First-person puzzlers have had a lot to live up to since The Witness wowed us with a unique and thoroughly enjoyable experience. That’s possibly why Oneiros arrives on Xbox with a lot of additional strings to its proverbial bow, instead of just being a pure puzzler. It professes to be a narrative-driven, surreal adventure as well; one that incorporates escape room style mechanics and elements of crafting. Is Oneiros a dream come true for puzzle fanatics, or will you find it nightmarishly terrible?
You end up wondering who Solitaire 3D on the Xbox is made for. If there’s such a thing, there’s a ‘game archivist’ in a university or museum who’s rubbing their hands at the prospect of preserving 100 different Solitaire variants. For the rest of us, you have a monumentally over-priced compendium of games you won’t play, with controls that aren’t optimised, and with features that often don’t work.
If you are after a night of horror and are looking to play something a bit different with unusual gameplay techniques, The Childs Sight might be worth a punt, mainly as it's very cheap to pick up. The sound design is excellent and the concept is unique, but for me the gameplay wanes quite quickly and eventually you’ll become more frustrated than scared.
Charm is perhaps the biggest thing Scott Pilgrim Vs The World: The Game - Complete Edition on Xbox has going for it. Unfortunately, the fighting isn’t quite as tight as it could be and occasionally lets down the wonderful music and great visuals.
Spirit Arena on Xbox will challenge you whilst providing plenty of unlockables to go after, if that’s your thing. This doesn’t stop it from being loads of fun, but it’s all over so quickly. I’m unashamedly asking for more, but right now, there's no reason not to check this one out.
I love quirky games that try something different, especially when they bring storytelling into the gaming arena, and that is the case with Life of Fly on Xbox. It's short, but I don’t have an issue with that as it’s just long enough to not outstay its welcome.
When all is said and done, Iris.Fall on Xbox is over in a flash and doesn’t linger in the memory despite some strong ideas. The monochrome graphical presentation alone will turn some heads, and some of the puzzles can be quite interesting. But once you make your way through the adventure and piece together the mystery, then there really isn’t much to come back for.
Teratopia on Xbox is a gross, poorly optimized, poorly designed, and disastrous product. I regularly have more fun with the mazes on the back of cereal boxes. Maybe if there were some kind of actual direction, it could have been a fun little 3D something. Instead, Teratopia is yet another example of a weird name being tied to a horrendous game.
From the moment I first caught a glimpse of Marble Duel, it brought back instant memories of games like Zuma and Sparkle Unleashed. This seemingly casual match-3 offering from developers HeroCraft has launched on mobiles and PC previously; now though, it’s ready to try and make its mark via the realm of Xbox. The question is, what tricks could Marble Duel hold up its sleeve to distinguish itself from the other, quite successful, marble based matching experiences?
Unspottable on Xbox does bring some new ideas to the table which work in short blasts, or in longer blasts that are fuelled by social lubricant. But it does get quite old, quite fast. It's not that it is a bad game; it's just that the secondary objectives tend to go out of the window once the sleeves are rolled up, and every match fast turns into a slug-fest.
For the price asked, ADVERSE is good for what it is - a trial action-adventure game for skilled gamers to flourish with. If you hate repeating things, or have nightmares with anything that involves precision platforming, then this isn't the game for you I'm afraid, however if it is, there is plenty to get your teeth into.
The repetitive gameplay and unrefined controls of Get Over Here on Xbox make it very difficult to enjoy. It’s cheap, and throws a fair bit into the mix, but despite this it will struggle to get its hooks into you.
The tutorial-focused hands of Summer in Mara on Xbox are where things stumble, offering a game that is unwilling to let you go outside of the strict parameters set before you.
Skycadia on Xbox is as basic an arcade flight game as they come, and the simple, functional mechanics serve their purpose well to deliver a reasonable score-chasing experience.