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Governing body cannot avoid the dark political backdrop to its tournament opening as Trump’s authorities flex their muscles

“When Donald Trump came in the laws just changed and it’s hard for immigrants now … you’ve got a lot of people being deported, people who have been in the United States for two decades. It’s not nice, it’s not right when someone who hasn’t committed a crime has to go back somewhere.

“I just don’t respect somebody like [Trump] that deports so many people and hurts so many families … this country was built on immigrants. Nobody’s from here.”

It seems unlikely this is the kind of hard political messaging Gianni Infantino was hoping to associate himself with when Fifa booked the New York rapper French Montana as its headline act at Saturday’sClub World Cupopening ceremony, a global spectacular taking place against a background of unrest over Trump’s immigration and repatriation policies.

French Montana moved to New York from Morocco aged 13 and has been outspoken in his support for the rights of undocumented US immigrants, although his place on the political spectrum has been muddied a little this year by an unexpected appearance on the Lara Trump track No Days Off.

His comments in interviews in2019and2018, and his presence at the centre of Fifa’s publicity for the launch night of its $1bn show, will provide a deeply uncomfortable reminder of the perils of fawning over divisive political leaders. Infantino has spent the past year energetically cosying up to the US president, attending his inauguration in a state of high excitement and even delaying Fifa’s annual meeting in order to follow Trump around a little longer on his visit to Qatar.

French Montana is at least in tune with the Fifa zeitgeist. Already this week the news that officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will be part of the security operation for Saturday’s game between Al Ahly and Inter Miami has sparked widespread disquiet.

A year out from the World Cup that the US is sharing with Canada and Mexico, there is concern not only that supporters may stay away over fear of document checks and status wrangles, but that Fifa’s showpiece men’s club event is in danger of being piggybacked on as a political event by the Trump administration.

CBP has been openly promoting its role at Fifa’s tournament for the past few months under the hashtag #CBPxFIFA. This came to a head this week as it ended up deleting a Facebook post that stated its agents would be “suited and booted and ready to provide security for the first round of games”.

The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that Ice and CBP officers will be present at Club World Cup fixtures, saying: “All non-American citizens need to carry proof of their legal status.” This is not without recent precedent. CBP often operates at big sporting events, including February’s Super Bowl in New Orleans.

But it isn’t hard to see how this might be interpreted as containing an element of threat. Ice officers are being escorted around Los Angeles by the US national guard, a hugely controversial move that has contributed to the current unrest in the city.

CBP has also declined so far to address the reasons for the removal of its post about Fifa’s grand jamboree, which fuelled fears the event may be rolled into the aggressive enforcement of Trump’s immigration policy.

A glance at CBP’s X feed makes plain this is by no means a politically neutral entity. One post reads: “The alarming riots in L.A. which have put hundreds of law enforcement officers at risk, are precisely why the Big Beautiful Bill is so important.” Another states: “While rioters wave foreign flags and burn ours, our officers will always raise the stars and stripes with pride.” Approving references to Trump’s policies are intercut with remarks about “lies” from “the mainstream media and sanctuary politicians”. Questions will naturally be asked about whether this constitutes an appropriate hashtag partner for football’s apolitical governing body.

Infantino was asked this week about the presence of immigration agencies at Fifa’s launch party. His answer was characteristically vague, focusing instead on security issues. But there is concern on that front in Miami, fuelled by the chaos of the Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia at the same venue last year, which led to arrests, barriers rushed and a one-hour kick-off delay.

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The Hard Rock has warned of “multiple security and ticket check points”, and the Miami Herald has unearthed a police video used as a training tool for the tournament in which a sergeant is heard saying: “If things go south, we get prepared, we get ready. For civil unrest and unruly fans, this will get us ready for those events.”

And Fifa is dipping its toe into some overheated waters here. Only this week the Trump administration explicitly instructed anything up to half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came legally to the United States under a Biden-era programme to “leave immediately” if they have yet to make the step from “parole” to full status.

The state of heightened security has affected Fifa’s party. On Wednesday a luxury pleasure flotilla chartered by the TV station Telemundo and containing Fifa officials and the Miami-Dade mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, was boarded by CBP officials in Biscayne Bay off the Miami coast. The event, staged to celebrate the approach of the World Cup, was abruptly cancelled.

Officials later stated the raid was a routine inspection that uncovered some safety violations. But the mayor has since described the incident as “deeply troubling” and told local media: “Ensuring that all community members feel safe and included is crucial to maintaining our county’s reputation as a welcoming destination for both residents and visitors.”

Saturday’s opening game (8pm EST, 1am BST on Sunday in the UK) is now a source of multiple migraines for Infantino. Trump will be absent, required instead to oversee his own Grand Military Parade in Washington. While this is no doubt a bone-deep personal disappointment for Infantino, it will at least spare him the embarrassment of marrying up his headline act’s political statements with the capricious and easily offended commander-in-chief in the seat next to him.

The game also coincides with a day ofnationwide anti-Trump protests. Styled as the No Kings movement, a warning against the exercise of extreme executive power in the first year of Trump’s second term, the protests will elide naturally with unrest over the actions of Ice and CBP.

The wider Miami area will stage at least 10 No Kings events, including one half an hour’s drive from Infantino’s coronational seat at the Hard Rock Stadium, although it is unlikely Republican Miami-Dade will see anything like the scale of unrest in Los Angeles. As one Aventura man put it on Thursday morning: “This is Florida. We don’t truck with that shit here.”

