This past weekend saw a gauntlet of new and yet-to-be released games take over Birmingham’s NEC as part of EGX – the UK’s biggest gaming expo. It’s here where players and developers all over the country come together to share in their passion of all things interactive entertainment, and 2018 saw the space filled to the brim with titles people were aching to try, and get a taste for. If you couldn’t make it for any reason, fear not, because Den of Geek was in attendance to bring you the highlights. Here’s all of the top games we laid our hands on.

Starlink: Battle For Atlas

Release date: October 16th, 2018 | Ubisoft Toronto | Switch, Xbox One, PS4

No one’s denying that the ‘toys-to-life’ craze made popular by Skylanders is now enjoying a rest period, but that hasn’t stopped Ubisoft Toronto from translating the format to a ship-based space battler. The best part is that you won’t need to buy the physical parts to unlock new guns and pilots in-game if you don’t want to, but the EGX demo definitely sold us on the concept.

Playing on the Nintendo Switch we made the most of Star Fox and his iconic Arwing being playable. Beginning in space, we launched down into the planet’s atmosphere to decimate a spider-like alien creature causing havoc. Manoeuvring the craft felt good and dodging attacks via boosting even more so. The real hook, however, comes from changing weapons by attaching and detaching toy pieces on your controller in real life. Doing so goes a long way to add strategy, keeping dogfights heated and intense. Releasing this October, Starlink: Battle For Atlas isn’t one to miss.

Beacon

Release date: TBD | Monothetic | PC

The roguelike genre is packed with releases vying for your attention these days. Monothetic, the developer behind Beacon knows this, implementing a flurry of mechanical quirks and gorgeous visuals to help the game better stand out – it’s working. This isometric top-down action game casts you as a mercenary in control of clone soldiers. All are fully upgradeable with the skills and abilities acquired by the previous clone every time a run comes to an end.

This low-poly sci-fi world immediately invites you in, making scouring each procedurally generated map for mini objectives and killing the local species one hell of a riot. Beacon doesn’t have an official release date yet, but those who can’t wait to check it out can get a head start with the game’s “First Access” version, downloadable from the developer’s site.

We Were Here Together

Release date: 2019 | Total Mayhem Games | PC

Described to us by the developer as “Pictionary meets an escape room”, We Were Here Together is the third in a series of indie puzzle games that’s core thrust is forcing players to communicate with one another. In our demo, two of us were placed in opposite locations of an Alaskan castle, with the first major puzzle tasking us to get one person across a ravine by having the other place a series of symbols in the correct order. Simple? Maybe, but it proved trickier than you might think.

It quickly became apparent that most puzzles in We Were Here Together will take up a good chunk of time, reinforcing the original escape room concept of taking a slow and methodical approach. The wider narrative at hand sees an unknown presence berating you on the radios you and your partner are using to communicate, and only by reuniting once more will you solve the riddle of who or what he is.

Blood And Truth

Release date: TBD | SIE London Studio | PSVR

We were first teased at what a virtual reality take on the London gangster film would look like back when the PlayStation VR Worlds compilation game released alongside the Sony headset. London Studio has been hard at work developing Blood And Truth – a continuation of London Heist – ever since, and the EGX demo we played proves that the wait has been worth it. Emphasising precise VR aiming and slick action, it’s hard not to feel like you’re James Bond when playing.

The demo starts with you exploring a construction site in search of your kidnapped dear old mum. The many brute-faced baddies standing in your way are so satisfying to aim at and shoot using the PlayStation move wands, it doesn’t matter if the action boils down to an elaborate shooting gallery. The sequence ends with the two of you reuniting, picking her handcuffs while trying not to touch the electrified fence in between. Hopefully we won’t have to wait long to see what happens next.

Man Of Medan

Release date: 2019 | Supermassive Games | PC, Xbox One, PS4

The first entry into Supermassive’s Dark Pictures Anthology series of cinematic adventures, Man Of Medan is an immediate tone-setter. The developer cut its teeth with horror hit Until Dawn back in 2015, and that same flair for incredible graphical fidelity and difficult decision-making within the narrative has successfully stayed intact. The hands-on demo we played was brief, but gave us more than enough chills to keep us on our toes.

