring the revival to the franchise the title claims. There’s something here and I reckon another year of development, polish and tweaking could honestly result in a legitimately great scrolling beat ’em up. But as it is right now – especially at an asking price of around $50AU, it’s difficult to justify for anyone outside hardcore Double Dragon fans or scrolling beat ’em up fans that just want something to play before something better comes along.

Eternal Hope is a beautiful, great-sounding disappointment. Even at its low price, it’s hard to recommend. With a playtime of no more than two hours and seemingly no replay value there are far better options out there for your time and money, but not many that look so danged pretty.

It’s a short game that has some additional content if replayed on higher difficulties, but I wouldn’t recommend pushing through these formulaic levels more than once. There’s a really cool presentation and some really funny ideas in here, but we expect far more from veterans like WayForward.

I’m glad I had the chance to play Digimon Survive, but I’ll just keep playing Digimon World 4 and Rumble Arena for my fill of Digi-goodness.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a really good 6 hour game stretched to be nearly three times as long.

Keeping the review short because the game itself doesn’t have a lot of meat to it – with a launch price of 39.99USD/39,99 EUR/33.49GBP, having a single board, 4 characters, 32 minigames, no unlocks whatsoever, no special modes and most importantly no online play, it’s extremely difficult to recommend this game right now. For shame, too, because it’s far from an original or exciting game experience, but the Lasagna Race is chaotic enough and most of the minigames are competently made and fun. The game’s creators also seem to respect the source material, with a lot of iconic locations lovingly recreated, the character animations generally on point and with music and sounds fitting for the IP. But no amount of Garfield love can hide the game’s shockingly low amount of content, making this lasagna party end way too soon.

Outcast: A New Beginning does its best to invoke a sense of wonder as you jetpack 4 feet off of the ground in an occasionally beautiful alien world. Weak writing, terrible performance, and repetitive quest design work together to make it a dour experience in the end.

Infinite Guitars has so much potential. It is a shame to see its wonderful music, killer art style, potentially intriguing story, and promising combat system ruined by questionable design choices.

I think I would have preferred to have more conversations to read as opposed to playing the minigames, but I also think Salamander County covers an odd gaping hole once filled by Xbox Live Indies or Newgrounds games. You’ll likely not open this game again after you’ve stopped playing, but it could keep your nieces and nephews entertained for a moment. And of course, an easy thousand Gamerscore—likely my third time pulling off such a feat!

MACROSS -Shooting Insight- may ultimately be a good fan service title, and it has the modes to boot! But too many cardinal sins add that make for a rather frustrating shoot ’em up experience.

I think Disney Illusion Island is built on a solid foundation, but sadly everything around it (be it level design, art, and objectives) are underwhelming. This is a game for the Disney faithful at best, because even for young children, there are an overwhelming amount of fantastic 2D Metroidvania titles to choose from. Unless you really like Donald Duck (and I solemnly raise my hand for the walking TNT box!), Illusion Island likely isn’t going to be worth your time.

Alien: Rogue Incursion Part One – Evolved Edition’s name is nearly as long as its runtime on console. I was able to clear the entire game in roughly 3 hours, though I knew where to go and what to do after having played it once in VR. Without that immersive interactivity, what was already a mediocre title is made that much worse.

Silt is a rather short, basic to control game. The story was intriguing from the start, and if you can look past how bland and unfun it is to play at times it might be worth checking out. For me though a nice art style and possibly interesting story simply isn’t enough to overcome how poor feeling and frustrating I found everything else.

Hellboy Web of Wyrd has good ideas and flawed execution. It’s not a looker, becomes repetitive to play after 15 minutes, and has one of the least satisfying rogue-like setups I can remember. If you love the character the story is interesting, but slogging through the title to see it is a tough thing to recommend.

Alan Wake: The Lake House is a disappointing finale to the game’s content. It was released alongside a solid quality-of-life update, and if you have already spent the extra money on the Deluxe Edition/Upgrade then you might as well check this one out. Just use a guide to keep frustration down.

I think it is fair to say that Deliver Us Mars is a frustrating experience and somewhat of a let-down compared to Deliver Us The Moon. While the environmental art style, musical score, platforming and accessibility settings are of a high standard, far too many aspects of the game are poor. This becomes even worse when you consider that this is the glitchiest game I have ever played on my Xbox Series X.

KIBORG caught my interest with its good looks, and quickly lost it with its bland and unsatisfying gameplay. Using some of the best rogue-lite tactics can’t help this one in the end, as its hilariously bad voiceover work and boring, repetitive combat make it a slog.

Great music and decent graphics can’t save what is otherwise a bloated and unbalanced mess of a title.

Its initial teasers promised a gorgeous magical world full of incredible sites. Instead, we’ve been given something boring, that runs terribly and has a story full of overused tropes.

Blind Fate shows potential for this rather new dev team. They nailed multiple parts of what it takes to be great, with the writing being solid and the voice acting being fantastic. It looks good but feels terrible to play, only getting to almost decent after many hours. It can feel wildly unfair but there is still just enough there that it may be worth checking out if you can find it at a decent price. It may not be the best Samurai game, but it’s got spirit.

Swansong promised a lot but delivered what I felt to be a severely flawed gaming experience. Quality cut-scenes alone cannot carry a title and that has been proved out here. With boring, glacially paced gameplay, janky controls and far too many technical issues wiping out any sense of pleasure gained from playing through to the games anti-climax, I was left wanting.

For $6 the ratio of time to earning all 17 achievements isn’t bad at all, and while it’s not fun per se it isn’t the pure torture that some recent titles I’ve reviewed have been.

At launch, I cannot recommend The Lamplighters League on Xbox. It runs terribly, while looking ugly, and is a broken and buggy mess. Once this game is patched up and fixed though, it’s a gem. Great gameplay, a deep meta-game, intriguing story, and one of the best videogame soundtracks I’ve ever heard will be there waiting for you (and hopefully still in Game Pass).

This is a decent time waster, that’ll get you a bunch of Gamerscore. It’s not a good game, but it’s cheap, and you’ll see your numbers go up. Sometimes that’s all you need out of a couple of bucks and thirty minutes of your time.