This appears to be the politically sanctioned position. The state governor, Ron DeSantis, speaking on the Rubin Report this week, took the extraordinary step of encouraging members of the public who feel threatened by protests on Club World Cup matchday one to drive through the crowds, an apparent extension of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. As DeSantis put it: “If you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.”

The tagline for the opening night of Fifa’s US mission is A New Era Begins. As things stand that new era will kick off against a rolling background of spot-check fear, off-message headline acts and an opening game shadowed by the prospect of governor-approved assault with a motor vehicle a few miles down the road. Over to you, Gianni.

An Australian win looked inevitable after setting 282 to win, but Aiden Markram and Temba Bavuma defied the odds

Right from the start of the day, there was an inevitability that this match was Australia’s. They started 218 runs in front, in the third innings, walking back onto a Lord’s field where 28 wickets had fallen in the previous two days. They had the four-star bowling attack, their opponents had the shooting-star batting order, one that had flashed and vanished in its first sighting. Soon this would be compounded by Temba Bavuma’s hamstring injury. The lead as it stood looked a chance to be enough, and first would come the chance to increase it a smidgen more.

The sense of inevitability only grew as that smidgen broadened into a big dirty smudge. There is nothing more galling for a cricket team than a long tenth-wicket partnership. Every ball is more annoying than the one before. Things had started right, Kagiso Rabada in his second over of the day trapping Nathan Lyon with only four runs added to the score. On four wickets for the innings, nine for the match, Rabada was ready to complete twin milestones.

Except they didn’t come. Not in his third over, nor his fourth. Not his fifth, not his sixth. Not even his seventh. When he was taken off after drinks, fading with fatigue, it must have been galling to the entire side, their champion deserving that last swipe of icing on the cake. Instead, not content with seeing off the major threat, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood just kept batting: 135 balls, 59 runs, to the stroke of lunch.

Starc made a few Test fifties early in his career, including a 99, as slap-and-slash affairs. He hadn’t made one in the last six years, but over that time his batting has probably been better. He has made 20s, 30s, 40s, over long periods, in tough situations, when resistance was needed. Look at the previousWorld Test Championshipfinal, the last Ashes in England, some of the most difficult outings against India. Today’s unbeaten 58 was one of his best, by far his slowest score of anywhere near that size, facing 136 balls, more than anyone in the Test to that point.

So a session of frustration, surely a distraction for South Africa as a lead inverted its final numbers from 218 to 281. Then an early wicket for who else but Starc as Ryan Rickelton nicked an outswinger. Starc again, as Wiaan Mulder chipped to cover for 27. Bavuma’s hamstrings have always popped like champagne corks on New Year’s Eve, and the South African captain did another when he was on 9. It was still inevitable, it seemed. Australia were on their way to win.

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But there was one wrinkle. For all that the Starc and Hazlewood stand drove South Africans mad, every run they made was also an example to the same team of how much easier run-making had become. The pitch metrics showed that movement had eased through the air and off the surface. The sun was shining brightly. And while it was the fourth innings of the Test, it was also only the third day.

Those who pay attention to county cricket will know there has been a Lord’s trend, at least recently, of scores growing bigger as matches goes on, with surfaces easing as chases are made. A month ago, Middlesex spinner Zafar Gohar sealed a chase of 366 at eight wickets down. Most followers of the Australian Test team would find themselves short of the required standard on reaching the Zafar Gohar round of their local pub trivia night, but that is a fact with some bearing on Australian fortunes.

Because over the next session and a half, that inevitability shifted. Bavuma batted on despite the injury, riding some luck with a dropped catch, injuring Steve Smith in the process, then growing into an unbeaten 65. At the other end was Aiden Markram, who had looked like a million dollars from the outset, riding the bounce and diverting the pace of Australia’s celebrated quicks, using their gifts to build his score. As the runs went by, South Africa became the team untroubled, Australia the team starting to scramble, and by stumps the pairing remained intact with only 69 more to win. Markramstarted his careerwith a fourth-innings hundred against Australia, and has reached that career’s peak with another here. The first time he still ended up on the losing side; this time, he mustn’t.

Cricket is fond of dishing out the lesson that nothing can truly be known, or in more frank terms, the lesson that you, the one making the assumptions, are an idiot, actually. No matter how many times the lesson is taught, each fresh instance of an opportunity will see some portion of us fail to remember it. Australia were going to win this, it was inevitable, until they weren’t. South Africa will win it from here, that too is an inevitability. Which means it might happen. Or it might not.

There’s a lot to take in at the yearly live video event: from Paralives to Felt That: Boxing, Dosa Divas to Resident Evil Requiem, here are our favourites

The ninth mainstream instalment in the survival horror series returns us to the wreckage of Racoon City and promises a blend of cinematic action and psychological horror. FBI agent Grace Ashcroft appears to be the main character, but is anything in this series ever what it seems?

The latest project from Sega’s Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (Yakuza, Like a Dragon) is a historical action adventure set in Japan during the early 20th century, featuring moody detectives, street gangs and jazz – a potent combo for this idiosyncratic team.

Surely the dream combination: James Bond meets the team behind the Hitman series in an adventure that seeks to reboot the Bond backstory and legend. Featuring globe-trotting espionage, stealth and gadgets, it’s the most exciting video game outing for Fleming’s character since GoldenEye.

A folkloric rural life sim, where you play as horticultural sorceress, tending to your garden and looking out for the darkness at the edge of the village. Developer Failbetter (Sunless Sea, Fallen London) are pioneers of narrative game design and the team is growing something special here.

