Plan your next trip … inside the world of the Xbox

Armchair tourists can travel the world with Rough Guides’ new book, which is dedicated to the real, and imaginary, destinations of Xbox games

If you’ve ever dreamed of a trip to Mexico, or maybe fantasised about what it would be like to travel back in time to Ancient Greece, then it turns out you don’t need to go any further than the on button of an Xbox. And thanks to the new Rough Guide to Xbox, it’s easy to find some of the most beautiful locations from the console’s range of games.

The book offers a detailed guide to these tourist hotspots, with in-game photography and a list of unmissable destinations, as well as things to watch out for at each one – for example, the Fortress of Dawn in Anthem, which Rough Guides describes as “forested and gorgeous”.

We may not, yet, be on the cusp of the digital tourism revolution that the book promises, but it does make a good point about the levels that game design has progressed to.

Many of the worlds created for these titles are incredibly detailed, and are often impressively faithful to their real-life counterparts (after the Notre Dame fire, reports suggested the Assassin’s Creed design team could help with the rebuild, after spending years re-creating a digital version in minute detail).

It’s also fun to see the usual overblown descriptions used by travel agents applied to video games – it’s clear Rough Guides enjoyed themselves while making this.

The Rough Guide to Xbox is priced at £20, and available from the Microsoft store. Several chapters are also published online at roughguides.com