Chaos

Mine didn't have one either, which I am not complaining too much about. The Thomas Crown Affair trailer was electric, and it was my first time seeing the Social Reckoning trailer. I have a lot of thoughts on this that I have not fully parsed out (my Letterboxd quick thoughts didn't really say much). One thought that I did not express there is that the first part of this felt very much inspired by the Insomniac games with the crime tracker, swinging around, and just dealing with random nuisances. I also have described this as a reminder of when the MCU stuff was still fun, and this might be the last one to give that feeling for awhile. I hope I'm wrong, but this hasn't been appointment viewing in a bit.

I listened to a lot of his music and have had a ton of videos sent to me by a friend that was also a huge fan, and it brought a smile to my face yesterday. There was such joy in much of what he wrote even if the song itself was devastating.

I have been determined to sit this cycle of Sports games out this year so I could focus on backlog and other interests. Of course, that means last weekend, I finally impulse bought the CFB/Madden bundle. I had played a trial on my Series S just to get a feel for the game at pre release but bought on PS5 per normal. I have not enjoyed the adjustments to the presnap controls as it makes you think too much, but last night, I think I finally found somewhat of a flow state and played a competent game of defensive football. impulse-boughtpre-snappre-release

https://variety.com/2026/music/global/glen-hansard-dead-once-best-song-oscar-winner-1236823238/ This one hurts. Been a huge fan of him as a singer and songwriter since seeing Once. I'd almost seen him live a couple of times and had to cancel because of life each time.

Microsoft also announced Xbox Prices are going up AGAIN. This time by $100 and $150, effective 8/1.

Timing-Wise, this was a pretty funny Prime-Day type sale from WalMart to go along with the Steam Machine stuff:

Xbox has been a series of bad business decisions dating back to the E3 announcement of the Xbox one with the Always On stuff and wanting to treat it more like a TV box than a gaming console. Gamepass was a cool idea, but having your first-party stuff go on day one versus being a niche service that lets you try games you wouldn't have otherwise was a long- term mistake. Then you look at the Activision purchase of it all. They had poor first party output over the One generation and really had no value proposition. That's why they pivoted to Gamepass as hard as they did because they were just not generating the revenue. Their one big Bethesda (Starfield) release being console exclusive on a console that had such low share was a misfire as well. Edit: Grammarly plugin freaks out over anything I write on here.

I saw a theory that they may write off Blizzard in a similar way that Sony did to Bungie.

I read somewhere that Id pulled all job listings as well. That will be a big one for those that have been gaming for as long as some of us have been.

I'm still feeling electric this morning about that performance. I honestly cannot recall a US one like it, and certainly not at the World Cup stage. What a moment for Gio Reyna after everything he's had to endure since Qatar ended.

I suck at racing games too, but that's why I like the Forza Horizon games. They're borderline cozy games because they don't require you to be an excellent racer. I'm having a blast with Forza Horzion 6. Probably the most hours I've logged gaming in a single week in some time.

Sony also bought Bungie, kind of after Destiny 2 was starting to come down from its peak if I remember correctly. It was also a game that I felt they couldn't figure out monetizing well outside of the annual expansion sales. It's a bummer because Bungie is one of the most important gaming studios ever just by virtue of being the studio that created Halo: Combat Evolved.

Yeah, this feels like the next logical step for Sony divesting itself of its Bungie investment. I'd gladly be wrong, but the writing seems to be on the wall there.

I keep seeing content referencing Uncharted 4 (I'll throw game list or game discussion videos on as background noise from time to time), so it motivated me to finally get to the end of Uncharted 2, which I powered through at the end of last night. I thought this was a game that I had started 3-4 years ago. When I went and looked through my trophies, I had gotten the first UC2 trophy in the PS4 collection back in 2016. Time is weird because I would not have guessed it would have taken me 10 years to get to the end of the game, but it's a weird one where every couple of years, I would just pick back up where I left off, knock out a few chapters, and then move on to some other interest or distraction. The game definitely shows its age as I powered through the end of it (I mean moreso mechanically because visually it's obvious). Without spoiling anything, I do like that one of the final gameplay sequences of the game is a nice Naughty Dog throwback to one of the Crash Bandicoot boulder levels. I'm now debating if I skip 3 to play 4 or if I should play 3 first.

It's an odd move for Nintendo too because there's been quite a few sales with the Switch 2 being well below MSRP. I only picked up my Switch 2 because it more or less only cost me $200.