Australian developer House House had an unexpected smash hit withUntitled Goose Game– now it’s back with a similarly unusual co-op adventure where players become bird-like creatures, exploring a mysterious puzzle-filled island. Like some sort of hallucinogenic 1970s children’s animation come spectacularly to life.

No one saw this coming: a big, dark post-apocalyptic action adventure from Game Freak, the creator of Pokémon. Set in a ruined Japan menaced by robots and monsters, you play as Emma the Sealer, using plants as weapons and aided by a faithful canine companion – and not a Jigglypuff in sight.

Developer Outerloop (Thirsty Suitors) returns to its self-created subgenre – the cooking RPG – with this typically colourful sci-fi tale. Two sisters fight an evil corporation by preparing real food rather than artificial slop for their local community. Expect spices and feelings.

Not so much a game as a bizarre TV simulator, Blippo+ encourages players to channel surf an alien broadcasting network, consuming soap operas, sitcoms and news reports in a haze of surreal, glitchy FMV.Hypnospace Outlawmeets Radio Times? Sure, go on then.

Whoever had “something that combines The Muppets with Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!” on their Summer Game Fest wish list must be feeling pretty happy right now. New developer Sans Strings Studio has utilised the power of Unreal Engine 5 to produce the highly naturalistic puppet boxing odyssey the world desperately needs.

After the hugely successful inZOI, here’s another indie take on The Sims, which pares down the experience to a single-player life adventure with no DLC, but lots of home customisation options, characters to meet and pets to, um, pet.

A time-warping steampunk adventure from the makers of Wasteland and Saints Row. There’s a hint of Bioshock in its setting: a dystopian future city where inhabitants augment themselves with clockwork cyber limbs. What could possibly go wrong?

Finally, Atlus has confirmed a remake of its legendary 2008 role-playing adventure set amid occult rituals and gruesome murders in rural Japan. Little is known beyond the title, but that’s enough to get us interested.

You’ve inherited a creaky old hotel and now you have 30 days to renovate it while solving puzzles and exploring the labyrinthine hallways. Part renovation sim, part spooky adventure, this was a real standout at the Xbox showcase.

The latest bizarre concoction from Psychonauts developer Double Fine has you controlling an anthropomorphic lighthouse as it explores a coastal realm together with its sea bird companion. What are they putting in the water at this studio?

The world doesn’t need another deck-building strategy game – unless it’s also a courtroom drama in which you’re a team of environmentalists suing a corrupt billionaire for poisoning a river. Timely stuff from Amsterdam-based studio Speculative Agency.

This year’s event showcased gaming’s evolving landscape, from blockbuster titles to standout indie projects

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As protests exploded in Los Angeleslast weekend, elsewhere in the city, a coterie of games journalists and developers were gathered together to play new games at the industry’s annual summer showcase. This week’sissue is a dispatch from our correspondent Alyssa Mercante.

Summer Game Fest (SGF), the annual Los Angeles-based gaming festival/marketing marathon, was set up to compete with the once-massive E3. It’s taken a few years, but now it has replaced it. 2025’s event felt like a cogent reminder that the games industry has dramatically changed since the pandemic. Whereas E3 used to commandeer the city’s convention centre smack in the middle of downtown LA, SGF is off the beaten path, nestled among the reams of fabric in the Fashion District, adjacent to Skid Row. There are fewer game companies present, it’s not open to the public and there’s no cosplay, unless it’s for marketing purposes.

Its centrepiece is a live show held at the YouTube theatre near the airport, hosted by ever-present games industry hype-man Geoff Keighley and streamed to millions – and you can buy tickets for that. Some video game enthusiasts and smaller content creators told me that the in-person showcase wasn’t worth their money: just a very lengthy show that they could have watched online, culminating in a massive traffic jam to get out of Inglewood.

This year’s event had some hiccups, including an attempted gatecrasher, but felt the most put-together yet. Attending SGF is a privilege, but it is also an ungodly hybrid of a marathon and a sprint: back-to-back-to-back appointments with publishers and developers with no downtime in-between, speed walking between cabanas and moving swiftly in and out of over air-conditioned rooms to ensure you don’t upset a PR person or accidentally spurn an indie developer. During brief breaks, if you even get one, you’ll shovel a canape into your gullet, wash it down with a Red Bull, have a quick bite of some (surprisingly good) PC Gamer-branded ice-cream, and attempt to get a few of your thoughts down on paper.

I saw a lot of games this weekend, some of which I can’t talk about, but once again it was the indie games that were the most memorable. Not just because they’re unexpected or unique or silly, but because there are usually far fewer restrictions while you play, devs are more open to questions and there aren’t eight PR people standing over your shoulder to ensure you don’t open up an unfinished menu or wander some place you shouldn’t.

On night one, I stuck my head in at the Media Indie Exchange (MIX) party downtown, and was immediately enraptured withUrban Jungle, a plant based game that speaks to my newfound love of horticulture. Placing plants around a cutesy little room afforded me a brief moment of zen in a crowded space full of people trying out dozens of indie games.

Then there’sPetal Runner, a pixel art RPG that looks and feels like a Game Boy-era Pokémon title. Published by iam8bit and developed by two people who met in the Instagram comments under some cyberpunk artwork, it’s a beautiful, adorable, “no violence” RPG. Rather than engage in the questionable practice of capturing cute creatures and forcing them to fight each other, you simply help deliver them to their new owners and “calibrate” or calm them down through a series of old-school minigames. Then you hop on your motorcycle (Petal Runner’s programmer was inspired to get a bike after watching Tron: Legacy) to deliver another pet. After just 15 minutes, its modern chip-tune soundtrack, cool-toned palette, and cute creatures had me sold.

