Sports games have become increasingly associated with Ultimate Team packs, card collections, and chance-based microtransactions that blur the line between gaming and gambling. Thankfully, not every title has followed that trend. Plenty of excellent sports games still deliver complete experiences without asking players to roll the dice for athletes or spend money chasing rare rewards. This means that you buy the game, get the complete experience, and move on with your life. If you’re looking for a sports game that respects both your time and your wallet, these are some of the best options available. Steam Super Mega Baseball 4…

Derrick Baca and Liz DeSilva, founders of pop culture collectible brands Whatever! Makes You Happy and Otonagai, joined Den of Geek at San Diego Comic-Con to talk all things geek. A subbrand of Whatever! Company focusing on accessory collabs with licenses and artists, Whatever! Makes You Happy caters to Gen Z and millennial nostalgia through an offering of bags, charms, blind boxes, apparel, and other accessories. Their collections include IPs like Peanuts, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Care Bears, bringing the fun childhood colors and characters into adult fashion. Before launching Whatever! Makes You Happy, the married duo worked at Loungefly…

Hollywood friendships can be just as unpredictable as Hollywood romances. While celebrity couples often come and go, some famous friendships have quietly lasted for decades, surviving career changes, public scandals, and life in the spotlight. Whether they met as aspiring actors, co-stars, or even as children, these duos have remained loyal through every stage of their lives. Some regularly vacation together, others constantly support one another’s projects, and a few have become so inseparable that fans almost expect them to arrive together. Here are 15 celebrity best friends that have lasted longer than your marriage. ©Reddit Ben Affleck and Matt…

Usually, we stare at pictures because they contain something we like, something that calls to us in a meaningful way. This isn’t a set of those images; instead, we’ve gathered a lot of examples of images that make you do a double take. Is what you saw really what’s going on? Well, it is and it isn’t, and we’ll have to go on a case-by-case basis. There are cases where what you see is literally what is going on, and it’s just hard to process how ridiculous it looks. The other cases are a trick, where the situation isn’t what…

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey ended up being more than a simple adaptation in the eyes of audiences worldwide, at least if the box office is anything to go by. The movie combines a solemn tone, war-time tale, and horror moments into a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the source material, no matter what accent the actors used. After seeing it, we at least can’t stop thinking about it. It isn’t that we hadn’t heard, read or learned about the story of Odysseus before, but it was surprising how well the story translated to the screen. Here are what, for us, were the…

A comedy film is all about having a good time, some laughs, and little else. A good movie aims to do multiple things at once, even when having a very defined genre; this is the case with good comedy movies as well, where the laughs might take center stage, but the story and message behind them are of equal importance. Whatever their approach, the good comedies prove that their genre can be just as meaningful as any drama. If you’re looking for movies that deliver both laughs and something to chew on afterward, these are among the genre’s finest achievements.…

Nobody has it particularly easy on House of the Dragon. But even with a high bar for misery in place for a Game of Thrones spinoff, Lord Corlys Velaryon a.k.a. the Sea Snake had himself quite a hard time in the show’s third season. It all started in the premiere, in which Corlys led a fleet of his House’s ships against the Triarchy of Essos. In the process of “winning” that naval battle he lost his nephew and queen’s heir, saw his home of Driftmark (filled with priceless valuables from across the world, mind you) put to the torch, and…

This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 8. The problem with the House of the Dragon season 3 finale isn’t necessarily the finale itself, but everything that precedes it. While that may seem like an unfair way to judge a singular episode of television, most season finales – particularly season finales of Game of Thrones shows – can’t reasonably be described as standalone experiences. House of the Dragon season 3 episode 8 (the name of which we won’t find out until well after press time… just one of the series’ many microaggressions against me specifically)…

This review contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 3, “Emigrants” “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Well, Maggie and Renata lit up Lady Liberty’s lamp, and the poor, huddled masses certainly came, but of course they had beef because things are hardly ever easy—or what they seem—on The Walking Dead, and this week, Dead City’s third season delivered an episode that felt almost eerily hopeful until…

Perfection is a fantasy, something not really attainable by anything, no matter what perspective you give it. However, certain video games can come so close to that in our minds, that if it wasn’t for one little detail, they would be that fabled 10/10. If you can’t look past it, though, it isn’t a small detail. This is what Reddit users decided to discuss on a popular thread. Some complaints are about frustrating gameplay, while others stem from emotional moments that are simply too difficult to revisit. These are the games players love almost unconditionally, except for that one unforgettable…

