I am in the dusty basement of Manchester cathedral. On the streets above me, there are police searching for anyone who would challenge the state. Someone like me. I am supposed to be working on a weapon to use against these fascists. It isn’t a gun or a bomb, it is a machine that eats books.

At least, that’s what I should be doing; instead, I’m searching for the final letter between the members of a love triangle of 1950s academics. I’ve tracked down all their trashy novels and papers on temporal dynamics, but I want to find the last bit of saucy gossip. Smashing the state can wait a moment.

There is a lot I won’t tell you about TR-49, Inkle’s latest puzzle game. I don’t want to ruin any of the epiphanies that lie in wait for you. But it is a treat for anyone looking to get all up in the personal lives of some long-dead fictional authors.

I know there are many of you curtain twitchers out there.

When you first awaken in that dirty basement, you are told by a voice over the radio that within the machine in front of you is a book. You must find a way to extract it from the machine’s archives before the police close in. However, when you turn the machine on, and its orange monochroma screens fizzes into life, you discover that its brain has become garbled. Whatever directory existed to guide users between the different entries in its databanks is corrupted. It falls to you to remap the archive and identify all the logged sources.

The sources within the machine are disparate. There are research papers with titles like Astral Perplexities, science-fiction novels retelling Arthurian legends with bug-eyed aliens, academic journals writing scathing takedowns of other academic journals, and personal letters sent between authors. It’s like trying to make sense of the papers littering a doctoral student’s cluttered bedroom floor.

You navigate between files in the archive by entering four-digit codes into the machine, selecting letters and numbers on a rotary dial. If the code you enter matches the address of a file then the machine’s monochroma screen zooms out and skates across the archive to your document, moving like a library microfiche machine. I’ve been playing on both my desktop and Steam Deck, and entering codes into this fictional machine has a delightful physicality to it. As you roll your thumb to select the letters and numbers the thumbstick clicks beneath your hands like you’re spinning a safe tumbler. It evokes the mechanical nature of those early 1950s computers, back when transistors were measured in inches not nanometres.

When you first land on a file in the machine’s archive, its title and contents are a mystery, encrypted and illegible. There is, however, always a note from the archivist who uploaded the document. These short blurbs offer clues to its identity. They might say, for instance, that it’s a book that was reviewed in the tenth edition of a particular literary journal. Find the journal in the archive and the archivist’s note appended to that file might tell you that edition contains a particularly scathing review of ‘Miracles of Water’ (not a real book in the game). You can now return to the first entry and pair its four-digit code with ‘Micacles of Water’ in your in-game notebook. Once successfully paired, the title and the extract will reorganise themselves into legible text and you will have returned a little order to the machine’s scrambled internals. Identify all of the machine’s sources and you might just piece together the mystery behind the device’s purpose.

A note on spoilers. The screenshots in this review and the paragraph below reveal some answers to early game puzzles. But there is nothing here from beyond the first 30 minutes in the game.

As you reassemble the archives, you will learn the rules of the machine. Recognising, for instance, that each log identifier follows the structure of the game’s title: two letters, two numbers. These stand for the initials of the author or publication and the year of its publication. Enter RS-83, for example, and you will be taken to a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 book, Treasure Island. From that identifier format, and the clues you spot in the archivists’ notes, you can begin to make leaps of logic. An early discovery is the publishing schedule of a literary journal. Once you know its publisher code and how often a new edition was published, you can jump forward to find new editions, uncovering a trove of titles, author names, and biographical clues useful for identifying further sources.

While Inkle provides an in-game notebook that automatically records titles, log codes, and creates brief biographies of the authors you discover, I also found myself scrawling across the tea-spattered pages of my own workbook. “She remarried?”, “Died 1971 but daughter pubbed open letter. Must find it”, “GA-00 = God Almighty year zero???”. As you piece together the archive, you catch glimpses of a literary scene filled with friendships and rivalries, admirers and haters, geniuses and idiots. There are references to their arguments in the archivists’ notes or direct call outs in the extracts you decrypt. I didn’t just want to know the function of the machine or discover the elusive text demanded by the radio operator, I wanted to know everything I could about their lives.