ThickAs Thieves, meanwhile, is a multiplayer stealth game. A representative for the developer told me that the team wanted to make a multiplayer game that avoided the three “black holes”, or oversaturated genres: shooters, PvP combat, and pure action gameplay. The result is something that feels like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood mixed with Dishonored: you’ll sneak through maps set in a dark early 1900s world cut through with slices of rich colour, while you try to pull off difficult heists to impress a thieves’ guild. But other players are trying to do the exact same thing, and guards and civilians will get in your way.

I also got a chance to try out the new season ofMonster Hunter Nowfrom Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go. This augmented reality game drops you into a version of the real world filled with monsters from Capcom’s iconic action game, condensing the series’ epic fights into bite-size battles that are barely a minute long (they can be close to an hour in the mainline games). And I played the new, four-person party gameLego Partywith two other journalists, screaming as our Lego characters fell over each other during minigames or stole gold bricks in an attempt to get to first place. It was fun and freeing; people gathered around us as we yelled and guffawed and talked smack with gusto, as if we needed this game to help cleanse our tired palates.

Every game I spent even a few minutes with this weekend was imbued with passion and creativity, no matter the size of the team or the scope of the project. It was a testament to the drive that fuels so many in this space, and the technological advancements that let smaller teams (sometimes just one or two people) make beautifully complex games. Seeing tons of fellow journalists and developers bright-eyed and excited, even with so many of us struggling to find work, recently laid off, or otherwise worried about the future, was a shot of adrenaline.

But it was also impossible to ignore that something larger was taking place in LA, acting as a sombre backdrop to this comparatively low-stakes weekend of video games. On Saturday, protests broke out in Los Angeles, with citizens pushing back against the militant and cruel anti-immigration raids taking place across the city. The constant whir of helicopters was a bizarre soundtrack to the weekend; many people who had come from out of state or even out of the country were noticeably concerned about the escalating events. We furtively shared updates with each other at hands-on appointments, whispering about the national guard, warning each other to travel together and safely. On Sunday night, dozens of journalists and devs were told they couldn’t leave a downtown LA bar where they had gathered; the LAPD had shut down the area, determined to quell the protests.

On the last day of SGF, we chatted about how weird it was to preview video games during such an acute political moment. One person told me they were playing a demo that kicked off with tanks and military men and, as he played, he heard the sounds of a helicopter circling overhead, and wondered where the game ended and the real world began.Alyssa Mercante

From the makers of Frostpunk and This War of Mine,The Altersis a strangesci-fi strategyexperiment that sees stranded space-worker Jan cloning himself several times over in order to assemble a team big enough to make it off an exoplanet before the sun rises and burns everything to cinders. The thing is that the clones don’t exactly get on. Each one represents a different alternate-universe version of Jan: imagine being stuck on a remote base with nothing but your squabbling selves.

Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming

I thought The Alters was going to be a comedy game, but though it is sometimes fleetingly funny, it’s also a surprisingly involving base-building survival affair, more tense and urgent-feeling than I was expecting and full of consequential choices that encourage a second or third run-through. I will certainly be playing more of it.

Available on:PC,PlayStation5, XboxApproximate playtime:20-30 hours

While Alyssa was on the ground at Summer Game Fest, Keith and I were watching an endless stream ofshowcases and trailersfrom the UK– we’ve picked out themost interesting gamesfrom the show.

The biggest announcement was probably anew Xbox handheld– though, confusingly, it’s not quite what it seems. The ROG Xbox Ally X (why can nobody at Microsoft name something properly?) is an Xbox branded version of an existing line of portable PCs. Still, Alyssawas impressedwith how well it worked in her brief demo.

We’ve also been extremely busy playing an inordinate amount ofNintendo’s Switch 2. Keith’sreview of the consoleis here, andhere’s my reviewof its flagship game, Mario Kart World.

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No question for this week’s guest issue but, as ever, if you’ve got something you’d like to ask, or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us onpushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

A gruesome monster munching through a luckless body was just one of the horrors I shuddered at in a brief snippet of the forthcoming Resident Evil 9. Be afraid – and excited

A surprise announcement at the end of the 6 June Summer Game Fest presentation revealed the ninth entry in the iconic Capcom survival horror series:Resident EvilRequiem, coming early next year.

Diehard fans of the series (which has spawned films, television shows and more) immediately began picking apart the trailer, which highlights protagonist Grace Ashcroft, the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, featured in 2003’s Resident Evil Outbreak. Requiem appears to be set in Racoon City, the fictional location in the franchise that was famously nuked to try and stop the spread of the zombifying T-Virus.

Game director Kōshi Nakanishi introduced the game at a demo in LA last week, saying that Requiem’s core theme is “addictive fear” and that Grace Ashcroft is a much more timid, fearful protagonist than the military-trained heroes of previous games.

I heard reactions to the demo before I saw it (screams and shouts, mostly), and when it was my turn to enter a dark room with a few dozen other people, boy, did it freak me out. I think anyone would be fearful if they woke up hanging upside down from a gurney, with a needle in their arm regularly drawing blood into a massive glass container hanging nearby. That’s how this snippet ofResident Evil Requiemgameplay begins, and it’s hard not to wince in empathic pain as Grace tries to free herself from her restraints. She manages, however, and the game shifts from a cutscene into first-person play, offering a few options to examine items in the room, which looks like it’s in an abandoned hotel or hospital.