There is something to be said about taking stock and counting your blessings at a year’s midpoint. For most that demarcation moment comes at the end of June, which is, after all, the year’s literal halfway mark. Yet we’ve always preferred taking stock in the dog days of summer, at least when it comes to movies. While the summer blockbuster season is technically still in its final waning hours, culturally the film calendar is already transitioning between the high heady days of summer box office season and the awards movie season that kicks off in earnest in less than a…

Some photos make perfect sense the moment you see them. Others leave your brain working overtime as you try to figure out what is actually happening. A strange angle, flawless timing, or an unlikely coincidence can transform an ordinary snapshot into something that looks completely impossible. The best part is that these images are not edited at all. They simply capture reality from the perfect perspective, forcing your eyes to tell a story that is not really there. Inspired by the endlessly entertaining posts on r/confusingperspective, these are twelve photos that only get weirder the longer you look at them.…

Robert Kirkman is not new to creating deeply layered mythologies set in foreign worlds. His pantheon of original characters and planets stretches across the outer reaches of new galaxies and timelines, giving readers a glimpse into cosmic, blood-soaked realities. He builds macrocosms with a few novel ideas and a pen.  This is extremely apparent in the pages of his newest series, Terminal. The comic’s first issue follows Marilyn Howe as she desperately searches for her missing sister, Alessandra, and discovers a secret war between two opposing factions of metahumans that each blur the line between good and evil. Co-written with…

Some television shows entertain audiences for a few years before fading away. Others leave a lasting mark that extends far beyond ratings, changing the way people think, talk, dress, and even imagine the future. These are the series that inspired careers, created lifelong communities, introduced new technology, or completely reshaped popular culture. Their influence reached well beyond the television screen, leaving an impact that can still be seen decades later. Whether through groundbreaking storytelling or unforgettable personalities, these landmark shows helped define entire generations. Here are fifteen TV series whose legacy continues to shape the world long after their original…

In “Human Best Friend,” the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ortegas and Scotty go on a wacky adventure to figure out what happened during an inebriated evening on a pleasure planet. The stakes are low, the gags are broad, and it all wraps up with XO Una Chin-Riley singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in Klingon. This after the Event Horizon-inspired horror of last week’s episode “The Griffin Incident,” which, in turn, followed the heady sci-fi of the season 4 premiere “Valles Marineris.” For Una’s actor Rebecca Romijn, weaving through tones is a sign of the show…

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Find out how you can subscribe to get the full physical copy right here! It’s been three years since Blue Eye Samurai debuted on Netflix, and not only is the wait finally almost over, but the second season will be well worth the time taken to develop its return. Created by Amber Noizumi and Michael Green, the award-winning animated series follows a vengeful samurai named Mizu (Maya Erskine) during Japan’s Edo period. Blue Eye Samurai season 2 will up the ante as the narrative scope goes global, all while the action…

Felicia Day is the geeky mastermind behind the massively influential six-season web series The Guild. Now, nearly 20 years after that project’s 2007 debut, she is returning with a celebratory reunion movie.  The crowdfunding campaign for The Guild Reunion Movie: Ren Faire’d launched July 15 on Kickstarter and has raised more than $4 million since, becoming the quickest movie to raise $1 million in the platform’s history (it reached the benchmark in three hours, surpassing Veronica Mars’ four hours). The campaign’s success speaks to Day’s ability to carve her own path in the industry, generating a loyal audience and establishing…

The best movie jokes are not always the loudest ones. Some slip by so quickly that audiences miss them for years, while others only make sense after a rewatch or once you are old enough to understand the reference. Clever background details, subtle wordplay, and blink and you’ll miss it moments often become fan favorites long after a film’s release. Many of these jokes were hidden in plain sight, waiting for viewers to catch them years later. These are fifteen movie jokes that flew over most people’s heads the first time they watched them. IMDb Austin Powers: International Man of…

This article contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 season 2 episode 8. After months of teasing, the penultimate episode of X-Men ’97‘s second season, “Dead Man’s Hand,” finally reunites Remy Lebeau with his beloved Rogue and their fellow X-Men… but not in the way fans would have hoped. As much as Remy appears to retain his pure heart and endless charm behind his new violet facade, the episode finds him pulling sleights of hand and double-crosses that reveal him to be in the thrall of season’s big bad, Apocalypse. When Gambit reveals his true plan and turns on Rogue, modern viewers…

This review contains spoilers for The Shards episodes 1 and 2 “This story is fictional. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” We see that fine print a lot, but it’s front and center as we dive into FX’s The Shards, and for good reason: this is a Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis joint. Murphy, who has been criticized in the past for sensationalizing real-life tragedies and taking creative liberties with the stories of those involved in them, has certainly found a lot of success despite those accusations. American Crime Story, Netflix’s Monster anthology series, and…