Dave Ozzy

Sure, it’s attention-grabbing to do something new, and innovation does get reviewers hot around the collar. But, most of the time, we just want a good thing done well, and Kaze and the Wild Masks does its 2D platforming extremely well. While Kaze and the Wild Masks on Xbox wears the masks of various platformers, like Donkey Kong Country and Rayman, they’re all polished to a mighty sheen.

Resident Evil is a goliath of PS1 gaming, and we’d be well within our rights to write about how important it is. But we’d be in danger of sticking Resident Evil on a pedestal (presumably with a slot at the bottom where a crest should go), when it’s less than perfect, and it’s those flaws that make it so endearing. There’s a weirdness about the original Resident Evil, and some of the quirks have been accepted as wrinkles in the fabric of the series, while others have been long-forgotten. Let’s take a moment to celebrate that weirdness.

Not the disaster we predicted from the truly terrible trailer, Warrior Boy on the Xbox is nonetheless a barebones action-adventure, where the combat is weak enough that you’ll ignore it, but sidestepping it leaves you with nothing more than a giant treasure hunt. There’s little value on offer right now, but Warrior Boy has an inevitable future in the sub-£3 bracket, which might be the moment to invest, delivering an easy 1000G Gamerscore and a leisurely ramble around someone’s 3D modelling portfolio.

For a game genre based on little pieces of cardboard, it’s surprising how many card games opt to portray death, violence and combat. Luckily, we have Signs of the Sojourner, out today on Xbox, PlayStation and Switch, which instead uses cards to represent the back and forth of conversations.

After playing Beyond Enemy Lines - Remastered Edition on the Xbox for more hours than it deserves, we feel shell-shocked. If it worked, which it doesn’t, it would still be magnitudes of awful thanks to a misunderstanding of what a stealth game is. It could at least have the courtesy of being forgiving when it’s bombarding you with bugs and bad decisions, but no - it keeps kicking you while you’re down and then tosses you to the start to experience it all again.

For insatiable veterans of hidden object games, it’s relatively easy to make a case for playing Portal of Evil: Stolen Runes on Xbox. It attempts some innovations, new puzzles, a harder difficulty, a sprawling map and a grab-bag of environments to create an experience that’s different enough, while keeping enough of the Artifex Mundi template to feel comfy. For newcomers, though, Portal of Evil is so ropey that it looks like a game of Atmosfear on VHS, and it has rough edges that only the most forgiving could ignore.

“When life gives you explosions, make Explosionade”, says the trailer, which should give you an idea of where Explosionade DX is being pitched. This isn’t the thinking person’s shooter: this is shlock, gore and mayhem. It’s Turrican, but less of the jumpy exploration stuff, and more of the bullet-hell, ‘make everything explode’ stuff. Explosionade DX is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and Switch.

Not quite the text adventure that SELF: Where’s my father on Xbox pitches itself as, it’s instead a surreal and stripped-back visual novel that beckons you to reveal its mystery by finding all of its endings. But while it has some wonderful moments on the way, it succumbs to the problems of many poorly structured mysteries: once you’ve peeled away the layers of the onion, you’re often left with nothing but a sense of dissatisfaction... and a tiny onion.

Sign of the Sojourner really is worth picking up for the surrounding exploration and setting stuff - it’s that good - but you might want to zone out for the card-gaming.

There aren’t many games that let you headbutt a ninja out of an open door, before turning to roundhouse a fireman into a bathtub, but Fights in Tight Spaces is that game, and it lets you live out your action movie fantasies. Part deck-building card game, part turn-based battler, and part Jason Bourne, it’s a pile-up of genres. Needless to say, when we were offered the opportunity to interview the founder of Ground Shatter Games and brawn behind Fights in Tight Spaces, we grabbed it with both hands and suplexed it.

There is no guarantee that you will enjoy Spooky Chase on Xbox. It’s an acquired taste that demands that you’re patient, focused, have the reactions of a grasshopper, and are willing to persist with the same level over and over again. Its randomness means you can’t rely on muscle memory, so tie your pad round your wrists, as it might go for a skydive out of the window. But come to terms with what Spooky Chase wants from you, and it’ll create great moments.

Doodle God gets an unheavenly makeover today, with the launch of Doodle Devil: 3volution. First released on mobile and PC back in 2017, it’s been remastered for console with a spruce to the graphics, console-friendly controls, and some extra minigames - and it’s out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

3 out of 10: Season One on the Xbox is good enough to dodge a too-on-the-nose 3 out of 10, and even a 3 out of 5. As a ‘playable sitcom’ it excels at the sitcom bit, delivering laughs that wouldn’t be out of place in a top-tier comedy. Where it falls down is the ‘playable’ bit, offering a 50% hit-rate on its minigames that will often have you reaching for the welcome skip button. But even when it misses, 3 out of 10 has always got something to say and will tickle a rib or two.

We were sidewinded by Steven Universe: Unleash the Light on Xbox. We came into it without any experience of Save the Light, and had unfounded assumptions that this was a My First RPG that would be as dull as dishwater. What we got was something in the way of Costume Quest 1 and 2: a witty, elegant little turn-based RPG that surprised every time that we thought it would dive into monotony.

Checking out trailers or screenies for Fights in Tight Spaces, you’d be forgiven for seeing it as a composite of different games. There’s SUPERHOT of course, not only in the way it looks - like a fight in an Ikea catalogue - but in the way it slows down frantic combat to a step-by-step. There’s John Wick too, and more specifically John Wick Hex. Hex searched for a way to make the incredibly fluid brawling of John Wick work in a turn-based tactical game. Fights in Tight Spaces has similar aims.