Best of EGX 2016: What Should You Play This Weekend?

Best of EGX 2016: What Should You Play This Weekend?

If you're going to EGX this weekend, have we got the guide for you. I went on ahead, an advanced party if you will, and had a go at some of the more interesting games scattered around the place.

Here are the games you'll want to play, and if you're not going, here are a few games you'll want to keep your eyes on regardless. My usual disclaimer: I didn't play everything at EGX, I don't recommend stuff I haven't played, I might have missed the best game of the show, although I did my best not to.

On with the games.

Sonic Mania

Play it at: The Sega booth in hall 20.

I did a double take when I played this one, but for the first time in over a decade this is a Sonic game that actually feels fun and responsive to play. Half ot the demo here is a remake of Sonic The Hedgehog 2's Green Hill Zone, Act 1, albeit with a new boss tacked to the end. This is the level that worked best, and my old muscle memory kicked in, letting me fly through the level with ease.

The Studiopolis level didn't gel quite so well, with directors' chairs springing you into the air, tough floating platforms to jump into and two separate times when Sonic was turned into TV waves and fired through the air from satellite to satellite, finally arriving at a TV and punching free of it.

Sonic Mania doesn't make up for a decade of crappy games featuring the blue hedgehog, but it's a wicked 2D platformer and I loved playing it.

Dawn of War 3

Play it at: Sega booth again. Still hall 20.

The only cute blue thing in Dawn of War 3 is the pulse of plasma fire as it incinerates your enemies. Dawn of War 3 strikes a great balance between the all-out carnage of Dawn of War 1 and the smaller scale hero-focussed parts of Dawn of War 2. There are heroes here, and they're powerful enough to turn the tide of battle, but largely this demo consists of hordes of Space Marines shooting and punching the Eldar (another space faring race the Space Marines don't care for much) to paste.

It's a gory wonderful mess, with all the high fidelity touches of modern AAA development mixed with a distinctly old-school feel to the RTS mechanics. I won't touch more on it because we'll have a proper hands-on coming in a few days, but for those of you pining after the glory days of Dawn of War 1? You've nothing to fear.