Man Of Medan will see you control multiple protagonists but here we took a hold of Fliss, an unfortunate teen aboard the eponymous Medan ship just as things started to get ghostly. The choice system present is primarily binary, with actions influenced by either your heart or head. Layer this on top of the exploration, puzzle-solving and QTE set pieces you’d expect from Supermassive, and Man Of Medan poses the potential to be a fun horror romp one could run through in a weekend.

Override: Mech City Brawl

Release date: December 4th, 2018 | The Balance Inc. | PC, Xbox One, PS4

You know that bit at the end of every Power Rangers episode when they call upon their giant robots? Override: Mech City Brawl is essentially this scenario brought to life and translated into a full 3D fighting game. Featuring more playable mech characters than you could throw a skyscraper at, all can be customised to suit specific playstyles. Left/right punch and left/right kick are mapped to the shoulder buttons and so make timing just as important as positioning.

The arenas you do battle in aren’t so large that reaching your opponent is made impossible. But if they do prove too elusive, each real-world location is littered with a nice mix of ranged weapons that you can use to unleash damage. The mobility of characters differs depending on their size, meaning players have the choice of being slow and up-close while being heavy or nimble and able to dish out a flurry of hits. Regardless of your preference, Override: Mech City Brawl came over as pure heartfelt fun.

Team Sonic Racing

Release date: December 2018 | Sumo Digital | Steam

Sonic and friends have tried many times to take on the acclaimed Mario Kart series, but Team Sonic Racing is the first game to make us think they could actually do it. Releasing this December, you can still drift, boost, and deploy power-ups as any one of your favourite characters as you once did, only now you’re able to share items across karts thanks to a totally new team-based system. Not since Double Dash has a kart racer had cooperation emphasised to this degree.

Winning a race is now no longer just about how well you’re doing as a single racer, but your team of three others too. Items they collect on the track could make or break your chances of coming first. Work together well enough and you’ll gain points and build an ‘ultimate’ meter that will see all of you get a much-appreciated boost to help you over the finish line. The tracks are colourful, the steering feels good; for those without a Switch, Team Sonic Racing will certainly scratch that karting itch.

“It’s really interesting working with someone who’s got an alien up their arse,” Riz Ahmed recalls, chatting to Den Of Geek at a snazzy London hotel, ahead of the release of Sony’s Venom movie. Ahmed is softly spoken and polite and his use of a rude word, even at a press event dedicated to a film with slathering alien symbiotes and plentiful violence, comes as a bit of a shock.

Wearing a natty jumper and stirring some soymilk into his tea, Ahmed – whose manifold pastimes include acting, rapping, writing and political activism – is a very wholesome conversation partner. Swear words sound alien coming from his mouth, he answers questions carefully and thoughtfully, and he’s definitely not the first person you’d think of when trying to picture an evil scientist.

Despite this, Ahmed’s character in Venom is a billionaire industrialist villain named Carlton Drake. He looks like a nasty piece of work in the trailers, particularly when Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock accuses him of conducting experiments that kill people, but Ahmed himself has a different take.

“I don’t see him as a villain”, he insists. “I see him as a really focused, sincere, egotistical guy with a messianic complex – a justified one.”

“He’s actually got good intentions of saving humanity, but he’s going about it in slightly ruthless ways and narcissistic ways. He wants to ensure a better tomorrow for all of us, like all these guys in Silicon Valley do. He has the same hubris [as real life tech geniuses], and I just thought it played to our contemporary reality while still honouring the legacy of the comic books.”

Recapping comic book history, Ahmed explains that “the Carlton Drake in the comics was heading up this secret club of millionaires, who would pay him to safeguard a future for themselves, in a kind of radioactive-proof bunker, after inevitable nuclear war destroyed civilisation. Remember these comics were around the time of the Cold War.”

But the world has changed a lot since David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane introduced Carlton Drake in 1988’s The Amazing Spider-Man #298. And because of this, the 2018 Venom movie – which has no less than six credited writers on IMDb, and Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer in the director’s chair – has updated the character accordingly.

“Contemporary billionaires are trying to find an escape on other planets”, Ahmed explains. “And they’re not outrunning nuclear war, they’re outrunning ecological collapse.”

