2.5/5 Review

Doodle Devil: 3volution on the Xbox falls foul of the same problems that have plagued Doodle games since the beginning of creation. Progress begins well, with elements mixing logically and a fun flourish when you get a pairing right. But then the pattern sets in, and you’re painstakingly combining every element with every other element, with the emphasis on ‘pain’.

If you were brought to Under the Jolly Roger on Xbox with the promise of swashbuckling, action, and a hope that it would be ‘Black Flag: The Ship Bits’, then turn sail: this isn’t the game you’re looking for. This is a pirate sim with the emphasis on ‘sim’, and all the resource management, tedious downtime and charmlessness that can come with the genre.

Persian Nights 2: The Moonlight Veil on Xbox is best described as an anticlimax. It starts well with a wonderful setting - magical lunar eclipses and techno-Persian backdrops - but then fumbles them completely, reverting back to all the usual Artifex Mundi cliches.

Butterfly on Xbox is an average puzzle platformer that doesn’t do enough to catch your eye. It will only set you back a few quid, but doesn’t do enough to stand out from the crowd.

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.

For anyone interested in the setting, there is a rather good, if flawed, turn-based strategy game out there on the PC which is available to purchase. Otherwise, I’d suggest getting out your D20s and giving the tabletop RPG a go and, sadly, giving Noble Armada: Lost Worlds on Xbox a wide berth.

Your appreciation of Mahjong Adventure DX on the Xbox will depend on two labels that should have been slapped on the box art: ‘not actually an adventure’ and ‘turns into a memory game halfway through’. In our case, the latter was a dealbreaker: it felt like going for a light stroll but being forced to stop and do push-ups. You come to Mahjong for relaxation, not mental gymnastics.

In a world where Cake Bash exists to deliver a multiplayer treat, Beat Me on Xbox is an irrelevance. It's okay in short bursts - and I mean short - and I imagine it would be fun with a group of drunken mates sat around the place, but as we all know, 2020 hasn’t been kind in that regard. That said, this is a game that is hamstrung by its own controls and combat system, and all the clever stages in the world aren’t enough to save it.

Cube Raiders on Xbox is a choc-a-block package, with more levels and modes than you’ll possibly need. As sokoban-style crate-pushers go, it’s well-designed too, with a punt at originality by incorporating dice. But it needed way more oomph and variety to break the feelings of repetition. Hundreds of levels won’t mean much when you roll out well before the end.

As you’d probably expect from a budget platformer that features a T-Rex main character, Tiny Hands Adventure on Xbox is awkward, unwieldy, and from a completely different time. If you’re blessed with patience and go all misty-eyed when someone mentions platformers like Croc and Bubsy, then you might find some enjoyment here. For others, it’s probably worth leaving this fossil in the ground.

There are much better JRPGs available, and even better KEMCO JRPGs out there to play, and I’d recommend you check those out over Alphadia Genesis.