While there are a multitude of authors in the archive, your constant companions are the archivists: Cecil Caulderly, Beatrice Dooler, and their daughter, Aliz. Their notes hint at what’s in the files, helping solve the TR-49’s puzzles, but they also reveal the strain the work puts on Cecil and Beatrice’s relationship, the heavy responsibility Aliz feels in following her parents’ footsteps, and tease at mysteries within their own family life. Despite being a game filled with dead texts, the archive you’re restoring is alive with the people that created the library and wrote the sources that fill its digital shelves.

With the entire archive open to be searched from the start of TR-49 there is a sense you have complete control of your investigations. You could just start entering four digit archive codes and there is a chance you may stumble across an entry deep in the machine’s memory. You decide what clues to follow, and so your path through TR-49’s archive may be quite different to mine.

That freedom is a double-edged sword, however. As you can investigate any corner of the archive at any time, throwing out author designations and publication years with abandon, you can stumble into entries sooner than Inkle may have intended. I found the first pieces of a puzzle and leaped to the correct conclusion before I had the full context of the parts I was slotting together. Solving the puzzle ended the game, triggering a dialogue between characters which discussed significant details of the story that hadn’t been touched on at that point in my playthrough.

I’m being vague, as I don’t want to spoil any of the mysteries of such a short game, but I had so fallen into the world Inkle had created that to find myself unceremoniously stumbling out of the other side was disappointing. After hitting the credits you are given the opportunity to return to an earlier point and try a different approach, which I did, but then hit another ending I wasn’t looking for. There are still mysteries to uncover and sources to identify in my game, but after hitting two endings, it’s difficult to regain that same headspace where I was lost in its world.

I say I’m done with TR-49, but I never did find that final letter. Maybe, I will give the game one more go. After all, is the game really complete if I don’t find out what she said to the spurned academic after he wrote that journal article that was derided in the Literary Review?

This review was based on a review build of the game provided by developers Inkle.

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Ah, The Walking Dead… a franchise that, rather fittingly, just won’t die. As such, Odaclick Game Studio and Trailmark Games have announced a new 2D beat-em-up called The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival.

Coming to Switch and Switch 2, Streets of Survival is a similar endeavour to Odaclick’s previous effort The Karate Kid: Street Rumble, which actually wasn’t too bad. We awarded it a score of 7/10 back in 2024 and praised its visuals and combat.

This new jaunt looks to offer a similar experience, albeit with lots of zombies and Walking Dead characters like Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon, and Michonne, with iconic villain Negan cropping up as a key enemy. Familiar environments will also appear, such as the Sanctuary, Hilltop, Alexandria, and more, so those looking to explore the world from creator Robert Kirkman will be well catered for.

Let’s check out the key features:

– Hard-Hitting Beat-’em-up Combat: Use brutal melee abilities, crowd-clearing ranged attacks, or a mix of the two in fast-paced skirmishes. Enjoy responsive, crisp, and satisfying fighting gameplay while surviving the apocalypse.

– Overwhelming Walker Swarms & Ruthless Enemies: Battle through creeping armies of the undead and dangerous gangs of Saviors that force you to fight for every inch of ground and adapt as new threats emerge.

– Face Iconic Bosses: Take on powerful, fan-favorite walkers like Winslow, the Well Walker, and more. The Saviors provide their own challenges as you throw down with Negan and Simon in intense, multi-phase boss battles that test your skill, strategy, and killer instincts.

– Replayable Arcade Challenge: Master each character’s moveset and tackle multiple difficulty levels in an experience built for repeat runs and escalating challenges. Or jump in with an optional Easy Mode for casual play.

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Tundra Esports announced a massive corporate pivot that leaves them with plenty of memes but absolutely zero competitive players.

The London-based organization confirmed that it is completely abandoning competitive play across all gaming titles. Instead, they are rebranding as a digital media hub focused on news, entertainment shows, and interactive content. They told fans they are simply changing seats to follow the scene right alongside them from the crowd.

“We love you all far too much to simply pack up, shut down our social media channels, and fade into the background. That’s why we’re staying right here! From now on, Tundra Esports is shifting gears and transforming into a media hub,” Tundra said.