It’s this thoroughly modern mission that leads Ahmed’s version of Drake to send “one of his exploratory shuttles into outer space to look for a home, for humans to live on outside Earth.” This shuttle, as Ahmed teasingly tells us, “inadvertently comes across a meteor that’s full of symbiotes. And actually these symbiotes may still hold the key to our survival in outer space, given that they can survive there.”

And so, Drake’s shuttle nabs the slimy symbiotes and brings them to Earth. The aforementioned lethal experiments begin taking place, at the labs of Carlton Drake’s Life Foundation, which soon catches the eye of Hardy’s prying journalist Eddie. 

In real life, Hardy and Ahmed go way back. In fact, the former starred in a music video for the latter a whopping eleven years ago. Working with Hardy again is something that drew Ahmed into the Venom movie, and it sounds like he wasn’t disappointed with the experience. 

“It’s always great work with Tom,” Ahmed says, “because he really cares about it. He really wants to make it as good as possible. He cares about every aspect of it. And he rolls his sleeves up and gets involved. That’s why he’s cool to be around. There’s a lot going on on sets like that, and you often need these different people that are helping to pull us – this massive thing – in the right direction.”

Ahead of the movie’s release, Ahmed wouldn’t be drawn into discussion on a couple things: he didn’t want to chat about whether Carlton Drake merges with a symbiote and becomes the Riot villain from the comics; he didn’t want to talk about whether he shares any scenes with Hardy in his fully-fledged Venom form; he didn’t want to talk about whether Sony had signed him on for multiple films; and he went rather quiet when Tom Holland and the Marvel Cinematic Universe came up in the conversation.

He’s happier to talk about tone. Once Hardy’s Eddie has coupled up with the Venom symbiote, Ahmed believes “it’s almost more like a werewolf movie than a superhero movie. I think that’s an interesting way to look at it. Think about it: he’s possessed by an external force, stronger than himself, that threatens to take over. It’s kind of a Jekyll and Hyde vibe.”

To create the scenes when the Venom symbiote is talking inside Eddie’s head, Hardy “recorded his own voice” to be played “in his own earplugs.” Nobody else on set could hear the Venom voice, leaving Hardy’s fellow actors to marvel at his work.

“It’s a very physical performance, as well, as you’ve seen. It’s just great to watch, man, and it’s great to act against as well, because really unpredictability is the key. So you want to feel surprised, and it’s always surprising working in that environment.”

As our time together nears its end, we ask Ahmed if he’s seen the finished film yet. “I have, man, and I loved it”, he enthuses. “I think it walks a fantastic tone between horror and comedy, and that’s kind of a tricky thing to nail.” 

The internet has taken a keen interest in the film already with many Tweeters saying the trailers feel more like a ’90s throwback than a traditional modern superhero movie. 

“It’s interesting to hear you say that,” Ahmed ponders. “I think that’s actually a really fair description. I think it does have a slightly inbetweeny retro feel, but I don’t think that necessarily makes itself feel dated in anyway… I think it’s actually something that makes us question why we’ve got such narrow boxes now around the films that we watch. This is something that sits between those stiff categories.”

Bucking the norms of comic book movies in one major way, Venom is apparently flirting with a 15 rating from the British Board Of Film Classification. Only Fox’s Deadpool and Logan movies have gone that hard in recent years, and Ahmed believes this is the right level for Venom. He promises that the film is “a bit more dark than some of those straight-up PG movies.”

“That’s something that’s exciting,” Ahmed says, and it’s hard to disagree with this enthusiastic statement from a softly spoken bloke in a nice jumper. As for whether Carlton Drake is really a villain, though, we’ll just have to wait and watch to see if we agree on that…

“It’s really interesting working with someone who’s got an alien up their arse,” Riz Ahmed recalls, chatting to Den Of Geek at a snazzy London hotel, ahead of the release of Sony’s Venom movie. Ahmed is softly spoken and polite and his use of a rude word, even at a press event dedicated to a film with slathering alien symbiotes and plentiful violence, comes as a bit of a shock.

Wearing a natty jumper and stirring some soymilk into his tea, Ahmed – whose manifold pastimes include acting, rapping, writing and political activism – is a very wholesome conversation partner. Swear words sound alien coming from his mouth, he answers questions carefully and thoughtfully, and he’s definitely not the first person you’d think of when trying to picture an evil scientist.

