LONELY MOUNTAINS: DOWNHILL

An unending cycle of happiness

First-person shooter in which you play a demonic cyborg, hellbent on the destruction of… ah, course it isn’t. See that title? You’re a cube-headed biker, speed-running through time trials amid four mountains’ worth of picturesque scenery. 1 Obstacles are everything you’d expect: ginormous rocks; unhelpfully placed trees; expanses of water; sharp curves bordering precipitous drops. Now for the part you’d never expect: it’s bloody fantastic.

By bloody, we mean bloody. You die often, being kicked back to the most recent checkpoint in the process, but the claret-spattered nature of each demise maintains light relief amid the relentless competitiveness. Ingeniously, it’s in dying that you often notice a shortcut to experiment with on your next run – gradually bringing your segment times down, unlocking new runs and faster bike parts, to bring your segment times down, to unlock… you get the picture. 2 Suddenly, brilliantly, exhaustingly, it’s 2am and you’ve no idea where the last four hours went. Yet you still can’t resist another 15 minutes customising your ride.

Three buttons. That’s the heart of the magic: brake ( p), accelerate ( i), and boost ( q). Masterful split-second management of these fundamentals in tandem with the left stick is the key to spinning round its courses in record time, and what courses they are: those obstacles may feel painful to thump into, but they’re beautiful to race past. The very occasional framerate stutter aside, LMD is as much of a joy to stare at as it is to play, and PS4’s biggest sporting surprise of 2019. A wheel good time. Ben Wilson

Autumnal, with glorious water features, Redmoor Peaks is the pick of the mountains. Every run unlocks a paint job, bike part, course, or challenge, with times mapped to leaderboards.