Dota 2 Fans Disappointed, But Esports Could Be a Sinking Ship

Fans did not exactly take the news well, with the comment sections quickly filling up with funeral arrangements. The overarching reaction can be boiled down to a single word: dead.

For the community, the frustration is entirely justified. Tundra was not a failing organization trying to sneak out the back door. They won The International in 2022 and their Dota 2 roster has been arguably the most dominant squad of the current season, recently winning ESL One Birmingham and DreamLeague Season 28.

If the literal best team in the world cannot make competitive gaming financially viable, it paints a pretty grim picture for everyone else.

This pivot to content creation is a playbook that fans have seen before, and it rarely ends in a standing ovation. When the esports winter hit hard, massive organizations like FaZe Clan and 100 Thieves tried to lean heavily into lifestyle and content creation to stay afloat. The problem is that fans usually show up to buy a jersey because they want to cheer for a championship team, not because they want to read an esports news aggregate feed or watch a cringe Kick stream.

The harsh reality of the industry explains why Tundra is packing up its keyboards. Operating costs in top-tier gaming have skyrocketed, with player salaries often outpacing revenue from sponsors or digital merch sales. In Dota 2, the situation became especially tight after major tournament structures shifted and massive prize pools shrunk, leaving organizations to shoulder enormous financial burdens without a clear return on investment.

Tundra has already transferred its entire powerhouse Dota 2 roster to 1win, meaning the players will still head to major tournaments under a different banner. Tundra gets a clean financial slate, but they face a massive uphill battle to convince a deeply cynical fanbase that their new memes are worth sticking around for.

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Like the summonable, energy-shooting ghoul I cultivated on my spaceship’s zombie farm, Romeo is a Dead Man is a bit of a grower. After an iffy start that exhibits plenty of Grasshopper Manufacture weirdness but not much Grasshopper Manufacture charm, its disparate parts do eventually coalesce, forming a lean yet muscular hack ‘n’ slash with a playful talent for mixing up its mediums.

God, so many mediums. The tale of Romeo – small town cop turned cyborg samurai, enlisted to hunt multiple space-time variants of obviously evil ex Juliet – is told not just through Unreal Engine cutscenes, but also animated pulp comics, stop motion, and 16-bit pixel art, and that’s just in the first half hour. It gets eclectic while you’re actually playing, too: bloody melee combat remains the star but it’s rarely long before you’re dragged off to do some 3D puzzling, or to upgrade your stats and items by playing arcade and mini-games.

It’s unfortunate that, in the early stages, not all of it lands. Such variety initially appears to paint a surface-level veneer of innovation over the action, which itself starts slow, only pitting you against shambling undead and the occasional powered-up meat monster. Neither does it help that the plot is largely stakeless multiverse nonsense, adopting a blandly literal interpretation of Suda51’s recurring Kill the Past theme and repeatedly contradicting itself with cheerful ‘Don’t worry about it’ handwaves. Game, I want to worry about it! Worrying is just caring with an extra syllable!

Stick with it, though, and Romeo is a Dead Man develops a genuine capacity to surprise. In part, because it knows when to commit to the bit. There’s an extended sequence halfway through that dips into survival horror, and instead of merely taking away Romeo’s ability to swing a sword, the entire game shifts into a claustrophobic over-the-shoulder perspective while introducing stealth and Resident Evil-style puzzle elements that never reappear anywhere else. That’s a bonkers amount of investment for a single switch-up. I don’t want to spoil the latter stages, like I’m apparently willing to do for the horror bit, but these also run further with the cross-media aspect, skillfully relieving some of the more dramatic moments with high-effort swerves into absurdist, visually diverse comedy.

Also, y’know, it’s a pretty good action game. Combat recovers from its weak start as well, both trusting you to uncover the nuances of its combo swishing and gradually enlarging the menagerie of angry flesh flappers – mostly in a sensible order of challenge – to test what you’ve learned. Romeo is no Dante or Raiden, agility-wise, but what his fighting style lacks in flashiness is more than made up for in tangible, satisfying weight. Even the default sword, perhaps the most purely functional weapon among an arsenal of power fists and sci-fi spears, cuts through crowds and bisects behemoths with a moreish chunkiness. Romeo can also wield guns, though I ended up having enough fun with the blades that I only whipped out my shotgun when necessary. As in, needing to shoot things that were either a) flying out of reach or b) liable to explode in my face upon thwacking them.