As you’d expect, certain rooms have functioning electricity, but Grace is mainly in the dark, red emergency lights bathing everything in an eerie glow. She stumbles around, trying to find keys for locked doors and fuses to boot up breakers, all whilesomethingmoves about this spooky space with her. Just when it seems that Grace has the tools to escape whatever the hell this place is, she stumbles across a body. Before she can figure out whose it is, a disgusting, massive creature resembling the monster inBarbarianappears, with massive black eyes, huge ears, pointed teeth and hands that are far, far too large.

The creature picks the body up and bites into its flesh, in a moment that feels like a one-to-one recreation of the famousGoya painting Saturn Devouring His Son.Goosebumps dance up my arms. We see this creature a few more times during the gameplay snippet, punctuated by screams from the players. At the very end, it seems like the demo starts over: the pause menu pops up, and the player navigates to a toggle between first- and third-person modes. The crowd “oohs” and “ahhs” – there hasn’t yet been aResigame that lets you swap between perspectives (except Village, which added that functionality as part of a paid-for update in 2021).

The phrase “this is the overture to our darkest symphony yet” appears on-screen before the demo ends and we are ushered into a dark hallway to exit. “What the fuck?” someone mumbles behind me. Not every Resident Evil game has pushed the boundaries of video game horror, but this one has made an especially disturbing debut.

Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming

Resident Evil Requiem is out on 27 February 2026 on Xbox,PlayStation 5, and PC.

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PC (version tested), PlayStation 5, Xbox; Build a Rocket Boy/IOI PartnersA lot of work and ambition have gone into this strange, sometimes likable cover-shooter throwback

There’s a Sphere-alike in Redrock, MindsEye’s open-world version of Las Vegas. It’s pretty much a straightcopy of the original: a huge soap bubble, half sunk into the desert floor, with its surface turned into a gigantic TV. Occasionally you’ll pull up near the Sphere while driving an electric vehicle made by Silva, the megacorp that controls this world. You’ll sometimes come to a stop just as an advert for an identical Silva EV plays out on the huge curved screen overhead. The doubling effect can be slightly vertigo-inducing.

At these moments, I truly get what MindsEye is trying to do. You’re stuck in the ultimate company town, where oligarchs and other crooks run everything, and there’s no hope of escaping the ecosystem they’ve built. MindsEye gets this all across through a chance encounter, and in a way that’s both light of touch and clever. The rest of the game tends towards the heavy-handed and silly, but it’s nice to glimpse a few instances where everything clicks.

With its Spheres and omnipresent EVs, MindsEye looks and sounds like the future. It’s concerned with AI and tech bros and the insidious creep of a corporate dystopia. You play as an amnesiac former-soldier who must work out the precise damage that technology has done to his humanity, while shooting people and robots and drones. And alongside the campaign itself, MindsEye also has a suite of tools for making your own game or levels and publishing them for fellow players. All of this has come from a studio founded by Leslie Benzies, whose production credits include the likes of GTA 5.

What’s weird, then, is that MindsEye generally plays like the past. Put a finger to the air and the wind is blowing from somewhere around 2012. At heart, this is a roughly hewn cover shooter with an open world that you only really experience when you’re driving between missions. Its topical concerns mainly exist to justify double-crosses and car chases and shootouts, and to explain why you head into battle with a personal drone that can open doors for you and stun nearby enemies.

It can be an uncanny experience, drifting back through the years to a time when many third-person games still featured unskippable cut-scenes and cover that could be awkward to unstick yourself from. I should add that there are plenty of reports at the moment of crashes and technical glitches and characters turning up without their faces in place. Playing on a relatively old PC, aside from one crash and a few amusing bugs, I’ve been mostly fine. I’ve just been playing a game that feels equally elderly.

This is sometimes less of a criticism than it sounds. There is a definite pleasure to be had in simple run-and-gun missions where you shoot very similar looking people over and over again and pick a path between waypoints. The shooting often feels good, and while it’s a bit of a swizz to have to drive to and from each mission, the cars have a nice fishtaily looseness to them that can, at times, invoke the Valium-tinged glory of the Driver games. (The airborne craft are less fun because they have less character.)

And for a game that has thought a lot about the point at which AI takes over, the in-game AI around me wasn’t in danger of taking over anything. When I handed over control of my car to the game while tailing an enemy, having been told I should try not to be spotted, the game made sure our bumpers kissed at every intersection. The streets of this particular open world are filled with amusingly unskilled AI drivers. I’d frequently arrive at traffic lights to be greeted by a recent pile-up, so delighted by the off-screen collisions that had scattered road cones and Dumpsters across my path that I almost always stopped to investigate.

I even enjoyed the plot’s hokeyness, which features lines such as: “Your DNA has been altered since we last met!” Has it, though? Even so, I became increasingly aware that clever people had spent a good chunk of their working lives making this game. I don’t think they intended to cast me as what is in essence a Deliveroo bullet courier for an off-brand Elon Musk. Or to drop me into an open world that feels thin not because it lacks mission icons and fishing mini-games, but because it’s devoid of convincing human detail.

I suspect the problem may actually be a thematically resonant one: a reckless kind of ambition. When I dropped into the level editor I found a tool that’s astonishingly rich and complex, but which also requires a lot of time and effort if you want to make anything really special in it. This is for the mega-fans, surely, the point-one percent. It must have taken serious time to build, and to do all that alongside a campaign (one that tries, at least, to vary things now and then with stealth, trailing and sniper sections) is the kind of endeavour that requires a real megacorp behind it.

