Finally some news! (Thoughts on Sony State of Play from June 2, 2026)

 Hey friends! It's been a while since I commented on some new game information, and I'm very happy to be back doing that at least for a few minutes here today. There were only a few games that especially caught my attention, so I'll do my best to just focus on the three or four, while bringing up a few to keep an eye on in the end here. Let's try to just jump into the stories here today, because I'm so excited for quite a few of them!

Gotta Love New Game Announcements!

    The Sony State of Play on June 2 started off with a pretty brutal look at Insomniac's latest game, Wolverine. This game looks pretty awesome, and while I do wish they could be working on one of their original series, such as Ratchet and Clank, after the excellent but short Rift Apart from 2021, their work on the most recent Spider-Man games have also been spectacular (pun somewhat intended). Wolverine is turning the rating up a little bit, from Teen to Mature, due to the kind of ridiculous amount of blood splatter on display. We got a look at some gameplay from the game, there's a section where Jean Grey showed up and fought alongside Logan against the villains, the Reavers, who locked a bunch of mutants on a truck. We see in this gameplay that there's still some element of stealth involved with this gameplay, though obviously Logan isn't looking to knock people out or web them up like Spidey, he's looking to kill through any means necessary. We see the name Trask on the trucks, so we know Sentinels are going to be involved in some way in the story, and the Reavers are clearly working with him, as can be seen with the Reavers' advanced technology. I think it's really interesting to have the main theme of X-Men, the attempted killing or experimentation on mutants, to be in a video game, and chances are that some of the darkest moments in this game will have to do with that. There are a lot of other characters from the X-Men series that have already been revealed to appear, among them being Mystique, Jean Grey (who I already mentioned), and Sabertooth, which makes sense, since he's Logan's brother. I'm really excited to play this game, and I'm very excited to finally know the release date, September 11! September is looking to be a pretty crazy month, full of good games, and the next game I'll talk about is coming right after that!

    Control is a game that I've talked about over and over on this blog, and I'm very happy that the sequel is finally getting ready to come out, about a week or so after Wolverine. Control Resonant is looking to be absolutely incredible, and the new trailer that they showed off focused a bit more on the story. We see Emily, the new head of the Bureau's research department from Control talking to Dylan a bit, and it's clear that he's the only one who can do something about this new threat in the absence of Jesse, with his P6 status as potential director. I really hope that nothing too bad has happened to Jesse, but it also makes me nervous that the first trailer showed the Board talking to Dylan, and clearly, something really serious must have happened for them to turn to a measure like that. We didn't see a ton of gameplay in this trailer, but we did get to see some footage of Dr. Casper Darling, the former head of research, welcoming Dylan with balloons and party favors, cut with a short period of him looking at some horrible bloody screen, potentially the scene where Dylan killed someone somehow that we heard about in a tape from the first game. This game looks so weird and trippy, I'm so interested to see what this version of New York City becomes now that all the things that go bump in the night have escaped containment, and I'm really glad that I don't have to even wait that long! September is going to be packed!

    After this, there was an announcement for a remake of Rayman Legends, called Rayman Legends: Retold. There have been rumors of a remake of either Origins or Legends for a few weeks now I think, but I wasn't expecting it to look anything like this. It looks like they've made a full 3D remake of the original game, even though Ubi Arts made it all in a wacky cartoon style that I thought suited the game perfectly. I say full 3D, but this is still going to be a side scroller, just with 3D models and environments. It looks really cool, and it seems like there are going to be some new things added to it, the trailer showed a few segments where it looks like you're riding on a dragon as the camera goes behind it, which would certainly be new, we'll see how often something like that happens in the game, but I thought maybe those sections would replace the Murfy sections which were really holdovers from the Wii U version of the game, but it appears that those sections are back as well. Maybe the dragon parts will just be added on as regular levels, but we'll have to see. It also remains to be seen if they'll also remake the levels from Rayman Origins that were added to the original game. I loved this game, it's definitely one of my favorite platformers of the past 20 years (I have to say 20 because I just realized that the original game came out in 2013, which seems crazy). It's such a wacky time, and honestly I think it may do co-op better than the 2D Super Mario Bros. games that have come out with co-op. I'm also excited that this one is not too far off, since it's coming out on October 1!