The relatively lengthy wind-ups and recovery times do require more than a measure of timing, and bosses will happily teach a harsh lesson in it. But simultaneously, Romeo is a Dead Man is barely ever about passively waiting for an opening. There’s no blocking or parrying, and successful strikes fill a blood gauge that lets you lash out with more powerful special moves – which also partially refill your health. All of this conspires to thrust you into highly aggressive, excitingly pacey brawls, where taking some hits might be worth it if you can fill that blood bar in return. Dodging, too, often feels like less of an evasive technique and more an offensive manoeuvre for shifting into the optimal backstabbing angle.

None of this is especially groundbreaking. But it seems like before you can start layering on novelty cinematics and genre juggling, it’d be important to for your action game to have good action. And Romeo is a Dead Man’s fighty parts are meaty, frantic, and terribly good fun.

Truth be told, it’s also not just the most ambitious of Dead Man’s silly asides that can extract a grin. Between missions, I always enjoyed returning to the FBI’s spaceship hub (long story), where – in exchange for parting with the third dimension – you can chat, trade, and upgrade with weirdo agents and amusingly out-of-place family members. Here, the ‘Sure, whatever’ humour works better than in main story beats; nobody questions the logic of growing allied zombies like carrots so you can call them up in later battles, which makes it funnier when you yank one out of the dirt to triumphant fanfare. And there’s something both sweet and entertaining about having Romeo’s mum, settled inside the ship’s galley, cook buff-granting katsu curries using ingredients you’ve found drifting in space. As Yuri Gagarin said, “I saw how beautiful our planet is, and also how many jars of cumin are just floating around up there.”

I wasn’t quite so happy in Sub-Space, the loosely Tron-ish alternate dimension that most missions have you poking around for keys and light navigational puzzles. Its aesthetic, that of a Zen garden as built in a heavily shader-modded Minecraft, is quite nice. But whereas the rest of the game got better with time, the appeal of yet another dive into Sub-Space only waned. For one thing, a lot of these sections just go on far, far too long, slowing down progress in a way that becomes ever more incongruous with the impetus-heavy combat. For another, going there utterly knackered my framerates.

PC performance, in general, lurches around like a Regent’s Park pedalo in a Caribbean storm. At what is usually an easy 1440p, my RTX 3090 – running Ultra settings with Quality-level DLSS 4 – couldn’t reliably hold 60fps, with drops to 30fps and sometimes even lower in some Sub-Space areas. I also tried the Steam Deck, using the lowest possible settings plus FSR upscaling, and that fell deep into the twenties too – even in real space. This is thankfully not a repeat of the No More Heroes PC port, as you do at least get proper mouse/keyboard support and, evidently, those custom graphics options. Still, it’s no smooth runner either.

Whether that’s a dealbreaker, I’ll leave between you and your rig. If you can run it, though, Romeo is a Dead Man provides smiles, surprises, and memorable swordfights, especially once it warms up. It probably won’t go down as an all-timer in Grasshopper Manufacture’s ouvre, and in 20 years’ time, I doubt YouTube will be recommending me Romeo videos as often as it currently does Killer7’s Russian Roulette scene. But that’s fine: quality slashing and organic zombie gardening can still count for plenty.

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Combat and the music go hand-in-hand in action games. You don’t have the heart-pounding thrills of Doom Eternal or the unforgettable boss encounters of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance without the face-melting soundtracks those games are known for. But some games make that link an intrinsic part of the action itself, such as Hi-Fi Rush, which came out of nowhere with its rhythm-fueled character action. Now, Dead As Disco is looking to pick up that Walkman and run with it. While the eventual goal of this Early Access release is to deliver a wealth of modes, unlockables, and boss battles, the current offerings are a lot on the lighter side. Despite that, though, this is already shaping up to be another unforgettable head-bopping beat-em-up.

