Paradise Killer review - dreamy open-world investigation meets cosmic horror

Paradise Killer's breezily cheerful trailer is only telling half the truth. It most certainly is a colourful, sometimes goofy investigatory adventure in the vein of Phoenix Wright, but it's also weird, a dizzyingly high-concept descent into the menace of the unknown, where balmy afternoons and beach-side cocktails co-exist with genuinely disquieting cosmic nightmares from beyond the stars.

Welcome, then, to Paradise, a breathlessly stylish, vaporwave wisp of a tropical island retreat, where palm trees forever sway in the afternoon breeze, where turquoise waters stretch from pristine beaches to an unblemished horizon, and where monstrous effigies of brutal gods spill out across every square inch, like entrails from a festering wound.

More specifically, welcome to Paradise 24, the latest attempt by the mysterious Syndicate to create a perfect living mechanism capable of sustaining the religious fervour required to resurrect the Old Gods it reveres. Like all 23 previous attempts, however, Paradise 24 is doomed, corrupted, and poised to be scrubbed from existence in order to begin the cycle anew.

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