    Unfortunately the last game that I was really excited about is not coming anytime soon, but I am incredibly excited for it. The State of Play ended with 20 minutes of footage for the new God of War game, God of War: Laufey. This game starts off with the scene from God of War (2018) which started the adventure for Kratos and Atreus. Faye has died and her loving husband and son have to build a funeral pyre for her. She burns and wakes up in some other place that a character refers to as the "Everywhen" which appears to be the afterlife for Gods maybe? The head of Santa Monica Studio, Cory Barlog, said that this game's narrative will be running parallel to the events of God of War (2018) and God of War: Ragnarok, so maybe we can expect to see some things start to occur as those games are going on, especially since Kratos has a tendency to kill gods every now and then. If this is really the place where gods and goddesses go when they die, I have to wonder if Faye will be bumping into some of the Greek gods from the original games, and if so, how is that going to play out? Faye didn't know the really dark side of Kratos as far as we're aware, but it shows a good way that the game could dive into how Kratos made it to the land of Midgard anyways, and the beginning of their relationship. We were also introduced to a couple new characters such as the Mongolian God of War (Maybe? I just saw someone saying that somewhere, I'm not sure) and the Egyptian God of War, Sekhmet, as well as a jelly cube named Phranque and a talking ribbon named Rue. I am very, very excited for this game, and I'm pretty sure that in my review of Ragnarok, I even said I would be so happy if they made a game about Faye, which is exactly what we are getting here. I'm sure some people are upset that it's a God of War game not following Kratos, but they set up such cool stuff about Faye in Ragnarok, I'm sure it's going to be a great time getting to know her a little bit better whenever this game comes out.

    These were the games that I was most excited about, but some honorable mentions really quickly, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has looked really cool for a long time, reminding me of Marvel Vs. Capcom a bit. It's a cool style that's been given to all these different characters, the developers at Arc Systemworks did a great job in terms of style (as Guilty Gear will show), and I'm looking forward to see it when it comes out on August 6. Kemuri was another game that caught my eye, from Unseen Interactive. Ikumi Nakamura showed up to talk some about this 3-player co-op Yokai hunting game. If you don't know who Nakamura is, you probably know her from her iconic speech when she showed off Ghostwire: Tokyo, when she pointed out, "It's spooooky...." I was genuinely happy to see her back, after Microsoft shut down Tango Gameworks a few years ago, and the game looks pretty cool! Until Dawn 2 was announced, which is pretty cool, it's not really my cup of tea, but I'm sure a lot of people are excited for it, and I was glad to see Neil Newbon in the trailer, since he's a pretty phenomenal voice actor (who I love most as the voice of Heisenberg in Resident Evil Village, but most probably recognize him as Asterion from Baldur's Gate 3). As a last minute inclusion, I have to talk about the Toy Story Retro Roundup and Toy Story 3 Complete Edition. The Retro Roundup is made up of the different versions of Toy Story, Toy Story 2 (including Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue), Toy Story Racer, and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, as well as A Bug's Life, which they throw in as a bonus game. I am very excited about these games, but I may be even more excited for Toy Story 3 Complete Edition. If you haven't played the Toy Story 3 video game, specifically the versions for Xbox 360 and PS3, you really need to give this game a try. I am not exaggerating when I say this may be my favorite licensed game of all time, and the Toy Box mode was so good, it literally became the basis for Disney Infinity, which was made later by this team. I am incredibly excited about both of these games, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

    The Summer is always a good time for game news like this, and as I'm writing this, the Summer Game Fest kick off showcase is airing tomorrow at 5, so we'll continue to get some good game announcements for the next week or so to come. Thanks so much for reading this post, friends. I appreciate all the support a lot, and I hope this has given you some thoughts about games to look forward to! Let me know somehow if there's a game that you're really looking forward to coming out, but it looks like September and October are going to be packed because Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming out in November. I don't care about that game at all, but I am excited for the people that are looking forward to it, at least. I hope you're all doing well! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Games Journalist, and I'll talk to you all soon!