Charlie Disco is dead. Or, he was. At some point. He’s alive now, though, and he isn’t sure how he even died to begin with. What he does know is that his ex-bandmates have sold their souls and turned bad as part of the bargain. Charlie has to track each one down to beat some sense into them and get the band back together, but he’s also got to piece together what exactly happened to him and his crew in the first place. Unfortunately, you won’t get the full picture in this version of the game, which has been the most frustrating part of this early access debut. It’s only so frustrating, though, because what is here is really great. Every character has solid voice acting and awesome visual designs, and each story level is such a blast.

Every stage tosses you into a gauntlet of battles against fodder foes while the stage transitions, animated cutscenes play, and incredibly sick music complements every punch. Like I mentioned before, music is fully integrated into the combat in Dead As Disco. Your attacks make impact based on the tempo of the track playing in the background, creating a super satisfying effect where combat always feels perfectly timed to the highs and lows of the music you’re hearing.

It’s like a playable version of that thing movie trailers do where gunshots and explosions are timed to the percussion of the trailer’s  song. It might be a little obnoxious in those trailers, but it’s awesome here. It’s also quite unlike the way rhythm combat in Hi-Fi Rush works. In that game, you’re tasked with pressing every button to the consistent bpm of the music. In this one, you can press and mash buttons as much as you want, and the animations will play out with the timing that they need. If you do time your buttons to the beat, though, you’ll be rewarded with bonus damage and perfect dodges.

All of the levels are capped off with some pretty awesome boss fights, and there’s a really solid variety to the encounters. You’ll definitely need to invest in a good amount of upgrades to stand a chance during these battles, though. Learning that the hard way means replaying some pretty lengthy sections in order to retry the battle, which got a little grating at times. Defeated bosses end up back at your home base, where you can chat with them to piece together a little more of the lore.

Wrapping up the currently available story missions doesn’t take too long, but once you’re done there you can move on to Challenge mode and Infinite Disco mode. The former gives you some scores to chase by battling it out to each of the few dozen songs in the game. The latter, though, is a more customizable mode where you’re even given the option to upload your own music into the game to battle to. It takes a little tinkering to get songs ready to go, but it’s nothing too complicated. And it’s so, so worth the effort in order to bash some baddies faces in to anime OPs and Slayyyter.

You’ve got to make some of your own fun with Dead As Disco, otherwise your time with this current Early Access version will be over pretty quick compared to the cost of entry. If you’re in it for the long-haul, though, the development roadmap for the game promises a massive amount of new content, including an entire co-op mode. We’ll have to see if the game sticks the landing once it hits 1.0, but for now it’s already off to an incredibly strong start.

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Behaviour Interactive has announced Dead by Daylight’s next (and 27th) chapter, Tools of Torment, which debuts a brand new Killer: The Skull Merchant.

The game’s first original modern female slasher, Adriana Imai is a wealthy high-powered tech executive who aggressively buys and absorbs smaller companies, before quenching her bloodlust as alter ego The Skull Merchant.

She’ll be joined by two new Survivors: Brazilian siblings Thalita and Renato Lyra. Check out all three in the trailer below.

The Skull Merchant promises to bring a techy twist to the multiplayer horror game, with the ability to position drones around the map to surveil Survivors – each of which is built around the skull of a previous victim. Nice.

Survivors will therefore need to avoid or disable the drones so as not to alert the Killer.

The Skull Merchant also wields giant claws and wears what looks like a cybernetic gas mask.

The new Survivors are her antithesis: a sibling pair who run a kite-flying business to mentor children from the area. The pair will have unique Teamwork Perks, so should be chosen to stick together.

The existing map MacMillan Estate’s Shelter Woods is where The Skull Merchant has set up her Hunting Camp, which features an executive suite in its upper container and a bloody workshop beneath.

Tools of Torment will launch on 7th March across PC (Steam, Epic, Windows), PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and Switch.

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Sony Santa Monica has revealed their next project, and the next chapter in the God of War saga, taking the rather unexpected direction of letting you play as someone other than Kratos. How about… Kratos’ dead wife?

That’s right, the rumours were true and the next God of War game lets you play as Kratos’ dead wife, Faye, aka Laufey the Just (portrayed once more by Deborah Ann Woll), who is surprisingly nimble for someone we last saw being barbecued. In fact, it opens with Kratos and Atreus laying her to rest in the woods, but as her spirit floats off, she awakens not within the Norse afterlife, but somewhere completely different. This is the Everywhen, the afterlife of the gods, where all magic comes from and where it returns to.