Despite this, Ahmed’s character in Venom is a billionaire industrialist villain named Carlton Drake. He looks like a nasty piece of work in the trailers, particularly when Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock accuses him of conducting experiments that kill people, but Ahmed himself has a different take.

“I don’t see him as a villain”, he insists. “I see him as a really focused, sincere, egotistical guy with a messianic complex – a justified one.”

“He’s actually got good intentions of saving humanity, but he’s going about it in slightly ruthless ways and narcissistic ways. He wants to ensure a better tomorrow for all of us, like all these guys in Silicon Valley do. He has the same hubris [as real life tech geniuses], and I just thought it played to our contemporary reality while still honouring the legacy of the comic books.”

Recapping comic book history, Ahmed explains that “the Carlton Drake in the comics was heading up this secret club of millionaires, who would pay him to safeguard a future for themselves, in a kind of radioactive-proof bunker, after inevitable nuclear war destroyed civilisation. Remember these comics were around the time of the Cold War.”

But the world has changed a lot since David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane introduced Carlton Drake in 1988’s The Amazing Spider-Man #298. And because of this, the 2018 Venom movie – which has no less than six credited writers on IMDb, and Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer in the director’s chair – has updated the character accordingly.

“Contemporary billionaires are trying to find an escape on other planets”, Ahmed explains. “And they’re not outrunning nuclear war, they’re outrunning ecological collapse.”

It’s this thoroughly modern mission that leads Ahmed’s version of Drake to send “one of his exploratory shuttles into outer space to look for a home, for humans to live on outside Earth.” This shuttle, as Ahmed teasingly tells us, “inadvertently comes across a meteor that’s full of symbiotes. And actually these symbiotes may still hold the key to our survival in outer space, given that they can survive there.”

And so, Drake’s shuttle nabs the slimy symbiotes and brings them to Earth. The aforementioned lethal experiments begin taking place, at the labs of Carlton Drake’s Life Foundation, which soon catches the eye of Hardy’s prying journalist Eddie. 

In real life, Hardy and Ahmed go way back. In fact, the former starred in a music video for the latter a whopping eleven years ago. Working with Hardy again is something that drew Ahmed into the Venom movie, and it sounds like he wasn’t disappointed with the experience. 

“It’s always great work with Tom,” Ahmed says, “because he really cares about it. He really wants to make it as good as possible. He cares about every aspect of it. And he rolls his sleeves up and gets involved. That’s why he’s cool to be around. There’s a lot going on on sets like that, and you often need these different people that are helping to pull us – this massive thing – in the right direction.”

Ahead of the movie’s release, Ahmed wouldn’t be drawn into discussion on a couple things: he didn’t want to chat about whether Carlton Drake merges with a symbiote and becomes the Riot villain from the comics; he didn’t want to talk about whether he shares any scenes with Hardy in his fully-fledged Venom form; he didn’t want to talk about whether Sony had signed him on for multiple films; and he went rather quiet when Tom Holland and the Marvel Cinematic Universe came up in the conversation.

He’s happier to talk about tone. Once Hardy’s Eddie has coupled up with the Venom symbiote, Ahmed believes “it’s almost more like a werewolf movie than a superhero movie. I think that’s an interesting way to look at it. Think about it: he’s possessed by an external force, stronger than himself, that threatens to take over. It’s kind of a Jekyll and Hyde vibe.”

To create the scenes when the Venom symbiote is talking inside Eddie’s head, Hardy “recorded his own voice” to be played “in his own earplugs.” Nobody else on set could hear the Venom voice, leaving Hardy’s fellow actors to marvel at his work.

“It’s a very physical performance, as well, as you’ve seen. It’s just great to watch, man, and it’s great to act against as well, because really unpredictability is the key. So you want to feel surprised, and it’s always surprising working in that environment.”

As our time together nears its end, we ask Ahmed if he’s seen the finished film yet. “I have, man, and I loved it”, he enthuses. “I think it walks a fantastic tone between horror and comedy, and that’s kind of a tricky thing to nail.” 

The internet has taken a keen interest in the film already with many Tweeters saying the trailers feel more like a ’90s throwback than a traditional modern superhero movie. 