MindsEye is an oddity. For all its failings, I rarely disliked playing it, and yet it’s also difficult to sincerely recommend. Its ideas, its moment-to-moment action and narrative are so thinly conceived that it barely exists. And yet: I’m kind of happy that it does.

The subheading and captions on this article were amended on 13 June 2025 to correctly refer to the developer as Build a Rocket Boy and the publisher as IOI Partners, not “Build A Robot Boy” and “IO Interactive” as an earlier version said.

With launch problems fixed, first colour Kindle improves reading experience – but it is pricey and too small for comics

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Amazon’s firstKindlewith a colour screen had been a very long time coming and then suffered a rough landing last year, plagued with yellowing screen issues and shipping delays. But with those problems fixed, is a splash of colour the revolution the Kindle needs?

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Amazon isn’t the first to use a colour e-ink screen in an e-reader, but it thinks its upgrades meaningfully improve on the tech used by others such as Boox and Kobo over the past four years by offering greater contrast and speed.

Costing £270 (€300/$280) the Kindle Colorsoft towers above the £125 black and white Paperwhite on which it is based, and is more expensive than top colour e-ink rivals. Having phased out theluxury Oasis, the Colorsoft is Amazon’s top 7in model, sitting below the big 10.2inScribetablet.

Despite the new screen the Colorsoft doesn’t break with the basic Kindle formula. It looks and feels just like the “signature edition” of the Paperwhite with a smooth black plastic back and a matt touchscreen on the front. The power button next to the USB-C port on the bottom edge is the only physical button, meaning all controls, including page turns are touchscreen-only.

Black and white books look ever so slightly greyer than the Paperwhite. But otherwise the page turns are fast and text is crisp and easy to read. The front light has 24 levels of brightness with automatic control and it can change the tone of white based on the time of the day. It works very well.

The colour screen makes browsing your library or the Kindle store much easier, as book covers are in colour so they are more recognisable at a glance. In-book diagrams, maps or pictures are now in colour and a lot more intelligible. And you can highlight passages in various colours to mark them out for later. The whole screen flashes on page turns when colour images cover more than about one-third of the screen, similar to some of the original black and white e-readers, which you quickly get used to.

The matt screen is not as bold or vibrant as a phone or tablet, looking more like newspaper print than a glossy magazine or photo, but with the brightness turned up a bit and the vivid colour mode turned on, the Colorsoft does a decent job of presenting the art of graphic novels.

Reading the text in speech bubbles can be tricky because the 7in screen is just too small when displaying a full comic page. The Kindle has apanel view modethat displays a few panels at a time but it is a bit clumsy. I prefer pinching to zoom and pan on the Colorsoft’s touchscreen, which is fast and smooth enough to quickly read sections while still getting an appreciation of the whole page.

One of the big advantages of the Kindle is Amazon’s vast ebook store, which is equally large for comics and graphic novels. Amazon boughtgraphic novel specialist Comixology in 2014and has since integrated its library into the Kindle store, including existing purchases.

The Kindle can be loaded up with ePub or pdf files, allowing you to buy books elsewhere, though only documents sent viaAmazon’s Send to Kindle serviceshowed up in colour on the Colorsoft.

One thing that needs improving is library management on the Colorsoft, particularly if you have a lot of comics or books. The Kindle has filters for books and comic strips, but it didn’t recognise any of the graphic novels I own as comics, leaving them all bundled in a mess with regular books and hard to browse. The filters do work on the Kindle app on a tablet, however.

Screen:7in colour e-paper (B&W 300ppi; Colour 150ppi)

Dimensions:127.6 x 176.7 x 7.8mm

Water resistance:IPX8 (2m up to 60 minutes)

Battery life:28 hours of reading

The battery life is a bit more variable than other Kindles because of the colour screen, but it lasted longer in my testing than Amazon’s estimates. I saw about 45 hours of reading of regular black and white books with about 40% brightness, which reduces to about 32 hours when reading colour graphic novels with the brightness set to about 70%. Standby battery life was very good too, losing less than 1% per day with the power save option enabled.

The Colorsoft will receive software and security updates forat least four yearsafter it is last available new from Amazon. The company does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery but it should last in excess of 500 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity. Access torepair optionsvaries by country. It contains 28% recycled materials including cobalt, magnesium and plastic.

Amazon breaks down the Kindle’s environmental impact inits reportand offerstrade-in and recycling schemes.

The Kindle Colorsoft costs£269.99(€299.99/$279.99).

For comparison, the Kindle costs£79.99, the Kindle Paperwhite costs£124.99, the Kindle Scribe costs£379.99, the Kobo Libra Colour costs£199.99, the Boox Go Color 7 costs€279.99and theiPadcosts£329.

Despite its troubled start, the Colorsoft proves that colour e-ink can be great. It feels like it will eventually be the norm for e-readers, replacing black and white for books, not just comics and graphic novels.

Seeing your covers and in-book pictures in colour immediately lifts the experience without creating a big downside compared with the best monochrome models. Comics also look pretty good and are easier to read outdoors on the Kindle than a tablet. But the 7in screen just isn’t big enough to do justice to graphic novels; for that you would need a colour version of the 10.2in Scribe or an iPad with its much bolder and more saturated display.

At the same time the Colorsoft doesn’t feel like a luxury Kindle in the way other high-priced models such as the Oasis managed. Despite its meaty price tag, it feels utilitarian just like a Paperwhite.

That leaves the Colorsoft in a hinterland. The colour screen is great, but struggles to justify the extra cost at this size of screen suited most for regular textbooks. Buy it on a deal and you won’t be disappointed. And if you have one already that has a yellow tint at the bottom of the screen, contact Amazon’s support for a replacement.