But she doesn’t get a greeting befitting of a god. No, the plantlife starts to attack her, and she soon comes face to face with Sekmet from the Egyptian pantheon of gods, and Begtse, the god of war from Tibetan mythology, who have her thrown into captivity. There she meets a talking gelatinous cube called Phranque (Jack Quaid), and the ribbons of a sword called Rue (Perlina Lau), which is a turn for the even more bizarre. They are the ones who reveal that this is the afterlife of the gods, as opposed to one specific mythology, and spur Faye on to rediscovering control of her powers and breaking out.

Wwith Rue’s sword in grasp – for better or worse, given the repeated warnings about this – she unleashes some fantastic fighting abilities, including a ribbon-whipping move, the ability to punch someone’s soul of their body with the Golden Hand of the Jötnar, and then stab that a bit instead, and great finishers. She’s fast and nimble, able to combine ground attacks with aerial ones.

Here’s more on how Santa Monica has created the character of Faye for her very own game.

There’s some truly titanic battling from this point in the reveal, really showing the scale and scope of what the PS5 can achieve in the battle with Begtse.

It looks excellent and we can’t wait to see more!

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I blast out of Tokyo, off into the countryside. At first, the roads run alongside waterlogged rice paddies, through flat and open country. Soon, though, I hit the coastal highway which winds its way over deep blue sea and past fishing villages. Carving north, I navigate snaking passes straight out of Initial D and slide upwards through their narrow switchbacks. Then, as I climb, everything opens up again.

Wide alpine roads sweep past green hills offering a spectacular view of Tokyo far to the south, the snow-capped peaks to the north, and Mount Fuji sitting stoically to the west. For a moment, it reminds me of the fabled alpine spaghetti you can find if you tour central Europe’s most breathtaking regions. Continuing my ascent, I soon hit snowy ski trails, steep stretches encased in permafrost and banked by looming snowdrifts.

Heading back south, down the western side of the country this time, I find myself twisting and turning alongside rivers and a huge waterfall. As the land begins to flatten out, more rice paddies come into view, this time interspersed with vibrant fields that radiate yellows, reds, and purples. I zoom through rural hamlets dripping with traditional Japanese architecture that in some cases looks to have been frozen in time since the Sengoku period. I come round past a giant stadium, then tunnel-blast down the coast past a rocket launch facility. Tokyo looms close by now, its trademark tower and skyscrapers welcoming me back as I cruise into its expressway arteries and slink down the alleyways that serve as its veins.

An open-world driving game lives and dies, to a large extent, by its world. Forza Horizon 6’s is an all-timer. A sprawling, diverse love letter that makes the most of the sheer variety of scenery Japan offers and neatly packages it all into a landscape that’s wonderful to drive through in any car. After the initial wow-factor of Horizon 5’s Mexico dissolved into a rather bland mass of green, browns, and beiges, I’d hoped that Japan would be the perfect four-seasons-in-a-day climate to make for a setting as visually stimulating after 100 hours as Horizon 4’s UK was. I’m not quite at that point yet, but it certainly feels so far that I’m unlikely to be wrong. If Horizon Mexico is an all-inclusive beachside resort that could get a bit tiresome once you’ve spent plenty of time lounging about in the sun, Horizon Japan is one of those mythical month-long cross-country odysseys from which you return with more lovely photos than you can fit on your hard drive.

Split into nine different regions, each with their own cute regional mascots (who appear as smashable collectibles by the roadside), Horizon 6’s Japan is rounded out by endgame festival hangout Legend Island and The Estate. The latter’s a rural house next to a sizable chunk of open grassland, which you’re free to turn into a private racetrack or other custom motorsport destination via the building mechanics Playground have introduced with this entry. Tokyo City, the game’s version of the Japanese capital, takes up an entire region of the map. It’s naturally trimmed down a lot compared to its real life inspiration, but it’s sprawling enough to make a big step up on Horizon 4’s Edinburgh. As with that city, though, I’ve found its expressways and docks mainly serve as a nice change when you’re not roaming where any Horizon truly shines: open country roads and trails.

