Epic continues to push the Fortnite-as-a-platform strat. Understandably not as deep as LEGO Fortnite, but a fun little racing game with a big emphasis on drifting and obstacles reminiscent of Mario Kart, and wild courses à la Trackmania. Be prepared to feel like Schumacher as you first place Bronze and Silver ranks only to be met with your first decent human opponents and summarily crushed. Fun though!

What I thought would be a quick, relatively low-effort brand collaboration turns out to be a remarkably fleshed out exploration/building/survival game with an incredible level of polish. A bit of Minecraft, a tiny bit of Animal Crossing, and even rolling in combat - sooo, we’re a soulslike now? Fun game, and the fact that Epic remade over 1,200 skins to suit the LEGO-verse is crazy in itself.

Remedy have provided an interesting (and very impressive) look behind the technical curtain of Alan Wake 2 and its engine Northlight in a new blogpost. AW2 has been universally praised for its visual technical achievements (among other things), so it’s great to be able to read about some of the tools and tech they created or utilised.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Alan Wake - and even less so of horror games in general - but this sequel is something else. Remedy have taken the entirety of their back catalogue and combined it all into a captivating and masterful nightmare. Probably the most graphically impressive game I’ve ever played, but its technical achievement would be hollow without the sublime art direction and sound design. The story is kooky but cool, even if the writing is a little overbearing at times. Absolutely love Remedy’s vision and ambition here - it won’t be for everyone, but IMO it’s a triumph.

Ahead of Alan Wake 2 releasing on October 27th, Epic Games have unveiled a clever promotional tie-in, in the form of a playable custom Fortnite island. Alan Wake: Flashback is a ‘reimagining the iconic story’, available now with island code 3426-5561-3374. We’ve seen these sort of collabs before, but this is a bit more involved, substantial and creative. Perk of a good relationship I s’pose!

After bouncing off Fortnite the week it launched, I wrote it off for years. It was polished and fun, but I was frustratingly bad. Once they introduced Zero Build I tried again, and it’s fun as hell.