Developer Kaizen Game Works

Publisher Fellow Traveller

Format PC, Switch (tested)

Release Out now

Kaizen Game Works’ open-world detective game begins with a death-defying dive onto its sun-kissed island setting. It could hardly be a more appropriate start. Paradise Killer is a daring, headlong plunge into a quixotic world, one that will initially leave you floundering and gasping for air. For its opening hour or so it’s as dense, confounding and overwhelming as our first visit to Night City, with its strange characters, unfamiliar terminology and arcane rules. And yet it’s similarly true to the spirit of cyberpunk: its retro-revivalist aesthetic brings together a diverse collage of influences, just as Barry Topping’s fantastic soundtrack marries city pop with jazz fusion, ’70s funk and disco. It’s almost too much, and yet you’ll realise that figuring out the workings of this uncanny universe is as absorbing as the process of solving its central mystery.

There is a giddy thrill that comes from discovering what could well be the smoking gun

Its unwillingness to explain itself not only avoids excessive exposition, but makes narrative sense, since you’re cast as a character who already knows the place inside out: Paradise is, after all, on its 24th iteration. Yet moments before the 25th version is set to be activated - surely this one won’t result in a violent uprising or the arrival of deadly demons? - all members of the island’s ruling council are brutally murdered. A suspect is already in custody, but soon you’ll discover there’s something a little too neat about all this. As the formerly exiled investigator Lady Love Dies, you’re charged with digging deeper, as this multiple homicide soon spirals into a complex conspiracy in which seemingly everyone - from a horny Scottish doctor with robotic arms to a skeletal ex-assassin turned bar owner - seems to be involved to a greater or lesser extent.