I’ve always found the relentless hype-filled chatter and enthusiasm of Horizon characters a bit grating, so it’s been a bit surprising that some of the most fun I’ve had in Horizon 6 has been in its day trips. These are short, cruising tours of each region, during which an NPC guide tells you a bit about the area and the cars they’ve picked for the run, before you do one of the game’s speedy or jumpy stunts to cap things off. I can take or leave the facts, but simply reminding you to slow down once in a while and take in the surroundings benefits Horizon 6 greatly. These and the other tourism-focused missions, including the likes of delivering food around Tokyo in a kei truck and joining the drift club, come under one of the two trees the game’s events and activities are split into.

There’s the less neon-soaked and glow stick-wielding side, Discover Japan, which hosts the likes of regional mascot smashing, street races, and touge driving in addition to these missions. Naturally, there’s also the Horizon festival, which has you work your way up through levels of access-granting wristbands via the usual combo of racing and stuntage, with showcase events (including a race against a giant, stompy mech) punctuating the grind. Alternating your focus between the two goes a long way to helping things stay fresh, with Discover Japan also dishing out the barn find hunts which see you track down long-lost wrecks and restore them to glory.

While most of these activities are tried and tested Horizon staples by this point, I did find the new touge races disappointing. They work like your standard Horizon street race, but limited to two cars and staged on a windy point-to-point run at night. That’s fine, but it lacks any extra twists like the winner being determined by the fastest time or closest following distance across two runs, with strict rules prohibiting car-to-car contact or pedestrian traffic to dodge. These were the wrinkles that helped make Race Driver: GRID’s depiction of touge stand out from the crowd, and an opportunity to pull off something just as memorable here has been missed.

It’s a shame, because Playground have packed so much else into their version of Japan that helps make it feel distinct to, and more alive than, previous entries’ open worlds. For those cruising in free roam, there are new aftermarket and treasure cars to find, with the former being rides parked in certain places you can buy at a discount from their regular price. That means building up your car collection feels more natural than retreating to a menu screen with regularity to scroll through showroom or auction house grids, something now often reserved for moments when you want to buy a specific ride. For those in motoring groups, there are car meets like Shuto Expressway’s famous Daikoku parking area where you can gather to show off your rides, as well as short time attack tracks around the map that you can compete for fastest times on without leaving the open world.

Given all of that and the wonderful map, it’s rather puzzling that another strand of new Horizon 6 additions work to actively take you out of the Japanese landscape the devs have expertly crafted. While I was sceptical of whether I’d dig The Estate, the Horizon 6 player home which doubles as a settlement building valley, out of the gate, I underestimated how Playground’s decision bring in customisable garages alongside it would impact my enjoyment of chilling out in the racer’s many purchasable abodes. First, though, The Estate. As a settlement building zone, it feels rather undercooked compared to the slickly executed mechanics and polished creations that dominate the world outside of its building bubble.

As in Fallout 4’s settlement mode, or any racing game with a custom track builder, you’ve got a decent, if very generic-looking, selection of blocks and decor with which to assemble whatever you want. Go around deleting big bushes and trees. Stick some track pieces down. Don’t forget to turn on the auto-snapping so you avoid facing an impossible task in lining edges up. Put a few buildings next to the track. Then, spend hours searching to see if there’s a button which can get rid of the grass that’s clipping through everything you’ve placed which isn’t elevated or layered a certain distance off the ground.

Realise, after sampling some of the small drift tracks Playground devs themselves have made, that such a button doesn’t seem to exist, so every new road has to go up a ramp the moment it leaves the paved route leading into the one-pre-built estate house, and everything beyond that also has to be built atop a patchwork of support pieces. Build a little track of your own that’s a decent diversion, but nowhere near as satisfying to look at as the test tracks built into the proper map, which are all perfectly satisfying to lap. Try to build a high speed oval, but struggle to get the banked turns to clip together properly without forming unintended bumps or elevation changes. Leave because you’d much prefer to be driving along roads laid by the pros and gazing at Japan’s beautifully detailed vistas. That’s where I’m at with it. My stance might change if, once the game’s out, tricks like Fallout 4’s infamous rug glitch are quickly unearthed and pave the way for builds that can come anywhere close to rivalling the beauty of the base map. At the least, I’ve no doubt the likes of backyard Spas and Silverstones will abound.

