In all, Curse of the Dead Gods on Xbox is a game that is easy to recommend to anyone looking for a challenge. It is always hard, always difficult, and has not a shred of mercy built into it. In fact, you need to be on top of your game in order to make it to the bosses, never mind to take them down. But should you fail, you can always put your finger on why you did so.
There’s no doubting that there is a short and ramshackle Breath of the Wild at the centre of Effie on the Xbox. Its rough, indie edges can be incredibly charming, and surfing the open world on the back of a magical shield is a gift that keeps on giving. But the rough edges are too sharp, too frequently.
If you have loved the previous two games in the Active Neurons series then you can’t put a foot wrong With Active Neurons 3 - Wonders Of The World on Xbox. It may feel a bit like a piece of DLC rather than a new imagining of the series, but that's fine for the cheap price and offer of a host of extra levels.
Whether you want to play #SinucaAttack on Xbox for achievements or for something a bit different, there is a bit of fun to be had. Levels do start to get a bit repetitive but then it will throw a new feature at you that will act as a difficulty spike and a way to keep things fresh. The controls cannot be excused though - there is just no legislating for them.
It’s the constant back-and-forth between great ideas and not-so-great ideas, technical shortcomings and imaginative solutions to those shortcomings, that define The StoryTale on Xbox. For every step back, it takes one forward. But The StoryTale doesn’t let that stop its attempts to innovate: even with a 50% hit-rate on its ideas, it keeps trying them out, and that should be celebrated.
Speed Limit on Xbox is a hell of a lot of fun. I’ll admit that I never thought I’d get to grips with what it offers, and thought failure would be nailed on. But there is something about it that keeps pulling you back for one more attempt, and then a few more thrown on top of that.
Aground on Xbox is a game that starts off simple and rapidly gets more and more complicated, with a massive amount of different things to do and objectives to achieve. These objectives lead you to new discoveries and paths to explore, and this isn't a game that will be finished quickly.
Yakuza 4 Remastered on Xbox isn’t the best game in The Yakuza Remastered Collection but it is a marked improvement on the pacing of Yakuza 3 Remastered.
The main problem that On The Road on Xbox has is not in the tedium of the driving, it's not in the poor visuals, it’s not in the game crashes and it's not in the clunky, amateurish menus. Nope, it's found in a combination of all those things along with an asking price that is verging on disgusting. And that means this is one trucking simulator that is going to struggle to make any form of headway on any console street.
Glittering Sword on Xbox is disappointing. It shouldn’t be expected to offer anything revolutionary to the genre, given its status as a homage to The Legend of Zelda. It should be expected to nail the fundamentals though. It doesn’t. The game never advances beyond the same simplistic puzzles and stale combat, and the only answer to scaling difficulty is throwing more projectiles and enemies at you in an attempt to slow you down.
Get 10 Quest is a brilliant little game which will only cost you a few pennies. For this reason it can be forgiven for being feature light, but at its core it’s amongst the best puzzlers around.
If you're looking for a game to tickle the little grey cells, you may just have found it with Knight's Retreat. The only real complaint is that once you’ve nailed the 80 levels, that’s about it; there isn't a score for each level, and so the urge to carry on playing once it is defeated just isn't there.
How to Take Off Your Mask Remastered on Xbox is a satisfyingly romantic visual novel that doesn’t over-complicate proceedings or become too awkwardly raunchy. You’ll want to see how the rather cute story unfolds, but then you’re done with it, which is a little bit of a shame.
If there’s one thing I have learned so far from playing the various works of DillyFrame Games, it’s that bunnies love to kick things; whether the purpose is to manoeuvre cars around in Bunny Parking, or organise boxes onto pallets like a warehouse worker in SokoBunny, they get a real kick out of it. Unsurprisingly, the latest release of Kick It, Bunny! follows the well-trodden path and looks to show off the fancy footwork of rabbits again, albeit with a new puzzle mechanic at its core. Could Kick It, Bunny! be the pride of the fluffle, or will it turn out to be more of a floppsy like the other aforementioned titles?