Pros:colour and black and white, in-book images and covers look great, much better for comics, speedy pinch-and-zoom, water resistant, light, good battery life, auto front light, USB-C.

Cons:screen flashes on page turns for colour far more than black and white, no page-turn buttons, expensive, 7in screen too small for comics, colours not as vibrant as tablet, locked to Amazon’s ecosystem.

New iPad has laptop-level power, reliable battery life, great video call camera and a choice of screen sizes

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Apple’s iPad Air continues to be the premium tablet to beat, with the latest version featuring a chip upgrade to keep it ahead of the pack.

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The new iPad Air M3 costs from £599 (€699/$599/A$999) – the same as its predecessor – and comes in two sizes with either an 11in or 13in screen. It sits between the base-model £329 iPad A16 and the £999iPad Pro M4, splitting the difference in price and features.

Nothing has changed on the outside of the tablet. The M3 model is a straight replacement for theM2 model, featuring the same crisp screen, sleek aluminium design and Touch ID fingerprint scanner in the power button.

The Centre Stage webcam at the top of the screen makes video calls a breeze by automatically panning and scanning to keep you and your family in frame. Stereo speakers make watching TV and films great, while support for the £129 Apple Pencil Pro makes doodling or taking notes a joy.

Screen:11in or 13in Liquid Retina display (264ppi)

Processor:Apple M3 (9-core GPU)

Camera:12MP rear, 12MP centre stage

Connectivity:Wifi 6E (5G optional eSim-only), Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C, Touch ID, Smart Connecter

Dimensions:247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1mm or 280.6 x 214.9 x 6.1mm

The big change for the new Air is an upgrade to the Apple M3 chip, which was first seen in late 2023 in theMacBook Proand was successfully used in theMacBook Airuntil March when it was replaced with theM4 chip.

While the M3 isn’t Apple’s latest chip, it is still far more powerful than most will ever need in a tablet and much faster than the competition. It is about 10-20% quicker than the outgoing M2 model in tests and will make short work of games and even pro-level apps such asAffinity Photo,ProcreateorAdobe Lightroom.

Combined with a reliable battery life of nine to 10 hours, it can easily be used as a laptop replacement when equipped with accessories such as the new version of Apple’s excellent Magic Keyboard case, although that comes at great cost at £269. Cheaper third-party options from Logitech and others are available, however.

The iPad Air runs iPadOS 18.4, which includes a collection of multitasking tools, and can be plugged into an external monitor such as a laptop via the USB-C port. But the M3 chip also enables variousApple Intelligence features, which are not available on the standard iPad A16. These include several AI image editing and generation tools, writing and proofreading tools, ChatGPT integration into Siri and other bits.

Apple says the battery should last inexcess of 1,000 full charge cycleswith at least 80% of its original capacity, and can be replaced from £115. The tablet is generally repairable, with adamaged out-of-warranty repair costing from £429.

The tablet contains at least 30% recycled content, including aluminium, cobalt, copper, glass, gold, lithium, plastic, rare earth elements and tin. Apple breaks down the tablet’s environmental impact inits reportand offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.

The 11in iPad Air M3 costs from£599(€699/$599/A$999) and the 13in iPad Air M3 costs from£799(€949/$799/A$1,349).

For comparison, the iPad A16 costs from£329, theiPad Pro M4costs from£999and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE costs from£499. TheMacBook Air M4starts at£999.

The iPad Air M3 is a great premium tablet that makes for an excellent upgrade over the base model Apple tablet.

It is a highly capable machine with laptop-level power, long battery life, a quality screen and plenty of accessories to turn it into a drawing tablet, computer replacement or many other tools. The choice of sizes balances nicely between portability at the 11in and the big-screen utility of the 13in version.

But the M3 model isn’t an upgrade worth making overrecent iPad Air versions, and if all you do is watch TV or films on it, the standard iPad A16 does the job for much less. Meanwhile, the top-endiPad Pro M4beats the Air on all counts but costs an awful lot more.

So for those looking for a premium do-it-all tablet, the iPad Air M3 is hard to beat.

Pros:choice of sizes, laptop-level M3 performance, solid battery life, quality screen, USB-C, long software support life, large range of apps and accessories, good speakers, landscape Centre Stage camera, recycled aluminium.

Cons:expensive, no multiuser support, iPadOS still needs work as a laptop replacement, no kickstand without case, no Face ID, 60Hz screen.

Latest satellite-free Sky TV is ready for primetime with better picture, sound and much-improved service

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The latest version of Sky’s Glass smart TV is faster and looks better than its predecessor and offers a level of all-in-one convenience that makes the satellite-free pay TV one of the best on the market.

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Sky Glass gen 2 is a straight replacement for theoriginal model from 2021, which introduced Sky’s TV-over-broadband service that ditched the need for a satellite dish. The new TV comes in three sizes and you can buy the smallest 43in version for a one-off payment of £699 or £14 a month spread over four years, after which you own it.

It requires a Sky subscription for full use, costing from £15 a month for the Sky Essential TV pack. You wouldn’t buy a Glass without the intention of using Sky, but should you want to ditch the subscription at a later date it willfunction as a basic smart TVwith access to streaming apps such as BBC iPlayer, plusa basic aerialand multiple HDMI inputs.