Though not suffering from any grass clipping, the custom garages which serve as every home’s car tweaking zone bear similar hangups to The Estate. Placing items on top of each other without any floatiness or clippiness is a pitched battle with finicky height controls. You need to leave a tonne of space around your main ride’s parking spot so that you can wander around taking a look at it in the game’s Forzavista mode, which rather limits the potential for creative or unorthodox layouts. Being able to place up to three display cars that’ll be visible at all times is neat, but they’re about the only props that feel unique. In terms of decor, those looking to build the likes of a licensed shrine to prancing horses around their Ferrari collection are out of luck, as is anyone looking to deck their place out like a tuning station full of ads for real-world aftermarket parts. Or Japanese souvenirs that aren’t just a generic gate or wall you’ve dragged in from a limited selection of rural objects.

There’s an entire section of garage gear and another of decor, but only one instance of each item, with hardly any colour or pattern variants. The result is that it’s quite tough for each garage not to end up feeling fairly bland, which is a crime when Playground have put just as much effort as always into ensuring the exterior of each house offers a contrasting aesthetic pulling at a different strand of Japanese architecture. The best you can get at the moment is a pale imitation of the professionally-assembled slices of picturesque Japanese landscape which exist in abundance beyond your garage door. Or a sleek, but relatively characterless, GTA Online-style arrangement of generic sofas and TVs around your motors and tools.

The Estate is, at least, very easy to ignore if it’s not up your alley. You’ll see one of these custom garages every time you load into the game, even if you can quickly peel out of it to go do some actual racing. To be fair, this is the first time the studio have tried delivering this sort of abode customisation, and it could well be something that fits a lot more snugly in future Forzas with a bit of iteration and refinement. For now, though, it’s a weak spot.

That said, unlike the circumstances currently surrounding Playground owners Microsoft – that certainly will be a dealbreaker for some when it comes to buying Horizon 6 – the niggles I’ve outlined aren’t egregious enough to stop the game from continuing the series’ roost atop the PC racing genre. This sixth entry’s been well-honed into the ideal crowd-pleasing racer, blending a beautiful open world with driving that offers arcade accessibility and has enough mechanical depth to its rides that it can at least dip its toes in the sim waters if you turn the aids off or decide to tinker with setups.

The car roster, while as heavy on familiar holdovers as Horizon games always are, has plenty of quirky new Japanese faces to take for a spin, plus the latest models from all the major brands it stocks. It’s true no matter whether you’re pounding around in a Mercedes-AMG One as I was in the intro, pulling up at Daikoku in a Nissan S-Cargo, or drifting a modified Impreza down a mountain. Unless you’re a seasoned petrolhead looking for something to satisfy a particular niche, Horizon 6 is the new king of the road.

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Dead Island 2’s release date has been quite the saga.

Today, Dambuster Studios revealed Dead Island 2 will now make its zombie-riddled debut a week earlier than previously announced.

Yes, make a new note in your diary, as its release date has changed again. We are now expecting the game to launch on 21st April.

“You asked for it, you got it,” the developer shared in a brief update today alongside a collection of messages imploring the Dead Island 2 team to finally get the game out the door.

Needless to say, knowing the game has finally gone gold is a very exciting milestone for all those eager to get their hands on more zombie gore. After all, the game was initially announced all the way back in 2014.

Dead Island 2 is currently available to preorder through the game’s site. Those that choose to do this will get some customary preorder bonuses.

Additionally, when Dead Island 2 does release, it will come with a new gaming feature known as Alexa Game Control.

This feature, announced by Amazon last year, will see players be able to control aspects of their game via voice activated software. In Dead Island 2, this will mean users will be able to help them navigate through LA (or Hell A, as the Dead Island 2 team has branded it) by saying things such as “where is the nearest workbench”.

What holds the most potential for fun, perhaps, is that this new feature will allow Dead Island 2 players to “manipulate zombie hordes” by saying “Hey zombie” into the mic.

For more on Dead Island 2, check out Ian’s interview with developers David Stenton and James Worral, where they talk more about their new and improved version of the game.

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