Get your kung fu fighting with Sifu, your zombie survival with Dying Light 2, and your hopes up with news that work on a new Grand Theft Auto is “well underway”.

Sublime Sifu will test your quick-twitch skills

Sifu embodies the fluidity of kung fu as it drops you into a story of revenge.

The latest game from indie developer Sloclap is like other recent titles – Returnal, Death Loop, and Hades – that challenge players to complete the game in a single run.

What’s different in this game, available for PS4, PS5, and Windows, is that Sifu is inspired by Chinese gangster films that put social breakdown at the centre of the story. The art and animation here are exquisite, bringing together a watercolour aesthetic with a satisfying flurry of kung fu moves as you finish off enemies.

After a world-establishing preface that gives you a taste of the power that you’ll employ later in the game, you become a young man out to avenge his father and solve the mystery of the criminal organization that has your city in a vice.

At its core, this is a fighting game, and to be successful you will need to be able to time your button presses to parry and dodge and counterattack at just the right moments. In Sifu, button mashing will get you nowhere.

As you progress through the game you’ll have opportunities to improve your odds by boosting your skills and abilities or improving how well you can wield the weapons you’ll find along the way. You’ll also explore and uncover clues, opening up more of the world and make it easier to progress in later play throughs.

When you are defeated, you’ll have the option to start over from the beginning, or you can choose to give up some of your life in order to keep going. This comes with a tradeoff. Older you is more powerful, but also more vulnerable.

This is a game intended for those who like the fighting genre, who like quick-twitch reflex mechanics, and who don’t mind a bit of frustration as you skill up.

If this is you, you’ll revel in the fluidity of the movement, you’ll love feeling like a kung fu master. At its best, Sifu is sublime.

Dying Light 2 gives us another apocalypse to overcome

Every zombie apocalypse has its own origin story. With the Dying Light series from Techland people become zombies when they are infected by a a virus of unknown origin. In the first game, the infection was limited to a single city, but Dying Light 2 picks up some 15 years after “the Fall,” when a lab-created virus variant escapes and spreads everywhere.

The story in this sequel, available on PS4, PS5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, is twisting and filled with rival factions and subverted loyalties. It’s all set in the fictional city of Villedor, an open world space in which you can scrounge supplies, pick up collectibles, and assist citizens by taking on side missions.

Anchoring the first-person experience are parkour mechanics that allow you to navigate the city but are also key to combat. And you’ll be fighting not just zombies, which are slower and less aggressive during the day, fast and deadly at night, but also various humans who, in their own way, are struggling to survive and thrive.

Your survival and success are dependent on managing your supplies, crafting and enhancing weapons and tools, and upgrading your combat and free running skills. You can also choose to hole up in a safe house at night, only emerging during the day, and you can play with up to three friends in co-op.

While the story you experience is somewhat dependent on the decisions you make during the game, what Villedor looks like, and who lives there, is highly dependent on which factions you support through your actions.

Dying Light 2 provides a vast and intriguing survival experience, and the parkour action is something else.

Rockstar Games confirms the next Grand Theft Auto game is in development

In a community update published last week, Rockstar Games revealed that “active development for the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well underway”.

In the meantime, Grand Theft Auto 5, which was released in 2013, is getting a remastered release for PS5 and Xbox Series X on March 15. The updates feature 4K visuals at up to 60 frames per second and HDR.