From the front, the gen 2 model looks very similar to the original. It has the same monolithic design with an aluminium body, slim bezels, a soundbar hidden behind a colour-matched mesh at the bottom and voice control mics that respond to “Hello Sky”. Glass gen 2 is thinner and lighter than the outgoing model, though still heavy for a modern TV, weighing 14.7kg for the 43in version with the stand. The larger and heavier 55in and 65in models will require two people to safely manoeuvre them.

A redesigned stand makes it a lot easier to set up, even at the 65in size as tested, with the TV simply slotting on to two prongs for a very stable mount without screws or tools required. It needs a power cable and wifi or Ethernet for internet. A wall bracket can be bought separately.

The crisp 4K LCD screen is noticeably brighter than its predecessor, with deeper blacks and much-reduced halo or blooming effect, which is the unwanted glow around the edges of bright spots such as white text on a black background. The screen has automatic brightness adjustment, which made things look a little too dark and grey in all but the brightest of rooms. Turning it off improved things.

Sky has automatic picture optimisation modes that detect the content being watched, such as entertainment, sport and movies, plus manual vivid and extra vivid modes for those who like over-the-top colours. I found the entertainment mode made the picture too warm, with people looking a little orange, while sport was a bit grey for all but the brightest of match days.

I preferred the movie setting, which is much more balanced, but there is also a custom mode for those who want to fully personalise the picture.

The improved screen really comes to life with HDR films, shows and sport. The Premier League looks crisp and vibrant on Sky and TNT, while flicks such asFuriosa: A Mad Max Sagain Dolby Vision look particularly good. But the screen is not ideal for gaming with an Xbox or PS5, lacking the variable refresh rates of up to 120Hz that console gaming greatly benefits from.

A big advantage of the Glass over normal TVs is the integrated seven-speaker soundbar, which blows other TV speakers away for power and clarity. Vocals are particularly clear at almost any volume and with none of thelip-sync issuesthat can plague external soundbars. Without a separate subwoofer or rear speakers, it does an admirable job of producing big and full sound.

However, it struggles to produce really deep, booming bass, and while it has a nice wide sound, there isn’t much in the way of virtual surround effect. Both require a more complex system to achieve with more speakers.

The TV also has night sound, speech enhancement and bass boost modes, the first of which proved very useful to avoid waking the rest of the house for late-night movies, by dampening loud noises while keeping the dialogue intelligible.

Since the original Glass’s launch in 2021, the Sky OS service powering it has dramatically improved. It still has excellent search and an improved playlist function, with more than one user profile so everyone in the house can have their own lists and recommendations, including child profiles.

The playlist feature automatically keeps track of new episodes of shows and films you want to watch, regardless of which service they’re available from. It feeds into a recently added “continue watching” rail that helps you jump straight back into the content you were previously watching, which is all I needed about 75% of the time.

Watching, pausing and rewinding live TV works great. Recentreductions to the broadcast delayfor sports have made a meaningful difference, preventing the irritating scenario where a friend watching on satellite or aerial a little ahead of you texts to brag about a goal before you’ve managed to actually see it.

On-demand content from the Sky platform works really well, but a bigger improvement is in the third-party on-demand services such as BBC iPlayer, ITV X and Channel 4, on which you are reliant in place of recordings. It’s still not quite as fast and seamless as having local recordings, such as you might on Sky Q or other PVR, but most of the apps launch quicker, work better and will take you straight to the episode you want to watch from the playlist or search page.

It supports most of the major on-demand services, including My5, YouTube, Prime Video, Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+ and Discovery+, for all your content in one place.

The television isrepairable apart from the screen. It contains 22% recycled material, including aluminium, fabric, tin and plastic. The company will recycle its old products and ships the TV in plastic-free packaging.

Sky Glass gen 2 costs£699at 43in, £949 at 55in or £1,199 at 65in, with 24- or 48-month interest-free payment plans available for all models with a £20 upfront cost.

On 24-month contracts, Sky Essential TV costs from £15 a month, Sky Ultimate TV from £22 a month, and UHD + Dolby Atmos costs an additional £6, as does the ability to skip ads. Other add-ons include Sky Sports from £31 a month, TNT Sport from £31 a month, Sky Cinema from £13 a month and Sky Kids at £8 a month. Some discounts are available for certain combinations, while all the packages can be bought on a 31-day basis at different prices.

The first-generation Glass required work when it launched, to the television screen and the Sky streaming service powering it. The gen 2 model rights many of the wrongs of its predecessor.

It is brighter, faster, has higher contrast and handles highlights far better. It is also easily the best-sounding TV available. It competes fairly well in the mid-range market but you can certainly buy a better-looking screen for similar money without a soundbar; those looking for the absolute best picture should look elsewhere.

The Sky OS service has greatly improved to a level that rivals the best in the business. Live broadcast works just as it might over satellite or aerial. On-demand content from the Sky platform is as good as local recordings while the third-party apps such as BBC iPlayer and ITVX have levelled up to at least an acceptable standard. The playlist and search with support for all the major streaming services are the killer features, removing the burden of remembering which of the plethora of services hosts the content you want to watch.

Above all, it is the level of convenience offered by the Glass gen 2, of an all-in one solution with solid sound and a single remote for all your TV needs, that is the major appeal.

Pros:all-in-one streaming and pay TV device, great sound, no satellite/cable or aerial needed, good remote, excellent search and playlist functions, improved apps, improved picture and good HDR, custom picture modes, optional motion-sensing and voice control.

Cons:better picture available for less from competitors, some picture modes and automatic brightness control aren’t great, no fast refresh rate for game consoles, thick and heavy, no Chromecast support, some third-party catchup/on-demand services still aren’t great.