One thing that’s probably got a bit lost in all the controversy preceding Horses’ release is the fact it’s surprisingly funny. Its humour is pitch black, yes, and its comedic moments often dance on a knife’s edge between laughter and revulsion, but writer and director Andrea Lucco Borlera’s first-person narrative horror – his debut game, created in close collaboration with Saturnalia developer Santa Ragione – is a fascinatingly singular vision. It’s singular enough, in fact, that it’s not an easy thing to effectively describe, but if you can imagine a sort of thematic reinterpretation of Animal Farm by way of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo on one side, and a meme-able Garry’s Mod video on the other, then Horses gleefully oscillates between them, landing somewhere in the middle. Read more

Taken as a whole, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond feels like something of a composite. On one hand, it is clearly a follow-up to 2007’s Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, drawing close many of that game’s greatest triumphs and fumbles with a fascinating reverence. On the other, it is something new for the series, structurally most comparable not to other Metroid games but rather to a different Nintendo adventure franchise (more on that shortly). Then there is how the game is built, feeling almost modular, with different modes and moods of play stitched together with visible seams. With all that said, it certainly – at least broadly – works rather well. Read more

Direct drive wheels, which transmit the forces experienced by your car in sim racing games to your hands without the use of intermediaries like cogs or belts, are experiencing something of a golden age. Pretty much every major manufacturer has now made the jump to producing these high-end wheel bases, offering a significant step up in dynamism and realism at increasingly mainstream prices. That includes well-known names like Logitech, Corsair (Fanatec), Thrustmaster and Turtle Beach, but also includes specialist firms like Moza which have disrupted the market with their huge ranges, well-developed software ecosystems and great value offerings. Read more

I now sort of understand why Kirby Air Riders was deemed worthy of a pair of Nintendo Directs that add up to a feature-length running time. Part of that is obviously the verbose design-nerd predilections of its director, Masahiro Sakurai, sure. But another reason is quite simple: this is a rather difficult game to describe. Read more

For Analogue, the boutique gaming brand that made its business in mining the emotions of the cash- and nostalgia-rich grown-up hardcore, the game has surely changed. When the company burst onto the scene in 2015, the use of FPGA technology to run old games was relatively new. Now, everybody is at it – and so Analogue finds itself needing to more precisely carve out and defend its corner of the market. Read more