“It’s interesting to hear you say that,” Ahmed ponders. “I think that’s actually a really fair description. I think it does have a slightly inbetweeny retro feel, but I don’t think that necessarily makes itself feel dated in anyway… I think it’s actually something that makes us question why we’ve got such narrow boxes now around the films that we watch. This is something that sits between those stiff categories.”

Bucking the norms of comic book movies in one major way, Venom is apparently flirting with a 15 rating from the British Board Of Film Classification. Only Fox’s Deadpool and Logan movies have gone that hard in recent years, and Ahmed believes this is the right level for Venom. He promises that the film is “a bit more dark than some of those straight-up PG movies.”

“That’s something that’s exciting,” Ahmed says, and it’s hard to disagree with this enthusiastic statement from a softly spoken bloke in a nice jumper. As for whether Carlton Drake is really a villain, though, we’ll just have to wait and watch to see if we agree on that…

And just like that, the Kingsman films have become one of cinema’s unlikeliest big tent franchises.

Exhibitor Relations reported today that not only will there be a Kingsman 3 but that it will be arriving as soon as next year. The targeted release date is November 8, 2019 to be exact. Where have we heard that release date before? Oh right! That was the release date for James Bond 25 before it was bumped to 2020. Well it looks like one spy’s loss is another spy’s gain.

Matthew Vaughn has reportedly been working on a script for Kingsman 3 with Jane Goldman for some time now. Filming would have to begin very soon for the movie to arrive by November 8 but at least the script is likely squared away. Previous titles in the series have included 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle – Kingsman 3 does not yet have a subtitle but is all but assured to get one. 

The Kingsman films come from the comic book series, The Secret Service, written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Kingsman: The Secret Service follows London teen Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Edgerton) as he’s recruited into a shadowy society of spies. Its 2017 sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, continued the adventures of Eggsy, his mentor Harry Hart (Colin Firth), and moved the action to the U.S. to introduce “The Statesman.” 

It was previously reported that Matthew Vaughn was developing Kick-Ass and Kingsman spinoffs as part of a larger Mark Millar-verse. There’s no word on whether those plans have been put on hold but Kingsman 3 will be a direct continuation of the series and not a prequel or spinoff.

Last year series star Edgerton mentioned that Vaughn would only return to the series when he had a really good idea.

“Matthew is a very much ‘don’t count the chickens before they’ve hatched kind of guy’”, Egerton said. “but he also has a real sense of Kingsman being his baby and he won’t jeopardise it with a crap idea. So it depends what occurs, and whether it feels right to him, but I don’t think for a second that either he or myself, the lovely people at Fox and whoever else is interested in Kingsman, wouldn’t completely love it if this is a continuing series.”

Looks like Vaughn has found an idea he’s happy with.

Telltale Games has reportedly suffered massive layoffs, suggesting that the studio might be shutting down. 

Telltale employees took to Twitter and other social media sites over the weekend to state that they had lost their jobs. As the numbers grew, it became clear that these were not isolated incidents. However, the extent of the layoffs was not yet known. 

Now, though, Gamasutra and other sites are reporting that sources close to the situation have announced that Telltale Games has laid off an astonishing 225 employees. That means that a small crew of 25 remains on staff. The identity and job titles of those employees are unknown at this time. 

Here’s what we do know: these layoffs mean that Telltale Games will not release The Wolf Among Us 2, Stranger Things, or any other games that they had previously announced they are working on. This also presumably means that they will not be moving away from their infamous in-house engine as has been previously suggested. Our understanding at this time is that Telltale Games’ skeleton staff is going to finish developing The Walking Dead‘s final season. Beyond that, there seems to be very little chance that the studio will remain open. 

This is the latest in a long line of unfortunate incidents for the studio. Last year, they laid off 25 percent of their staff. They were then sued by co-founder Kevin Bruner (who has taken to his blog to share his sadness over the news that so many talented people have lost their jobs). Things seemed to have been looking up for the studio when they revealed several high-profile new projects and plans for the future, but it seems like the true story of what was going on was far direr than anyone could have suspected. 

We wish every Telltale employee that lost their job today the best of luck moving forward, and we will continue to update you on this situation as more information becomes available. 

