So not only are we somehow halfway through the year, I'm another year older. Time really flies, doesn't it? I went into 2026 dreading the end of June because I have some Life Stuff that I knew would be coming up around now, but due to the fact I actually prepared for it and didn't just leave it 'til the last minute, I feel pretty good about where I'm at. I still need to figure a lot of stuff out and I'm not where I want to be in, well, many regards, but I'm making progress and that feels good. I still have my bad days but I'm generally able to handle them, and a large part of that is because I feel like I've finally got a therapist I can really connect with. I'm rambling a bit, I can tell, but I wanted to say that things are going alright for me which has been nice because I genuinely thought it was going to be a whole lot worse.
Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest extravaganza was how the month of June started for me and, as is kind of my tradition at this point, I watched it alongside some friends on a Discord call. I always like this time of year because, honestly, I don't mind a bit of marketing. I know it's just glorified advertisements for products that may never even come out, but it's fun to get wrapped up in some collective excitement for the return of, like, Spyro or whatever. The video game industry is in a dire state, for both consumers and the workers themselves, but I think a bit of time spent on the fruits of all that labor is worthwhile. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like these showcases even if I can see them for the shameless advertisements that they are. It makes every June (and December, with The Game Awards) sort of special, in some small way.
This was another month of watching things, though the stuff I watched
was shorter. I saw several movies recently, from
Obsession and
The
Furious to other films that required a bit of homework. You see, I
decided to watch the two-hours-or-so of
Backrooms shorts that Kane
Parsons had made before I saw the movie, so I watched those and then,
well, saw the movie. The movie was alright, though I honestly think the
YouTube stuff was a more compelling watch. I also finally ran through
The Amazing Digital Circus, a show which I'd been hearing about for
years but only decided to watch now. I loved it.
I wrote a little about the ending and why it resonated with me, but in short just know that
that series is special and absolutely worth your time.
As for video games I played, I played some Ace Combat. A new Ace Combat was announced for later this year so I took a friend's advice and started
Ace Combat 4, as that game, alongside
5 and
0, are apparently The Ones To Play. I'm not terribly deep into it but it's fun and the storytelling, in
4 at least, is better than I anticipated. I intend to keep playing these over the next few months so I imagine I'll have more to say about them later, but right now it's just been fun to get into dogfights watch the pretty explosions. That's what video games is all about, baby.
I also (re)started
Final Fantasy 7. I believe I mentioned starting it a few months ago, but I restarted it on PC because there was a mod a friend recommended and I figured I'd try that out. FFVII has a rather infamous translation and this "Shinra Archaeology" mod alleges to fix the translation to be more in line with the Japanese original, and to provide a sense of continuity between the original and the Remakes that was apparently not present in the official English translation. I can't speak one way or the other on the quality of this mod, not yet at least, but the game itself is very very good. After all, it's
Final Fantasy VII, that shouldn't come as a surprise.
I played most of
inFAMOUS 2 this month and, while I intended to get to Festival of Blood, that's been put on hold. Maybe July will be that game's month but, still, I love these games and revisiting them has been a treat. For
inFAMOUS 2's fifteenth anniversary I decided to write something about Zeke Dunbar, a fictional character I've been associating myself with for all these years and
you can read that here, if you're interested.
As for
Yakuza 5 I, uh, didn't play any
Yakuza 5. I've been putting it off all June and now, a month after watching the opening cutscene, I'm still no deeper into it than I was in May. I
do really like these
Yakuza games but I guess I've burnt myself out somewhat, and need a bit more time to ease back into things. I have so, so, so many
Yakuza games I want to play (and they keep making more of them!) so I need to stay on top of this if I want to finish in any reasonable timeframe but, right now, the allure of things that
aren't Yakuza has been too strong to resist.
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