Xbox One (Ubisoft) What a difference a year makes. This time last year, Hope County in Montana was a farming community with a terrorist cult problem – think Jonestown crossed with Isis. Now it’s a post-nuclear rural resort stuffed with motorcycle gangs who cuss like sailors.

New Dawn is a direct sequel to last year’s Far Cry 5, a game that ended on a downer as the world got nuked by cultists. Forget Chernobyl. In this world, the foliage glows with radioactive glee: it’s a renaissance landscape painting dipped in liquid LSD. This isn’t really how nuclear war works, but don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.

You play a freedom fighter who arrives to liberate local activists from the clutches of evil twins. When your sidekick gets kidnapped, recruit local henchmen to the cause. Liberate outposts, brandish new weapons like the Saw Launcher (does what it says on the tin), and roam a massive open world map in search of quests, animals to hunt, and vehicles to rob. Collect ethanol to power your home base, where you can craft weapons and vehicles. New Dawn is a vast sandbox of pleasure that has no idea where it lies on the thematic scale, dipping from violent morality tale to terrible humour like a bipolar stand-up.
6/10