An animated Diablo series may soon be coming to Netflix. 

Andrew Cosby, founder of Boom! Studios, has tweeted that he’s in final talks with Netflix regarding an animated adaption of the Diablo series. The original tweet has since been deleted, but it stated that Cosby hopes “to the High Heavens” that it “all works out,” which would tend to suggest that the deal is not final at this time. 

However, that initial tweet was enough to inspire people to do some digging into the situation. It seems that Cosby has previously spoken about his interest in doing a Diablo series and noted that if he were to do one, it would “DEFINITELY be Rated R.” While there’s no word at this time regarding whether or not he has stuck by his guns and is still insisting that an adaptation of Diablo be R-Rated, we don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to suggest that Netflix would be into that. 

Why? Well, the reported success of the adult Castlevania animated series would seem to suggest that Netflix might be open to the idea of pursuing other, similar projects. So far as that goes, the world of Diablo would certainly translate well to an R-Rated series. 

Blizzard isn’t saying anything about these rumors at the moment, but previous statements from the company suggest that this adaptation may indeed be in the works. Blizzard community manager Brandy Camel previously suggested that the studio is working on several projects related to the Diablo franchise. At the time, it was widely speculated that they were referring to multiple games (like a Diablo II remake). However, it makes a lot of sense that one of those projects is actually an animated series. 

As for Cosby, he seems like the perfect guy to run such an adaptation. He’s clearly passionate about the Diablo franchise, has worked on a variety of “adult-oriented” properties, and has even worked on projects related to video games in the past. All in all, we’re excited by the potential of this project and look forward to bringing you more information on this project as it becomes available. 

First off, this is nothing about baby poo. The “nappy” in Haifaa al-Mansour’s soapy new-start rom-com is the one Sanaa Lathan’s character sees on her own head – an untameable afro that represents everything wrong with her old life. There’s more to it than that of course, but not a lot. 

Lathan is Venus Johnston, a successful Atlanta ad executive, a rich socialite and (thanks to her monster of a mother), an obsessive control freak who measures the orderliness of her life by the straightness of her perfect hair. When her dullard of a doctor boy friend (Britain’s Ricky Whittle, taking two steps back after American Gods) gives her a Chihuahua instead of an engagement ring, she breaks things off, gets drunk, and shaves her head. 

From here on out, things get a bit Eat Pray Love – with Venus going on a personal journey of rediscovery that sees quitting her job, dropping her OCD habits and falling in love with a humble, scruffy hairdresser (She’s Gotta Have It’s Lyriq Bent). New hair, new woman and some very, very old rom-com clichés.  

The hair is a metaphor, sure, but only just – as it’s pretty much the only thing anyone in the film talks about. The script handles its important messages about female empowerment and African American identity in the clumsiest way possible – with Bent’s character literally introducing himself to one woman with the line, “Your hair told me everything I needed to know”, which would have been a much better title for the film. 

Besides the script and the story and the clichés and most of the acting, there’s nothing particularly wrong with Nappily Ever After. It’s a perfectly okay rom-com that feels like it was made to be mildly smiled at, casually enjoyed and then instantly forgotten. What makes it so surprising is that it comes from director Haifaa al-Mansour. 

Saudi Arabia’s first female director, al-Mansour got noticed in the West for 2012’s Wadjda – a confident, urgent little social drama that made a loud enough noise at film festivals and award shows around the world to get important equality issues heard in her home country. Following it up last year with the patchy (but still interesting) Mary Shelley, al-Mansour seems to have made a pretty dramatic U-turn with Nappily Ever After. 

In her defence, there are elements of the script that must have appealed to a director so clearly interested in modern gender politics. The moment when Venus shaves her head would have worked brilliantly as a standalone short film – Lathan’s wonderful performance in front of the mirror (shaving her head for real), silently going from desperation and sadness to joy and liberation, says so much more that the rest of the film even tries to say. 

In a different pair of hands, Nappily Ever After might have even felt as vital for African American women as Wadjda did for Saudi girls – but this definitely isn’t the empowering, feminist rom-com that Hollywood needs at the moment. 

Just as Venus quickly comes to realise about her own hair, at the end of the day, it’s only a bit of fluff.